The Five Realms

Chapter 29: Beanca IV

Chapter 29: A Fire in the Heart

The world broke apart in orange light.

One second Joey was there—smirking, eyes narrowed against the heat, teasing his way across the Bridge of Flames like it was just another stupid dare. And then—

Crack.
Stone giving way.
Screams.
Flames swallowing everything.

Beanca didn't register the fall so much as the absence. One heartbeat he existed. The next, he didn't.

The noise drained out of the tunnel as if the world itself had taken a breath and refused to let it go. Beanca felt her knees lock, her fingers tighten around Solin's scruff. The little direwolf pup whimpered once, nuzzled into her leg. She barely noticed.

The lava below shimmered like a mouth that had just devoured something precious and was already licking its teeth.

No one moved.

Maria's hand hovered near her mouth, fingers trembling but unmoving—as though even breathing might shatter the illusion that this wasn't real.

Chyna... Chyna looked carved from marble, standing stiff with her jaw clenched, tears threatening but held back by pure fury. Her whole body shook, but she didn't cry. Not yet.

Steven... Steven was the only one not completely frozen.

Beanca noticed him because she noticed everything—always had. His mouth was parted, eyes locked on the edge of the bridge, but it wasn't grief that filled them. It was something else.

Not relief. Not exactly.

Anticipation?

Beanca's gut twisted. What did he know?

Why was he not as broken as the rest of them?

Why did he look like he was waiting?

A voice broke through the unbearable quiet.

"Little help here?"

It was casual. Too casual. Like someone asking to be passed the remote, not pulled from a pool of lava.

Beanca's mind blanked. Her head snapped up so fast her neck cracked.

Joey.

Clinging—shirtless, soaked in sweat and ash—to the side of the crumbling bridge, one arm hooked through a gap in the ancient stone, legs dangling above the magma as if he were cooling off in a hot spring.

"Seriously, I think my eyelashes are gone," he muttered. "Are eyebrows supposed to itch?"

For a long moment, no one moved.

Then chaos hit.

Murtagh reacted first, flicking a rod from his belt that telescoped into a hooked staff. Arya leapt forward, voice sharp in the Ancient Language, wind curling upward to ease Joey's weight. Steven was already there, jacket off, holding it out.

Maria fell to her knees.

Not in prayer. In collapse.

Beanca didn't move. Couldn't. Her body refused to translate what she saw into something that made sense. Joey—alive. Joking.

She had mourned him. Felt her chest crack open. Had already tasted the salt of her grief.

And he was laughing?

Even Chyna didn't budge at first. She stared, unmoving, fists trembling at her sides.

Joey climbed over the edge with the same awkward lurch he always had when climbing out of pools—graceless, gangly, muttering, "I didn't mean to fall, by the way. In case that wasn't clear."