Page 24 of On Burning Paths

"Why did you go back?" I ask, only realizing I've said it aloud when I hear it echo off the cave walls.

"Go back?" Nyx lifts her head.

"To the Ashen. Going through once was hard enough. Why did you return?"

She's quiet for a moment. In the firelight she's beautiful, the gold from the flames reflecting off her dark hair, and I find myself imagining her somewhere else entirely. Before a different fire, in a different life, wearing a fine dress, dancing with her sister instead of fighting to win her back. A lady, through and through.

"I just needed to try to see if I could help them," she says finally. "Gave them permission to cross over. They'd been waiting so long, and nobody had ever told them they were allowed to leave." She drops her chin to her chest. "I couldn't walk away knowing I might have been able to help and chose not to. I had to try."

"And they listened," Thorian murmurs, his eyes on her.

"They did," she says quietly.

"Those children had been waiting for someone like you," I say. "For longer than either of us have been alive." I shake my head. "You truly are a good person, Nyx. I wasn't entirely sure someone like that really existed. But you do."

"No, I don't—" she starts, but Thorian raises a hand, cutting her off.

"You are," he says, with the same certainty he uses when he's telling us where to make camp or which direction leads to water. Simple fact. Unargued. "I've traveled every land one can reach by foot or boat or carriage, and I've competed in these trials long enough to know that there is nobody like you."

She flushes and looks down, but doesn't argue further.

Thorian is right. There's something about Nyx that defies logic. I knew it the first time I laid eyes on, the first time she spoke to me. She was a lady stopping to speak to a berserker with genuine kindness, no airs, no snobbery. I hadn't known what to do with it then. I'm not sure I entirely know now.

"We need to get dry," Thorian says.

It's practical. Obvious, even. And yet there's a moment where we all seem to register what that means at once.

“Nyx, you can go first,” Thorian offers, digging in the pack and handing her a blanket.

She takes it, but just stares back at us. It takes me a minute to register why.

"We’ll turn around to give you some privacy," I say to Thorian.

He does, without comment. I follow suit, the two of us facing the cave wall while Nyx changes behind us. There's the soft sound of wet fabric peeling away from skin, the quiet of her moving around the fire, laying her things out over the rocks where the heat can reach them.

"Done," she says, then continues, “Your turn.”

I can hear her settle, her back to us now, giving us the same courtesy we gave her.

Thorian and I strip down without ceremony, spreading shirts and trousers over the rocks closest to the fire. The cave air is cold against damp skin, and I move quickly, grateful for the fire's reach.

When we're done, the three of us turn back to the fire at roughly the same moment, and there's a beat where nobody quite knows where to look. Nyx is wrapped in the blanket to her chin, her hair damp and beginning to dry, loose hair from her braid framing her face. In the firelight she looks softer than she does when she's armed against the world. More herself, maybe.

"Right," I say.

"Right," she agrees.

We arrange ourselves around the fire, the three of us in various states of undress and exhaustion, and something about the absurdity of it makes it easier. There's no room for self-consciousness when you're this tired, this cold, this thoroughly battered by a god's tantrum.

Silence falls over the cave and we let it, warming ourselves and resting our weary bodies. Nyx stretches out alongside the fire, the blanket pulled up to her chin, her breathing gradually deepening.

I pass around what I've salvaged, which are the nuts, the berries, and the two mushrooms, and we divide it solemnly. It isn't much. It's almost laughable, honestly, and after a short silence Nyx looks down at her small share and says, deadpan, "A feast."

"Don't let it go to your head," I tell her.

Thorian makes a sound that might, in certain lighting, be considered a laugh.

It loosens something, that small exchange. We talk as we eat, low and easy. Nyx says something that sets Thorian off, and he defends himself with more feeling than he probably intends, and she and I catch each other's eyes across the fire and say nothing, which somehow makes it funnier. It's easy. Easier than it has any right to be, given where we are and what we've just been through.