Chapter 13
Nyx
The other teams are huddled against the tree line, trying to take shelter from the storm. The Ashen Hounds are living up to their names, sitting completely still in their massive wolf forms, letting out slight, harrowing howls from time to time.
No doubt mourning their poor, fallen friend.
Magnus and the Vultures are huddled together beneath a sort of magical umbrella formed over their heads to keep them dry. I wonder if I could use my magic like that. Then I wonder about the energy they're expending to do it, and decide it probably isn't worth it simply to stay dry.
Nearby, Thorian and Talon are hauling old weapons up from the shallowest part of the canyon, as close to the edge as I'm comfortable with them being. Every time lightning splits the sky I tense, watching them. But Fenric needs the materials, and this is what we're doing.
We have a plan. Trust the plan.
I kneel on the ground and receive each load as they bring it up, organizing the weapons by length for Fenric, shortest to longest. Each time I wrap my hand around a mud-speckled hilt, I think of the person who last held it.
Toys in the hands of stupid gods.
The shifters let out another mournful howl for their friend, and tears spring to my eyes despite everything.
My heart hurts for them, even knowing they would never mourn my teammates the same way.
But I can't stop myself from imagining it anyway, one of my own—Thorian, Talon, Fenric—struck down like that.
Here one moment and gone the next. The thought makes my jaw go tight.
As awful as the godfever was, I didn't have to watch my parents fall. I had the chance to say goodbye, to hear their last words, to go through the burial rites of our people. Those shifters had none of that. Just a body turning in the air, and then the bottom of a canyon.
"Here," Talon says, interrupting my thoughts.
He grunts and drops another load of weapons near my feet. They clatter noisily when they land, some of them nearly rusted through. Fenric is nearby, scanning the weapons I sort each time.
I reach for the nearest one and get back to work, my thoughts spinning to all the lives lost because of the gods. Because of the yearly Trials.
There are many who enter this competition for the greed, just wanting money and notoriety, but surely there were others like Fenric and me. People who lost something and decided competing in the Trials was the only way to regain what they lost.
I finish sorting the pile of weapons and look up to watch Fenric, breathing hard and moving tirelessly in the rain. Water blows out and away from his face, dropping off his nose and lips.
With each new pile of swords and daggers clattering to the ground, he’s looking through them, grabbing the longest ones, and wrapping vines from the nearby trees around them to secure them together.
It’s like watching a beaver build a dam, but much quicker and far more vertical. His brain works in ways so unlike mine it’s hard to figure how he even came up with an idea like this. And I’m not quite sure what it has to do with us getting across the pass.
But perhaps that’s part of what’s made us a good team thus far. All of us have different approaches and different abilities. All complementing one another.
“Are you sure this is going to work?” Thorian asks, raising his voice to be heard over the roaring wind and rain as he drops another pile of weapons near us.
“No!” Fenric replies in a beat of honesty, before flashing a wide smile at the demi-god. “But I think this is our best bet! Unless you’ve got a different idea?”
Thorian shakes his head, a slight smile on his lips, and I marvel at the fact that they’re able to joke and laugh together in such a circumstance. The other groups watch us from their huddles, clearly intrigued, but not in a hurry to investigate further.
“So…what is the idea?” I ask, trying not to let my worry show through.
Fenric turns to me, eyes refocusing, as though he’s been so engrossed in his task he didn’t even think to explain it. “Oh,” he says, glancing at the other two guys, who are also waiting. “It’s… well, it’s a lightning rod. You all don’t have those?”
We shake our heads. It rarely storms like this where I’m from. The most we get is the occasional rain. I wonder about where Thorian and Talon are from, then about the volume of storms Fenric must get if he knows about something like this.
“Lightning,” the berserker says, pointing at the sky, “is electricity. And electricity likes to run through the tallest object. That’s why he—” he gestures to the bridge, the scorch mark where the shifter once was, “—was struck. He was the tallest thing out there. But the lightning is attracted to metal, and if we can make this tall enough, it will strike here instead.”
“Sounds… like it could work,” Thorian says, sounding more bolstered now that he’s heard the explanation. “So, let’s finish it.”
Thorian and I get busy digging a hole near the start of the bridge, while Talon and Fenric work on the long string of swords, laying it on its side in the mud. They work quickly, tying more weapons together with the vines until the contraption is impossibly tall.
The silence of everything but the storm sends my thoughts back to before, for some strange reason. Maybe because it’s cold. Maybe because I remember the last time I felt warm. I don’t know. But my mind goes to Talon pulling me in close, and it feeling like the most natural thing in the world.
In fact, being around all of them has started to feel like the most natural thing in the world. Thorian, impossibly strong and stoic. Fenric, bright and thoughtful. Talon, with his clever remarks and flirting ways.
The way the three of them move around me feels natural, with an ease I never expected and still can't quite explain. It’s like the spaces between us have always been shaped this way. Like we fit.
I find myself thinking, for the first time, about going home. Not the version I've been carrying since I left, the one where I find Lyra and bring her back and things slowly, painfully rebuild. This is a different version. One where I walk back through the doors of the manor and I'm not alone.
