Page 126 of Thief of Hearts

You’ll never win. Untie the rope.

I wanted to ask who or what that was, but I was certain he didn’t know the answer, either.

The voice didn’t speak again. My body went rigid while I waited, expecting it to say something else horrible, but it didn’t.

And I wasn’t sure if it was my imagination, but it seemed like the water was dying down. Less rain was falling.

Would the voice return? Would the water get worse?

This was not how I wanted to die. I wanted to end my days fighting on a battlefield. Not sitting on a rock in the middle of the Wastelands hoping I didn’t drown.

“Everything is going to be all right!” he said, and I wasn’t sure if he was trying to calm himself down or if he thought I might panic. “We will wait until the storm passes. And we will be fine so long as we stay together.”

I hoped that was true.

Chapter Thirty-Seven

It was one of the most miserable nights I could ever remember having. The rain did eventually taper off and die down. But that left us shivering in the cold desert air in clothes that were soaked. Poor Dagger kept wheezing.

As soon as the sun came up, we both undressed and laid our clothes out in the sun so they could dry. I’d never been so grateful for sunlight before. It warmed us up and made me feel human again.

After our things were dry, we got dressed and started packing our bags.

I glanced up at Zain, and when he noticed me looking, he quickly shoved something into a bag.

“What’s that?” I asked. He wasn’t usually cagey like that around me.

“Nothing.”

It wasn’t nothing. “What is it?”

“It doesn’t matter, Basileia. Let it go.”

Now I was concerned. When he called me by my actual name like that, it meant something was wrong.

I used my battle-favored ability to yank the bag out of his hands before he could stop me.

The thought that kept running through my head was, has he somehow betrayed me again?

My heart ricocheted around inside my chest as I threw the flap open and searched. Something smooth and soft greeted my fingertips. I grabbed hold of it, pulled, and saw . . .

The dress he had bought for me in Sagaris. “I told Dione to burn this.”

He took the bag out of my hands and closed it. “I asked her to give it to me and she did.”

I turned around so that he wouldn’t see me smile. Nothing had been wrong. He had just been embarrassed that he’d been caught with the dress. Maybe he wanted to remember our good times, too.

And perhaps he was more sentimental than I’d given him credit for.

He put Dagger back into his tunic, looping the sides shut so that the dog would stay put.

We finished packing and headed down the opposite side of the rock wall. The side we’d come up on had essentially created a new, shallow river. Zain said it wouldn’t stay—it would eventually dissipate.

“Dry riverbeds are good places to camp but not when there are flash floods.”

We had to carry our bags ourselves as our horses were long gone. I hoped that they had outrun the rains and floods and that they were safe and would find civilization.

Zain didn’t seem as concerned as I was about the nature of that storm. It had felt otherworldly.