Page 49 of A Thousand Burning Ravens

“You speak of the lights as if they are living.”

Myla purses her lips in thought and shifts the reins, so she stands on the side of the horse closest to Bryar. “I think they are.”

He flashes her a perplexed look. “Really?”

“They had energy within them, could you not feel it?”

He seems to reflect, his brows furrowed in deep thought. “Well, I suppose they did not seem inanimate by any means.”

“See,” Myla insists, “there was something to them . . . something that felt lonely.”

The hint of a smile teases the corner of his mouth. “Surrounded by a thousand others just like them?”

Myla ignores the twinge of annoyance stabbing at her chest. “You can be surrounded by endless streams of people and still feel lonely. Believe me,” she adds bitterly. “I would know.”

Thoughtful remorse blankets his demeanor. “I know. I do not know why I said that.”

“You have not been the same since you got back from that mountain,” Myla says softly. “I wish you had not gone.”

His jaw clenches followed by a growled string of words. “I went for you. Believe me, I wish I had not gone either. It felt useless.”

It is Myla’s turn to feel remorseful. “I am sorry—” she fumbles over an apology, feeling torn between sorry and seething. “I just feel like you left something up there, and I can not put my finger on what it is.”

“Myla.” He stops dead in his tracks, turning to face her. His expression is unlike any he is ever worn when addressing her. It is alarming. “Can we just...not talk about this?” He points toward the path before them, his heavy chainmail clanking in the process. “Can we just...walk and get this over with?”

Get this over with. She plays the words over in her head as they walk on in silence, wondering what exactly could prompt the shortness toward her. A thought she would mull over for the next two hours until he speaks again, this time using a less aggressive tone.

“I see the end!” He points toward the horizon, their line of sight impaired by the glare of sunlight overhead. Myla squints, shielding her eyes with a hand, gratitude washing over her as the terrain slowly evens, and the ruins become more scattered, making way for quicker travel.

“We can ride the horses again in a few miles,” Bryar announces. “We will make good ground today.”

Finally able to ride and pass the miles with galloping horses beneath them, the scenery changes rapidly. At first, they pass through more barren wasteland, nothing but dusty ruins and young foliage. The dreariness, in time, transforms into a hillside scape, earth’s green carpeting slowly evolving into a forest growing from the marshes.

In all her years, Myla has never seen a world so diverse, so spectacularly watched over by the gnawing teeth of mountains to her left. There is a chill in the air and a freshness of breath. It is wild, untamed, and less touched by civilization. While the ground beneath her feet is green and the trees all blaze with autumn colors, as her eyes travel the great height of the mountains, all she can see is snow and ice and billowing clouds. A long, skinny fox jets across their path, stopping briefly to blink its beady eyes in their direction, before dipping into a thicket of willows. Myla smiles, wondering where it is off to. How simple the life of a fox must be.

She wants to ask Bryar if he has been somewhere so wild before, but his face is unreadable, and the only words coming from his lips are prompts for the horses to drink and rest. Instead, she checks that he has the horses under control, and she walks downstream, balancing from rock to rock and enjoying the babbling of water over boulders.

Across the way, a deer dips into the forest, turning briefly to watch them, taking stock of the possible threat they pose. Myla wishes she could tell the beast she is a friend, but the spotted doe disappears as quickly as she appeared.

A bed of willows ahead catches sunlight on their thin, ice coated reeds. Behind, in the distance, the black mountains pierce the brilliant blue of the sky, a sight Myla promptly ignores. Without taking note of distance nor time, Myla immerses herself in her senses, experiencing everything nature has to offer her, until she has walked far out of eyesight and earshot of the captain.

There is an alluring glisten in the water and the way the current begins to violently crash, this part of the river picking up in speed and intensity. A sudden insatiable need to lie in the water, to soak in it—to drown in it—washes over her. A sensation that drives fear to her core.

“No,” Myla says between gritted teeth, though her feet move against her will. “No!” she insists again, trying to resist the uncontrollable propelling of her body. She stumbles forward, her feet splashing into the water, and gasps at the shocking cold sending an aching through her.

Bryar is nowhere to be seen; she has walked too far. With the thundering of the river, he would not hear her scream even if she could, which she can not, though her throat tenses with effort. Somewhere, Vesperian sits, bored and burning with the need to torment her.

Myla realizes these past years, the little twinges of need and desire to appease him have been child’s play. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she wondered why so many fell victim to him when suppressing those impulses had only been a matter of focus and mental strength.

Foolish thoughts, she realizes in a flash as she stumbles face first into the shallow water. Ice envelops her, stiffening her limbs and halting her breath with a smack. Something hard jabs her ribcage. Her mind, a jumble of panic, begs her to sit up and move toward the banks, while her body crawls through the rigid water, slipping painfully over the smoothed boulders, seeking a deeper water to die in.

A sob manages to slip from her lips as the water grows deeper and deeper until she is submerged. All that is left to do is lie down and take a deep breath. Hot tears leave her eyes to float away in the icy cold water, never reaching her freezing cheeks; her body trembles as the cold of the water paralyzes her limbs. Myla’s only thought is of the poor child inside her, wondering why its mother’s body is suddenly cold and tensing around what should be a warm, comforting oasis.

Like a newly sharpened blade, the cut of the icy water against her neck, then her chin, and finally her face, pulls her down until the light above merely ripples like a kaleidoscope, waving goodbye to her.

Fuck you, Vesperian. What a lovely final thought. Myla pictures him drowning next to her, his lungs aching like hers do. An overwhelming need to breathe tempts her, whispering, ‘Take a breath right now; it is ok.’

She is ready to comply when the light overhead takes on an irregular pattern, disturbed by something crashing into the water. Not something, someone.