I squeeze the water skin so hard it creaks. My body sways, instinct tugging me closer, but I catch myself, locking every muscle.
The silence surges back, hot and sharp, wrapping around us like the storm never left. His eyes linger on mine, steady, unwavering.
And I know it’s already too late.
I’m his.
19
KARA
Imust have dozed for minutes at most.
The ache in my neck says I never truly slept, but exhaustion dragged me down. Now I blink, grit scratching my eyes, and the world is pale with the setting suns.
The silence hits me first. No muttering curses from Joran. No rickety prayers from Harlan. No restless pacing, wings scraping stone, from the younger Zmaj. Only him.
The scarred warrior sits close, lochaber braced across his knees as though nothing in this world touches him at all. His gaze is fixed outward, scanning the canyon. Heat creeps into my face before I can stop it.
His eyes shift. Just for a breath, they find mine. Not sharp, not scornful—calmly seeing. He nods. That same unshakable acknowledgment he gave before.
Gratitude, relief, and that feeling of something more, the thing I still don’t want to name.
The silence stretches, thick and intimate in a way the chaos of the group never allowed. My chest is too tight for words. The bandage on my arm pulls tight, reminding me of the venom burn, but for once it isn’t the worst pain. The tightness is worse.
We’re alone.
The thought should terrify me. It does—but not in the way I expect. Fear of the desert, fear of the storm, fear of the thing that hissed in the bones—those all gnaw at me. But the heavier fear is quieter, rooted deeper.
That he’ll look at me and see nothing worth protecting. That he’ll walk ahead and leave me to the sand.
Instead, he rises, smooth and deliberate, the lochaber sliding onto his back with the kind of ease that comes from a thousand repetitions. He doesn’t speak, instead tilting his head toward the canyon’s mouth. It’s just us. The scarred warrior and me, chasing a hope of food in a desert that doesn’t want to give.
My throat works around a breath that feels too heavy, but I push to my feet anyway. If he walks into the storm, I’ll walk beside him.
“Ready,” I whisper, though he hasn’t asked.
The faintest flicker passes through his black eyes, like the recognition of a truth he already knew. He turns, leading into the pale dusk, moving with the same silence he always does, but with no others to fill the space, it’s heavier.
Every sound is amplified: the faint scrape of his claws against stone, the whisper of sand shifting down the canyon walls, the rasp of my own too-loud breath.
I fall into step a half pace behind, watching the line of his shoulders, the scars cutting across the curve of his neck. He doesn’t hunch under the weight of the world the way humans do. He doesn’t flinch at shadows or mutter about curses. He walks as though the desert belongs to him, as though no storm, no monster, no hunger could strip him of that claim.
And somehow, his steadfastness pulls me forward too.
I’ve spent so much time snarling at the edges of civilization, begging to be noticed, desperate to prove I could stand. Here, in the quiet, I’m realizing I don’t have to shout. Not with him.
My arm throbs under the bandage, but I bite back the hiss. He doesn’t need to hear my weakness. More than that—I don’t want him to. The thought lodges sharp in my chest, and I clench my fists until my nails bite my palms. Foolish, maybe, but it lingers.
Ahead, he glances once over his shoulder, checking—not if I follow, but how. His gaze flicks to my stride, to the set of my jaw, to the knife gripped at my hip. His eyes narrow, not in doubt, but in assessment. And then he faces forward again, giving nothing away.
I breathe out slowly. Maybe that was nothing. Maybe it was everything.
The canyon narrows as we walk, the walls rising higher, blotting out the pale suns until the light turns thin and gray. Our footsteps echo strangely, as if the stone itself is listening.
I keep pace, close enough that the steady weight of his presence anchors, but far enough that I don’t feel like a shadow. The silence isn’t empty anymore—it’s layered. The rasp of grit under my boots. The occasional click of his tail against stone. My ownheartbeat, quickening every time I catch the subtle shift of his head as he scans the cliffs.
He doesn’t speak, but I start to see the shape of his silence. The way his gaze lingers a fraction longer on a crack where shadow pools. The tilt of his body, angled to shield me from the worst of the wind. The pause before each turn, reading the desert as easily as others read a map.
