He sighed. “Think of it this way. There are two roads. A morally high road, clear and free of obstacles. And there is a lower road, filled with brambles and contaminants and festering insects. At the end of the high road is a safe but unfulfilling life. It is the life I must present before God at the end of all things and say, ‘Yes, because I lived this easy life and submitted to your will in all things, I am worthy of paradise.’ And that is when he says, ‘How can you come before me and insist on paradise when your faith in me was never tested? Never wavered?’ Then there is the darker road, the one full of obstacles and terror. The one that tests my faith. That challenges me to question God, and His will. The one that requires me to be a better man at the end than the beginning. To fight. And at the end of that road, when God welcomes me, and I prostrate myself before Him, He will see the road I chose to travel. He will see I chose not ease and comfort, but the path that challenged me to become a better man. I have committed many terrible acts, Nyx. God may forgive, but He does not forget. I will account for all my crimes. There will be a reckoning. All that remains now is to choose how I will redeem myself before the end days.”

He took a breath. She still wanted to kiss him.

Rhys turned from her, and trudged back to camp to join the others.

Nyx watched after him for some time, watched him roll himself up in his burnous and turn his back to her. She wondered what it was like to live in a world where your children were something more than just fodder for a war. His old family in Chenja was rich, back when he went by some other name. They wouldn’t have had to sacrifice as much. She wondered if that was what love was, knowing there was someone in your life who most likely wouldn’t get torn apart.

She saw Eshe again, eight years old, his hand in her pocket; a fistful of notes. He had looked up at her with big, dark eyes in an unremarkable face, and in that moment, she had imagined him blown apart by some mine, or gunned down by a Chenjan, or poisoned by hornets. He was just a child, just a boy. But boys always met bad ends. It was the first thing she thought of—his mangled body sacrificed to a perpetual war for a God she didn’t even believe in anymore.