True to Dagr’s word, the forest was beginning to thin, spaces between the foliage opening like gaps between pillars. Shards of moonslight stabbed down into those open spaces, providing a clear view of the forest floor. The undergrowth became less tangled, which was a good thing, because Ludo’s feet were dragging across the ground now, and the thought of lifting them over even a small root felt next to impossible.

And then they were free. Ludo staggered forward several more steps before his knees betrayed him and he crumpled onto the grassy plains to the south of Lostwood. It was all he could do to lower Bryony’s limp form to the ground without damaging her.

Dagr offered him an unimpressed side-eye and then easily deposited Cainan nearby. The unconscious man’s exposed flesh had a burnt look to it, and several small wisps of smoke continued to curl skyward from his skin. Images flashed in Ludo’s mind: The man’s mouth widening impossibly large, jaw distending, a black maw that seemed to pull the flames toward it with a flame-eating gravity.

“The Fire Eater,” Ludo muttered, trying to understand the man’s notorious nickname in a whole new light. The last words the man had whispered in his ear echoed in the ether. Seven simple words that had changed his entire view on the world around him:

Your brother is alive. Gado is alive.

He hated those simple words, because they’d turned the very simple path he’d laid beneath his own feet years earlier into something infinitely more complex, with twists, turns, and a thousand switchbacks and dead ends.

Those words were a lie, he told himself. He forced this truth into his heart because they had to be a lie or the rest of his existence was a lie, and yet those seven words haunted him just the same. Taunted him, jeered at him, mocked him, cruel, merciless. Relentless. And yet whether they were a lie or not did not matter, for Ludo knew he would follow the new trail those words had paved to the very end, his every waking moment focused on disproving them even as false faith pushed him onwards.

Faith, he thought. It was something he hadn’t had in a long time. Something he wasn’t sure he deserved.

He pushed his incomprehensible thoughts aside and turned his attention to Bryony. In this state of unconsciousness, her face was so serene, the flawless beauty of a statue, a far cry from the harsh glare she’d offered him as he’d stopped her hand from killing her father, her dagger set between them, reflecting firelight.

That look had been worse than hatred. It had been one of disappointment, like she was staring into the face of someone she no longer recognized. Someone she wished she’d never met.