Chapter 18 Talia
TALIA
The silence that follows is worse than the argument. Not so much because it’s awkward, but more because it’s settled.
Korr’s stride evens out after a few steps, long and deliberate, built for endurance rather than speed. He doesn’t rush and he doesn’t speak. That restraint is heavier than anything else he could have done.
The desert adjusts around us as I struggle, internally, to come to terms with my situation.
Illadon moves without being told, repositioning himself just off Korr’s left flank, eyes up, posture alert. Adapting to the new situation with ease. Rverre walks close on the other side, her gaze flicking between me and the horizon with an intensity that makes my chest tighten.
No one comments which might be the worst part.
I tell myself I’m angry and that I should be. My free will was overridden and now I’m being carried. A burden. Reduced to a problem with a solution instead of a voice with agency, and yet…
My ankle isn’t screaming anymore. The constant throb dulls to something manageable, something distant enough that I can think clearly again. My breathing comes without effort. My shoulders unclench, one muscle group at a time, like my body has decided the argument is over whether I agree or not.
I recognize it, but there is still a part of me that hates it. Hates the loss of control. The loss of self-determinism. I hate that most of all.
“You’re favoring the right,” I say, grasping for something neutral.
“Yes,” Korr replies.
“You’ll walk us into uneven ground.”
“No,” he says calmly. “I’ll keep you out of it.”
“I didn’t ask you to—”
“I know,” he says again, and there’s no heat in it at all, only a calm certainty. “You wouldn’t.”
I go quiet. Not because I have nothing to say, but because anything I do say will crack something I’m not ready to examine yet. We travel until Rverre breaks the silence.
“You sound different,” she says, not looking at either of us.
Korr doesn’t answer.
I swallow. “Different how?”
She hums softly, head tilting, listening to something beneath the surface of the world.
“Like the ground stopped arguing.”
A chill slips down my spine.
Illadon glances at her. “The ground doesn’t argue.”
“It does,” she says mildly. “It just usually wins.”
I can’t pretend to understand what she means by that but no one contradicts her.
We crest a shallow rise, and for the first time since we left the canyon, the horizon changes shape.
It’s not dramatic and the city is not revealed and there are no impossible structures breaking the sky, but the land ahead tightens.
Folds drawing inward and stone ribs clustering closer together. The desert feels… narrower.
Korr slows, adjusting his grip, not because I ask but because he anticipates the shift in terrain. My weight doesn’t jostle. My ankle doesn’t protest. My body — traitor that it is — settles more fully against him.
I stiffen and he feels it, but he doesn’t comment.
Instead, he says quietly, “We’ll make camp before dusk.”
Illadon nods. “There’s cover ahead.”
Rverre points without hesitation. “That way. It bends.”
I close my eyes for half a second.
This is happening. All of it. The change in formation. The way decisions are landing differently. The way no one questioned him, or me, once the line was crossed. When I open my eyes again, I don’t fight the fact that I’m still in his arms, but I don’t lean into it either.
I do stop pretending this is temporary.
It feels like this city isn’t waiting for us. It’s watching.
Somewhere between the sand and the stone, between my pride and his resolve, the journey has shifted onto a path that doesn’t allow retreat — only adaptation. Korr carries me forward without another word. And I let him.
The desert feels like it tightens as the light changes.
It’s subtle at first — a deepening of shadow between stone ribs, the way the air thickens just enough to resist breath — but my body registers it before my mind does. The land ahead feels less like open ground and more like a corridor that hasn’t decided whether it wants us inside it.
Korr feels it too. His pace slows a fraction.
It’s not hesitation, more he’s precise. Every step placed with intent, boots finding stone whenever possible.
I’m acutely aware of the way his arms brace me — not crushing and definitely not indulgent, just…
secure. As if my weight has already been factored into his balance and dismissed as irrelevant.
That makes my throat tighten.
I’ve spent years being careful not to need anyone like this ever again. To not lean on or rely on anyone else. To not to let someone else decide when I’ve reached my limit. And now the desert has made that decision for me, and Korr is enforcing it without so much as an apology.
“You’re not even breathing hard,” I mutter.
He glances down briefly, eyes dark and focused.
“You weigh less than your fear thinks you do.”
That shouldn’t hit me in the chest like a fist, but it does. I look away, jaw tight, watching the sand slide past beneath us.
“You don’t get to decide what I’m afraid of.”
“No,” he agrees calmly. “But I get to decide when it stops controlling the pace.”
Illadon scouts ahead, stopping at a narrow break in the stone and signaling with a hand motion we never discussed but all understand. Rverre is beside us walking carefully. Her attention split between the path and something deeper that is pulling at her from under the surface of the world.
“It’s closer,” she says quietly. No excitement or fear in her voice, more someone stating a dry fact. “It knows we changed.”
I stiffen.
“Knows how?”
She shrugs one small shoulder.
“Like when the wind notices a fire.”
Korr stops. It’s not abrupt. The motion ends cleanly. He looks out across the terrain, then down at me.
“This is the point,” he says.
My pulse jumps. “The point of what?”
“Where pretending you can walk this off stops being useful.”
I bristle. “I wasn’t pretending.”
“Yes,” he says gently. “You were.”
The gentleness undoes me more than anger ever could. I push a hand against his chest, not hard enough to move him, enough to remind myself I can still choose something.
“Put me down.”
“No.”
“Korr—”
“No,” he repeats, and there’s iron in his voice. It’s not an exertion of dominance or some kind of cruelty, it’s a decision. “Not here. Not like this.”
“Then when?” I demand. “When do I get my feet back?”
“When it won’t cost you more than it already has.”
I laugh — sharp, humorless.
“You make it sound so reasonable.”
“It is,” he says with a shrug.
“That doesn’t mean I have to like it.”
His mouth curves slightly. “I know.”
That does it. The fight drains out of me all at once, leaving something raw and shaking underneath. My fingers curl into the leather at his shoulder. I don’t hide it. I don’t apologize for it either.
This isn’t surrender. It’s triage.
We move again, threading through the stone as the desert closes in, shadows stretching long and sharp.
The air feels tense and charged, like a held breath.
The city, whatever it truly is, presses closer.
It’s not as if it’s calling, how can an inanimate thing call?
But it is demanding… expecting. The sirens call pulling us forward towards the one thing we need more than any other.
Hope.
And, with my ankle useless and my pride bruised, I understand something I’ve been avoiding since the canyon. Holding strong wasn’t my mistake. The mistake was thinking I could do this alone.
Korr carries me forward, steady and unyielding, and for the first time since we left the valley, I stop telling myself this will all end cleanly. Some lines don’t get uncrossed. And some choices — once made — don’t ask permission to become permanent.