“That wasn’t the question.”
I look at the troops through the window, then back at her. “Fine. What’s the plan?”
Thalia closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. The air around us shifts. It’s subtle at first. A coolness, like stepping into shade on a hot day. Then I look down at my hands and almost scream.
They’re gone.
Not gone gone. I can still feel them. I wiggle my fingers and feel the sensation, but there is absolutely nothing visible where my body should be.
“What the—”
“Fae magic,” Thalia whispers. Her voice comes from right beside me, even though I can’t see her either. “It won’t last long. Maybe ten minutes. We need to move.”
She grabs my wrist. I feel her grip, warm, firm, as she pulls me toward the door. We slip out of the cottage just as the first soldiers reach the perimeter. They call to each other, using hand signals I don’t recognize, swords drawn.
We move carefully, stepping lightly in the sand. Every footprint we leave makes my pulse spike, but the soldiers are focused on the cottage, not the ground. Two of them kick the door in, charge inside. I hear the cot overturn. The pot of stew crashes to the floor.
What a waste. That stew smelled incredible.
Thalia’s hand squeezes mine, guiding me between two soldiers standing close enough to touch. I hold my breath. One turns his head slightly, nostrils flaring. For a horrible second, I think he can smell us. Then someone shouts from inside the cottage. He turns away.
We keep moving, one agonizing step at a time, until we crest the nearest dune and start down the other side. The sand is loose here. Every step sends small cascades of red grains sliding downward. I grit my teeth, focus on not face-planting.
When we reach the bottom, the shimmer fades. I watch my hands come back into view, fingers first, then palms, then arms, like someone slowly painting me back into the world.
“That’s all I’ve got,” Thalia says, breathing hard. She’s visible again too. She looks drained.
“We need to split up.”
“What? No, I just got rescued. I’m not wandering this desert alone.”
“You won’t be alone for long.” Thalia’s expression changes. The young woman who was making tea five minutes ago is gone. In her place is someone older than her years, someone carrying a weight I don’t fully understand. She grabs me by the collar of my shirt and yanks me close.
“The Sage spoke with me too.”
I blink. “What?”
“The Sage. They told me to find you. They told me to tell you that you have to find Kaelren and get back to the present before you both become permanently stuck in whatever iteration you’re in.” Her grip tightens on my collar. “If you don’t, both Earth and Wynmire will be destroyed. Permanently. No more resets. No more chances.”
My blood runs cold. “How do you know about the Sage? How do you know about the iterations? Who are you—”
But she’s already letting go. Already backing away. Her eyes hold mine for one more second, and there it is again: that familiarity, that something I can’t name, and then she turns and runs, disappearing over the next dune before I can get another word out.
“Thalia!” I shout, but the wind eats my voice.
She’s gone.
I stand there for a moment, sand blowing against my legs, trying to process what just happened. The Sage spoke with her. The same Sage who’s been pulling strings since this whole messstarted. Which means Thalia isn’t just some random traveler who happened to find me in the desert.
But I don’t have time to figure out who she really is, because behind me, I can hear the soldiers shouting. They’ve figured out the cottage is empty. It won’t take long for them to start fanning out across the dunes.
I take off in the opposite direction from Thalia, keeping low and using the contour of the dunes for cover. The sun is brutal, bearing down on me like it has a personal vendetta. My throat is already dry again, and I wish I’d grabbed that water skin before we ran.
I run for what feels like an hour, but is probably closer to twenty minutes. The Barrens are disorienting—every dune looks the same, every direction is identical. No landmarks, no trees, no sign of anything alive. For a magical garden realm, this part of the continent feels like some god or goddess got pissy and refused to finish creating it.
Eventually the shouts fade behind me, and I slow to a walk, then a stumble. I need to find shelter before nightfall. Desert nights are cold.
I find a shallow depression between two larger dunes where the wind doesn’t hit as hard. There’s a rotted log half-buried in the sand—goddess knows how it got here when there isn’t a tree for miles—and some scrub brush that’s dry enough to burn. I gather what I can and manage to coax a small fire to life using my marks. At least they’re good for something out here, even if my bigger magic won’t cooperate without water nearby.
