“For me?” Her tone is carefully neutral, but there is a minefield in those two words.
“For the group.”
She huffs under her breath, but doesn’t argue. Instead, she watches me from the corner of her eye, measuring. Assessing. As if trying to determine whether this is strategy or stubbornness. If she were to ask I’d tell her, it’s both.
The land changes—sand thinning, rock surfacing in irregular plates that catch the light at sharp angles. The heat reflects differently, bouncing instead of sinking, making distance harder to judge.
Rverre slows. Illadon eases closer without touching.
“Is it louder?” he asks.
She nods, her small wings rustling.
“Not louder. Closer,” she says.
That catches my attention.
“How close?” I ask.
She points—not straight ahead, but off to the left, toward a line of darker stone that rises unevenly from the dunes.
“There,” she says. “But not yet.”
Not yet is not reassurance. It’s a warning.
“We angle,” I decide. “We don’t approach directly.”
Talia shifts closer as we change course, her shoulder nearly brushing mine. I feel it—heat through fabric, the awareness sharp and unwelcome.
“You don’t trust what she’s sensing,” she murmurs.
“I trust it enough to respect distance,” I reply.
“And if the city doesn’t?”
I glance at her, surprised despite myself. She meets my gaze, expression steady.
“Then we listen harder,” I say.
She frowns, brow furrowing, but gives no other reaction. We move another stretch in silence. The suns begin their slow descent, light softening, shadows lengthening. The desert exhales, heat loosening its grip.
Talia stumbles.
It’s small. A misjudged step. The sand gives more than she expects and her ankle twists stealing her balance. I catch her without thought or pause.
I close my hand around her arm, steadying her before she can fall. She freezes, breath hitching, and for a heartbeat the world narrows to the place where we’re connected.
Her skin is warm. Too warm. Alive in a way that has nothing to do with the heat of the suns or the desert.
“I’m fine,” she says quickly, pulling back.
I let her, but the dragoste surges hard enough to make my vision blur for a fraction of a second. I lock it down with brute force, jaw clenched, breath controlled. This is not the time.
She looks at me then—hesitating—and something shifts in her expression. I don’t see fear or anger… but whatever she sees on my face makes her straighten, squaring her shoulders despite the pain.
“Don’t,” she says softly.
It isn’t a command, it’s a boundary. I nod once and step back, reasserting and respecting distance. We continue on, the space between us now carefully measured and fragile as glass.
