Jika still looked like how I felt when my blessing held me right on the edge of death, but she was apparently put out that she had missed seeing the Dawn Crawler the day before so when we gathered to see what drew the fire dancers out of the lake of fire every year, she insisted on coming along. She didn’t even fully back down when Malady and Nine Claws pressed her on her ability to stay upright. It was nice to see that she could have a spine, but I also wished she didn’t send my mind into a spiral just by standing in my line of view.

On one hand, she might not be alive if I hadn’t given her my slipshod concoction because she wouldn’t have been able to stay awake long enough to get to safety and I doubted my ability to carry her as far as she had taken me.

On the other hand, my mixture definitely hadn’t done her any favors in the long run and it could have been just as dangerous as the fog.

Really, I should have forced her onto the floating box with Deamar and been done with it in the first place, because now I had my whole childhood’s worth of training telling me all the reasons she should by laying down, recovering, and all the things that should be done to help her get better, faster, that I couldn’t act on while another part of me was precariously close to breaking and giving her an apology even though that was weakness through and through—and it wouldn’t solve anything.

She just looked so pitiable and I knew that one way or another I should have been the one to deal with the consequences of my ideas and not her. But here I was walking around, normal, after finally getting enough sleep while she looked like the one who had stayed awake for days on end and could barely function as a result.

That was partly on her for insisting on staying with me at Steamer’s Fall but I knew better than to make the argument that she would have had the guts to stay there on her own. If I had gone back to the village in the floating box, she would have to.

So, in the end, I compromised between the two warring parts of my mind so they’d shut up and I could think about anything else.

“You should use a spear to help you balance as you walk so you don’t fall and break your nose on top of everything else,” I said.

Jika recoiled slightly at my sudden bit of instruction, but Prevna handed over her spear without a word while giving me a look of conflicted amusement. I kept my focus on Jika so I couldn’t be accused of not giving her the time she asked for.

“Also make sure you drink lots of water and if you get dizzy don’t push it.”

I stomped away before she could say anything. It was all common sense advice but almost no one would have bothered to say it if they didn’t have a healer’s background. I didn’t like hinting at my past but even if she followed what I said it couldn’t be construed as healing since I hadn’t done anything.

I would have preferred it if Logar had taken us to see what he had promised the day before, but there hadn’t been a lot of hours left in the day by the time we were done seeing the Dawn Crawler. Instead we left early in the morning and with a bigger group than anticipated.

Logar and Morn led the way with Deamar sulking on their heels. I wasn’t sure why we needed both leaders to show us where to go, but they were dressed differently than normal with ash painted across their faces in intricate designs. Morn also held the charred remains of some animal that hadn’t escaped the fire dancers’ path.

Kuma was also coming along this time while Gard and Colt stayed behind to keep an eye on our camp. She kept close to Jika with Prevna. Nine Claws kept between their group and the men at the front while Malady, for some disconcerting reason, drifted back to keep pace with me at the back of the group.

I glanced at her sidelong but I refused to be the one to break the silence as we walked down to the village’s docking area and then piled onto a floating box to cut across the giant lake of molten rock. I claimed a spot by the edge and tried to see through the fog so I could focus on something else other than the press of people in the box. Though the sheer unnatural nature of the fact that we were in a box made of wood on a lake of liquid fire did a good job of distracting me already.

Until Malady settled into the spot next to me. She stood there, one hand lightly resting on the railing, her ridiculously large pack on her back in case something unexpected happened.

“I know Helena spoke to you about the sects last night. Don’t neglect your choice of fire starter either. We can make or break a whisper woman’s success.” She cut her gaze over to where I knew Deamar was still hiding in his parents’ shadows.

“He’s not my fire starter.” I glowered at her for the implication.

She was unfazed. “Then don’t let anyone else know the lizard tied you two together or find someone else quick. There’s surely more than a few who’d jump at the chance to ruin your chances, especially when the means are practically handed to them.”

“Why do you even care?” I asked. “How would anyone else even find out?”

“If you think that boy won’t open his mouth and complain about the injustices he thinks have been done to him at every opportunity, then you’re much more of a fool than I took you for,” Malady said. “It won’t help you or him but he’s so used to being coddled, you’ll be lucky if he realizes the damage he’s done before it’s too late and you’re both stuck in situation you can’t escape from.”

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And I couldn’t even threaten him not to talk about how it was all my fault he was being forced from his precious valley because that would just push him to be even louder about it. Nor did I have much faith in appealing to his sense of reason since I still wasn’t sure if he even had one.

Since I couldn’t force Deamar to be smart, I pressed Malady for more answers instead. “Why do you and Nine Claws care all of the sudden? You should be giving all this advice to Prevna.”

“Who’s to say we aren’t?” Malady raised her eyebrows at me. “Besides, it’s not that we suddenly care. We respect your mentor and she knows us well enough to know we’d be interested in taking on this mission for more than the relic and exploring new territory.”

“So what, you agreed to fulfill Mishtaw’s favor so you could meet me?” Something in my guts twisted at the thought. I knew I had made more of a name for myself than I ever would have wanted between Flickermark’s mark on my chin and the way things had gone down during my few months in the Seedling Palace so I got booted out to a war front on the shore, but it still didn’t make sense that fully fledged whisper women and fire starters would seek me out.

