27

We are so deep into this Quiet that in just some hours, I will awaken to the beginning of the second passage.

Fear would have me in its unyielding fist if it wasn’t for the exhaustion that has me slumped, face-down, on my bed. My mouth is smooshed against the pillow, lashes stuck in place, and a gravelly snore rumbles through me.

I haven’t even changed out of the black breeches and blouse that I wore to the ash grounds. Didn’t so much as kick off my boots, and now they smear the bedspread that Tris will have to scrub raw.

Not that it matters, because by the time this bedspread dries, I’ll likely be dead on a mountain.

All that’s happened this past month has caught up to me—and wiped me out. I feel charred, beaten, and most of all, tired.

So tired that, when the door creaks open, and the draught from the corridor creeps into the room, I hardly stir at all.

My gaze cuts to the side, but all I see is the pillow bordered by the fringe of the wall.

It’s my heartspace that alerts me to who has come.

Pain. So much pain. So much grief—and defeat.

That’s going around lately, like a cold in winter.

Daxeel climbs onto the bed.

Like me, he doesn’t draw a blanket or a fur over himself. He doesn’t kick off his boots.

He just lays his head on the pillow beside mine.

Still, I don’t stir.

I should order him out of my bedchamber. I should put this pillow over his face and smother him. I should shame him all over again just to see him on his knees for what he’s done to me. But the fatigue weighs me down and I feel like one of those limp noodles in the red spaghetti I sometimes eat in the human lands.

The solid, pressing sensation of an arm drapes over my side. Then the warmth of a steady breath disturbs my hair.

Daxeel holds me.

He doesn’t speak.

Why he does this, I don’t know. The loss of his sister, perhaps. That, this Quiet, we are just two folk who lost a sister. Or that the next phase will bring with it the second passage, and we will be portaled away to the Mountain of Slumber—and our fates are uncertain.

Maybe it’s for those very reasons I don’t kick him out.

I just close my eyes.

I find some hours of sleep.

In it, I dream of death.