“The wind can blind you,” I say. “It can strip the skin off you. It can throw a rock hard enough to break bone. The car frame is the only cover we have. Get under it.”
Darina moves first, jumping out of the car without waiting for my help. She drops to her hands and knees, and crawls under, between the wheels. Esme shoots me one last defiant glance, then follows Darina. She smacks my hand away when I reach for her, but once on the ground, she hesitates.
I take her by the arm and guide her under the car, pushing her to the center. I make sure they’re both where the undercarriage is heaviest, away from the open side where the worst of the wind drives under the car. Darina curls up against the far wheel with her knees drawn to her chest and her eyes shut. Esme goes in the middle, and I come in last, on the open side. I place my body between them and the storm.
It feels like the world is gone, swallowed by chaos.
The car rocks over us. Grit scrapes along the ground and blows under the frame in low, stinging sheets. Something sharp strikes the metal above my head. I hear a hard crack, then another. The air is dry and hot.
“It’s a blackstorm,” I say, loud enough so they can hear me. “A monsoon windfront. Either the season started early, or it could be just one bad storm.”
Esme presses into me. She’s shaking, and she turns into my side and pushes closer. I want to move her off, but she whimpers, and I can’t do it. I can’t push her away now. Every rule I have set for myself requires space between us, but there’sno space here, there’s only her weight against my chest, and her breath against my shell. She’s frightened, and protecting her is what I’m for. It’s my fault she’s out here.
I wrap one arm around her, and when she doesn’t protest, I wrap the other. My tail comes forward on its own and curls around both of them, tighter around Esme, closing off the gap where the grit blows under the frame, so it doesn’t reach her face.
She freezes against me. Then she looks down, where my tail holds her around the waist, the stinger at the end of it close to her ribs. She knows what I am, even if she doesn’t know that the sting is part of the mating ritual. I’ve read the guide myself, and I know it leaves that piece of information out. On purpose. Still, she knows that I’m venomous and one careless graze of the sharp point across her skin could kill her. She should be afraid. She has every reason in the world to pull away from me.
She doesn’t. Instead, she relaxes.
The clicking starts in my throat. I crush it before it can build. I feel her go tense against me for half a breath, then she settles again. I squeeze my eyes shut. I can’t look at her. If I look at her now, pressed to me, trusting me, relaxing in the grip of the thing that could end her, I don’t know if I’ll survive it. So, I keep my eyes closed, keep still, and let the storm rage over us.
Her hands come up to touch my face. Her palms are cool where everything in me runs hot. She’s gentle. It feels like tenderness, but I don’t let myself think too hard, because I don’t know what she’s thinking, and I can’t afford to be wrong about it. I don’t open my eyes to look at her. I revel in the feel of her hands, and the careful way in which she holds my face, and memorize this moment.
We stay like that until the worst of it passes.
The wind calms down, and the strikes against the car grow further apart. The rain doesn’t come. The storm moves north.
I pull away from her, and she reluctantly lets me go. I come out from under the car, into the settling dust. I check the vehicle, the road, and the sky. The car is battered. Grit has scoured the paint, and a crack runs across one of the lamps, but the wheels are sound, and the frame held. The stormfront has moved past us toward the cliffs. The road is perfectly passable.
“You can come out now,” I say.
The women crawl out, holding onto each other. They’re disheveled, dirty, shaking.
“Get back in,” I say. “We can still reach the city.”
Esme pulls free of Darina’s grip, straightens her back and smooths down her messy hair. She fixes me with an intense gaze and stomps her foot. Literally… stomps her foot.
“No,” she says. “I’m not leaving.”
“Get in the car,” I sigh.
“I changed my mind. Take us back home.”
“No.”
“You don’t get to decide.” She is nearly shouting now. “I won’t be shoved through a portal because you’re too frightened to tell me the truth. Because there’s more to it, isn’t it?”
The last of my control dissolves.
I close the distance between us and take her by the arm. It’s a gentle hold, careful, only enough to let her know I’m not playing this game.
“You don’t understand,” I say in a low voice. “If you stay, you’re as good as dead.”
Chapter Fifteen
Esme
“As good as dead,” I say back to him. “Dramatic much?”
