Chapter Thirty-One
Dietan
My head still throbs where Aren smacked me with her skillet.
One thing’s for certain: the woman has good aim. It’s a bearable pain—familiar, even. The fear and dread are much harder to shake.
I almost lost myself to the Whisting. If Aren hadn’t intervened, I don’t know what would’ve become of me.
“You okay?” she asks, her voice soft and hesitant. She’s been silent by my side as we walk across the rest of the bridge. It’s just the two of us now. Marcus tried to make us come back, to find a way across the gap in the bridge, but it was futile. So, we just kept walking.
I wonder what my men think of what happened. They all know now. They saw the power I hold in me. Did they connect it with the Rings of Fate? I just have to trust that Marcus can keep them from figuring it out.
“I’m okay,” I assure her, rubbing my head. “You really do have quite the swing,” I add with a half-hearted grin, trying to make light of it, since it’s clear we’re both still shaken.
My usual charm doesn’t work on her, or maybe my heart’s not in it. “You?”
“I’m all right,” she says tightly.
I know those words are masking a world of emotion. If she hadn’t blatantly ignored me, I’d be dead—or worse. Thank gods for her stubborn streak.
I know we’ve made it to the other end of the bridge when my boots suddenly hit soft sand instead of brick. The gray smoke starts to clear, and I squint at the sun breaking through the clouds. I didn’t realize how much I missed sunlight until now.
Aren blinks up at the suddenly blue sky, shielding her eyes. “That’s weird. I thought Estyrion is supposed to be all gray skies and blackened ruins.”
I nod. That was certainly the case on the other side, in Alba. But here, the smoke and acrid stench have vanished.
“Is that… Is that real?” Aren asks, her voice full of wonder as she stares at the city that rises up in front of us.
Glittering crystalline towers reflect the sunlight. Mirrored structures stretch out, expanding across the canyon cliff and out of sight. Glass statues of ancient kings stand on either side of the city’s entrance, draped in lifelike flowing robes, their hands raised in welcome.
“I thought everything in Estyrion was destroyed when Boreas fell,” she murmurs in awe.
“I don’t know,” I say, shading my eyes as I look around.
The city looks intact and dazzlingly beautiful. Before it fell, Estyrion was the most powerful of the four kingdoms. As I look more closely, I realize why it looks so strange.
The city is empty.
There’s no one here at all. It’s as if Aren and I are the only two people left in the world—something I wouldn’t mind one bit.
Aren cranes her neck gazing up at the distant glass towers cutting through the clouds in the too-bright sky. Her lips part slightly in amazement.
But the city is lifeless. It’s as still and silent as the paintings depicting its grandeur that hang in the palace in Lundenwic.
As we approach the entrance to the city, it feels frozen in time—a relic of an age-long past. There’s no sound except for the howl of the wind through the empty streets. The hairs on my arms stand on end.
“What is that?” Aren asks, pointing.
I follow her gaze to rippling in the air around the glass structures. The mirrored surfaces appear to bend. It’s like a distortion in a pond.
I take a curious step toward it, and as I draw closer, understanding dawns on me.
“It’s a mirage,” I say. Suddenly, the confused and conflicting intelligence reports about the region make more sense.
“It’s just an illusion. This is what Estyrion City must have looked like before it fell. It isn’t real.”
“I wonder what is real, then,” Aren says. “The smoke and the ruins—and now this? What does the real Estyrion City look like?”
“We’ll find out soon enough,” I say as we walk toward what looks like a wavy curtain hanging between us and the beautiful architecture. When we reach it, I hear the faint, high-pitched buzzing of a spell, like a gnat near our ears.
Aren hikes her rucksack higher on her shoulder and gestures determinedly ahead. “Together, then?”
I nod. Side by side, we step through the rippling wall of the mirage.
The moment we do, everything changes.
Instead of a glittering city, a vast desert stretches before us. It’s blindingly bright and impossibly hot. A gust of wind held back by the mirage rushes past us, blowing sand and dust into our faces. I close my eyes a second too late. The sand fills my lungs and leaves me blinded for a moment.
All around us, mounds of sand, shifting in the wind, stand where the shining buildings were a moment ago. Now that I’m no longer dazzled by the illusion of the crystal city, I remember where I am.
The Great Waste. This is what remains after Boreas’s destruction. He killed everyone and everything in the kingdom and turned it all to dust.
