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“If he does…” Vera whispered, “will he be able to close it again?”

“I hope so.” Or Lore would set her sights on expanding her Empire all over again—this time, with Hell.

They took their dinners around a roaring campfire each evening, the Hell beasts they would have once attracted no more than a scattering of corpses across the dusty shale. Fenrir worked on his arm while Daedra told stories, trading accounts of manticores and griffins and other dangerous beasts they’d both hunted, while she explained how weakened they were here on Earth’s surface. In Hell they were far stronger—strong enough to give Daedra a challenge, even when at full strength.

“You would be stronger there too, Ama.”

“Really?” Fenrir couldn’t quite wrap his head around that, but Daedra gestured at the puckered shale scars of the former chasm like it was common knowledge. “Hell is in your blood, now. You too are its child.”

Child—Child of the Rim.

Vera did not ask the awkward questions Fenrir expected of her. There were no interrogations over Daedra’s motives. No second-guessing her route or questioning their plans. Vera seemed more interested in mundane things, details of Daedra’s life Fenrir hadn’t really thought important, but Vera sought like gold hiding in the silt of a lake.

“Do you have any family, Daedra?”

“My bloodline is ancient and noble, and I am unworthy of its name.” Daedra ran a cloth down the blade of her sword. Fenrir had returned it that morning, she hadn’t let it out of her sight since. “They are the reason I am here, in pursuit of Ohm. I am not to return until their honor is restored.”

Fenrir paused, halfway through a dragon he planned to have curl around his forearm. So, Daedra hadn’t returned to Hell when the chasm closed because she wasn’t allowed to? That certainly explained some things, but it wasn’t the answer Fenrir expected. It wasn’t Vera’s either, but for entirely different reasons.

“That’s not what I asked,” Vera said more gently than Fenrir thought her capable of.

Daedra swallowed, cloth stilling. “I have a brother who is dear to me.”

“Dear?” Vera encouraged.

“Bonded,” Daedra said, voice softening. “By blood and by law.” Her blade caught the firelight, a ripple of iridescence where a glare should be. “He saved my soul at a time I did not deserve it. I owe him more than all my years are worth. He is a good brother. A better man.”

“How long has it been?” Vera asked. “Since you’ve seen him?”

“It’s been one month...since we were last together.”

Fenrir put his tools aside and looked at Daedra. “He’s at Sanctuary?”

Daedra nodded, gaze gone distant, the smile on her face small, the memories she lost herself to private, a no-mans-land neither Fenrir nor Vera cared to cross.

The afternoon they discovered the fresh burn scars was the day Fenrir first began to feel real hope.

Red had survived. That much Fenrir could tell.

Tire tracks marked the dust in half-swept away ruts. Daedra spent a long time consulting her map and the horizon, finally confirming that their path indeed took them towards Sanctuary. Her eyes seemed more yellow than gold. Her skin more gray. Her cheeks gone gaunt. A cup of tea sat beside the map on the table, half-drunk to stave off what must be a debilitating hunger.

“They’re ahead by several days,” was not the comfort Fenrir expected.

He manned the portable satellite Bastion had supplied them with late into night, making a call to Red’s screen every thirty minutes until the solar charger went dead alongside the device.

Nothing more he could do, Fenrir crawled into his tent, tired but restless, dreams of that shadowy place plaguing what sleep he could get. In his mind he walked, veins of silver creeping across a vast sweep of shale like they were headed straight for him, following him no matter which way he turned. He woke with the dawn, sweaty and breathless, tossing and turning in his bedroll until he heard the first signs of camp breaking, then found his mother waiting outside his tent flap with two cups of coffee.

“Can we talk?” she asked, and Fenrir didn’t have the strength to deny her.

They found a place outside the camp to stare out over the tracks, wind in their hair, dust at their feet.

“It’s strange, I never thought I’d return here again…” Vera said. Bun a mess of fly-aways, dark circles beneath her pale eyes, all evidence pointed to her sharing Fenrir’s sleepless night, but whether it was the Rim or something else that harrowed Vera, Fenrir couldn’t say. This was the first time they’d been alone since that night in his bedroom, when Fenrir had turned his back on being king and Vera had…had gone along with his plan.

Why are you here, Mum?

Fenrir wasn’t sure he’d ever get a satisfying answer. Wasn’t sure he wanted an answer at all.

“Didn’t really think I’d ever be back here either.” Fenrir swirled the dredges of his coffee while dawn’s blue-gray glow settled the world into liminal suspension, like a picture plucked out of a dream. “It’s different though. More dust, maybe. Not sure how you ever kept the house clean.”