8. Chapter 8
Chapter eight
Keera
The night might be dark, but it was anything but still.
Aderyn swore colorfully behind me, and I blinked rapidly in an effort to think straight.
The tether low in my belly yanked me forward toward Erix and the terror of the uncharted night hard enough to make me gag.
It was obvious he wasn’t thinking clearly, and I desperately tried to hold on to reason before running after him.
“Stay with the horses,” I ordered Aderyn. “Find a way to make some light so we can make our way back to you.”
Aderyn muttered something frustrated and undiscernible under her breath, but it was the most instruction I could offer until I set off into the darkness.
I tried to move carefully, not knowing if other predators waited or if the bone spider who had taken Dhara was trying to lure us into another attack.
A female scream and a terrified shout from one side grabbed my attention, and I started to grope through the darkness toward it, but another tug on the connection in my gut drove me to my knees.
The next second, a searing pain tore through me.
It was both a visceral feeling and one beyond what my body could understand.
Like the well of magic that lived in my core was boiling over.
My hands hit the ground, and I gasped for air, but my lungs wouldn’t expand fully against the sensation.
Erix.
I knew he was the source of this pain. Whatever I was feeling, it had to be worse for him. As loud as the feeling was, and as hard as it was to move against it, at least I could follow it back to its source.
I crawled forward through the darkness; all thoughts of monsters faded in my need to get to Erix. He would not be in a position to fight like this, and neither would I.
Dirt ground under my fingertips, and the hard earth scraped my knees as I scrabbled forward. The pain lessened as I grew closer to my goal, although it still made my eyes water and my breath come in short pants. Finally, my hand landed on what felt like a clothed thigh.
A noise like a whimper cut through the haze of pain tearing through me, but it lessened as I touched Erix. Through his clothes, it wasn’t quite enough to bring him back. I groped blindly, tracing my hands up the planes of his torso until I could find his face.
I cupped his cheeks in both hands, and his whimper transformed into words—fast and chaotic, whispered under his breath so I could barely hear him.
“So dark. Alone in the dark. Under the mountain… Trapped forever. My flower is gone.”
I frowned, not understanding all of it—I couldn’t be sure even he knew what he was saying.
But alone under the mountain was a fear I understood.
The impenetrable darkness of the night with no moon had transformed the openness of the desert into something suffocating.
Her anger had turned her freedom into a cage for Erix’s mind.
“Erix, you’re not alone,” I murmured back at him.
His eyes were screwed shut, but I pressed my forehead to his.
“Not real. It’s not real.” He muttered frantically.
I needed him to see me. To know that I was truly there.
I peeled one of my hands from his cheek and cupped it between us. As chaotic as the magic was around us, and distracting as the pain that had settled into an ache in my lower belly was, a spark of magic flew easily into my hand.
A small ball of fire formed in my palm, and I had to grit my teeth to keep it from growing into a towering flame as Erix’s chaotic magic tugged on mine.
Instead, I kept it small, cupping it between our chests where the warmth bloomed and chased away the harsh cold of the desert at night.
Finally, the flickering flame illuminated Erix’s face.
The harsh shadows it cast sharpened his look of pain, but his eyes blinked open.
They were hazy at first but then cleared to the piercing silver that had become a calming presence to me.
I tried to meet them steadily, even as pain continued to boil in my abdomen, making it hard to focus.
His breath rushed out of him all at once, blowing loose hairs back from my face.
Erix let his face fall forward so his forehead pressed to mine, and the last of the swirling pain dissipated from my stomach.
I kept the small ember of fire gently cradled between us.
I wouldn’t leave him alone in the dark.
For a moment, we stayed like that, sharing breath. It wasn’t quite calm, but it felt nearly so after the chaos of the bone spiders.
My breath caught.
“Dhara and Elion.”
Even as fear for their fates sent a fresh surge of adrenaline through my veins, restoring my heart to its previous hammering, I hesitated. I didn’t want to throw Erix from the grip on reality he had just seemed to regain.
“Sands,” he swore and scrabbled to his feet. He reached down, and I took his forearm and let him haul me up, still keeping the ball of flame in my other hand. Its faint light didn’t reach very far into the darkness, but it was better than nothing.
The sounds of the bone spider had vanished. Dread rose in my throat, tasting bitter on my tongue. What had become of Dhara and Elion?
