Sadie

Sand rained down on us as the giant beast rushed forward. I shielded my eyes with one hand, keeping them averted as I shoved Navin toward the wagon. The air whipped around me, and a long, thick leg speared into the sand in front of me. Skidding to a halt, I narrowly avoided crashing into it. Undulating like fish scale armor, the creature’s leg rattled as it moved. I crawled backward on all fours as another leg appeared, then another. I wanted to crane my neck up and look the beast in the eyes, but its massive body was creating a whirlwind of sand. Another rattling leg shot toward me. It seemed made of one plate of hard black skin atop another, making an unsettling sound like the tail of a rattlesnake.

“! Move!”

Maez barked from the wagon.

I scuttled backward again right as a giant stinger slammed to the ground between my legs. Holy fucking Gods. What was this creature with quivering legs and a scorpion’s tail? Another stinger smashed into the sand beside the first. Two. Two fucking tails.

I rolled onto my belly and crawled toward the wagon, feeling the air swirling and grit caking my skin.

“Almost there, almost there,”

Navin chanted as he stooped from the driver’s bench and offered out his hand. “Don’t look back.”

I opened my mouth to speak but another leg landed right in front of my face, the force of the step throwing sand into my mouth. Scrambling to my feet, I darted around the leg and up onto the driver’s bench. I wedged between Maez and Navin as he slapped Opus’s rear and the wagon jolted to life. But oxen were not known for their speed, and every other breath, I stood up on the driver’s bench to get a good look behind us at the monster that had almost impaled me with its stinger. I could barely make out the shape of its towering, spindly legs in the darkness, but those dozen glowing gray eyes shone like a beacon and moved over the horizon with preternatural speed.

“What is that thing?”

“A crishenem.”

Navin grabbed a handful of my tunic and yanked me back down. “And you staring at it is not helping. It tracks the moonlight reflecting from your eyes.”

“Hey Nav,”

Maez said. “Next time we’re traveling through the desert at night, it’d be nice if you gave us a fucking heads-up that there are giant scorpion monsters here!”

“I’ve never seen one so close to the trail before,”

he said too calmly for the near-death experience we’d just had . . . still were having if that beast decided to attack again.

Maez and I leaned back to look at each other from behind Navin. We clearly both had the same suspicion: Why would he have seen one in the first place? How did an Olmderian human—well traveled or no—have so much knowledge about Valtan monsters? There was no need for traveling musicians this far from the path. When would Galen den’ Mora have ever parked in the middle of nowhere? Yet Navin seemed to navigate this detour from the path to Rikesh with far too much ease . . .

“That thing has like fifty fucking eyes, Maez,”

I groaned, shaking out my hands, my limbs feeling like a bunch of tiny beetles were crawling up and down them. “If it is still behind us in another minute, I’m going to Wolf out.”

“No Wolfing out,”

Navin said tightly. “You’ll only provoke it more.”

“This is what my people do,”

I reminded him. “My ancestors rid the world of monsters . . . well, most of them. They must’ve battled this creature before, too.”

Navin clicked his tongue, spurring the oxen on. “Not this one, they haven’t.”

“And how would you know that?”

“I just do,”

Navin said tightly, keeping his eyes focused on the road ahead. “Besides, it was entire Wolf packs, hundreds of Wolves, that took down the monsters of old. Not two.”

“Bit of a history buff there, aren’t you, Nav?”

Maez asked.

Navin shushed her. “I’m trying to focus.”

“You can focus on the road all you like; it won’t make us go any faster.”

I stood to peek at the monster again, and Navin yanked me back down before I could catch sight of it. “I told you: if we ignore it, it’ll leave us alone,” he said.

“How do you know that?”

“I just know. Trust me,”

he gritted out. Maez and I exchanged suspicious glances again. “Just stop looking at it.”

“Okay, fine,”

I hissed. “I’m going back into the wagon.”

