The camp lay hushed beneath the night sky, embers glowing faintly in the fire pits, smoke curling lazily upward before vanishing into darkness. Rows of tents sat in quiet order, their occupants lost to sleep. I moved carefully, my breath held as I crept between the tents and beyond.
Theron’s stood apart from the rest, larger, darker, commanding space even in stillness. Its presence was a reminder of everything I had bound myself to only hours before. Of power and consequence, and a king who had looked into my truth and claimed it. A king I really hoped hadn’t betrayed us as I feared.
I skirted around it, giving it a wide berth. My heart was hammering, acutely aware that waking him would not end with reassurance or comfort. He would stop me. Or worse, follow me to Atlas.
“Alexandra.”
The voice came again, no longer from the camp, but from beyond it, threading through the trees.
I didn’t hesitate again.
The forest swallowed me quickly, firelight fading behind me as trunks closed in, the moonlight struggling to light my way. The air was heavy with damp and thick with the scent of earth and decay. The deeper I went, the quieter it became, until even the night insects seemed to fall silent.
My footsteps sounded too loud.
How far had I ventured?
The thought slipped in uninvited, tightening my chest as I slowed, turning to look back the way I thought I’d come. The path was already unclear, the trees blending. Shadows stretched and moved, roots and fallen branches rearranging themselves in the dark. Unease crept up my spine…The forest was moving.
But then, as if Atlas could sense my unease, I heard him again.
“Alexandra.”
Relief surged painfully, chasing the fear away as I turned toward the sound.
“I’m coming!” I called, my voice breaking through the darkness. “I’m coming. Just hold on!”
And I ran. I ran without thinking, breath tearing in and out of my lungs as branches whipped at my arms and face, leaves slick with damp brushing my skin like grasping fingers. What little I could see, thanks to the moonlight filling the gaps and breaks in the trees, was enough to know I wasn’t about to run headfirst into a trunk.
The forest felt like it was slowly trying to consume me, swallowing sound, swallowing distance, swallowing the certainty that I knew where I was going or how to get back. The voice guided me forward, always just ahead, always close enough to keep hope alive and fear at bay.
“Alexandra.”
It came from the left this time.
I veered toward it instinctively, boots slipping slightly on the uneven ground as I caught myself against the rough bark of a tree. Its surface was warm beneath my palm, unsettling in a way that made my stomach churn. I pulled my hand back quickly, wiping it against my clothes as though that might erase the sensation.
This place was wrong.
The thought came fully formed, no longer a whisper but a warning, and yet my feet kept moving. Kept carrying me deeper despite every instinct screaming that I should turn back. The Badlands revealed themselves fully now, stripped of the deceptive beauty daylight had lent them. What had once seemedmerely strange or unsettling became grotesque under the cover of night.
Bones threaded through the soil like pale roots, rib cages arched upward to cradle flowering vines that pulsed faintly with bioluminescence. Skulls lay half-buried beneath moss and creeping growth, their empty sockets glowing faintly with insects that scattered when I passed. Death was not hidden here, not buried or honored. It was used, repurposed, woven into the land itself.
I stumbled again, catching myself just before I went down hard, my heart pounding as panic began to bleed into clarity.
I should have woken Aster. Should have tried to find his tent.
The thought hit harder when I realized how far I had gone. The camp felt impossibly distant, like a memory rather than a place I could return to. I turned in a slow circle, scanning the darkness for anything familiar, any marker I could recognize.
Everything looked the same.
Trees crowded close, their trunks twisted and gnarled, branches reaching overhead to knit together a canopy so dense it now blocked out the stars.
“Oh, Alexandra.”
The voice was closer now. Slower, almost mocking, yet in my foolish mind, I still clung on to the hope it was him. Relief surged, chasing away the creeping dread with brutal efficiency.
“Where are you?” I called, my voice shaking despite my efforts to steady it. “I’m here. Just tell me where you are.”
