I don’t look up.
Not yet.
Instead, I sit there until the stars blur and the air grows too cold to stay. And even then, I wait a little longer. Just in case.
Just in case tonight’s the night he answers.
CHAPTER 18
MAUG
The sky groans.
Not a sound, exactly—more like a pressure. A thrum in the bones. A promise of violence yet to come.
I feel it long before it breaks. The air thickens, dry and sharp, tasting like blood and ozone. A storm. A big one.Purgonisdoes nothing in halves. And this one… this one will carve flesh from bone if it finds you in the open.
I crouch low on the ridge above the humans’ camp, my breath quiet. I watch the shield ripple and stammer, light flickering like it’s being gnawed on by invisible teeth. They built that barrier for stingtails, not the wrath of the southern flats. It won’t hold. Not tonight.
I should retreat. Take shelter, ride it out like I always do. But my eyes catch on a single figure, a smudge of movement at the edge of camp. Red hair. Too bright. Too vulnerable.
Jillian.
What is she doing?
She’s too far out already, near the outer rocks, scribbling something on her pad like the damn sky isn’t collapsing above her. A gust slams into the ridge. Sand and grit howl across the canyon like banshees. I see her flinch, arm thrown up over herface, but she doesn’t move fast enough. She’s caught in the spiral now. Lost in it.
I move.
I don’t think—I don’t hesitate. I leap from the ridge, boots hitting the gravel hard enough to crack it. Wind tears at my cloak, claws at my skin, but I push forward. The sand stings. It bites like insects, digs beneath the plates of my armor. My vision narrows. Everything else falls away.
I find her.
She’s down, crouched low, arms over her head, coughing. Her hood’s torn loose. Hair whips across her face, eyes squeezed shut.
“Jillian!” I shout, but it’s swallowed whole.
She doesn’t see me. Doesn’t hear me.
I pull the heat-shielding tarp from my belt—fabric woven with carbon thread and old hunter tricks—and I wrap her in it without ceremony. She screams at first, a sharp, animal sound of terror, but then I lift her, hold her close, and I feel the moment she recognizes it’s me.
Not a monster.
Not tonight.
I tuck her against my chest, shield her with my body, and turn toward the cliffs.
There’s a shelter nearby—one I carved into the stone cycles ago, when I still thought surviving here mattered. A lava dome half-buried in ash and forgotten by time. Reinforced, hidden, mine. It’s not far.
The wind screams louder. The storm eats the stars.
I run.
Each step feels like I’m dragging the weight of every bad decision I’ve ever made. My joints burn. My lungs fill with dust. But I don’t stop. I can’t. The storm is a predator now, snapping atmy heels. And she… she is soft in my arms. Fragile in a way that terrifies me more than any stingtail ever could.
Finally, I reach it.
A sliver of rock, a crack in the world. I slip inside, shoulder first, kicking the stone panel closed behind us with a grunt. The moment the storm’s roar is cut off, the silence roars louder.