Malady nodded. “Helena did. She likes to discover for herself the difference between common knowledge and the truth.”

“And?”

“And we’ve discovered enough to realize that the Lady of Calm Waters was right to snatch you up when she did. It’d be a waste for you to be trapped amongst the bottom ranks of whisper women, unable to do anything meaningful, because you make enemies as easily as you breathe.”

“I don’t—”

She cut me off. “Just think on it. Every whisper woman needs a personal fire starter unless they join the Beastwatchers.”

I jumped on that tidbit of information. “They don’t have individual fire starters?”

She pressed her lips together in distaste. “They pool theirs together. Some still end up paired since they work so well together or if they chose each other before joining the sect, but for the most part they treat us as interchangeable tools.”

I wasn’t sure if that was true but I didn’t waste my breath debating an issue I wasn’t involved in. There was some appeal to the idea of not having someone follow me around all the time, but I wasn’t sure if the trade off of always dealing with someone new was worth it.

Malady left me to rejoin Nine Claws and no one else took her place so I was able to spend the rest of the trip across the lake in peace. I kept a careful, but subtle, eye on Jika as we started to hike up the side of one of the mountains ringing the valley after we left the floating box behind. She handled the climb well though with her spear in hand to help keep her balance, and Prevna and Kuma right there to lend a hand. Another night or two of good sleep to recover from her exhaustion and for whatever lingering effects the mixture might have to leave her body and she’d probably be back to normal.

About halfway up the mountain we arrived at a clear path carved into its side. The entire thing looked melted, like rock filling the lake below had finally cooled. Leading up to the melted path was another path of scorched earth that I recognized as the fire dancers’ work. It was like over the course of a dozen steps the fire dancers had decided they need to burn more than the foliage so they had lit up the mountainside until the ground beneath their feet boiled and melted into something slick and uneven.

We followed the new path up while doing our best not to slip. More than once Prevna or Kuma had to catch Jika by the elbow when her exhaustion caused her to miscalculate her footing. It didn’t help that the higher we followed the path, the more the side to our right dropped away into a cliff. The fog clung around us no matter how high we went.

It also blocked our view of what lay in wait until I looked up from my footing that had finally evened out to see that we had entered a bowl carved into the mountain top. Like a giant had sheared its peak off before scooping out a deep basin in the center for good measure.

In that basin was a sight so familiar and yet so unlike anything I had ever seen that I stopped cold, just so I could try to process what I was seeing. Dozens and dozens of what could only be fire dancers filled the space. They were humanoid in shape but where we were made of flesh and blood, they were all fire.

All of them were as still as statues, locked into one last gesture, one last step. An eternal final move to their dance. Those closest to us were still embodiments of fire, burning brightly, while those closer to the circle they were locked in smoldered, mostly embers and gray ash. Even closer to center had bits of glass poking through their ashy exteriors while those in very center were fully clear glass.

And those that were made of glass refracted the glow from the thin lines of lava crisscrossing the space beautifully.

It was like stepping into the Statue Garden all over again, but instead of finding monsters that could curse me with a touch I found mystical creatures whose sole purpose was to be beautiful.

Morn gently dumped the scorched remains of the creature he had been carrying into one of the thicker lines of lava. “Every year they dance through the valley, creating the ash the plants need to thrive and areas for new growth, before they join the others here. Offering their fire so they can all dance once more.”

Nine Claws asked, “Why gather here?”

Morn just nodded to an area across the basin. I couldn’t see what he was indicating at first until I found a bit of higher ground so I could see over the dancers’ heads.

That was when I saw the throne resting on a ledge partially up the basin’s wall. It was nothing like our goddess’s nest in the Seedling Palace, but the grand nature of it, the impossible way sunlight seemed to be caught the braided strands of glass that made up the chair, and the unusual furniture itself made it obvious who had sat there.

We were in a valley dedicated to a goddess who had been cut of from it for centuries and, perhaps once a upon a time, she had sat on that chair and watched while her dancers preformed for her delight.

Now they still danced, but there was no one to see. The villagers gave their loyalty to a lizard instead of a goddess’s empty throne and the only other goddess scorned dance with a passion.

This place truly was an ever burning funeral pyre. Abandoned and grieving for a past that wasn’t likely to ever come true again. A relic of when the goddess’s had been on friendly terms.

I wasn’t sure why the fire dancers kept dancing every year, unless that was an oversight on Azabel’s part when she was barred from entering our goddess’s territory, but they were definitely eerie in a way the shamble men weren’t. The fire dancers had sounded alive when they passed by Steamer’s Fall and now they seemed no more alive than the surrounding stone. The shamble men were likened to statues for how still they could be for years on end but there was still some life to them. The feeling that they could move at any moment.

These fire dancers were different. Like the life had been cut from them. Like how the goddess could give and take away our blessings on a whim, so to could Her sister give and take away the very life she had made us with, with similar impunity.

That thought sent a shudder all the way down my back. For all that our goddess was terrifying and powerful, She couldn’t start and end our existence like puppets on a string. She might kill us because we drew Her wrath, but that felt entirely different than what Her sister could do.