“We passed The Burning trial,” Arwyn said. “We made it through.”
“But there are two more to survive,” I added, a lump forming in my throat.
“Correct.”
“Romy and Kai?” I gasped, feeling the wind driven from my lungs as they finally came to mind.
“Safe-ish. Alive, yes.”
“Where?” My questions came out breathless; I only managed one word at a time.
“Back at our… base? Is that what we’re calling it?”
“And Verena?”
“My aunt is… elsewhere.”
My aunt. Verena. The witch who had worked for Father Tomin. The witch who’d protected us after the first trial. The witch who looked so much like Romy that it had made me sick…
“Where is she, Arwyn?”
He shrugged, clearly not as affected as I was. “Wherever she was before The Burning began, I assume.”
“How?”
Arwyn gathered me close, as if those moments without touching me had driven him mad. “The trial spat us back out close to where we started. I sent Romy back with Kai not but a few minutes ago to make sure our base is still intact.”
Worry, mixed with relief, shot through me. Worry, because of the state Verena was in when The Burning began. If that meant she was back with Tomin, and the single Hunter who made it through the last trial, that wasn’t a good thing. But relief, yes. Selfish relief that I could push that one conversation out of my mind.
“This doesn’t look like whereIstarted…” I couldn’t see over the tall stems of flowers that surrounded us. Even if I stood up, not that my legs would allow it right then, I hardly imagined I’d see many other details either.
“We’re… close as I said. Close enough that, with a little help, I found you.” The clasp Arwyn had on my arms grew tighter. Desperate tears filled his wide, beautiful eyes. “Hector, you shouldn’t have…”
“Passed,” I answered for him after it seemed the word was too hard for him to speak aloud. “I shouldn’t have passed the trial because every pyre was accounted for, and I was left.”
Arwyn’s brief silence was confirmation. “I thought I lost you.”
Those five simple words cut me deep.
I forced a smirk on my lips, trying to feign that everything was normal. “It’s going to take a lot more than that to get rid of me.”
Arwyn leaned close, resting his forehead on mine. The exhale he released brimmed with his relief. “It’s all my fault.”
My mouth dried, the taste of scorch and ash still poisoning my tongue. “What is?”
A shifting made the poppies to our left move. I turned in time to find a little black serpent wind its way through the brush. “Emon?”
My familiar coiled up, lifted his slender neck and bared his sharp teeth at me.“If you ever put me in fire unwillingly again, I swear I will tear out your throat, drink your blood and make a nest in your empty corpse.”
I rolled my eyes, aware that his threat was serious, and yet I couldn’t help but laugh a little.
“This is not funny, witchling.”
“You’re right,” I replied aloud to my familiar. “It’s not. Nothing about this is funny. And yet, we are all alive…”
“Only just,” Arwyn added, side-eyeing my familiar. “Didn’t I ask you to wait back at the base, and protect those inside of it?”
“Tell that witch that I do not take orders from him, or anyone.”
