So Kael raises his walls and cuts off the serpent’s head, containing it within the fortress of his mind.
Elyssara doesn’t release the breath she’s holding.
“I’m sorry, El?—”
But she cuts him off.
“It’s not that. Kael, your eyes… they’re black.”
Fuck.
“It… it seems to happen when I let go. Of control, I mean. Itstrikes,” he admits, and he fucking hates the burden he’s placing on her.
Elyssara’s eyes are narrowed in concern. No—more than that.Despair. But Kael watches the way she pulls herself from drowning. Because Elyssara won’t let him descend into his own pity, nor her own. She never does. Her mouth lifts up at the sides. “You’ll die from dehydration before the madness takes you if you don’t find us some fucking water.”
Fuck, she’s beautiful when she smiles.
“I thought you said we couldn’t joke about it, El,” he counters, his lip cracking in a fractured split with the smirk he returns.
“No, I saidyoucouldn’t joke about it. But me? What good is a secret if I can’t wield it?” Her eyes brighten—the first time herenergy has sparked since their arrival. “I’m the only one who knows the King of Zerynthia is going mad—perhaps I’ll use it to my advantage and make a play for your throne.”
Despite the rasping dryness in his throat, Kael laughs. Unbridled and free. He laughs, and he swears the Stars hear him—because the sun moves fractionally to the west. Not setting.But shifting.
Geography snaps into place in Kael’s mind, suddenly oriented by an almost imperceptible shift of the sun.
Elyssara clocks the movement.
“This way,” Kael directs, urging himself away from the dying sun to the east.To Azhareth.
But Elyssara hesitates, not moving in the direction, eyes darting around in confusion. Not faltering, butresponding.
“I can feel something,” Elyssara murmurs. “I can feel… searching. But… not my own.”
Kael pauses for a heartbeat, and that’s when it clicks.
“The Astral Compass,” he announces. “Your satchel.”
Elyssara’s eyes blow wide, and she scrambles through her mother’s worn leather satchel, until she plucks out the Compass she found at Skaedor’s Crest. Pulled there by the Stars themselves.
The dial wavers, wobbles, swings from side to side like it’s searching for something nearby.
Elyssara moves, trying to orient herself with the Compass.
Kael notices the moment it decides. It’s subtle, but unmistakable. It settles, only a slight tremor in the dial now, reading a language written beneath the sand. A language older than maps. Older than kings.
Elyssara veers. Not dramatically—just enough that the Compass comes to a complete stop.
She slows, changing rhythm—testing, listening. Elyssara looks to Kael with a flicker of something dangerously close to relief. He forces it away.Hope is a luxury here.
But the Compass flares to life again, spinning in frantic circles as if it’s communicating something.
Elyssara looks up at Kael, confused and irritated.
But realization dawns. “It’s beneath us. We’re standing atop whatever it wants us to find.”
A small breath escapes Elyssara.
“What do you want more than anything, El?” Kael asks, knowing it’s the only thing the Compass will find.