I wonder if Thorian would still be the way he is now, that quiet watchfulness, that instinct to put himself between me and whatever is coming.
If he would still make me feel like nothing could get to me while he was nearby.
I wonder if Fenric would still make me feel safe in that warmer, easier way of his, like the world is manageable, like there's always a next step worth taking.
And Talon. Whether he would still find ways to make me laugh at the moments I needed it most.
It's silly. I know that. I've known these men for days, not years, and the Trials have a way of compressing time, of making everything feel more significant than it might otherwise. My mother would have raised an eyebrow at me.
But I can't unknow how it feels to be cared for. Not just to care for others, which is all I've done for so long I've stopped noticing the weight of it, but to have someone looking back. To have three someones looking back.
I can't help but think that if my mother were here, and she saw them, she might just understand.
“We’re done,” Fenric announces, breathing hard.
“So are we,” Talon says.
I look up to see Fenric and Talon dragging the tower of swords through the mud. Thorian stands, helping them to lift it, and they place it in the hole while I quickly shovel as much of the mud in as I can.
When I stand, hands dripping with muck, Thorian and Talon return with large rocks, which they gather around the base of the thing.
“It’s not going anywhere,” Thorian says, after shaking it with a hand.
“Don’t!” Fenric reaches out, grabbing the demi-god’s arm. If Thorian didn’t allow it, his arm wouldn’t move, but he must because Fenric snatches it away from the lightning rod. Breathing hard, Fenric says, “We all need to get back from this thing—”
At that moment, the hairs on the back of my neck start to stand. Silently, we all understand what it is that Fenric is trying to communicate to us.
The lightning is going to strike the pole.
“I’ve memorized the pattern of the wind, the lightning!” Fenric shouts through the wind, holding his hand up to his forehead to keep his hair from dripping into his eyes. “I’ll cue when to go, and when to stop and hold on.”
At that moment, the air around us seems to fritz with a strange dryness, even with the rain falling all around us, and there’s a crack of energy as a lightning bolt seems to reach up from the top of the tower and to the sky, like a long, reaching splinter through a glass window.
It strikes again and again, each time hitting the tower.
Fenric jumps, pumping a hand into the air. “It worked! Now, come on! Before the lightning singes through the vines!”
“I’ll go first, since the bridge can only handle one of us at a time,” Thorian says, pushing up his sleeves. I start to protest, but he holds up a hand. “I have the best chance of surviving the fall. After me comes Nyx, then Talon, and Fenric, you’ll have to be last, because you know the pattern.”
I want to protest again, but I realize it’s because I don’t want to cross the bridge at all. Swallowing down the trepidation, I nod and take a breath. The other men accept the directive without question, nodding solemnly.
Thorian moves to the start of the bridge, knocking his elbow against Fenric’s, then nodding at him once before facing forward.
Bouncing on his heels, his hands shaking with nervous energy, Fenric watches the sky.
“Wait!”
I can’t stop myself. Thorian turns back from the start of the bridge, and the other two look to me, concern and defense instantly lighting in their faces, eyes darting to the other teams, as though they might not have sensed an attack on me.
“I—” I swallow again, looking at each of them. “I care about you. Each of you.”
Thorian steps forward, taking my chin in his hand and tipping my head up to catch my gaze. “Don’t,” he commands. “Do not talk like this. We’re going to make it across.”
A moment later, there’s heat to my left, and I feel Fenric’s arms coming around me. “It’s going to work, Lady Nocturne,” he whispers.
“Of course it is,” Talon says, joining the hug after a moment, his other arm snaking around my back just under Fenric’s. Grinning at me, Talon says, “We’ve got this genius berserker on our team, don’t we?”
Before I can answer, the sky splits open again, striking down at the tower. I can feel the weight of the other groups watching, clearly curious about what we’re doing.
“We’ve got just a minute or two left,” Fenric says, as several consecutive strikes hammer down on the tower, which, somehow, still holds strong. “Right after the next lightning strike!”
“Got it,” Thorian says, pulling me in for a quick kiss, his eyes locking on mine before he turns back to the bridge.
“Okay,” I say, letting Talon pull me to his side as he puts his arm over my shoulders. “We can do this. It’s going to be okay.”
"The demi-god is annoying," Talon whispers into my ear.
Ever since that moment in the garden, Talon has had a way of soothing me. He makes my brain buzz with a contentment I don't understand. I turn my head slightly toward him.
"Why does being near you feel like this?" I ask quietly. “Like I’m safe?”
"It's because of vampire magic," he murmurs, then cracks a smile. "Just kidding. It’s all me."
I lean into him, watching as Thorian prepares to run over the bridge. The air sizzles. Lightning strikes once again, and the wind whips once more violently before dying down.
“Go!” Fenric hollers, looking up at the sky, then at Thorian. “Go now!”
Thorian doesn’t need to be told twice. A second later, and his great silhouette cuts a figure over the canyon, the bridge rocking under his weight.
“Oh, Gods,” I breathe, fighting the urge to close my eyes.
Talon pulls me closer. “It’s okay. Trust him. He can do this.”