Dax wrapped his arm around my shoulders as we walked up the stairs, our steps echoing in the unusually silent fortress. “We’re very close, I can feel it.”
At least he had hope.
All I could feel was a growing sense of discouragement–and a hum I now recognized as Ryker’s presence right at the outskirts of my mind.
Steady and unintrusive, it was no wonder I hadn’t been aware he was right there, all this time.
I focused on that calm, strange point, not truly knowing what to do with it. But I was curious and yearning, so I did.
He felt…mad?
No.
Annoyed?
Yes.
As long as no stronger emotions radiated from his side, I could sigh in relief. But what could make Ryker annoyed on the battlefield, of all things?
Chapter 61
Ryker
The sweet bison’s grass swayed around us, brushing against my face and filling the entire side of the hill in a honeyed scent that overpowered all the blooming flowers. For once, the sky was clear, the air crisp, and the Serpents hadn’t attacked.
Yet.
“We should be moving, not lying down,” I grumbled, gently flicking one of the flowers when it got too close to my left eye.
Elysia tucked herself lower in the tall grass, even though it already covered her fully. “This is a stake out, not relaxation.”
“This is anything but relaxing.”
It was an act of folly that clung on a thread of hope and madness.
I readjusted my body against the rocks digging into my stomach, cursing the pebbles. I cursed everything. The cooling breeze wafting the sweet perfumed smell, the sway of the trees in the distance, even the sun’s rays kissing my forehead.
I didn’t deserve to indulge in them.
Not when Geryll would never smile in the sun ever again.
We were far away from the battlefield, so close to the Crimson Dam that the river’s currents blared in our ears, but my thoughts hadn’t left that blood-soaked riverbank.
I blinked, and I saw Geryll’s terrified face as the snake struck.
Our fallen warriors’ screams taunted me in the river’s murmur.
The snakes’ grinding scales echoed in the rustle of the trees.
Every pure thing was tainted with guilt.
If I’d acted differently, made others decisions, anticipated more, maybe they wouldn’t have died.
If I hadn’t been so consumed with everything, my mind scattered in every corner of our camp, I would have discovered Geryll in time. Dragged him home myself, and now I would have had the memory of a stern talking-to gnawing at me instead of his ghost haunting me forever.
My fingers dug into the ground until the dust wormed its way underneath my short fingernails, stinging.
I felt selfish in my own suffering. Geryll was the one who’d never get to experience life again, not me.
