Let the storm try. I’ll drag them all through it if I have to.
The storm drives harder, shrieking in our ears, pressing grit into our eyes until every blink feels like knives. Each step is a fight, but I don’t let go of Joran’s collar or Harlan’s arm.
“Faster! You crawl like hatchlings!” the younger Zmaj shouts, his voice cutting through the storm.
His wings snap open, buffeted by the gale, forcing him sideways before he regains balance. He snarls, teeth bared, and pushes forward recklessly, half-vanishing into the white swirl.
“Stay with the group!” I scream, throat raw, but he ignores me.
His silhouette surges ahead, only to be swallowed again by the blowing sand.
“He’s going to get us all killed,” Joran coughs out, spitting mud-dark sand.
Harlan mutters faster, words breaking into jagged sobs, his body trembling against my grip. His feet stumble, nearly dragging me down with him.
Panic surges hot in my throat. If the younger Zmaj tears off into the storm, if the humans collapse, if the group splinters, we’ll all be swallowed.
“No!” The word rips out of me, fierce, sharp enough to sting my own ears. “Stay together!”
The sound shocks even me—my voice doesn’t crack. It doesn’t vanish under the wind. It carries. For what feels like the first time, no one is talking over me. Joran stiffens, coughing, but hekeeps pace. Harlan’s mutters slow, his steps steadier under my pull. Even the younger Zmaj, a shadow in the grit ahead, glances back.
And then the scarred warrior is at my side. He doesn’t speak, only braces us against the storm. His gaze cuts across the group, black and unyielding. The younger Zmaj falters, his reckless push slowing. Joran mutters, but quieter now. Harlan keeps breathing.
The line holds.
It isn’t just him. It isn’t just me. It’s us. Somehow, between his silence and my shout, the group bends back together, stumbling as one through the storm’s teeth.
And deep in my chest, something shifts. Not just survival. Not just stubbornness. A thread of steel weaving into my voice, into my spine. For the first time, I feel like more than an overlooked girl dragging behind. I feel like someone who belongs beside him.
The storm worsens, becoming a wall of grit so dense I can’t see more than a foot ahead. My lungs scrape raw, every breath a fight. My legs feel carved hollow, but I don’t let go of Joran or Harlan. Step by step, we keep moving, following the dark bulk of the scarred warrior as he carves through the chaos.
The younger Zmaj surges a little ahead again, wings twitching, but he doesn’t break away fully this time. He glances back once, then snarls and lowers his head into the gale. Even he’s learning—the storm doesn’t forgive.
My body aches, every muscle trembling, but I refuse to stumble. I refuse to be dragged again. I want him to see me as more than weight to carry. I want to deserve the look he gave.
A darker shape looms through the grit. At first I think it’s a cliff, jagged and sharp against the storm. Relief surges, sharp as hunger—we’ve found shelter—but as we stagger closer, the outline shifts.
The shape curves. Not stone. Bone.
It’s taller than a house, arching overhead, half-buried in sand. Another rises beside it, jagged and cracked but unmistakable.
Ribs.
We push forward, and more emerge—massive arches of pale fossil jutting from the canyon floor, forming a hollow half-sheltered from the storm. A skeleton so large I can’t grasp it, the bones of some ancient beast the desert swallowed long before us.
Joran curses under his breath, voice ragged. Harlan gasps out something that might be a prayer or a sob. Even the younger Zmaj goes still, his wings folding tight against his back.
The scarred warrior leads us inside the skeletal remains. Wind shrieks through hollows, whistling high and sharp like a scream. The storm funnels through the ribs, alive in its voice.
The storm hasn’t just driven us to shelter. It’s driven us into something else.
Something waiting.
13
KARA
The first rib rises higher than a watchtower, curving overhead in a pale arch. The next thrusts out of the sand at a jagged angle, fractured near the tip, big enough for ten men to walk side by side beneath it. They don’t stand alone—more bones jut outall around us, half-buried, stretching into the storm like the remains of a thousand monsters.
