Page 137
Of all his lessons, I wasn’t sure any had ever proven truer.
My lips? Cracked.
Mouth—so dry it ached to swallow.
Rations—nearly gone.
For three days, I trekked across the endless dunes of the Middle. On the fourth, the world darkened. Far to my right, a storm rose taller than any cityscape I’d ever seen—a wall of sand blotting out the light while my mind kept glitching between this reality and another. A world where my sisters still drew breath…
Petal-soft grass brushed my palm, nature’s down comforter lush beneath us as giggles bounced between the trees. The warmth of my sisters’ humor wrapped around us twice, as if the summer sun meant to stretch our joy as long as it possibly could.
As though it wasn’t fleeting.
Nat’s silky laughter drifted through the air, balmy and unburdened as she sprawled beneath me. My head rested in her lap, her fingers raking through my hair in slow, luxurious strokes.
The world was alive with color and texture, every sensation magnified—brighter somehow. Loud and soothing all at once. Vibrant in its existence and pulsing with an undeniable… oneness.
It was all the same, I realized, as Aideen threw her head back at something Kenna said.
The swaying grasses. The blazing sun. Speckles of wildflowers scattered through the green. Warm earth beneath my back, the cells of my skin—all one pulsing, unified painting, meticulously crafted by a masterful artist.
An artist whose love shone through every careful stroke, every painstaking detail, every color deliberately chosen—from the red of Jaycee’s hair and lush forest green of the trees to the satiny warmth of Rika’s tawny skin.
My sisters emanated so much love it was nearly blinding…
Nothing about the storm bearing down on me felt unified with anything.
It was all I could do to breathe between each twist and swell of magic as I jumped as far as I could see. I must’ve spent hours leaping across great stretches of sand, fruitlessly trying to outrun the wall barreling toward me with the roar of some enormous beast, before I slammed face-first into a ward and rebounded hard enough to land flat on my back…
Suddenly outside myself, I stared down at my coven beneath the weeping willow, all of us struggling to breathe through the kind of laughter that poured tears down our cheeks.
Longing. Sorrow.
But mostly… love. For the women in my life. For the air in my lungs. Even for the hollow ache of grief—love with nowhere left to go, bleeding freely into my chest. For the first time, that burden felt like a gift, because it could not exist without first knowing Zehra’s fingers slipping into mine or Jaycee wriggling her slender shoulders until she could lay her head on my stomach and wrap her arms around my waist.
“I miss you,” I admitted under my breath.
“We never left love.”
“Then where have you been?”
“We were called elsewhere...”
Beyond the ringing in my ears, the storm’s roar and skitter grew louder. I blinked into the descending darkness, trying to banish the image of Jaycee smiling up at me. Rolling onto my stomach, I wheezed out an agonized groan as my ribs screamed for air I couldn’t gather and jammed my eyes shut against the lashes of flying sand.
Wards. Wards meant territory. Someone’s territory. Which meant this white desert hell had to be ending.
Unfortunately, I’d yet to see a single trace of the Grayshell Party.
I dragged in a ragged breath, tears sliding down my cheeks as the echo of that brutal impact tightened around my ribs. The wind kicked harder while I rocked onto my hands, gathering what little strength I had left as every muscle screamed in protest.
My next breath came out closer to a sob. I lifted my face… and froze.
Because there, on the horizon, rose the unmistakable broken teeth of castle spires.
Solid. Dark against the stretching expanse of desert.
I blinked hard, forcing my eyes to focus. No glimmer. No shimmer. Just distant stone and what could only be mountains smeared across the horizon behind it. I memorized the outline, straining to separate reality from whatever hallucinations the scorpion venom kept roaring through my veins.
