Page 22 of Heart of the Desert

Even as fear for their fates sent a fresh surge of adrenaline through my veins, restoring my heart to its previous hammering, I hesitated. I didn’t want to throw Erix from the grip on reality he had just seemed to regain.

“Sands,” he swore and scrabbled to his feet. He reached down, and I took his forearm and let him haul me up, still keeping the ball of flame in my other hand. Its faint light didn’t reach very far into the darkness, but it was better than nothing.

The sounds of the bone spider had vanished. Dread rose in my throat, tasting bitter on my tongue. What had become of Dhara and Elion?

Voices came through the darkness, no longer panicked with battle, but still frantic and concerned.

“Are you all right?”

“Stop fretting. It doesn’t befit a lord,” Dhara’s voice snapped in the darkness, but her tone was slightly breathy and reedy.

“I thought…” Elion said.

Erix and I started picking our way toward the sound in the pregnant silence that stretched.

“I did too,” Dhara’s voice was barely loud enough to hear when she finally spoke.

It felt like a vulnerable moment—private. Something I was loathe to interrupt. Still, it was worse to leave them alone out here when danger might still lurk.

“Dhara! Elion!” I called, both hoping they would help me find them, and to give them warning of our approach.

“We’re here,” Elion called.

Finally, their shadowed forms appeared in the small circle cast by the fire in my palms.

“And have all of our limbs still attached, miraculously,” Dhara amended as we approached. We found her sprawled on the ground, with Elion crouched over her.

“Barely,” he huffed.

“It’s just a scratch.”

Dhara’s assurance was undercut by her hiss of pain as she shifted. She appeared to be holding one leg in front of her as if it were injured, but it was hard to tell in the dim light.

“It’s not safe out here,” Erix said. “We need to regroup. Can you walk?” Erix looked around, brow furrowing as he took in the lack of any distinguishing features in the darkness around us.

“I told Aderyn to stay with the horses and figure out a way to make a light,” I said, grimacing. Leaving her alone with only the barest of a plan had not been my finest moment, but the urgency of Erix’s need for me had outweighed all else in my mind.

“If somebody helps me up, I can manage,” Dhara assured.

My hand was still full of fire, but Erix and Elion each grabbed one of Dhara’s arms and hauled her to her feet. She seemed steady enough, and Erix stepped back, but Elion looped the arm he held over his shoulder, supporting her on the side where her leg was injured. I hissed at the gash across the front of her thigh—as if the bone spider had started trying to detach her leg before Elion rescued her.

A shudder wracked my frame, and the flame in my hand flared, then sputtered as I tried to pull it back under my control.

“There.” Erix pointed out into the night.

I squinted where he indicated. At first I thought a lightning fly danced in the darkness, but we were too far from a water source for such things. Instead, a small guttering flame waved about, as if trying desperately to be seen.

“Aderyn,” I murmured, and we set out.

We moved slowly, all wary of what we might come across in the dark and limited by Dhara limping along with Elion’s support. She did not complain, and I could tell she tried to move as fast as she could so as not to slow us down. The tense set of her jaw, exaggerated in the shadowy light, spoke to her pain, though.

Finally, we drew close enough to the swaying light to make out Aderyn’s silhouette. A flaming bunch of cloth was tied around the tip of her sword, and she swung it in the air to make herself visible.

When we finally reached her, the air rustled as if she sighed in relief, but she snapped. “Next time, don’t leave the one person in our group not touched by the desert to make the light. It took me forever groping through our packs to find a flint.”

My chest tightened, but I reached out and laid a hand on her shoulder.

“I’m sorry.” My apology was earnest. I hadn’t been thinking straight. I needed to do better—stop making choices that led us all into further danger.