Avoid the haze of the past few days. The bandages. The wounds tucked beneath my skin. Avoid the icky memories that try to tame me into a fucked-up plait.
Yes.
Don’t touch it. Don’t look at it. Don’t think about it.
Avoid.
I tiptoe out, blink back to the now, and release a shuddered breath.
“Keep up,” Rhordyn bellows from ahead. “We have a lot of ground to cover if we ever want to get home.”
I scrub at my face, allowing the faintest smile to slip free, along with my gathered tears.
Home.
Withhim.
Rhordyn sets a rigorous pace over toppled trunks and big shards of blue stone, sometimes slashing through drapes of vines with his sword, the terrain a constant rise and fall. At times we’re forced to climb near-vertical cliffs, others we’re traveling down the spine of rocky gullies, ankle-deep in rushing water, pausing periodically to fill our bellies from the crispy streams.
Silence mulls between us like the hot, sticky air that clogs my lungs and clings to my skin as we weave deeper into the jungle, brushing past thick, waxy leaves, the canopy so dense barely any moisture seems to escape this humid hell.
I keep resisting the urge to close the distance between us and touch him. To make sure he’s really here, and that my mind’s not playing tricks on me, dragging me through the jungle by my withered heartstrings.
He doesn’t look like he wants to be touched right now—shoulders tight, movements stiff. Every now and then he clenches his hands into fists so tight I picture him strangling something.
Or someone.
I forge along behind him, gulping breath, my calves and thighs more wobbly by the second. My head feels light and airy—perhaps from the higher altitude. I rack my brain, trying to remember the last time I ate …
But I can’t. Since I woke on that beach this morning, I’ve been walking through a dream—the past few days a big, messy, hurting blur I don’t want to think about. Or talk about.
Ever.
Zane and Baze are okay. Rhordyn’s alive—brooding, but alive.
He’s here. With me.
I’ll never take that for granted again.
Keeping my stare firmly pinned to the back of Rhordyn’s head, I tug on my cupla, trying to drag it over my squished-up hand for the umpteenth time today. Unsuccessfully.
I want it off so I don’t have to look at it. Wearing a constant reminder of everything I gave since I stepped onto Bahari soil is not helping meavoidthe messy forest of thorny emotion smushed inside my chest.
It’s doing the opposite.
After another painful tug, I sigh. If I keep it up, I’ll make myself bleed, and then Rhordyn will be all up in my face, inspecting the hurt. Then he’ll ask why I don’t just unclip the thing.
Avoid.
My full bladder makes each hurried step more uncomfortable than the last. Groaning, I slow to a fidgety stop, threading my fingers through my sweat-slicked hair and shoving it back off my face.
Rhordyn pauses, looking at me over his shoulder.
He’s not even breathing hard. If it weren’t for the shreds in his pants or the sweat beading off his sculpted panes, he’d almost look like he was taking a midmorning stroll.
He raises a brow.
“I need to …go.”
