57

Jadon and I slow to avoid tiring the horses but maintain enough speed to keep up with the moths’ sparkly trail.

“Can we talk about it?” Jadon asks.

I give him a firm head shake. My lips can’t shut any tighter.

He huffs. “But I just want to—”

I throw him a glare so hot his horse’s ear flicks.

There’s nothing Jadon can say that will make this chase through the desert any better. There’s nothing he can say that will make my heart hurt less.

The sooner we find Olivia and my amulet, the sooner he and I can separate, forever. Although the thought of leaving him forever makes my heart clench, I know my heart will heal.

Another gust of dry wind blows sand into our faces. I swipe at my eyes, and my hand brushes the cut on my cheek. Oosh . That’s right—a soldier sliced my face with his blade. But this cut… It feels different than any nicks I’ve received since waking up in Maford. This cut even feels different than the scratch made by Gilgoni the aburan. I thought it was my explosive anger and my use of wind power that had made my face numb, but no. This cut feels hot , and in just that single touch, I feel its heat and its burning pulse. My skin feels tight—my face is swelling.

I look across to Jadon. He’s scratched and nicked, and his nose looks swollen from the sucker punch, but he doesn’t look vexed about it.

Is this peculiar pain a result of a blade, or is this part of my degeneration?

My face tingles, and my mouth tastes like metal—not the copper of blood but ore torn from a mountain. I can still move, but my muscles feel weighted down by that ore-filled mountain. Nothing looks true. The world has become a blur. I try to slow the rapid beating of my pulse, but nothing works, and a creeping anxiety quickens my breath.

Dry lightning cracks across the sky, and hot wind blows like angry rasping ghosts from every direction. All life has been sucked out of anything that once lived here, leaving behind gnarled husks of used-to-be. That used to be a cactus. That used to be a pond. That used to be a family of foxes. Tomorrow at this time, will Jadon and I also be used-to-be?

All the supplies we’d purchased in Caburh or been gifted by Ridget are back at the inn. My satchel filled with honey, wax, the plant chart, and Veril’s journal are back in the sitting room of the Broken Hammer.

Jadon pushes his dirty hair from his face to search the sky. “I’d love to see a falcon now.”

I’m looking for birds, too. Red cardinals to confirm Elyn’s presence. A raven to portend death. My heart pounds like I’m still fighting. I can’t catch my breath. My luclite armor isn’t cooling me even as sweat pools beneath the soft woven fabric of my tunic. I feel no sensation from my forehead down to my shoulders.

Jadon points to a distant hill. “We’ll ride there and set up camp. There’s some green, which means there’s water. Animals, maybe.” He pushes a smile to his face—probably happy that I haven’t blasted him to the sky yet. His eyes are bloodshot from ashes, dust, and exhaustion, and any good cheer he has hides beneath whiskers and bruises from our battles. “I even think I see—” But then he pales. “Kai, what’s wrong?”

I blink at him, wobbling on my horse like a drunk, and say, “Gracious…potato,” but those two words make no sense together. Those words sound like soup, and my tongue feels like it’s dragging across this arid land.

Trying to hold my focus on the desert, my mind swims in an ocean of doubt. How could Sybel believe that I’m the only person who can stop Vallendor’s destruction? Obviously, the Lady of Dawn and Dusk was desperate for someone to pick up the sword and fight for this realm. How can I achieve something that important— save Vallendor —when I can’t even triumph against the very-human Gileon Wake? If I’m so powerful, if I am truly special, why am I here, in this desert, riding this stolen horse, numb and broken and still without my amulet?

Give up. Surrender.

Jadon’s mouth moves, but I don’t understand what he’s saying. His eyes are big and shiny with an expression that looks like panic, but I don’t know what he sees.

I slump in my saddle, and I glimpse sand and the right front leg of my horse.

Jadon flings himself off his horse and catches me before I fall from my mount.

I scream, my skin as tender as snowflakes, his touch as hot as wildfire. That fire travels everywhere, and it prickles against my numb upper body.

He shouts and looks around, frightened. He says something else; the only word I understand is “sorry.”

I smile, and my mouth, gummy and strange, forms words that make no sense—to me or to him. I’ve lost everything.

Stone walls. Dark. Hard, wet earth.

My chest hurts almost as much as my head. Knots as hard as this dirt lodge in my stomach. Every limb, every inch of skin… I don’t have any limbs or skin. I can’t feel any briars or thorns sinking into my face.

Jadon kneels beside me. A blur, he bends down and says, “They coat their swords with the strongest snake venom in this realm. I didn’t know you’d been cut. Drink this.”

I whisper, “’kay.”

He parts my lips with his fingers and presses the canteen to my mouth.

I trust water is dribbling into my mouth, because I can’t feel it. My tongue is as numb as my face and my arms. I taste nothing. I feel nothing. And yet I know his touch is gentle, and that deeper part of me I’d tried to kill yearns for more of that tenderness.

Slumming , according to Gileon Wake.

“You have to sit up for the antidote to work.” He slips his arm beneath me, and despite that deeper part of me that yearns for it, there can never be true tenderness in his touch. His lying, half-truths, swindles, whispered sweet nothings that are—surprise—nothing at all. His acts of softness and sensitivity are ploys. His gentleness is a field of thorny milk thistles. His gentleness is a bed of poison oak leaves.

I need to push Jadon’s hands away, but I’m too weak.

“Hey,” he says, smiling, “I found echinacea and calamus root growing at the foot of the cave. I crushed it up, packed it beneath your tongue. I’m not Veril, but I’ll have to do for now.”

The mention of Veril squeezes my heart. I’ll join him in the next life sooner than I thought.

Jadon grabs a blanket from beneath his horse’s saddle and spreads it at the mouth of the cave, across a patch of long, soft grass and wildflowers that smell of honey and cinnamon.

“A nice place to die,” I whisper.

“You’re not going to die.” He helps me settle on the blanket, then offers me water from another canteen.

“Just sit up a little longer,” he says, draping a thin blanket around my shoulders. “Give the antidote time to work.” He stands and peers out to the desert, hands on his hips. “We should be safe here for the night.”

I blink—the dark sky now burns with oranges and purples.

“I’m gonna look around,” Jadon says. “See what I can see. Maybe find Gileon’s trail. Hope to not see what I don’t want to see.” He waits a beat, then adds a chuckle. “You should rest.” He reaches down to stroke my cheek, but he remembers how tender I am and stops. “I’m sorry, Kai,” he whispers. Regret crackles across his battered face as he moves away.

And soon, I hear only my labored breathing, the snort of tired horses, and the tinny echo of a dying world.