Without a word, he moves to her side, opening the satchel of salves and other healing supplies she packed before she came for me. She brought them to save me. Now she’s the one needing saving.
I don’t move as he peels away the wrappings. Her skin isstill raw in places, an angry red, and healing slowly. The steady beat of her heart is still too faint. Too fragile. So unlike the fierce female I’ve come to know. Every time I checked it, I had to fight down the panic rising in my chest.
She is still with us.I keep telling myself. But for how long?
He works quietly, hands steady as he cleans and treats the burns. I watch each movement with a tense stillness. I keep my fists curled in my lap, white-knuckled, hating how useless I feel. Hating that I wasn’t able to stop this.
When Dimitri finishes, he rests back on his heels and studies her—really studies her. His silver gaze drifts from her face to the soft shadows that cling to her skin like a second layer, protective and pulsing. They aren’t attacking. They aren’t withdrawing. They are holding her. Guarding her.
Dimitri tilts his head slightly, then speaks softly and respectfully. “Shadows.”
I glance at him with a frown, but he isn’t looking at me. He is watching the dark strands coiled around her arms, her legs, the base of her throat.
“Can you show us the way to the others?” he asks them. “Please.”
For a long moment, nothing happens. The shadows simply curl tighter around Serenya, as if the idea of parting from her is unthinkable.
Dimitri lowers his voice further. “We need to get her to a healer. But we need to get Koen to the others first. It’s what she wanted.”
The shadows tremble faintly, then loosen. Slowly andreluctantly, they begin to unravel from her limbs. One tendril drifts toward the outside of the ruin, then another.
I don’t breathe as I watch. They’reanswering.
Dimitri nods once, murmuring something in thanks. Then he leans forward and carefully gathers Serenya into his arms, making me tense.
“I’ll carry her,” he says in a low but firm voice. Not challenging, just a matter of fact. “You’re still too weak.”
I don’t argue this time. I can’t. My body is still barely holding itself together after yesterday’s events. But it doesn’t stop the sick twist in my stomach to see someone else carrying her.
He stands, cradling her like something precious and irreplaceable. “We follow them,” he says, glancing at the gently drifting shadows that have started to slither ahead, slow and sure.
I push myself to my feet with a soft grunt, pain sparking down my legs. I don’t care. I would follow, no matter how long or far.
I look at her again—her brow still furrowed in sleep, face pale against my dark cloak wrapped around her.
Hold on.Please. Just hold on.
I follow them into the morning light. Toward Asbel and Lioran.
We walk until the sun is setting again. My feet are numb. My muscles scream with every step, my legs tremble beneath me, but I don’t stop. Not once. Not even when the pain reaches bone-deep. My body has long since demanded rest, but rest is a luxury I cannot afford. Not while Serenya still lies limp inDimitri's arms.
We only pause twice. Once to refill the water at a moss-covered stream, and once when Dimitri tightened Serenya's wrappings and reapplied one of the salves in the dying light.
Then we are moving again. Through tangled forests. Over broken trails. Following the slow drift of shadows that glide ahead of us, like living wisps of smoke.
Even after night falls, we press on. The stars above are hidden behind storm-heavy clouds, and the moon is only a sliver. But the shadows keep going, glowing faintly in the dark, understanding the urgency.
It is sometime past midnight when the forest thickens, then opens up. The land drops away to something else entirely.
An old village. Stone homes half-collapsed into flooded earth. Water pooling around the cracked foundations, slick and stagnant. Trees growing sideways, their trunks split and gnarled.
There is no noise. No animals. No wind. Just the quiet sound of water lapping at the forgotten houses. We don’t speak. Words don’t seem welcome here.
The shadows wind their way through flooded paths with purpose, weaving beneath sunken stones and shattered fences, until stopping before a crumbling temple, its once-golden spire now half-buried in collapsed stone. It sits on a small hill, out of reach of the water.
I stare up at the ruined archway. A temple of…Roxnos?
The name crawls through my mind. Foreign, yet somehow familiar. I can’t recall ever hearing it before, though. Not in prayer. Not in books. Not even whispered by the elders inmy village. But a part of my magic stirs at the name.
