She lets out a whimper.
Her arms shake violently, muscles fluttering on the edge of collapse, and a terrifying numbness creeps in beneath the pain—the kind that means the body is preparing to quit.
And the mind has already started to prove it.
She can’t get there.
She’ll never make it.
And the thought feels dangerously close to truth.
Her fingers slip, nails tearing backward against stone, and the pain is so sudden and precise it steals a soundless cry from her throat. But just as her resolve splits apart, the sky thunders with a dying groan. The waves cease crashing atop her, and retreat to their regular reach. The mist settles. Like she’s passed a test, and the elements withdraw in approval. Or perhaps, tolerance.
Seren doesn’t care why.
She rolls over, sprawling on her back in exhaustion and pain.
Her eyes pry open, and above her, the ivory bones of the skeletal frames hang in the cave’s mouth.
She made it.
Her hands throb violently, heartbeat echoing inside torn flesh, and every breath drags fire through her chest as if the storm carved itself into her lungs.
Broken, battered, bruised, but she made it.
A smile breaks free on her face, but she hisses in agony as it stretches the fresh gash on her cheek.
“Fuck,” she groans again.
She sucks in a long, slow inhale through her nose, finally able to calm herself. And for the first time since she stepped through the Gateway, the world holds its breath. But before she’s let out her own, a voice echoes from behind her.
“Welcome to The Perils, child.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Some kingdoms gild their wounds with gold
Their brightest lies are wrapped and sold
The Gateway spitsthem out into heat.
Not warmth.
Not sun.
Heat—dense and crushing, like the air itself has weight.
Elyssara stumbles forward, boots sinking into fine, pale sand that swallows sound and footing alike. The sky above is a merciless expanse of white-gold, the sun hanging low and enormous, bleached of all mercy. There is no wind. No shade. No horizon she can trust—only dunes rolling endlessly in every direction, indistinguishable from one another.
Her first breath burns.
The air scrapes down her throat, dry enough to sting, and instinctively she swallows—only to realize her mouth is already parched, tongue thick, lips pulling tight against her teeth as if the desert has reached inside her and stolen something vital.
“Use your cloak to cover your mouth,” Kael rasps, already pulling his in place.
Elyssara hacks a dry cough—outright rejection of such abject dryness, but pulls her cloak over her nose and mouth, spluttering another dehydrated cough.
Beside her, Kael goes still. Not tense. Calculating.Assessing.
