The day had been too long, too heavy with judgment and vows and fire, my body wrung out, and my mind frayed thin, at its emotional limit. Hearing his voice was exactly the kind of cruel trick exhaustion would play, surely? Dragging the one sound I wanted most out of my memories and dressing it up as hope.
But my pulse refused to slow.
I lay there, barely breathing, listening so hard my ears rang with the effort. The camp was quiet, wrapped in the deep stillness that came from soldiers sleeping without fear. Guards no doubt on patrol, stationed around us, keeping us safe. So whywere there no shouted warnings indicating someone new had approached? No sign that anything was wrong.
Then again, this was Atlas. Which meant that if he wanted to make it inside or close enough to me to lure me out, then he could. He was powerful enough in his own right.
Then, impossibly, gently, it came again.
“Alexandra.”
The sound slid through me like a deep caress.
It was him. I knew that with a certainty that had nothing to do with logic and everything to do with instinct. The cadence was wrong for anyone else. The subtle roughness threaded through the softness was unmistakably him. My fingers curled into the blanket beneath me as my chest tightened painfully.
This isn’t real. It can’t be.
Atlas was days away, separated from me by land and armies, by the darkness that tore worlds apart. Hearing him now was impossible.
And yet.
‘What if,’ a traitorous part of my mind whispered, ‘what if you’re wrong and he needs you’, but more than that, I also asked myself…
What if the Gorgon King wasn’t who he claimed to be? What if there was no bargain and he was, in fact, taking us along for a ride under the pretense of giving us the torch? What if all of this has been orchestrated, and this was just a setup so that he could hand us over to Demetrios himself? Another bargain made, only for our lives. To prevent us from having any chance at stopping him. After all, he still had possession of my dagger.
I swung my legs over the edge of the bedroll and sat up, cold air biting at my skin as my bare feet pressed into the packed earth beneath the tent. My whole body felt too alert, nerves buzzing, heart racing, as if it recognized something before my mind would allow it.
I held my breath.
Silence pressed in around me, thick and watchful, and for a heartbeat I almost questioned my own sanity. Was I really going to do this with no proof? I could wake up Aster, but I had no idea which tent he was in, since I had been shown my own first.
“Alexandra.”
This time it was closer.
“I need you.”
The words were barely louder than a whisper, but they hit me like a blow, panic flaring white hot in my chest. The sound carried urgency now, strain, as if he were hurt. As if he were weakened, calling for me because I was the only one who could hear him.
If he was in trouble, if somehow, against all reason, he was here and I didn’t go, didn’t answer, didn’t try, I would never forgive myself.
I pushed to my feet.
The vow burned suddenly, a deep, aching heat beneath my sternum, the echo of judgment stones and living fire too close to ignore. Everything in me felt raw and overexposed, my emotions stripped of their armor.
I should wake Aster.
I reached for the tent flap, fingers curling into the fabric as doubt surged hard enough to make my hands shake. I hoped that Aster was here. That I would find him awake, because he would have known what to do. That towering frame and raised brow of his was no doubt going to be furious when he heard what I did.
“Alex, please.”
The plea slid under my skin, the shortening of my name, it wrapped around my spine and tugged me forward.
If I don’t go now, if I hesitate and it’s real, I’ll be too late.
That fear drowned out every other thought.
I slipped from the tent.
