They had traveled the desert for two days, and the smoke had not let up. It wrapped around the dunes like a sheet over a corpse.
They trekked north, where there were no cities and no people. The northern Ravani Desert was dry and barren, full of shadowed canyons and brittle plants. Elena watched the dark horizon for the telltale whirl of sand, but no storms came. It was as if the wind held its breath.
Her eyes were heavy. Her palms still smarted, pulsing with heat, but she was too exhausted to summon fire. Her gun had run dry, and she had tossed it into the dunes, along with her heavy jewelry. She kept only her mother’s necklace, tucked beneath her blouse. With a pang, she thought of her mother’s earrings, lost somewhere in the burning forest behind them.
Flames flickered in the distant mountains. Her kingdom was under attack, yet here she was, stranded.
She had waited for the army. She had waited for Ravani hoverpods or scouts on cruisers to scour the desert for her, but no one came. Not the generals, not the Black Scales, not even the palace guards. It could only mean one of two things: They didn’t think she had survived or Ravence had already fallen.
She slipped down a dune, sand spilling before her.Swish, sip, swish, swoon.Elena tried to move lightly, fluidly, but she was tired. She turned to see Yassen trailing behind her. He moved slowly, ploddingly, leaning to the right as if his arm was weighing him down.
Swish, sip, swish, swoon.
Blood caked her shoulder where her stitches had ruptured.
Swish, sip, swish, swoon.
The smoke coiled tighter, slowly squeezing her chest.
Swish, sip, swish, swoon.
She wondered what had become of her palace. Had the Arohassin burned the throne? Or did they sit upon it now, laughing like jackals? Did they notice the flowers hovering along the ceiling? Would they tend to them? She had wanted to get rid of the marigolds when she became queen, but her father had always loved them. The memory of him sitting on the throne, the crown on his head, her mother’s necklace around his neck, opened a well of grief within Elena. She tried to block it, but that was as useless as trying to stop a summer monsoon.
Leo was dead. Ferma was dead. Samson was probably dead, along with Majnu and Arish and Diya. Her entire world, shattered over the course of a single day.
And what of her god? The one she had sworn to serve, the one who had promised to protect her? Elena looked to the dark sky.Where are You now?
She touched her waistband, felt the outlines of her mother’s letter in the pocket beneath the lining. Aahnah had said the Phoenix had been fooled. That Alabore derived his power from a darker god. Is that why the Phoenix abandoned her now?
Anger, confusion, and pain threatened to rip her throat. But the dagger of sorrow felt even more acute—so sharp that it cleaved through all other emotions and spilled them into the sand until an aching hollowness filled her chest.
Her family was dead. Her kingdom was burning.
She was the last Ravence.
“Where can we find water?” Yassen croaked behind her.
His voice pulled her from her spiral. She paused on a stone slab overlooking a valley. Yassen slumped against a boulder, wincing.
Elena ran her tongue over her cracked lips. “Maybe we can find a skorrir.”
“We don’t have a knife to cut off its branches.”
“We can use a stone.” She fell to her knees, searching the uneven ground. Her knee knocked into something sharp, and she hissed. Gingerly, she drew back and found a stone with a pointed edge, no bigger than her palm. She rose and held it out to Yassen.
Pain flickered across his face as he turned to her. “That’s too small.”
She chucked it, and they watched the rock skip away. Elena skirted around the sandstone pillars that lined the valley edge, her torn skirts trailing behind her, when a low rumble echoed through the ground. It gradually grew into a buzz that reverberated off the boulders.
Elena hobbled back to Yassen as tiny lights pinpricked the night across the valley.
The scouts!
She began to raise her hand when he grabbed her.
“Wha—”
He shoved her behind a pillar. When she tried to turn back, he pushed her forward.
