Imara
TWENTY
Three days of running, and the world has turned to dust.
The landscape beyond the Vale’s boundary stretches in every direction—rust-colored earth, jagged stones, skeletal trees that died decades ago and never fell. Nothing grows here. Nothing survives. The clan’s influence leached life from this territory centuries ago, and the land has never recovered.
We move at night. Rest during the day in whatever shelter we can find—collapsed buildings, shallow caves, the hollowed-out trunks of petrified trees.
The survivors dwindle with each passing mile.
Some split off to find their own paths. Some can’t keep up and fall behind.
Some simply disappear in the darkness, choosing to take their chances alone rather than follow a monster and a harvester into the unknown.
I don’t blame them. I’m not sure I’d follow us either.
Dena stays. She clings to my hand during the long marches, sleeps curled against my side during the brief rest periods, watches Kharvek with a mixture of terror and fascination that I recognize too well. She has nowhere else to go. No one else to take her.
Neither do I.
“There.” Kharvek’s voice cuts through the pre-dawn silence. He points toward a shape on the horizon—low, angular, man-made. “Shelter.”
I squint through the gray light. A farmstead, maybe. Or what’s left of one. The structure lists to one side, its roof partially collapsed, but the walls look intact enough to provide cover.
“Could be occupied.”
“Could be.” He starts walking toward it anyway. “Stay here with the girl. I’ll check.”
“I’m not—”
But he’s already gone, moving across the barren earth with that unsettling silence, seven feet of scarred muscle somehow disappearing into shadows that shouldn’t be deep enough to hide him.
Dena tugs at my sleeve. “Is he going to kill someone?”
“Only if they try to kill him first.” I hope that’s true. I’m not entirely certain anymore.
“He’s scary.”
“Yes.”
“But he carried me. When I couldn’t walk anymore.” She chews her lip, thinking. “Scary things don’t usually help.”
“No,” I agree. “They don’t.”
We wait in the gray light, watching the farmstead for movement. Minutes pass. The sky lightens from black to bruised purple. Somewhere in the distance, a bird calls—the first living sound I’ve heard in days.
Kharvek emerges from the farmstead’s doorway. Waves us forward.
“Empty?” I ask when we reach him.
“Years empty. Whoever lived here left long ago.” He steps aside to let us enter. “Or was taken.”
The interior is exactly what I expected—dust, debris, the remnants of a life abandoned in haste. Furniture overturned. Clothing scattered. A child’s doll lying in the corner, its button eyes staring at the ceiling.
Dena picks up the doll. Holds it against her chest.
I don’t have the heart to tell her to put it down.
We settle into the farmstead like ghosts inhabiting a tomb.
The remaining survivors—only three now, the others having scattered during the night—claim corners of the main room. They don’t speak to each other. Don’t speak to us. Just curl into themselves and sleep, exhausted beyond the capacity for anything else.
I should sleep too. My body screams for it—muscles aching, eyes burning, thoughts moving through fog. But every time I close my eyes, I see the Sacrificial Pit. Bodies falling. Blood spraying. Kharvek tearing through guards with his bare hands.
And beneath all of it, the Matron’s voice. Proud. Pleased. Hungry for what we could produce.
I find a corner away from the others and sit with my back against the wall, watching the room. Watching him.
Kharvek has positioned himself near the door—guard duty, I assume, though he hasn’t announced it.
He stands with his arms crossed, that massive frame filling the doorway, blocking the gray light that filters through the gaps in the walls.
His scars have dimmed since the pit, power settling back into dormancy, but I can still see the faint glow beneath his skin.
He’s watching me too.
The awareness prickles along my spine. Every time I look up, his gaze is there—dark, intent, unreadable. Not threatening, exactly. Not safe either. A balance between those poles, a feeling that makes my skin flush and my breath quicken even as my instincts scream caution.
We haven’t spoken about the kisses. The bone garden. The cave. His hands on my waist, my back against stone, that growl vibrating through my chest. It hangs between us now, unaddressed, a tension that thickens the air every time we’re in the same space.
I look away first. Always look away first. Because if I don’t, I’m not sure what I’ll do.