Voices came through the darkness, no longer panicked with battle, but still frantic and concerned.
“Are you all right?”
“Stop fretting. It doesn’t befit a lord,” Dhara’s voice snapped in the darkness, but her tone was slightly breathy and reedy.
“I thought…” Elion said.
Erix and I started picking our way toward the sound in the pregnant silence that stretched.
“I did too,” Dhara’s voice was barely loud enough to hear when she finally spoke.
It felt like a vulnerable moment—private. Something I was loathe to interrupt. Still, it was worse to leave them alone out here when danger might still lurk.
“Dhara! Elion!” I called, both hoping they would help me find them, and to give them warning of our approach.
“We’re here,” Elion called.
Finally, their shadowed forms appeared in the small circle cast by the fire in my palms.
“And have all of our limbs still attached, miraculously,” Dhara amended as we approached. We found her sprawled on the ground, with Elion crouched over her.
“Barely,” he huffed.
“It’s just a scratch.”
Dhara’s assurance was undercut by her hiss of pain as she shifted. She appeared to be holding one leg in front of her as if it were injured, but it was hard to tell in the dim light.
“It’s not safe out here,” Erix said. “We need to regroup. Can you walk?” Erix looked around, brow furrowing as he took in the lack of any distinguishing features in the darkness around us.
“I told Aderyn to stay with the horses and figure out a way to make a light,” I said, grimacing. Leaving her alone with only the barest of a plan had not been my finest moment, but the urgency of Erix’s need for me had outweighed all else in my mind.
“If somebody helps me up, I can manage,” Dhara assured.
My hand was still full of fire, but Erix and Elion each grabbed one of Dhara’s arms and hauled her to her feet.
She seemed steady enough, and Erix stepped back, but Elion looped the arm he held over his shoulder, supporting her on the side where her leg was injured.
I hissed at the gash across the front of her thigh—as if the bone spider had started trying to detach her leg before Elion rescued her.
A shudder wracked my frame, and the flame in my hand flared, then sputtered as I tried to pull it back under my control.
“There.” Erix pointed out into the night.
I squinted where he indicated. At first I thought a lightning fly danced in the darkness, but we were too far from a water source for such things. Instead, a small guttering flame waved about, as if trying desperately to be seen.
“Aderyn,” I murmured, and we set out.
We moved slowly, all wary of what we might come across in the dark and limited by Dhara limping along with Elion’s support.
She did not complain, and I could tell she tried to move as fast as she could so as not to slow us down.
The tense set of her jaw, exaggerated in the shadowy light, spoke to her pain, though.
Finally, we drew close enough to the swaying light to make out Aderyn’s silhouette. A flaming bunch of cloth was tied around the tip of her sword, and she swung it in the air to make herself visible.
When we finally reached her, the air rustled as if she sighed in relief, but she snapped. “Next time, don’t leave the one person in our group not touched by the desert to make the light. It took me forever groping through our packs to find a flint.”
My chest tightened, but I reached out and laid a hand on her shoulder.
“I’m sorry.” My apology was earnest. I hadn’t been thinking straight. I needed to do better—stop making choices that led us all into further danger.
“I didn’t exactly leave you with much of a chance to make a plan,” Dhara grunted as Elion helped her sit on the ground once more.
Aderyn’s shoulder relaxed under my fingers and her brief flare of frustration seemed to melt as she saw that Dhara was injured. “I was just worried. I’m glad you all made it back. What now?”
Elion spoke first: “Dhara’s injury will need tending, and we’ll need to move on to find water for that, but we can’t move in the dark.”
“It won’t be long before sunrise.” A rustle of cloth drew my gaze toward Erix, and I found I could make out his shape more easily as he gestured in one direction.
Sure enough, the darkness in that direction was slightly lighter—the thick blackness slowly leeched away into heavy grays as the sun approached the horizon.
We had made it through the night.
While the humans in our band were worse for wear after our night of battle, the horses were in much better condition than the day before. The heat of the sun didn’t seem quite so harsh, as if some of her fiery anger had been quelled by the bloodshed the night before.
Dhara was well enough to ride—and if she wasn’t, she would never admit it—so we set out doggedly, praying that today we would make it past this vast open plain and find shelter and water.