Suppressing a growl, I straighten, squaring my shoulders and leaning into the climb up the far side.
The mix of sand and stone rises beneath my boots, solid and familiar, and I take comfort in it longer than I should. My palm finds the rock again without conscious thought, grounding myself as the basin falls away behind us. The instinct is automatic. Stone first. Always stone.
We clear the lip and pause just long enough to regroup.
Rverre doesn’t sag with relief, she turns in a slow circle, wings shifting as if she’s orienting herself to something I can’t see. Illadon stays close without crowding, eyes scanning the horizon while his body angles subtly toward her.
Talia stops beside me. She doesn’t speak. She just watches the land the way she’s learned to—head tilted slightly, eyes narrowed against the glare. The wind lifts a strand of her hair and presses it damp against her cheek. She wipes it away absently, attention fixed outward.
“You don’t like this ground,” she says at last.
It isn’t an accusation. It isn’t even a question. Just a carefully placed observation.
“No,” I reply.
She nods once. “I can tell.”
Something tightens in my chest. We stand here longer than we should, heat building, silence stretching. The desert feels different. It’s not louder or closer, just… aware. Like we’ve stepped onto a surface that remembers being walked on before. Rverre looks up at me suddenly. Her eyes are bright, almost reflective.
“You’re listening too hard,” she says.
That stops my thoughts in their tracks and I go utterly still, watching her.
“What does that mean?” Talia asks, turning sharply.
“You’re trying to hear the danger before it decides to speak,” Rverre says, shrugging, her small shoulders lifting beneath her pack.
“That’s how you stay alive,” I say.
She considers that, then shakes her head. “Sometimes.”
Illadon frowns. “Sometimes?”
“Sometimes,” Rverre repeats, patient. “If you listen too hard, you miss what’s already decided.”
I look to Talia before I can stop myself. She’s watching Rverre, but I see the shift in her posture. She absorbs the statement instead of dismissing it. Files it away. Trusts it more than she should. Or maybe exactly as much as she should.
“We rest for three minutes,” I say, needing motion. “Then we move.”
No one argues.
We drink sparingly. Adjust straps. Rebalance weight. When it’s time to go, Rverre points again without hesitation, indicating a path that will take us farther from the stone than I like. I hesitate. Just a fraction, but Talia notices.
She doesn’t speak, simply meets my gaze, steady and unflinching, and waits for me to choose.
The desert hums softly around us, heat rising, wind shifting. Finally I nod and we follow Rverre’s lead.
The stone thins and the open ground stretches wider. The last of my certainty loosens, slipping enough that I have to adjust my footing.
Control is no longer enough.
I don’t say it aloud. I don’t need to. Tajss already knows.
8
TALIA
We stop because Korr says we do.
