“Yes,”he said, thickly.
“Alright.”She squeezed his hand again, returning her muzzle to the bush of his hair.“Alright, love.Just one more thing.”
Hetilted his head.
“If youneed something, I’m right here.You just gotta ask.”
Henodded.
“Alright?”
“Alright,”he said.
“Good.”Her chin burrowed through his hair.“Night.”
Hetried to answer, but his voice began to break.
He laythere for a time, watching the stars grow bright.Despite his exhaustion, hefound himself unable to sleep, replaying the events of the day over and over inhis mind, reliving the voices, the shouting, the pain.Each moment seemed tocut worse than the knives in his flesh.
Histhoughts were interrupted when Zaria began to snore, which sounded like a sawchewing through wood.He listened to the echoes it made, feeling her breath asit rose and fell at his back.Every night since their meeting, he had fallenasleep to the sound of her snores.The first night, it had made him angry.Thesecond, he had hardly noticed.In the comfort of the bathhouse, he had managedto find it relaxing.
Now, asthe air grew cold, and the ossein canopy glimmered a pale white beneath thestars, he found it comforting, the same way one might find comfort in thecrackle of a torch, holding it aloft as it burned through the dark.
He fellinto a dreamless sleep, still holding to her hand.
ChapterTwenty-Three
Knights& Squires
“Itwon’t work,” he said.
“It’sgonna.”
“Ithasn’t the last dozen times.”
“Oh,you wanna bet?”
Isaacgazed up at the shattered skull.A day ago, it had been a house.Now, it was afew fragments of stone jutting out from beneath a boulder, close to sixty feetabove their heads.One of the white stone slivers was sticking from the edge.
“Comeon,” Zaria said, swinging the rope like a lasso.“What’s your wager?”
Isaacrolled his eyes.“Five sapphires.”
“Five?Goin’ cheap on me?”
“I’mhelping you be graceful in defeat.”
She swungthe lasso high into the air.The loop missed the jutting bone by a couple offeet, landing instead on a loose collection of scree.A shower of rock followedthe rope as Zaria tugged it back.She growled, swiped some pebbles from herfur, and began to swing the knot again, glaring at the stone that used to be ahouse.
Theyhad been climbing for hours, making their way through the jagged, open valleywhere the colossus had once rested, where a city of necromancers had onceconducted the foundation of empire.Isaac judged, as best he could, that theywere halfway up the hollowed escarpment.A few waterfalls poured from the rockycliffs.Beneath the rubble and drifts of wind-blown sand, there were stillvisible reminders of the unnamed city—shards of furniture, broken walls,signposts and window frames, an entire street’s worth of fingers scattered likegravel.Stone dust was thick in the air, constantly belching from the cracksand gaps as the wreckage continued to settle.
So far,the majority of the climb had required them to scramble over the faces ofboulders, leap across slotted canyons, and crawl beneath the gaps of rocks inthe places they could not ascend.More than once, they had nearly been sweptaway by a river of spilling debris.Now, they were faced with a large stack ofboulders crushing a residential neighborhood of skulls.There was no other pathworth considering.
Theyhad to climb.
“I’mraising the wager,” Zaria said, tightening the bowline knot.“Seven opals, fouronyx.”
“Thisis a pointless game.”
