Chapter 19
KARA
Imust have dozed for minutes at most.
The ache in my neck says I never truly slept, but exhaustion dragged me down. Now I blink, grit scratching my eyes, and the world is pale with the setting suns.
The silence hits me first. No muttering curses from Joran. No rickety prayers from Harlan. No restless pacing, wings scraping stone, from the younger Zmaj. Only him.
The scarred warrior sits close, lochaber braced across his knees as though nothing in this world touches him at all. His gaze is fixed outward, scanning the canyon. Heat creeps into my face before I can stop it.
His eyes shift. Just for a breath, they find mine. Not sharp, not scornful—calmly seeing. He nods. That same unshakable acknowledgment he gave before.
Gratitude, relief, and that feeling of something more, the thing I still don’t want to name.
The silence stretches, thick and intimate in a way the chaos of the group never allowed. My chest is too tight for words. The bandage on my arm pulls tight, reminding me of the venom burn, but for once it isn’t the worst pain. The tightness is worse.
We’re alone.
The thought should terrify me. It does—but not in the way I expect. Fear of the desert, fear of the storm, fear of the thing that hissed in the bones—those all gnaw at me. But the heavier fear is quieter, rooted deeper.
That he’ll look at me and see nothing worth protecting. That he’ll walk ahead and leave me to the sand.
Instead, he rises, smooth and deliberate, the lochaber sliding onto his back with the kind of ease that comes from a thousand repetitions.
He doesn’t speak, instead tilting his head toward the canyon’s mouth.
It’s just us. The scarred warrior and me, chasing a hope of food in a desert that doesn’t want to give.
My throat works around a breath that feels too heavy, but I push to my feet anyway. If he walks into the storm, I’ll walk beside him.
“Ready,” I whisper, though he hasn’t asked.
The faintest flicker passes through his black eyes, like the recognition of a truth he already knew. He turns, leading into the pale dusk, moving with the same silence he always does, but with no others to fill the space, it’s heavier.
Every sound is amplified: the faint scrape of his claws against stone, the whisper of sand shifting down the canyon walls, the rasp of my own too-loud breath.
I fall into step a half pace behind, watching the line of his shoulders, the scars cutting across the curve of his neck.
He doesn’t hunch under the weight of the world the way humans do.
He doesn’t flinch at shadows or mutter about curses.
He walks as though the desert belongs to him, as though no storm, no monster, no hunger could strip him of that claim.
And somehow, his steadfastness pulls me forward too.
I’ve spent so much time snarling at the edges of civilization, begging to be noticed, desperate to prove I could stand. Here, in the quiet, I’m realizing I don’t have to shout. Not with him.
My arm throbs under the bandage, but I bite back the hiss. He doesn’t need to hear my weakness. More than that—I don’t want him to. The thought lodges sharp in my chest, and I clench my fists until my nails bite my palms. Foolish, maybe, but it lingers.
Ahead, he glances once over his shoulder, checking—not if I follow, but how. His gaze flicks to my stride, to the set of my jaw, to the knife gripped at my hip. His eyes narrow, not in doubt, but in assessment. And then he faces forward again, giving nothing away.
I breathe out slowly. Maybe that was nothing. Maybe it was everything.
The canyon narrows as we walk, the walls rising higher, blotting out the pale suns until the light turns thin and gray. Our footsteps echo strangely, as if the stone itself is listening.
I keep pace, close enough that the steady weight of his presence anchors, but far enough that I don’t feel like a shadow.
The silence isn’t empty anymore—it’s layered.
The rasp of grit under my boots. The occasional click of his tail against stone.
My own heartbeat, quickening every time I catch the subtle shift of his head as he scans the cliffs.
He doesn’t speak, but I start to see the shape of his silence. The way his gaze lingers a fraction longer on a crack where shadow pools. The tilt of his body, angled to shield me from the worst of the wind. The pause before each turn, reading the desert as easily as others read a map.
It isn’t indifference. It’s vigilance. For me.
I chew at the inside of my cheek, fighting the urge to break the quiet. Words feel clumsy, like they’d shatter something fragile and real. Still, a part of me aches to hear his voice again, rough and steady, cutting through the storm the way it had when Joran ran his mouth.
Instead, I listen.
The canyon smells different the deeper we go.
Less sand and old stone, more of something sharp and tangy.
