Chapter 16
Thorian
I glance over at Fenric, who's walking alongside me like we didn't all grieve his death last night. After leaving the canyon, we found shelter and collapsed, and this morning we rose quietly, gathered our things, and kept moving. It's the same as it's been from the start.
Yet, somehow different.
Everything just… feels different. I’m leading our group. Fenric is still gathering anything edible and constantly giving us things to snack on as we walk, and Talon is keeping us entertained with stories.
It’s easy. Comfortable.
Strange.
Since we woke up, I’ve been watching it all like a play, and I’m in the audience. I don’t belong in a unit like this. On a team that really feels like a team. All the other Trials that I entered, my teammates were just bodies to get me to my goal.
These three… are people.
People I think I like.
"Perhaps we should find somewhere to rest soon?" Fenric suggests.
I've been too caught up in my own thoughts to track the time properly. The edges of the sky are drifting into soft pink, the sun lowering behind the trees. Nyx tips her canteen back, coaxing the last drops from it. We need to refill.
"Yes," I say, clearing my throat. "Let's make camp near the river."
We switch our direction, curving back toward the river we’d been trying to stay close to.
Fenric stretches as he walks, something in his back cracking when he raises his arms, and I note that he's moving better than he was last night.
Lucky. Berserkers heal quickly too, and Fenric is no longer cradling his hand to his chest like he was.
He catches my gaze. “Body still feels a little gummy.”
Talon pops in. “I imagine that’s normal when you almost die.”
Nyx has a flash of hurt across her face. “He’s doing great.”
He is. Which I’m grateful for. And not just because his death hurt Nyx. I’d have missed the bastard too.
But if we survive this, we’re supposed to go our separate ways anyway. Right?
I've considered, more than once, how I'll approach Nyx about not parting ways when the competition ends.
That part I've turned over enough times that it no longer surprises me.
What surprises me is everything that followed from it last night, lying awake in the dark after Fenric came back from the dead and Nyx finally stopped shaking.
I heard her grief when he fell. That raw, tearing sound she made at the canyon's edge. I've only felt that kind of loss once in my life, and I would burn the world down before I let her feel it again.
And then I found myself thinking something I've never thought before.
What comes after.
My plan, the one I've carried for years, the reason I'm in these trials at all, will in all likelihood kill me.
I've always known that. I've always considered it acceptable, even preferable, a clean ending to a life that was never going to resolve itself neatly.
I've never planned beyond it because there was never anything beyond it worth planning for.
But now there’s Nyx.
And if, against all probability, I survive, If I complete what I came here to do and I'm still standing after I receive my godhood and embrace my destiny, what then?
Is there a version of this where I actually live?
Where I go somewhere, and she's there, and it's a life rather than just an aftermath?
The thought is so foreign it almost makes me stop walking.
Marriage. The word surfaces like a relic dredged up from deep water.
A home. Children, possibly. Some version of a future I've never permitted myself to picture.
And in the periphery of all of it, somehow, are Fenric's laugh and Talon's insufferable commentary, the four of us comprising some strange, improbable family that shouldn't make sense yet does.
No. That can't be what this becomes.
Can it?
It disturbs me more than dying does. That's the part I can't reconcile. The thought of my own death has never frightened me. But the possibility of finally having a life worth living, and of losing it, frightens me considerably more.
I look at her.
She's walking a few paces ahead, her dark hair coming loose from her braid.
Small. She's always struck me as small—not fragile, never fragile—but compact and precise, like everything about her was made deliberately.
Her hazel eyes catch the last of the light when she glances up to check that I'm still just ahead, and my chest tightens.
She's beautiful. I've known that since the moment I saw her, but knowing it and feeling it are different things, and right now I feel it with a directness that bypasses every practical thought I've had in the last hour.
I want her. Not just in the abstract future I've been reluctantly imagining, not just as a concept, but here, now, her dark hair spread out beneath her as she lies under me, our naked bodies pressed together, her hazel eyes on mine, saying my name in a way she hasn't yet but that I've thought about more than I'd care to admit.
"Thorian?" Talon asks, snapping me from my thoughts as he gestures to the river rushing just up ahead.
