I turn inward and inventory options instead of terrain.
We can slow our pace. That stretches our water thinner than I like and keeps us exposed longer.
I can carry her. That preserves speed but burns my strength and makes us visible from too far away.
We can stop. And stopping means the city remains unfound, but Rverre is not going to wait.
None of the choices are clean and none of them are safe.
Rverre lifts her head suddenly, attention snapping sharp as if someone has pulled a thread inside her. Her wings twitch as she stares toward the broken line of darker stone ahead, eyes unfocused but bright.
“It won’t wait,” she says quietly.
No fear, only a statement of fact.
Talia exhales through her nose, a tight sound, and finally looks at me. There is frustration in her eyes, and something else beneath it—an awareness that we are already past the moment where pretending is useful.
I look back at the land.
At the way the stone ribs ahead rise like bones surfacing through skin. At the subtle pressure that has been building since we crossed the basin, the sense that the ground has been watching us adjust, compensate, break.
I understand then, with unsettling clarity. Whatever the city is—whatever waits ahead—it expected this.
Not her injury or the argument. The narrowing of options. The moment when control stops being enough.
Dragoste settles in my chest. Solid. Like a weight I have always carried and only now recognize as necessary. It does not distract; it aligns. I do not name it. I do not need to.
I step closer to Talia—not touching, but close enough that she can feel the choice shifting around us.
“We don’t turn back,” I say.
She studies my face, searching for hesitation she will not find.
“And we don’t pretend this ends the way it started,” she replies.
“No,” I agree.
The path forward has reduced itself to a single truth. We move together or not at all and the city waits.
17
TALIA
We’re moving again.
The desert has shifted into something meaner—sand thinning into irregular stone plates that catch the light and throw it back at us in sharp, blinding angles. Every step requires more thought than the last.
I tell myself that’s normal even as my ankle throbs with a steady, controlled ache, the kind that sits just below the edge of true pain. I catalog it the way I catalog everything else: pressure, heat, range of motion. It’s manageable because it has to be.
I shorten my stride, trying to not let it show. Adjusting my weight the best I can so that the stress stays diffuse. I’ve lived with pain before. Pain isn’t the enemy, panic is.
Korr takes point, as he has since dawn, his back a dark, unyielding line against the red desert ahead. He doesn’t look at me which should make this easier, but it doesn’t.
Illadon walks close to Rverre, his attention split between her footing and the land ahead. She hums softly under her breath, the sound almost lost beneath the wind. It threads through theair like something alive. I focus on that instead of the ache climbing higher up my leg.
We crest a low rise and start down the other side, sand loosening underfoot. I step carefully, testing each patch before committing my weight.
Then the ground gives more than it should.
