Chapter
One
KAEL
Heat waves rise from rusty patches of clay, punctuated by yellow cheatgrass and mint-colored sage.
The air presses against my skin—hot for July, too thick. Like the cloudless sky forgot how to break into thunder.
The air tastes metallic. Wrong.
Familiar in a way I have no wish to remember.
Where Tempest steps, grasshoppers scatter, tiny bodies snapping into motion. Cicadas thrum in the distance, a thousand rattles without the bite.
I rub the spot on my gut where ancient scars linger. Hate never meant to be forgotten.
A ruined cabin comes into view. Tempest hesitates, hooves stamping. Dust lifts in slow, ruddy columns.
“Easy.”
I nudge the ebony mare forward, though the hairs along my arms have already risen.
Broken paddock. No horses. Fresh shoe prints in the soil—two sets, one lighter.
They left in a hurry.
Last night, when the mountains hummed wrong.
An insect buzzes past my ear as we stop beneath a pine. Charred wood. Broken glass. The aftermath of something that doesn’t belong here.
I slap my neck, drag my palm away, and stare at the flattened horsefly. Tempest tosses her head, tail snapping as more flies gather.
Sun don’t do much this time of day. Not even keep bugs at bay.
At the cabin’s edge, I dismount.
The ground tells its story—chaos cut through with a kind of precision that doesn’t belong here.
My hand settles against a rough-hewn log split clean through. No axe did this. No saw.
The vibration still lingers. Something moved through here. Something that has no place in this world.
Inside, I step carefully, avoiding broken glass and rusted nails. Metal glitters against blackened floorboards warped into soft, misshapen lumps.
A growl rises low in my throat. “Fucking Ancients.” Haven’t had cause to say that in decades.
The words don’t fade. They hang, refusing to be swallowed by the wreckage or the forest around it.
Tempest whinnies, sharp and uneasy.
“Yeah,” I mutter. “You feel it.”
I kneel beside what used to be a table. Papers scattered. Old maps. Ranch claims. Mining claims.
Humans drawing lines around something that was never theirs to begin with.
I never saw the point.
