Chapter Thirty-Two #5
Or, at least, not death.
Guards do not respond to her presence. They only watch as she half-collapses, half-limps across the courtyard.
The gates groan open, just enough for her to stumble through.
And the city walls rise ahead of her like a challenge.
Where will she go? How will she leave this fucking place?
Elyssara grips the amulet hanging from her neck, fist curled around it like a lifeline.
Seren.
I need you.
Come for me.
Please.
Azhareth.
They have Kael.
She chants the words over and over like an invocation.
But the amulet stays silent in her palm, as useless as prayer in the mouth of the dying. No acknowledgement. No response. Just… nothing.
Panic flares in her chest.
Where will she go?
The city’s walls are the only way out. She’s too far from the gate.
She needs… help. Safety. Direction.
She looks up.
Too high.
Too far.
But she stumbles toward the wall anyway.
Something inside her chest pulls.
A pressure.
A thread hooked somewhere behind her sternum, tugging forward with quiet, relentless insistence.
There.
Move.
Her feet drag through sand and gravel as she crosses the open ground, half-expecting arrows to whistle through the air behind her.
None come.
A thin, late night crowd at a corner tavern stare at her from behind their ale. They do not help. Do not speak. Only watch. Like everyone else in Azhareth.
Her heart squeezes, anguished and heavy with despair.
Kael.
She left him.
The thought almost brings her to her knees.
The city walls approach. Closer, closer.
She slams her shoulder against the base of the wall and grips the rough stone with shaking hands.
Her fingers slip immediately.
Too smooth.
Too tall.
Too impossible.
But the pull inside her chest tightens.
Up.
She doesn’t question it.
Her foot finds a crack in the stone.
Her fingers wedge into another.
She drags herself upward.
One inch.
Another.
Her injured side screams. The pain makes her vision explode into white.
She almost loses her grip.
Don’t stop.
Her arms shake violently as she hauls herself higher, muscles trembling beneath the weight of blood loss and exhaustion.
The wall stretches forever above her.
Her breath comes in shallow bursts now, chest refusing to expand properly.
Halfway up her foot slips.
She slams against the stone hard enough to rattle her teeth. For a moment she hangs there. Fingers barely holding. Vision collapsing inward. The pull tightens again.
Up.
Her nails tear.
Her palms burn.
She climbs anyway, rust fabric snapping in the hot Azhareth breeze like a flag.
One desperate movement at a time.
Her knee finds a shallow ledge.
Her elbow scrapes raw against stone.
Her head swims.
The Stars above her blur together into streaks of silver light.
She doesn’t remember the last few feet.
Only the moment her body finally spills over the top.
Her weight tips forward.
And gravity takes her.
She falls.
Her body clips protruding stone, scraping skin, bruising bone. But for a heartbeat, she feels like she’s floating, weightless.
It doesn’t last.
The ground on the far side rushes up in a violent tumble of sand and darkness. Elyssara crashes into the slope beyond the wall and rolls, silk tangling around her legs as her wounded side slams against the earth with a wet crack.
The impact steals what little air she has left from her lungs.
For a long moment, she cannot breathe. Cannot move.
The world tilts and spins.
Stars smear across the sky above her like spilled paint.
Her fingers curl weakly into the sand.
The pull in her chest loosens.
Just slightly.
And a sound breaks through the haze.
Soft.
Low.
Tentative.
Elyssara blinks slowly.
Shapes shift in the darkness beyond her blurred vision.
A shadow steps forward from the dunes.
Tall.
Graceful.
Moonlight spills across skin.
A woman.
The realization hits her in a quiet, breathless wave.
The pull in her chest.
The thread that dragged her forward.
It was instinct.
Fate.
The Stars themselves.
Perhaps she is never beyond the reach of fate. Perhaps everything she does is simply a new thread in the same tapestry.
She pushes herself up. Or, attempts to.
The movement sends a flare of pain through Elyssara’s ribs, and a groan spills from her throat.
Her body gives up the fight. Darkness edges closer. But another set of boot steps approach, the sound of compressed sand squeaking under foot.
A figure kneels beside her, hooded cloak in place. Hands—steady, careful—slide beneath her shoulders.
She tries to lift her head. Tries to see. But the world refuses to focus.
The person lifts her with surprising strength, settling her across their arms.
She wants to fight, but instead, she allows herself to sink into the body that holds her. Warm skin beneath her chest. A steady heartbeat pulsing in her ears.
“Kael…” she murmurs. As if his name is enough to call him home.
The person shifts beneath her, honed muscles coiling.
The last thing Elyssara feels is the person turning toward the desert.
The last thing she hears is the steady collision of boots striking ground.
Then the darkness takes her completely.