“I didn’t ask you to?—”
“I know,” he says again, and there’s no heat in it at all, only a calm certainty. “You wouldn’t.”
I go quiet. Not because I have nothing to say, but because anything I do say will crack something I’m not ready to examine yet. We travel until Rverre breaks the silence.
“You sound different,” she says, not looking at either of us.
Korr doesn’t answer.
I swallow. “Different how?”
She hums softly, head tilting, listening to something beneath the surface of the world.
“Like the ground stopped arguing.”
A chill slips down my spine.
Illadon glances at her. “The ground doesn’t argue.”
“It does,” she says mildly. “It just usually wins.”
I can’t pretend to understand what she means by that but no one contradicts her.
We crest a shallow rise, and for the first time since we left the canyon, the horizon changes shape. It’s not dramatic and the city is not revealed and there are no impossible structures breaking the sky, but the land ahead tightens. Folds drawing inward and stone ribs clustering closer together. The desert feels… narrower.
Korr slows, adjusting his grip, not because I ask but because he anticipates the shift in terrain. My weight doesn’t jostle. My ankle doesn’t protest. My body — traitor that it is — settles more fully against him.
I stiffen and he feels it, but he doesn’t comment.
Instead, he says quietly, “We’ll make camp before dusk.”
Illadon nods. “There’s cover ahead.”
Rverre points without hesitation. “That way. It bends.”
I close my eyes for half a second.
This is happening. All of it. The change in formation. The way decisions are landing differently. The way no one questioned him, or me, once the line was crossed. When I open my eyes again, I don’t fight the fact that I’m still in his arms, but I don’t lean into it either.
I do stop pretending this is temporary.
It feels like this city isn’t waiting for us. It’s watching.
Somewhere between the sand and the stone, between my pride and his resolve, the journey has shifted onto a path that doesn’t allow retreat — only adaptation. Korr carries me forward without another word. And I let him.
The desert feels like it tightens as the light changes.
It’s subtle at first — a deepening of shadow between stone ribs, the way the air thickens just enough to resist breath — but my body registers it before my mind does. The land ahead feels less like open ground and more like a corridor that hasn’t decided whether it wants us inside it.
Korr feels it too. His pace slows a fraction. It’s not hesitation, more he’s precise. Every step placed with intent, boots finding stone whenever possible. I’m acutely aware of the way his arms brace me — not crushing and definitely not indulgent, just… secure. As if my weight has already been factored into his balance and dismissed as irrelevant.
That makes my throat tighten.
I’ve spent years being careful not to need anyone like this ever again. To not lean on or rely on anyone else. To not to let someone else decide when I’ve reached my limit. And now the desert has made that decision for me, and Korr is enforcing it without so much as an apology.
“You’re not even breathing hard,” I mutter.
He glances down briefly, eyes dark and focused.
