33. Chapter 33
“What was that?” Isla demanded as they rushed down the rocky trail, smaller rocks careening down the mountain along with them. She kept her eyes fixed on the ground, focusing on each footfall, desperately trying to avoid tripping.
“A shadow wolf,” Vaelin clipped.
“What the hell is a shadow wolf?” she asked, stumbling as her toe collided with a rock jutting out of the uneven ground. Vaelin steadied her with a touch to her elbow.
“Myth. Legend,” Evric grunted from behind her. “Except apparently not.”
Her lungs burned as she ran. “Do you think it’s dead?”
“Let’s not find out,” Evric suggested.
Risking a glance up, Isla took in the unfathomable expanse of desert they ran for, the sands rising up like a tidal wave, obscuring any vision beyond. She swallowed, wondering what other horrors lay waiting in the sands they ran to for salvation.
As though he’d heard her thoughts, Vaelin said, “We should be safe in the sands, even if there are more. Wolves can’t survive the desert.”
“And shadow wolves?” she asked, doubt lacing her words.
Vaelin's jaw tightened. “I don't know. But at the very least, the sands will make it harder for them to track us.”
At last, they reached the base of the mountain and Vaelin held out an arm, halting them.
Isla watched as he scanned the barren plateau that bled into the sands not fifty feet from where they stood, each of them breathing hard and already sweating.
A wave of heat seemed to roll off of the sands, blanketing them as Isla squinted against the tiny grains of sand that peppered their faces. Evric made a noise of disgust.
“Cloaks. Scarves.” Vaelin ordered, ripping his own scarf from his pack. “Cover as much of your face as you can. Take a drink now. A small one,” he amended sharply, “And stay in sight of each other at all times.”
Hastily, they secured their cloaks, Aurelia weaving Isla’s hair into a hasty braid and securing her scarf snug around her face so that only her eyes were visible.
She grimaced at the suffocating heat of her breath trapped by the scarf, the fabric sucking into her mouth with each inhale.
She was already sweating. She felt Vaelin’s eyes on her and looked up to find his eyes burning with determination.
“Let's go,” he clipped, and led the way into the desert.
On the first day of travel, the overwhelming, dry heat slammed into Isla.
Though the dunes stretched in all directions like a glimmering, golden blanket, she was struck by how barren and unforgiving the realm was.
She was thirsty all the time, a constant dryness in her throat unmoved by the water she sipped sparingly from her canteen.
With no trees or structures to block its path, the hot wind that roared across the dunes whipped grains of sand into her face.
The few plants she spotted weren’t forageable - cacti, as sharp and unforgiving as the desert itself.
Walking in the sands was hard — much harder than she'd anticipated. The constant shifting of the terrain forced her to use stabilizing muscles she hadn’t known she possessed.
More than once, she had felt Vaelin’s hand at her elbow, his touch steadying her.
She had thought she’d known fatigue, even exhaustion, but the desert proved her wrong with each unrelenting hour that passed.
Isla tugged at the fabric around her face, squinting against the onslaught of sand and unwelcome sand flies — tiny, buzzing insects that seemed determined to lodge their way into her eyes and ears. At some point, she’d commented on the sandstorm and Evric had laughed bitterly.
“This is just a squall,” he said through his own scarf. “They happen all the time. You’d know if it was a true sandstorm.”
“How?” she had pressed, as sweat rolled down her brow.
His chuckled darkly, “You’d know.”
She frowned, cursing as she slipped again in the sands.
“You have to move with the sands,” Evric said, “Like this.”
He sank his boots into the sand, pushing laterally as he moved with an easy grace.
“Easy for you to say,” she grumbled. “Your stupid fae balance. Stupid fae muscles.”
He steadied her shoulder as she wobbled, the crinkling at the corners of his eyes suggesting a grin beneath his scarf. “I am very muscular,” he agreed. Isla rolled her eyes.
“Small steps. Distribute your weight evenly, like when you’re sparring. Tighten your core.”
Begrudgingly, Isla felt her steps begin to smooth out, her wobbling cease. She managed several steps without needing to be steadied and looked to the auburn haired fae, frowning. He tugged his scarf down to his chin, clapping enthusiastically as he grinned. Isla narrowed her eyes at him.
“Well,” she sighed, “I assume now you are going to be even more insufferable than before.”
His grin widened.
All day, Isla wished away the daylight, craving relief from the relentless beat of the sun’s rays.
But when the sun finally slipped beyond the edge of the horizon that evening, the sudden cold shocked her.
Even with Vaelin tempering it, the icy wind bit at her skin, and she shivered beneath her cloak, her body reacting violently to the drastic swing in temperature.
They took shelter in the first set of ruins as Vaelin and Evric had planned — little more than broken rocks jutting out of the sand.
