“It’s not targeting us,” I insist. “But if we pull its attention?—”
“You will not draw that thing to you,” he snarls.
“I don’t mean me,” I say quickly. “I mean… us. Movement. Noise. Away from the ship.”
Travnyk’s eyes widen fractionally. “A misdirection. Short-term.”
Rakkh hesitates, just for a heartbeat, then curses viciously under his breath.
“Fine,” he growls. “But we do this my way.”
He turns, cupping his hands around his mouth, and roars. It’s not only a challenge, it’s a territorial threat.
The sound rips across the desert, raw and furious, echoing off the dunes. The guardian whips its head around, roaring back, attention snapping toward us at last. The ship seizes the moment.
The hum spikes as it rises sharply, breaking free of the last of the dune’s grip.
“Run!” Rakkh bellows.
And we run.
The ground shakes behind us as the guardian lunges, but not at me, or at Rakkh. It twists and lunges toward the retreating ship, furious and denied. We reach the rocky outcrop at the basin’s edge just as the ship lifts clear of the sand entirely.
I turn, breath tearing in and out of my lungs. The guardian rears back, roaring at the sky, claws raking uselessly through empty air. And the ship climbs.
Not violently. Not triumphantly. It lifts like something that has finally been allowed to let go.
Sand pours off the hull in long, cascading sheets as the engines pull it free of the dune entirely. The hum deepens, steadies, and then shifts—no longer vibrating the ground beneath my feet, but pushing upward. The guardian roars again, a raw sound torn from fury and loss, clawing uselessly at empty air.
And then the ship is above us. Clear. Alive.
I stand there shaking, lungs burning, heart slamming so hard it hurts. For a moment, I can’t even tell if the wetness on my face is sweat or tears. The desert stretches out around us, scarred and battered, but breathing. Alive. We did it.
Tomas lets out a sound that’s half-laugh, half-sob.
“Oh my god,” he gasps. “We actually—oh my god—we did it.”
Travnyk exhales slowly, deeply, the tension easing from his shoulders for the first time since we entered the ship.
“The departure is stable,” he says. “The contamination vector is broken.”
The guardian roars one last time, then turns away, defeated, slamming back into the dunes in a storm of sand and rage. It’s over. The silence that follows isn’t empty. It’s full.
I turn, breath hitching, and find Rakkh already looking at me. His eyes are molten in the double suns, burning with desire. He blinks, slowly, and a smile spreads over his face. The first real, full smile I’ve seen from him.
I smile back.
28
LIA
By the time we crest the final rise, the campfires are already lit. They flicker low and steady against the darkening sky, smoke rising straight instead of twisting and choking the air. That’s the first thing I notice. The wind still cuts sharp across the dunes, still carries grit and heat and the smell of scorched sand, but there’s no longer a metallic bite to it. No wrongness clinging to the back of my throat.
We slow as we approach them. Not because anyone tells us to, but because something in all of us understands that we’re crossing another threshold.
Voices trail off one by one as we enter the camp that sprawls across the length and breadth of the valley. Zmaj pause mid-motion—one with a blade half-sheathed, another crouched beside a fire pit. Humans look up from their packs and bedrolls. Urr’ki pause as heads turn. Conversations stall. The camp doesn’t erupt into cheers or questions. It simply watches.
I feel exposed, the way you do when you step out of shadow and into open ground. It’s not a feeling of being hunted, but one of being seen.