"Yes," I say, more firmly than necessary. "Let's find a safe place to make camp."
“Look at this—” Fenric emerges from the brush with his hand held out, a little pile of berries sitting in his palm.
Normally, I would be bored by his constant foraging, but now the color of the berries catches my eye.
“I’ve never seen anything like this before. It looks edible, but there’s something special about—” he says, bringing one to his face to smell, and I reach out, catching his wrist and stopping him.
“Don’t,” I say, reaching around him and taking the berries so I can hold them up to the light.
“I wasn’t going to eat it,” he protests, crossing his arms, which makes Talon snort out a laugh.
“Yeah, right,” the vampire says.
“Even smelling this could affect your brain.” I pinch one of the berries so the skin thins and turn it, holding it to the waning light for the others to see. “This is a Veridra berry.”
Nyx’s brow wrinkles. “Like the celebration?”
“Aye, like the holiday,” I say, glancing at her. Even rumpled like this, with her hair falling from her braid, she’s beautiful. “They go hand in hand.”
I turn the berry in my hand, examining it, remembering the first time Valtor convinced me to try one. As a demi-god, it didn’t affect me as much as it would a human, but it was still the most violent high I’ve ever experienced.
Ale and mead, most mortal vices, don’t even come close to swaying my mental state. But Veridra berries could kill a human if they consume too many too fast.
“The gods use them during the holiday to really get drunk,” I inform them, clearing my throat. “It takes away every inhibition you have.”
I hear Nyx swallow, and I force myself not to glance over at her. It’s becoming harder and harder for me to control my urges around her. That much is clear from how I’d backed her up against that tree, how I’d let my hands roam where they wanted.
“Don’t mind if I do,” Talon quips, reaching up, and I throw the berry to the ground, shaking my head.
“Don’t even think about it.” I’m not the boss of him, but I am the de-facto leader of this group, and I know I’ve earned his trust. “I know you think you’re stronger than this, but this shit will fuck you up, Talon.”
He shrugs. “No matter. I’m sure we’ll find more.”
But when he flashes a smile in my direction, it’s not a challenge.
“It’s more than just berries back here,” Fenric calls, and I realize he’s disappeared into the thicket again. The three of us follow him in and find a nearly perfectly concealed entrance, no bigger than me, that descends down into the earth.
Once again, Nyx swallows.
“I don’t know…”
“Come on.” Talon knocks his shoulder against mine and forges ahead, turning his body to fit into the entrance. “Let’s check it out, big dog.”
We’re the only ones who will be able to really see in the dark. I’d rather not get trapped in a cave tonight, or have to fight whatever we find in there, but night is still falling. It might be our best bet.
Together, the vampire and I slip into the sliver of an opening. Fenric stands protectively between Nyx and the rest of the forest as we disappear. I don’t like leaving her, but I also don’t like the idea of the vampire having to fight whatever cave beast is in here on his own.
A minute later, the cramped passageway, which threatened to narrow to a stop, opens into a cavern, and Talon sucks in a rare, surprised breath.
“Well, holy fuck,” he mutters, swiping the back of his hand over his forehead.
The cave is enormous, far larger than I expected from the narrow opening hidden between the cliffs.
The stone ceiling stretches high overhead before opening to the night sky near the center of the cavern, allowing moonlight to pour inside in shimmering silver beams through a small opening.
It spills across a broad, flat outcropping of pale stone polished smooth by centuries of water, making it glow against the darkness surrounding it.
At the back of the cavern, a waterfall tumbles down the rock face, its steady roar echoing through the vast space before disappearing into a wide, opalescent pool.
The water is so clear I can make out the smooth stones scattered across the bottom, each one gleaming beneath the rippling surface.
Tiny crystals embedded in the cave walls catch the moonlight and sparkle like stars, filling the cavern with a soft, ethereal glow.
Moss blankets the edges of the pool in deep emerald green, and delicate vines trail from the rocky walls, their pale blossoms swaying gently in the cool breeze drifting through the opening above.
It’s like something out of a children’s book.
“I’ll stay behind and check for any creatures we might not want to share our sleeping area with,” Talon says, waving a hand at me. “You go back and get the others.”