I know the history. This was once the greatest of Albion’s kingdoms, the most beautiful of the First Epoch. But now it’s just an endless desert. No wonder we call it the Great Waste.
All those lives, gone.
I glance at Aren, who is trying to shield her eyes from the sun. Already, I can feel my scalp starting to burn. I pull on my cap for protection, but the heat immediately makes my head sweat.
It’s going to be a long walk to Engel, where the mad king resides.
We begin our trek, climbing tall dunes. We slide on the soft sand beneath our feet. Each stride feels like walking through molasses. The ground gives way beneath each precarious step, sometimes sinking us into deep drifts that rise to our thighs.
Walking through the desert saps most of our energy.
What strength the sand doesn’t take the sun drains, forcing us to pause frequently to rest and drink.
There is little room for conversation. We wordlessly scan the horizon for any sign of sanctuary.
I worry that we’ll run out of water. Marcus and the men have most of our supplies.
We can’t die before completing our mission. We’ve come too far.
On one of the highest dunes, we stop to get our bearings.
There’s nothing but rolling sand as far as the eye can see.
No shadows, no clouds, no reprieve from the relentless sun and the endlessness of the Great Waste.
My compass is useless, spinning aimlessly amid the Waste’s destructive power.
But something out there calls to the Rings within me, so we set out in that direction.
It becomes clear that traveling during the day is a mistake.
When the sun reaches its zenith, the air itself burns our lungs.
Aren and I are relieved to find the ruined shell of a building.
Even in its shade, the oppressive desert air settles like hot breath on our skin.
We sweat through our clothes, losing what precious little water we’ve consumed.
The sand burns anything it touches. My leather shoes can stave off the heat for only so long before it feels as if I’ve stepped onto Aren’s frying pan. But the heat isn’t the only problem.
At night, the temperature drops so low that my fingers and toes go numb.
No matter how much I breathe warmth into my hands or tuck them deep into the folds of my clothes, I can’t escape the cold.
We huddle together as we walk, but the freezing temperature robs me of any enjoyment at Aren’s closeness.
We must once again seek shelter from the punishing sun.
It’s nearly impossible to sleep, no matter where the sun is in the sky. When we rest, my thoughts flit from one anxiety to the next while Aren attempts to nap.
When I finally drift off from sheer exhaustion, I’m too tired to dream of anything but endless sand and sun, and empty crystal streets.
Marcus was right—I’ve stepped into a hellhole. Worse, I’ve brought Aren with me. She doesn’t deserve any of this suffering.
How many days have we been walking? Time plays tricks with your mind in the desert.
“You don’t look good,” Aren says one morning, studying my face.
I snort.
“And don’t say ‘speak for yourself,’” she adds with a weak chuckle.
“You always look good,” I blurt out. I’m half-delirious, and I don’t intend to flirt, but she smiles, and that’s enough to get me back on my feet.
I can’t imagine surviving this torturous trek on my own.
Her presence is the only thing keeping me going.
I need to survive for Aren; I can’t leave her alone here.
Before I met her, I had come to terms with my inevitable demise.
But now, with her by my side, she gives me newfound hope for survival.
Just when I want to start living, I can’t very well die. The irony is too grand.
We come upon no village, no outpost, nor even an abandoned hut, and the supplies in our backpacks dwindle with each passing day. We’ll need to further ration our food and water.
“Here,” I say, offering Aren my waterskin. I pretended to drink my share so she can have more.
“You didn’t have any.” It’s not the first time she’s noticed, but her protests grow softer each time.
I shake my head. “Take it.”
Too weak to argue, she does as I say, and I’m relieved to see a bit more color in her cheeks.
There’s no life here at all. Sand gets everywhere: between my teeth, under my eyelids, beneath my fingernails.
The dry heat ripples across the horizon, warping the land and creating more illusions.
I know they aren’t real, especially when they show me my white city in Loegria, with its lush pools and verdant gardens.
When we rest, wasting precious hours, she lies on her back at my side, her face twisted up in agony.
In her dreams, she cries out for someone, though I can’t tell if the name on her lips is mine.
Her sleep is always fitful. Her lips are cracked and bleeding, her cheeks burning red, her skin peeling.
Her eyes are sunken, her gaze distant, and I know I don’t look any better.
We save what little food and water we have for when we must walk another step.