I straighten and step back, putting space between us before instinct overrides discipline. The stars wheel overhead, indifferent and sharp. The desert stretches out beyond our small pocket of stillness, vast and waiting.
Control is not enough. I see that with unsettling clarity.
Tomorrow, I will have to choose whether I keep pretending this is about routes and pace and terrain—or admit that the fracture isn’t just in her ankle.
And that if I don’t act soon, something far more dangerous than bone is going to give way.
In the morning we resume the journey. Quiet reigns over the group. Talia struggles, but I do not intervene. As much for myself as for her. If I do… I will not be able to stop. Or control myself. I aid as I can without pushing boundaries and then we are moving.
The desert does not announce itself.
There is no roar. No warning cry. No moment where instinct has time to sharpen into action. One breath the ground holds. The next, it doesn’t.
I feel it through my boots first—a subtle shift. Sand loosens its grip in a way that is wrong, sliding instead of settling. The sound follows half a heartbeat later: a low, rushing whisper that raises the hair along my spine.
“Don’t move,” I snap, already stepping forward.
The basin betrays us.
The sand ahead of Illadon sloughs away in a wide, shallow spill, collapsing inward as if something beneath it has decided it’s done pretending to be solid. Not a sinkhole. Worse. A flow. The kind that steals footing without violence, dragging weight downward by degrees until panic finishes the job.
Rverre freezes.
Her wings flare once, useless, her breath hitches as the ground pulls at her boots. Her eyes go unfocused, too full of sensation to sort signal from threat.
Illadon is already there.
He doesn’t yank or shout, stepping in close he plants his feet wide, and locks one arm around her middle, grounding her with his body before her mind can scatter.
“Look at me,” he says, voice low and steady. “Just me.”
She clutches his arm, fingers digging in, and nods once. The hum slips from her lips again—shaky, off rhythm—but it keeps her present.
Talia moves. Not toward me or safety. Toward Rverre.
It isn’t bravery. It isn’t calculation. It’s reflex, pure and unfiltered, the same instinct that made her step between frightened children and chaos a thousand times before this desert ever knew her name.
“Talia—!” I shout.
Too late.
Her weight hits unstable ground and the ankle gives out completely. There’s no dramatic fall, no cry of pain—just a sharp, involuntary sound as her leg buckles and she drops hard to one knee, hand slamming into the sand to keep from toppling.
Pain flashes across her face before she can hide it.
The sand shifts again, responding to the added weight, flowing faster. I move, crossing the distance in three long strides and anchoring myself between her and the slide, boots digging deep, stance wide.
“Stay still,” I order, one hand braced against stone, the other hovering inches from her shoulder.
She looks up at me, jaw clenched, eyes bright with frustration and something dangerously close to apology.
“I’m fine,” she says automatically.
A lie. A useless one.
Illadon has Rverre clear, pulling her back onto firmer ground. The sand continues to move for another breath, then settles, the desert pretending innocence again.
Silence crashes down around us, broken only by the rush of blood in my ears.
