"No!" Milo screamed and I saw the fear in his expression, the desperation. "Please! You have to listen to me! You don't understand! They knew you were coming. They wanted you to drop the wards. They're after the amulet! They—"
"What did you just say?" Gryfon snapped, his attention fully on the screaming scholar now. Milo balked at the intensity of the general's full attention for a brief moment, staring back at those icy blue eyes with shock and fear, but then his gaze slid behind him to the cots on the ground and the men upon them.
"He killed them," he whispered, turning a ghostly pale. "He killed all of them."
"Stay with me, boy," Gryfon spat. "What did you say about the wards? About an amulet?"
Milo's gaze snapped back to the general.
"Cosmo came for it but I'd already…he couldn't get to it so he slaughtered them, all of them, my whole…but then he started laughing, said it didn't matter anyway because Deimos was on his way and, by then, the wards would have fallen and he'd be able to…he'd get it himself. I didn't—I don't—I'm sorry. I tried. Forgive me, my ancestors, but I tried."
Milo's voice cracked at the last and his head dropped into his hands with a sob. He fell to the sand below, both warriors stepping back in shock as he broke before them.
Gryfon's jaw was so tense I thought his teeth might shatter. But then, shoulders set and lips pursed in a grim frown, he began striding forward, against the tide of refugees, toward Sanctuary.
"Sir?" one of the warriors questioned, dragging his stunned gaze from the weeping First Ringer to his general. "Should we act on this information? If it's a real threat we should—"
"Keep to your tasks, Tamim," Gryfon replied and in his tone there was nothing but cold, grim determination. "Get the refugees to safety, report back to Prima, guard Adrian. Those are your priorities. Mero is in charge while I'm gone. Relay my instructions to him."
The warrior, Tamim, blinked at him in shock.
"You don't intend to go alone," he said, gaping.
"This dance between Deimos and I began long ago," Gryfon muttered, hardly loud enough to be heard over the thousands of shuffling feet striding in a line nearby. "It's time we finished it."
Then he walked forward in the sand, weapons strapped to his back, silver hair blowing around his shoulders in the afternoon breeze. He disappeared from sight moments later, lost in the dust rising with the wind around us.
***
We were moving within hours.
Witha storm rising in the sands not caused by our own Zver and their riders, we had hardly any time at all to vacate the premises. More and more citizens moved away from their home city with wide eyes and pale, terrified faces. I looked away from them the moment I could, the moment the general was gone and Milo was taken to this Esher woman for settling. I shut myself inside the wagon with Adrian in avoidance. Because that was precisely what this was: avoidance. I didn't want to see mymother. I didn't want to see my grandfather or my cousins. And I didn't wantthemto see the man I'd become. Not yet.
So I shut myself in the dark wagon and watched Adrian as she slept peacefully on the rickety table before me. We'd tied her down so she wouldn’t slide off butthe general's strange companion had informed me that the restraints might cause her to panic if she woke while we moved. I was here to calm her if that happened. I thought it best not to tell the man my presence would be anything but calming for Adrian.
Luckily, she didn’t wake.
Not for weeks.
She didn’t wake when the wagon rocked back and forth on uneven desert ground. She didn’t wake whenone of the general's warriorspulled the door open every time we stopped to make sure she was still breathing and I hadn’t finished her off. She didn’t wake even whenPavosianscouts caught up with us twice and we had to kill them so as not to risk word getting back to their masters about our location despite the fact that they hadn’t engaged us in the slightest, knowing better than to try when they were so vastly outnumbered. I was beginning to think Adrian would sleep all the way back toArchíwhen we began to cross the river and she stirred.
“Adrian,” I said her name, leaning forward in the darkness.
She jerked against her restraints and her eyes flew open, panicked.
“Don’t panic,” I tried but that was obviously the wrong thing to say.
“What have you done?” she cried, tossing back and forth. My fingers fell to the rope that bound her, working to loosen the knots even as she pulled against them. “Where are we? Why am I tied down?”
“We’re moving,” I informed her. “We’re going back toArchí. We tied you to the table so you wouldn’t fall in transport. You’re safe, Adrian. You’re with us.”
Her eyes narrowed and I didn’t have to hear her voice in my head to know what she thought. She would never feel safe with me again.
“Sanctuary,” she spat.
“Freed,” I told her. “They’re with us now, walking across the desert at a snail’s pace. It’s been over two weeks, Adrian.”
She blinked at me once, the only show of surprise at how long she'd slept.
