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I fought to pull my awareness away from the burning roots. But I felt myself drawn into another life, then another. Each one needed something—water, shelter, air. I was swallowed by an ocean of need. I couldn’t remember which heartbeat was mine.

Blind panic seized me. I wanted my hands. I wanted the painful, freezing ache of my knees on the stone. I wanted Eryx’s arm around me, but the roar of the earth drowned him out.

“Find me. Eryx, please find me.”

His presence slammed through the current. I knew him at once. The cool steadiness of his mind had nothing to do with the fire or the frantic growth pressing through me. He was the anchor, refusing to let the line snap.

“I have you. Come to me. You don’t have to carry this on your own.”

I threw my consciousness toward his tether. The moment I tore my awareness from the village, the world spun violently out from under me. I arched backward against Eryx with a ragged gasp.

His arms locked fiercely around my chest.

“This is your body, Thalia. Stay with what you can feel right here.”

My body. I clung to that, to him, to his thoughts. I bit the inside of my cheek, using the sharp sting to ground myself. Then his cold hand closed over mine.

I curled my fingers, pressing weakly against his grip. The movement was tiny, but it was mine. I did it again, desperate to prove I was back inside my own skin.

“That’s it.” His voice finally pierced the chaos, a strained rumble right beside my cheek. “Keep hold of me.”

I gasped, ripping my hand out of the moss.

I choked on the freezing air, the sudden burn making me sob. I went limp, but he held me upright, exactly as he’d promised he would. The courtyard tilted around me.

I squeezed my eyes tighter and sank against my mate. I felt his chest expand against my back, slow and deliberate. The frantic pounding of my heart eased, steadied by our connection.

My eyes flew open.

The shrine was only a shrine again. Frost clung to the stones. Nothing here was burning.

Melia was.

I twisted toward him, grabbing the front of his coat.

“Melia,” I rasped, my throat raw with phantom ash. “We have to go to Melia. Now.”

Eryx didn’t ask a single question. He hauled me to my feet, his arm locked tight around my waist to take my weight. The earth had given me a warning, and I would not waste it standing still.

12

The Gorgon’s Gaze

Thalia & Eryx

We rode hard from Petrion, pushing the horses until they fought the reins a half-mile from the village. They screamed at the stench of burning thatch, rearing wildly. Finally, we had to dismount and leave them tethered in the trees.

We sprinted the rest of the way up the dirt road. My lungs burned with the freezing air and choking smoke, my boots slipping in the mud. I pulled ahead of Eryx as we crested the last rise.

Fire crawled along the roof of the council hall.

People fled down the road toward us. A woman scrambled past, clutching a child to her chest, her skirts torn and dark with wet blood. Behind her, an elderly satyr fell to his knees, wailing. The man dragging him hauled the satyr to his feet, sobbing with the effort to keep them both moving.

A body lay facedown beside an overturned handcart. I stopped running, my stomach churning violently. I recognized the shawl trampled deep into the churned mud. She was just an ordinary villager, a neighbor who wove baskets and worried about the winter cold. Now, she was a broken shape in the dirt.

“Thalia, stay beside me.” Eryx stepped in front of me, his serpents hissing at the thick smoke. “There are people trapped ahead.”

A shriek tore from a doorway farther along the road. A human staggered out into the mud, clutching his stomach. A centaur followed in his wake, gripping a bloodied sword.