“We can’t just keep running.”
His gaze flicks to me, then back out again. No argument. He’s waiting for me. The realization hits quiet, but solid. He’s not deciding this part.
I look out over the dunes. The empty space that isn’t empty anymore. The silence isn’t safe. My people will be looking, but that drone is looking too. And whatever is behind it is already here.
“We need somewhere they can’t see from above,” I say. “Not just dunes. Not open terrain.”
No response, but I feel his attention.
“There was a city,” I continue. “Ruins. Structures. Stone and metal. We were heading there.”
His focus sharpens. More than before. Interest.
“Cover,” he says.
I nod.
“Yes. Real cover. Not just sand.”
He blinks slowly, then he moves. Stepping past me and angling toward a new direction. I follow without hesitation. Because this isn’t about getting away from him anymore.
I take one last look at the sky before I turn. Empty. Quiet. Wrong. Then I move with him.
Because I know exactly what happens if I don’t.
10
LEENA
The sky is empty, but I don’t trust it.
He steps out of the crevasse first. Then I follow. The heat and the light are too bright after the shadowed crevasse. I narrow my eyes, shielding them with one hand, and scan the horizon.
I don’t see a thing. No movement. No shadow. No hum. But I am painfully aware that it doesn’t mean anything.
I shift my attention to Kaelreth, cataloging everything I can. The threats have grown exponentially. I thought I had a handle on this whole situation. Being kidnapped, figuring him out, and working my way back to safety and normal, but that certainty is gone. Blown apart by this new revelation.
After all we’ve been through. All my fellow humans who crashed onto this hellhole. The Zmaj who’ve, no matter how you look at it, saved us. The Urr’ki we met after setting off a planetary-level bomb that forced us underground. The expulsion from there to the valley and our makeshift camp.
All of those events have led me to this moment. To him.
Logic has always been my refuge. Analyzing systems, recognizing patterns—that makes sense. It makes more sense than people do by far. And I’ve been treating this like any other problem. Analyze. Break it down. Find the pattern. That’s how problems get solved.
I thought I had a handle on it. I understood he’d been captured, on an intellectual level, and that he’d been tortured. Psychological damage fits a pattern. One I can understand and navigate. But the thing I didn’t factor in was whoever had him wanting him back.
He’s ahead of me, angling across the dunes without hesitation, like the direction has already been decided. I fall in beside him, not behind anymore. Tajss was a great enough threat in itself, but now the danger is at an all-new level.
The sand gives under my first step, then steadies. I adjust my weight, matching his pace instead of fighting it. The rhythm comes easier, not natural, but not impossible either.
We move faster than before. There is less hesitation and less space between us. Every few seconds, my gaze flicks upward, checking and listening. Waiting for that sound to come back.
It doesn’t, and I’m not sure if that’s better or worse. What if it’s there and I just don’t know it? He was aware of it and tracking it long before I was, but what if he misses it? What if it slides up on us and that’s it? We’re gone in a single, almost silent ray. I drag in a slow breath, forcing my focus back down to the terrain ahead.
“You changed direction,” I say.
“Yes,” he says, not looking at me.
“Because of the drone.”
