Bleak seems to be what he’s going for today.
Already, sweat beads along her spine, gathering faster than it should. The sun presses down relentlessly, drawing moisture from skin and breath alike, and a sudden, irrational panic flares in her chest.
How long have they been here?
Heartbeats?
Hours?
The desert gives her no answer. It doesn’t keep time. It erases it.
She glances back. The Gateway is gone. Only sand remains—smooth and unmarked, as if the world itself has erased their arrival.
Elyssara licks her lips and tastes nothing.
No salt.
No air.
No promise of water.
Her pulse stutters.
As if he felt her falter, Kael presses closer, rising to the moment with certainty Elyssara desperately needs.
“Let’s move quickly, El. We need to start moving or this desert will take me before the madness does,” he says drily, his smile clear in his tone.
Elyssara sucks in a gasp and nearly chokes on it.
“Kael! You can’t fucking joke about it like that! Gods, that was so incredibly morbid.” But a laugh spills from her lips of its own accord.
“Youlaughed, El,” he quips, shrugging dismissively.
And for the first time in too long, he joins her. Wild and raucous and free.
But she knows it’s not because it’s funny. It’s because he’s allowing her to enjoy this while it lasts. And the thought twists in her chest.
She wipes the sweat from her brow with the back of her hand.She’s so fucking hot.
“We need lighter clothes as soon as we see the city, El. Because if Maireth’s army don’t kill us, these fucking leathers will.”
Another bead of sweat tracks down her spine, the leathers trapping in her body heat.
“I think they’ve already begun to.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The fox survives where wolves may fail
A clever tongue can tip the scale
The Gateway opens into fire.Not just flame—furnace.
Ronyn barely has time to brace before heat crashes into him like a living thing, wet and choking and relentless. The air burns his lungs on the inhale, sulfur and ash coating his tongue, and his boots hit black stone hot enough to bite through leather.
The groundthrums.Not in the way of magic, but with labor. With the steady, rhythmic pulse of work that never rests.
All around them, the volcanic forges of Vyrhal roar to life—crucibles tipped and reset, molten metal poured into reinforced troughs cut deep into blackened stone. Massive bellows scream as workers heave them into motion, forcing air into furnace throats already glowing white-hot. Hammers strike anvils in thunderous, unyielding rhythm, a sound that rattles bone and leaves no room for thought.