They set their packs down as deep into the corner of the ruins as they could, where what was left of the two remaining walls met, providing some meagre shelter from the wind and sands.
But the cold cut through their clothing, driving even Evric to wrap his cloak around him as he coaxed a small fire to life from the kindling he'd carried in his pack.
The desert winds licked eagerly at the paltry flames, curling greedily over the ruined, broken walls.
Isla felt the heat from the fire bloom over her skin, and sighed gratefully as she flexed her stiff fingers.
She had no doubt that an ordinary fire would never have withstood the unforgiving Dunovarian night, but one tended by a firewielder...
“Can you keep it burning all night?” Vaelin asked, his voice tight.
“Probably not,” came Evric's grim reply, “but I’ll try.”
They laid their bedrolls close to one another and to the small, hopeful fire, Vaelin stretched out on the bedroll next to Isla’s.
She rolled to her side, drawing her cloak tight around her body against the cold and shutting her eyes. In stillness, the exhaustion rolled over her body like a tide. Sleep beckoned and she felt the enticing pull of oblivion.
Moments later, her eyelids lit with a sudden, almost painful brightness.
She jerked, snapping her eyes open at the angry clap of thunder that snapped through the air, nipping at the lightning’s heels.
Her breath caught as her pulse raced and she desperately tried to push away the unpleasant memories that clawed their way up her spine.
“A dry thunderstorm,” Vaelin murmured quietly at her side. "Common in this realm in the evenings, with the sudden shift in temperature."
“There's no rain,” she said, unable to stop the shake in her voice. Lazy footsteps coming up the path, a sharp knock on the front door of the cottage…
Vaelin’s brows knitted together, the fire sending shadows flickering across his face. “No,” he agreed quietly.
A second flash of lightning lit up the darkness, bringing the concern on his face into sharp relief.
Isla sucked in a gasp, squeezing her eyes shut.
He said nothing, just lay beside her, a pillar of support, the backs of his fingers lightly brushing her own.
She focused on the warmth of his skin, let it ground her.
“It was...” she began, swallowing. “It was storming — the night the windwielder delivered the news of my parents' deaths.”
Her eyes slid out of focus as her mind called to memory the devastating scene.
Even now, two years later, she could remember every minute detail.
The feel of her thin robe as she'd tied it hastily around her waist, hurrying to the knock at the door. She’d assumed someone had fallen ill or been gravely injured.
It had been the middle of the night, the lanterns long extinguished, and she'd stubbed her toe on a leg of the dining table as she'd hurried across the main room of their house.
“I'm sorry,” Vaelin's voice drifted toward her, a comfort that clashed with the memory Isla now replayed in her mind. She’d staggered backwards as though the fae's words had hit her like a physical blow. Much of what he’d said was lost — not because she’d forgotten, but because sound had left her in the immediate moments after his unfeeling announcement of her parents’ deaths.
Everything had become deafeningly silent, nothing but a dull buzz in her ears, as though she’d stood too close to an explosion.
All at once, sound had rushed back, and suddenly she’d become aware of Cael and Lyra standing white-faced in the hallway behind her: Cael gripping the handle of a hastily lit lantern so hard his knuckles were bleached white, tears rolling down Lyra’s face as she stared at the fae, a harbinger of death, looming in their doorway as though she struggled to reconcile his words with her fractured reality.
“I asked him how they died,” Isla’s voice broke, “and he couldn't even tell us. He said...” she huffed a dark laugh. “He said if he had a gold coin for every human the Shifters shredded, he'd be richer than the King.”
Vaelin was deathly still, but for his fingers twitching against hers as though he itched to curl them into a fist. “I'm sorry,” he said again, his voice low and steeped in barely-contained fury.
She felt him shift then, as though he might draw his hand away.
Instinctively, she laced her fingers with his, suddenly unable to bear the thought of losing his anchoring touch.
He froze, his eyes fixed on their intertwined hands.
The fire seemed to find renewed life in the wake of the dry thunderstorm that crashed overhead, the flames climbing into the open air.
“Vaelin…” she whispered.
Nervousness knotted itself in her belly, thinking of how he'd been unable to look at her after the bridge. You felt that, he’d said, his voice shaking.
But she’d pulled away, certain she'd misread what they’d both felt in a moment of life-or-death desperation.
But then the shadow wolf had attacked, and the naked fear on his face, the way he had touched her almost reverently, as though reassuring himself she was really there… Her pulse hammered in her throat.
But then his eyes met hers and it felt like a lock clicking into place. Warmth spread from their clasped hands through her body, settling knowingly in her chest.
Another flash of lightning. Another clap of thunder. But she didn’t jump this time.
“Sleep, Isla,” he murmured.
And she allowed her eyes to flutter closed, her hand in his.