Chapter 9 Talia
TALIA
Iwake to the sound of my name.
Spoken softly, but close, calling me from the depths of sleep.
“Talia.”
For half a second, I don’t know where I am. I sit up only aware that something has breached the thin wall I built to keep the past at bay. My body reacts before my mind does. I jerk upright, heart hammering, breath sharp and defensive.
“What?” I snap. “I’m awake—stop—”
The rest of the words die in my throat as the world resolves.
Hard stone, soft sand and heat already assaulting my lungs. Rverre and Illadon sleep a short distance away, their chests slowly rising and falling. Korr is crouched just beyond my reach with one hand lifted. He’s not touching me, not even close, he’s just there.
I wasn’t awake. That realization comes next and is followed by something else. Shame.
“I—” I drag a hand over my face, scrubbing at the grit and the remnants of a dream that hasn’t fully released me yet. My pulse is still too fast. My skin feels tight. “I’m sorry.”
He doesn’t move back. He doesn’t move closer either.
“The heat is turning,” he says evenly. “If we wait longer, it will cost you more than rest will give back.”
No accusation that I didn’t take a watch as I promised and no commentary about my tone. He states facts, pure and simple. Which somehow makes it worse.
I nod sharply and push myself upright. My cloak slips, and I fix it with more care than necessary, anything to keep my hands busy.
To keep from looking at him. Looking feels dangerous right now—like if I meet his eyes, he’ll see too much.
The echo of the nightmare. The fracture I haven’t finished sealing back into the box where it belongs.
“I didn’t mean to fall asleep again,” I say, as if that’s the problem. As if sleep is a failure instead of a necessity. “I was… resting.”
He hums quietly, a sound that might mean agreement or might mean nothing at all.
“You did not miss anything,” he says. “I would not have allowed it.”
There it is again. That certainty. That will.
It presses against something raw inside me, and I hate how much I want to lean into it. Hate how easy it would be to let someone else hold the line for once. So I don’t.
I swing my legs under me and stand, a little too fast. The world tilts for half a breath before settling. I pretend it doesn’t. More, I pretend I don’t notice the way his attention sharpens onto me.
“I’m fine,” I say, preemptively and automatically defensive.
“I know,” he replies.
I glance at him despite myself, caught off guard by the lack of challenge. He’s already turning away, scanning the horizon, giving me my space back like he never took it in the first place.
The regret hits late, sharp and unwelcome.
I didn’t want to snap at him. I didn’t want to hear my own voice edged hard and brittle in a way I recognize too well. It’s the sound I make when something gets too close to a wound that has never healed properly.
I bend to tighten my boots, focusing on the straps, on the simple mechanics of readiness. My hands shake just enough that I have to slow them down.
Control first. Feel later.
Behind me, Illadon stirs. Rverre shifts, wings flexing once before settling again. The quiet morning stretches, thin and fragile, and I realize with a small jolt that this is the first time in years that someone else decided when I should wake.
That shouldn’t matter, but it does. In that small way, the way of things that were but haven’t been in a long time.
I straighten and roll my shoulders, deliberately avoiding looking at Korr. If I do, I’ll have to acknowledge the gratitude tangled up with the irritation. The relief braided through my instinct to push him away.
Avoidance is easier. Safer.
For now, I can pretend that snapping at him was just fatigue. For now, I can keep the wall intact.
The camp that isn’t much of a camp dissolves around us as Korr repacks the meager supplies.
No one says it out loud, but we all feel the shift—the moment where stillness becomes movement and rest turns back into momentum. Illadon rises and helps Rverre to her feet before she’s fully awake. I watch from the edge of my vision while pretending not to.
Rverre blinks against the light, squinting up at the brightening sky. She breathes in slowly, then presses her bare palm to the ground as if checking in with something only she can hear.
“It changed,” she murmurs.
Korr turns toward her instantly. “How?”
“Closer,” she says after a pause, a small smile forming.
I tighten the strap on my pack and focus on practicalities—water levels, ration placement, the way the shade cloth folds into itself when we break it down.
My body is stiff, my muscles reluctant after too little sleep, but the motion helps.
It grounds me in the now instead of the echo of a sealed doors and words that never quite stop hurting.
“We’ll adjust our route,” Korr says. “The wind will turn by midday.”
I glance up despite myself. “You’re sure?”
He nods once. “The air is already pulling.”
I follow his gaze, scanning the horizon. At first, I see nothing but shimmer and distance. Then—subtle, almost imperceptible—I feel it. A faint pressure at my back.
“You’re right,” I say quietly.
Something flickers across his expression. As if this confirms something he’s been filing away since the moment we left the canyon. I don’t know how to read it so I look away.
We get moving and the terrain resists immediately.
The sand is loose underfoot as the stone thins out.
I fall into step without thinking, matching Korr’s pace instinctively, even though part of me bristles at how natural it feels.
Illadon and Rverre walk just ahead of me, close but not touching, their silhouettes easy and familiar against the glare.
Rverre hums under her breath, a low, wandering sound that doesn’t have a melody so much as a direction. I’ve learned not to interrupt it. Whatever she’s doing, it keeps her calm.
“You’re favoring the left,” I say after a few minutes.
“Yes.”
“There’s a shallow ridge ahead,” I add. “If the wind comes up early, it’ll break there.”
Korr slows enough to look back at me.
“You see it,” he says.
“I do,” I say, sharper than I’d like.
I don’t like the way I respond but it feels like he’s questioning me and everything about him makes me feel a bit on edge.
He considers, then shifts our line by a few degrees.
Illadon adjusts immediately. Rverre doesn’t even glance back.
The change flows through the group like it was always meant to happen that way.
We walk in silence for a while after that, the kind that isn’t empty but shared.
The suns climb higher, heat presses down with intent rather than suggestion.
Sweat traces familiar paths down my spine, my hair damp against my neck, but the pace holds.
Korr glances back once more, his eyes flicking to my gait, my posture. Assessing but now showing concern.
“I’ll tell you if I’m slowing,” I say, sharper than necessary.
“I know,” he replies calmly.
The irritation I was expecting doesn’t come, only a strange, hollow quiet where it should be. I look away, fixing my attention on Rverre as she pauses abruptly, wings twitching. She lifts her head, eyes unfocused.
“This way,” she says, pointing—not straight ahead, but slightly off, toward a shallow dip where the sand darkens.
Korr studies the line, then nods. I expect him to disagree or argue but doesn’t.
“We follow.”
Illadon doesn’t hesitate. Neither do I.
As we angle toward the new path, I realize something with a jolt that has nothing to do with the desert or the city or the children between us. I’m not watching Korr to see if he’ll fail. I’m watching him because some part of me expects him not to.
And that is the most dangerous shift of all.