Except pretending is getting harder.
The ash storm hits properly near dusk. Not a natural weather pattern—nothing in the Reach is natural—but a surge of corrupted air dense enough to turn the world gray-white and featureless. Visibility drops to nothing. I can’t see my own hands in front of my face.
I stop moving, because moving blind in the Dead Roads is suicide.
“Arax?”
His hand finds mine in the murk. Not my arm—my hand. Fingers lacing through fingers with an accuracy that suggests he navigated to me without sight.
“Don’t let go.”
I don’t.
He leads me through the storm, each step chosen with the same preternatural certainty he brings to everything. I followblindly, trusting his guidance because the alternative is standing still until the storm buries me.
His hand is cooler than I expected. Scarred, the texture rough against my palm. But the grip is steady, unyielding, an anchor in the white chaos that surrounds us.
The storm breaks as suddenly as it started, ash clearing to reveal a stretch of road I don’t recognize. We’ve traveled at least a mile in the blind—moved through terrain that should have killed us without ever losing footing or direction.
Arax releases my hand.
The absence of contact produces an immediate awareness of cold. My palm feels exposed, vulnerable in ways that have nothing to do with temperature.
“We need shelter.” He sounds exactly the same as he did before the storm—untouched, unmoved. “There’s a stable structure ahead. We’ll wait out the night there.”
“How far?”
“Half a mile.”
I look in the direction he indicates. The structure is visible, a dark shape against the gray twilight—another ruin, another temporary safety in a world that offers nothing permanent.
“Let’s move.”
We walk the remaining distance in silence. My hand burns where he held it, a phantom sensation I can’t shake no matter how many times I flex my fingers.
The shelter is better than last night’s—three walls, a partial roof, a floor that shows no signs of imminent erasure. Arax conducts his sweep while I claim a corner and settle in with my gear and notes.
He builds the fire without comment, the movements practiced and spare. Arax settles against the opposite wall, keeping the same careful distance he established last night. Watching. Always watching.
“Ask me.” His voice cuts through my concentration. I look up to find him observing me with an intensity that borders on uncomfortable.
“Ask you what?”
“Whatever question is preventing you from focusing on your work.”
The audacity of it—the sheer presumption that he can read my distraction from across the fire—should irritate me. Instead, I feel a pulse of awareness behind my ribs, dangerous and sharp. Recognition. He sees me the way I see him, reads my patterns the way I’ve started reading his.
We’re both observing. Both calculating. Both pretending the calculations mean nothing.
“Does it bother you?” I shouldn’t push. Should let the subject drop and return to my notes and the comfortable pretense that we’re simply allies of convenience. “Not knowing why you didn’t turn me in?”
“Yes.”
“Then why don’t you change your mind? Turn me over now, follow the protocol you abandoned?”
“Because the thought of doing so produces a response I cannot justify but will not reverse.”
“What kind of response?”
