Lightning continued to flick at the night sky, delicate silver traces there and gone so quickly that they might have been imagination. Thunder gave way to the steady whisper of light rain. Ashes sat on her heels and wrapped her arms around her knees. Her heart felt like it had swollen to fill her entire chest and now threatened to choke her. She fought the urge to vomit it out.

No one spoke, at first. They stood with hands on thighs or slumped to their knees, and the sound of heavy breathing interwove with the sound of rain. Then the rain stopped altogether, and the cool scent of rain gave way to the usual mossy, dank scent and clammy humidity of the swamp. Insects and frogs and night birds hesitantly resumed their usual chorus.

“We can’t stay here.” Daness, who had first grabbed the prod and pinned Barab with it, straightened and worked her shoulders. Her head turned as she peered into the surrounding darkness.

Night cast black shadows across a gray world, robbed of daylight colors. Moonlight painted edges of pale green along the edges of trees and marsh grasses where it touched. But there was nothing resembling enough light to see by.

“We can’t go stumbling around in the dark.” Moss spoke up before Ashes could. She’d kept the slaver’s prod and leaned against it now. “We’ll have to wait for dawn.”

“And how long will that be?” The blonde woman who’d thrown mud into Barab’s face looked up from where she crouched, wiping her hands half-heartedly on a softer tuft of short grasses. Despite the tears streaking her dirty cheeks, her voice held a wavering pragmatism. “What if other slavers are still out there?”

“Then we kill them, too.” Moss’s knuckles tightened around the prod she’d taken from the slaver. Barely restrained fury ran from her voice and sank cold into Ashes’s veins.

“Dawn is only four or so hours away.” Charak of the friendly blue eyes and wavy red hair interjected a soothing voice into the conversation. “We’ll keep watch until then.”

“And then what?” No inflection in Arrold’s voice indicated whether he argued or merely asked. He stood, Ashes noticed, at the very edge of the huddle of survivors. Had he contributed anything at all to the struggle against Barab?

Ashes thought he had not. Based on where he now stood, she wondered if he hadn’t been attempting to sneak away while the others were fighting for their lives. What had Moss said earlier, when Arrold was trying to bribe his way out of the cage? Survival is not selfish.

Perhaps, perhaps not. Instinctive mistrust tickled the back of her neck, but Ashes said nothing.

“And then we go home.” Plump Meleri with the lank black hair stood beside Charak, still, after the two of them had pummeled Barab with their fists while Daness and Moss fought him for the prod.

“So we’re going to ignore that there was something unnatural about that storm? And that dozens, maybe hundreds of vipers attacked the barge at the same time?” As Arrold spoke, his gaze drifted toward Ashes.

Because I made that foolish speech. Not because he knows anything at all for certain.

Her pulse picked up again, just the same.

Because I know. The memory of that long-ago ritual welled again into Ashes’s memories. Whatever Mother Reed had done, she had tied Ashes to that nameless black power. However many years it had been, she was bound to it, still. And whatever Ashes’s intention had been, that power had answered her prayers.

“It’s not unheard of.” Moss took a step toward Arrold, leaning on the semi-sharpened pole she carried like it was a walking stick. “Snakes can sense warm-blooded prey even through the water.”

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

Arrold stared at Moss for a moment. Then he shrugged and glanced at Ashes once more before turning away altogether and staring into the darkness in the direction Ashes thought he had been trying to flee.

“We’ll go south.” Daness continued as if Arrold hadn’t interrupted. “Back the way we came. If there are more Vithtak along the way, we’ll sneak around them. We’ll find a way.”

Charak nodded, a smile ghosting the corners of his mouth. “We will.”

The blonde young woman stopped wiping her hands on the grass and rose to her feet.

“I’m… Well, it doesn’t matter. People will be looking for me, that’s the part that matters. A group of people. Armed, even.”

The girl’s claim was met with momentary silence.

“What is your name?” Daness looked the girl up and down as she asked. “And who is looking for you?”

“Kestrel. Yes, like the bird. My organization will have sent out hunters to get me back from the Vithtak.” Kestrel made an impatient motion with hands still coated in dried mud. “What matters is that they’ll be coming from the south—in the same direction we need to go.”

Moss had continued staring silently at Arrold. Now, her face turned toward Kestrel. “So when we head that way, we can watch for them. If we can find them, they can protect us the rest of the way home.”

Kestrel’s head bobbed. Tears dried on her cheeks, but she seemed calmer now. Ashes imagined everyone felt it, that sense of brightening in the air as they began to believe that their ordeal was nearly over. Home was but a short walk away.

What Ashes thought about was the lingering bitter scent ever at the edge of her awareness. Even if Arrold had been dissuaded from further pursuit of what the storm and the poisonous death it had brought up from the lake meant, Ashes had not.

Moss stood with the others, easily assuming a role as protector and planning out how she and Ashes would get away from the slavers and the black presence and back to the lives they’d stolen from the clutches of other, larger duties when they were children.

But they weren’t children any longer. And everything Ashes had thought before was no less true now that they were freed.

I turned my back on my duty then. If I hadn’t, maybe the Vithtak would no longer even be here.

There was still time, the shadows around her seemed to whisper. She could still set things right.

But doing that meant that she could not go home.

The conversation meandered through other minutiae of their plans for the morning. Charak and Daness looked over Barab’s body and found a pair of long knives in his belt. Charak and Meleri each took one, although Moss borrowed Meleri’s and used it to put a finer point on the slave prod, turning it into an even closer approximation of a spear.

Daness took the long metal cage key from the body of the slave who’d died setting them free and after a moment’s thought turned it over to Kestrel.

“You did fine with mud, but I imagine this would do you better. I do fine with just my fists.”

Barab wore a heavy cloak and good boots, as well. No one made an attempt to take those from him. Swamp folk were accustomed to going barefoot, and Kestrel wore her own boots already. And Ashes couldn’t speak for anyone else, but the thought of wearing a cloak which reeked of Vithtak blood made her feel ill, silver thread or not.

Moss volunteered to watch through the night. “I won’t sleep anyhow,” she remarked as she hunkered down beside Ashes.

Daness also volunteered and took up a post beside a tree, her arms crossed. The others settled into poses of relative comfort so they could attempt to rest before daylight came. Moss lingered a moment longer beside Ashes.

“We’ll get you home.” Moss touched Ashes’s shoulder. Moonlight glittered in her green eyes and sparked in the pale copper of her hair. A fierce smile creased the corners of her mouth. “Away from… here. Back to safety.”

Threatening tears tightened in Ashes’s chest. Telling Moss no had never been easy.

But you know it’s right.

“I don’t think I can go home.” Ashes whispered but for as quickly as Moss’s smile dove into a frown, she might have shouted. “What Mother Reed told me…”

“You were a child. We’ve talked about this before and decided.”

“I’m not a child now.”

But Moss was already shaking her head, and Ashes recognized the hard set of her chin.

“It was ridiculous then, what they asked of you. It’s ridiculous now. We’ll go home.”

Moss’s voice rose. Daness looked back over her shoulder. At the edge of Ashes’s vision, Arrold looked toward them, too.

More objections welled inside Ashes, but she held them in. Moss would not ever agree, and whatever words Ashes spoke would only bring opposing ones from Moss.

I can either make Moss happy, or I can do what I know I need to do.

But Ashes couldn’t do both. Somehow, she would need to decide which was truly more important.