Prologue

Keera

The desert held her breath. She’d been my only companion for many years, and I knew her rhythms like I knew my own heartbeat—the swish of the burrowing owl’s wings and the brushing of wind over sands. While the desert seemed quiet to many, it was a symphony to those who knew how to listen.

Now, she fell quiet. Even rustling of the date palm leaves had ceased and the back of my neck prickled with awareness. Something deep in my belly stirred—something that had been dormant for so long I thought I had imagined it, not yet awakening but shifting.

The desert was waiting, and I stood with her on the precipice.

Something was coming.