Sand pelted my face as I squinted, the setting sun painting the distant Harena Desert in citrus tones and warming my face despite the lingering chill of the season.
I tied the knot on Tempest’s saddle as gently as possible. The horse flattened her ears and flashed a sliver of teeth. I raised a brow before rolling my eyes, having spent enough time with Lyvia and her herd in our youth to know how to properly, and respectfully, tighten a girth.
I gave her gray shoulder a pat before moving to Anchor. At least, that was what Ezrich claimed Lyvia named him. Ezrich had recognized him as the horse his father took from Rivaner toOdessa last spring. He’d found the sorrel in the city stables days after retaking Aedrialis and killing Saros.
The Rising had pounced when the late king was distracted by Dark King Daimos attacking a city in the north. King Saros’s power had weakened with his capture of the Stone Witch, or Olienna, as we learned. He’d been drained, pouring nearly everything he had into the steepled fern shield he held over the capital city of Aedrialis until Evony brought it down with a single rubelline arrow, followed by an unfathomable amount of power from Lyvia.
All thanks to Bear.
My stomach turned over itself as the image of his impaled body flooded my mind, and my eyes darted to his son. Ezrich seemed just as worthy of the nickname as he strode to where I stood at the edge of the forest. His broad form cast a shadow across the sandy stone ground. He gave a curt nod, tossing me a waterskin I promptly tied to Tempest’s saddle.
“Ten days to next town,” Ezrich said aloud, struggling through the signs Ronan and I tried teaching him, but I’d always been decent at reading lips.
Ezrich’s brows tilted upward in apology, and I nodded, the look bouncing off twenty-four years’ worth of built-up armor. I used to feel a heaviness when I got that look. Pity.
I’d always felt like a burden. And for a long time, I felt that since it was harder for people to communicate with me, maybe I didn’t deserve to be communicated with. I’d spent most of my childhood that way until I’d met Lyvia.
I’d been orphaned in Krestwood. How I’d ended up in a western Sultiran city as an orphan with no memory of my past, based on what Lyvia claimed of my heritage, was beyond me.Rhashtai. She claimed I came from the people of the Death Dunes. I still wasn’t sure what to make of that.
Regardless of my origin, a Sky Scholar passing through Krestwood took pity on me as a young boy, noting the bright blue hue of my eyes, and took me to Aedrialis to study at the Temple of the Sky. I’d met Lyvia two weeks after his untimely death.
Guilt often rolled over the warmth brought on by Lyvia’s defense of me. She was always reckless and competitive, but her friendship was fierce. And though it took years of her treating me as an equal, I’d finally felt worthy.
My copper skin warmed under the sun. The cool breeze floated over the Harena Desert, strange and contrary. I’d always been different, useless ears aside, my skin a warmer shade and my eyes tilted just a bit more than the typical Sultirans.
I shrugged, closing my eyes as I cracked my neck to release the strain on my body that had arrived three months ago. The pressure of my newfound power searched for a break in the storm that had blown over the place it needed to roam.
A single minute. That was all I’d had with the Advetis power. The unyielding pull coming from whatever made Lyvia the Bonder snapped my powers into place as her Bellator bond demanded my presence. It tore me away from the stables in Aedrialis and landed me right in the middle of whatever shit show unfolded in that cave on Kayj.
With Evony holding on for dear life.
And then I heard it.
Thatscream.
It followed me from that cave. Not just the pain of it, but thesoundof it. Because for the first time in my life,I’d heard something. And the pain of hearing for the first time, only to be smothered in silence once again, was like never realizing you were dying of thirst until a drop of water hit your tongue. And I’d felt an emptiness since.
I’d gripped Evony’s arm and surrendered to the building pressure in my chest, keeping the stables of Aedrialis locked in my mind’s eye as we transported back to Sultira, leaving the chaos and danger behind us.
Like a coward.
Only to arrive seconds before Mount Telum ignited in a blinding flash of red. The white stones used to construct the massive castle vibrated and glowed crimson. The rubelline stones were somehow activated in those moments and nullified the surrounding magic for miles. I’d felt it immediately, the dulling of senses that had awakened only months prior.
My connection to the lost arts had been smothered. The water and wind just beyond my fingertips, and the strange Bellator power, somehow belonging to me, now tethered. The Advetis longed to move. To travel. To fly. It was the freedom of the wind with the force of the water, able to span miles of distance in seconds. Because it wanted tosee.
Evony had been more excited about it than I was. The reverberations of her squealing trembled through her fingertips that gripped my arm when we raced through the halls of Mount Telum to find Ronan.
I was now on a mission with her brother. I pivoted, keeping Ezrich in view, as I did with most people, as he adjusted the saddlebags on Anchor’s back before mounting. I followed suit, and we set off down the dusty road heading west, by orders of Ronan, Sultira’s High Steward, to find out exactly how far Mount Telum’s nullifying power reached.
Ezrich’s fistrose to the air ahead of me, and I tucked my hips, slowing Tempest to a halt. The sun had set hours ago. The lightof our moons cast a deep, blue shadow along the white sands and guided our trek along the road separating the forest from the desert.
The wintery breeze out of the west stilled, and my nostrils flared as I took a deep breath of the loamy sage scent hanging in the air. I focused on Tempest’s ears as they twitched back and forth, clearly listening to something nearby. Her head swung to the left a moment before Ezrich snapped his face in the same direction, hand moving to the axe on his hip.
I twisted in my seat, turning Tempest to face the threat lurking in the sand, and moved my reins forward, with silent permission to defend, to attack when ready. The mare tensed between my legs before blue sand erupted before us.
Vibrations pummeled through my chest as the bellow of the creatures echoed through the air. I forced breath into my lungs as I looked in horror at the monstrosities breaching the sandy surface.
A line of needle-like fangs stretched from the opening maws of heart-shaped heads. Their necks stretched into thick, long bodies that glowed an eerie green. They slithered and coiled against the shallow dunes lining the road.