Navin’s grip on my tunic tightened. “So you can peek out the back window flaps?”

he asked incredulously. “Nope, you’re staying right here until we reach the aerial road.”

I folded my arms tightly across my chest. “And how long until we reach the first aerial road?”

“Four hours, more or less.”

“Gods,”

Maez groaned, dropping her head into her hands. “And will this beast be following us like the worst fucking puppy all the way?”

“Maybe,”

Navin said. “Or maybe it’ll get bored.”

“Bored?”

Maez balked. I grimaced as she scrubbed a hand down her face.

Navin’s hand reached over and dropped onto my thigh, giving it a squeeze in acknowledgment. “We’ll hide out on the first island, Sankai-ed, for a few days. Restock our supplies. Make sure those Silver Wolves aren’t following us.”

He shot me a sidelong glance. “Then we are coming back down, cutting out to the shoreline, and getting on the first boat back to Olmdere.”

“But King Luo,”

I protested. “Our mission.”

“Our mission was fucked from the second we ran into your father,”

Maez said.

“Agreed,”

Navin echoed.

“No.”

It took all my strength to keep my voice quiet, but the last thing I needed was for that crishenem to charge us. “I will stay hidden in the wagon, but you still need to go, Maez. You were the one Calla wanted to broker this alliance anyway. We need the Onyx Wolves. Promise Luo whatever it takes. Gold. Land. My hand in marriage—” Navin and Maez started to protest at the same time but I carried on, “My hand in marriage after we win the war.”

“Not happening.”

Navin’s voice turned into a guttural rumble.

“You think Luo won’t see through those false promises?”

Maez added. “He thinks he can have you now, . Nero has promised you to him.”

“But we have the gold,”

I said. “Nero doesn’t.”

Maez snorted. “The Onyx Wolves aren’t exactly lacking in wealth.”

“Then you will have to convince him that ours is the winning side, and should he wish to remain king after this war, then he will stand with us.”

“You want me to threaten him?”

Maez shook her head at the stars. “He’ll just throw me off the mountainside. Things have changed since we ran into your family.”

“They haven’t changed,”

I seethed. “We can’t return to Olmdere without this alliance. The Golden Court depends on Luo’s armies. We could lose everything.”

Maez didn’t reply to me for a long beat before finally murmuring, “Let’s just get to Sankai-ed and we’ll come up with a new plan from there, okay?”

I knew her “new plan”

was just to convince me she was right, but I relented. As long as we were moving in the same direction, I was okay to wait.

“What did Briar say about your news?”

Maez wrapped her cloak tighter around her. “I didn’t get a chance to reach her.”

She fidgeted in her seat. “I’d only just shifted when I caught that beast’s scent. I was still trying to reach her when I spotted it and ran.”

“We can try again in Sankai-ed,”

I said softly. I knew it was little condolence. This was not a conversation Maez was looking forward to having.

“Delightful,”

she muttered.

Navin moved closer to me on the bench until his knee was pressing mine, but he didn’t say another word.

We rode for another hour in silence with no disturbance from the crishenem. My skin still rippled in gooseflesh every time I thought of it lurking behind us, but true to Navin’s word, there was no further incidence. Maybe it was just a curious beast—a giant, poison-tailed, spindle-legged, freaky kind of curious beast.

Before long, the weight of the day and the weight of my head finally caught up to me. I tried to keep my eyes fixed on the rolling horizon, but everything kept blurring as sleep tugged on me. I must have nodded off a few times before Navin reached over and pulled my head onto his shoulder. I glanced up and realized Maez was already slumped against the wagon wall, her mouth agape, and drool trailing down her cheek. I let out a soft chuckle and let Navin’s shoulder take the weight of my suddenly too-heavy head. He wrapped his arm around me and I leaned into him more. I wasn’t sure if I had faded into the land of the dreaming or not, but I swore I imagined Navin kissing me on the hair before I drifted off.