A trickle of water glints from a crack in the wall, running down into a shallow pool no larger than my palm.
I stop, crouching, and touch the damp rock.
Cool. Real. A shock of life where there shouldn’t be any.
When I glance up, he’s watching. His head tilts, the faintest flick of his tail betraying approval. His acknowledgment makes my chest squeeze tighter than hunger ever could. I swallow hard, standing, and brush grit from my fingers.
“I… almost missed it.”
His eyes don’t leave mine. He doesn’t need to say what he’s thinking. But you didn’t.
I quickly turn, heat rising onto my cheeks, and pretend to study the canyon walls.
My stomach growls, sharp in the silence, and I wince.
The sound feels too loud between us. When I risk a glance, he isn’t mocking.
He shifts his weight, scanning upward where the rock splits into jagged shelves.
His gaze lingers on a cluster of pale pods clinging high to the stone, translucent enough to pulse with faint light.
Food. Maybe.
I follow his gaze, biting my lip. The climb looks treacherous—shelves brittle, edges sharp—but I don’t say it out loud. He knows already. I see it in the tight set of his jaw.
We stand there, shoulder to shoulder, both staring at the pods. The hunger between us sharpens into something more complicated. Something that has nothing to do with fruit.
I slide my knife into its sheath and test the rock face with my palms. The stone crumbles under my touch, powdering to grit, but some of the jagged shelves hold firm. The pods hang maybe thirty feet up—too far to reach without climbing.
“I’ll go,” I whisper.
His gaze cuts to me. A slow shake of his head.
“I can,” I press, jaw tight. “I’m lighter. If the stone breaks, I’m less likely to bring it down with me.”
He studies me, scars stark in the moon and starlight. I think he’ll refuse again, but instead he turns to the wall, testing the lower handholds with claws that scrape sparks against the stone. He means to climb too.
Of course he does.
My pulse hammers as I grab the first hold, hauling myself upward.
My arms burn quick, the bandaged one screaming with every pull, but I grit my teeth and keep going.
Once I’m a short way up he follows, moving slower, lochaber strapped across his back.
He climbs like the canyon itself makes space for him, deliberate and sure.
Halfway up, my boot slips on a slick patch of stone. My stomach lurches. Fingers claw for a grip, nails breaking. Before I fall, a strong hand clamps around my ankle and steadies me. His grip is iron, anchoring me back into place. I breathe out hard, nodding even though he can’t see my face.
“Thanks,” I whisper into the stone.
I keep going.
The pods glow brighter as I near them, their skins thin and pulsing faintly. They look edible—but so had the last cactus fruit that steamed poison into the air. My knife slides free and I cut one loose. The pod drops heavy into the cloth pouch tied at my hip.
A crack echoes.
I freeze. The shelf beneath his hand gives way in a spray of grit. For a heartbeat his claws scramble for a grip, his weight dragging him back.
“No—”
I move before I think, bracing my foot against a narrow spur and thrusting my arm downward. My fingers catch the strap holding his lochaber. The sudden weight jerks me off balance, but I manage to hold on. My arm wrenches, pain blazing through the venom-scarred flesh, but I grit my teeth and hold.
His body stills, muscles coiling. He regains a new grip with one clawed hand, then another, pulling himself back into the climb.
Only when he’s steady again do I release the strap, my chest heaving.
His head tips up. His eyes—black, fathomless—lock on mine. For once, there’s no hiding what I see in them. A flicker of surprise. And something more, something raw.
My stomach twists, heat flaring sharper than the ache in my arm. I saved him. Me.
The moment stretches taut between us. Then, wordless, he nods once. The smallest motion, but it feels like the world shifting.
I climb higher, cutting down two more pods before lowering myself carefully back to the ground. He drops beside me in a controlled crouch, silent but close enough that his shoulder nearly brushes mine.
The pods glow faintly between us, fragile as glass hearts. My fingers tighten around the pouch. My chest still pounds—not from the climb, but from the way he’d looked at me, just for the length of a breath.
My palms sting, fingers raw from gripping stone, but I can’t feel anything except the thud of my heartbeat. He should’ve fallen. I should’ve lost him. Instead, my hand still tingles from where I caught the strap of his lochaber, the memory of his weight dragging against me.
I saved him.
The thought spins through, dizzy and bright, cutting through exhaustion. For so long I’ve been dismissed, overlooked, shoved aside. But not this time. Not by him.