Page 197 of Blade of the Nightking

What would Lady Elyndra think if she knew the Dark Prince was making his way toward her capital? Without his magic, Rìan would be vulnerable. Vulnerable enough that a single blade in the right place could end him before he ever regained his footing in Elantis.

The thought made me deeply uneasy. If anyone discovered us, we wouldn't make it out of the city.

“How long does it take to cross the salt flats?” I asked, partly because I genuinely wanted to know and partly because I was suddenly wondering how quickly we could flee if we needed to.

“From Illyra at their centre, two days in any direction.”

“Two days?!”

He seemed entirely unbothered. “If we become lost, considerably longer. But that could be a death sentence.” He adjusted the strap of the waterskin at his hip.

I gaped at him. We'd been forced to abandon our packs at the temple after the Spinner attack, and Rìan hadn't wanted to risk returning to the Wildlands to retrieve them. As a result, though he still carried most of his knives and the sword strapped across his back, I had little more than my bone knife sheathed at my hip. No food. No blankets. No spare clothes. Just one waterskin between us and two days of unforgiving emptiness.

My gaze drifted downward, the flats shimmering wetly beneath our feet.

“The water is contaminated by the salt,” Rìan said, following my line of thought. “There is no source of fresh water until we reach Illyra.”

I looked out across the expanse before us. Only moments ago it had seemed magical. Now I saw it differently. The flats were beautiful, yes—but it was the beauty of a drawn blade, gleaming and exquisite right up until the moment it cut you.

The only reassuring thing about it was that getting lost seemed nearly impossible. The ground stretched unobstructed in every direction, offering a clear view as far as the eye could see.

I later realized how spectacularly wrong that assumption was.

As the day wore on, the weather gradually shifted around us. The cloud cover thickened, and the sky began to spit fat, spiteful droplets. They pelted the water with such force that, at times, it looked as though the rain was falling upward. Before long, the mirrored landscape absorbed the horizon until there was no longer any distinction between sky and earth.

Hours after we'd left the ridge behind, I glanced over my shoulder. A startled cry escaped me. Rìan stopped at once, his hand dropping immediately toward one of the knives at his belt. He relaxed when he realized what I was looking at.

Behind us, a dark shadow lay on the horizon, the ridgeline we'd descended from nearly indistinguishable from the distant silhouette of Illyra ahead. For one horrifying moment, I genuinely couldn't tell which was which.

“That's impossible,” I whispered.

Getting lost suddenly seemed frighteningly easy.

We continued on.

The flats proved far more difficult to cross than they appeared from a distance. The reflective surface concealed subtle dips and rises in the terrain, and more than once my foot landed where I didn't expect it to.

The first time I stumbled, I caught myself. The second time I nearly fell into Rìan. The third time I went down entirely.

Cold water splashed up my legs as my knees struck the surface.

Rìan kept walking.

“You could at least pretend to be concerned,” I called bitterly after him when he didn't so much as glance back.

“There's no cause for concern unless you're dead or dying.”

I muttered several unflattering things about him beneath my breath and pushed myself back upright.

By late afternoon my trousers were soaked through, the cold so persistent and biting that my legs had gone numb.

Rìan wasn't entirely merciless. He called for frequent stops throughout the day, though the moments were devoted entirely to practical necessities. Short rests. Quick trips away to relieve ourselves while the other kept their back respectfully turned.

And a single sip of water.

Whenever we halted, he would unhook the skin and pass it to me without a word, never dictating how much I was allowed to drink. Even so, I found myself following his example, taking only the smallest sip before handing it back. The mouthfuls were pitifully small, barely enough to wet my tongue, and I was always thirsty afterward.

The rests were a welcome reprieve, but they came with their own misery. The moment I stopped walking, the cold descended in earnest. I would wrap my arms tightly around myself and hunch against the wind, my teeth chattering as the cold settled deeper and deeper into my bones. The draining of my magic only made it worse.