Page 50 of On Burning Paths

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.