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Draven reached for my face.
I stepped away and cleared sand from my throat. “We should keep moving.”
Lark’s silhouette took a chunk out of the night sky atop a dune ahead. He stood still, but I couldn’t tell if he faced away, or if he’d just seen me with Draven. Not that it should matter if Draven and I stood too close.
I waded on; I didn’t dare glance back to see the hurt on Draven’s face. This was difficult. He and I were joined, and that meant something, although it had been a ruse to begin with. We’d both said the words, tied the ribbon around our wrists. I’d told Draven we had a future, and at the time, I’d meant it. Now? Everything was a muddle.
Lark had agreed what we’d had was nothing, so at most, Lark and I were friends. And that would have to be enough. I couldn’t stop caring about him. I’d always cared, even when I’d spent years behind a door pretending not to. But if he wanted a friend, and nothing more, I’d be that friend. Considering everything Razak had inflicted upon him and the things Razak had demanded he do to undermine the courts, if Lark never wanted to be touched again, I’d understand that too.
“Lark, we must follow those three stars,” I said, coming up behind him.
“Shh.” He waved me back. “Something’s out there.”
I peered into the gloom, searching for something out of place, but saw only sand dunes swept between jagged rocks. It was the same landscape we’d been traipsing through all night. The wind hissed, but nothing moved.
“There.” Lark pointed and it took a little while to focus on a patch of sand at the bottom of the dunes. It appeared to be moving, as though stirred from below. “You see it? What is that?”
It didn’t appear to be much. A dust devil? “Probably the wind.”
The stirring motion swelled, and sand spiraled like water down a drain. The hair on the back of my neck prickled and the chill that had wrapped around me for hours tightened its hold. The spiraling widened, and the ground beneath our boots trembled, then shifted, slipping forward.
Lark reached for me, the dune shifted, and we both dropped.
“Draven!” I twisted, Lark’s hand in mine, and grabbed hold of Draven’s already-reaching fingers. He heaved, dragging us against a sudden river of earth gushing below our feet, until finding solid rock underfoot.
All around the sand flowed like water, pouring downward, into a widening vortex.
Draven grabbed me around the waist and shoved me away. “Go!” He shoved Lark toward me. But behind Draven—rising up like one of the rocky monuments come to life—a vast beast towered. Sand waterfalled off its bulk, obscuring whatever features it had. Maybe it was the desert itself, come alive to devour us.
“By Dallin.” It was huge, the size of a house, or bigger.
A pair of jaws opened, revealing rows of triangular teeth and a gullet that would swallow all three of us whole. “Draven! Look out!”
Draven spun with his daggers out, as though he meant to attack, but when he saw it, he froze. He didn’t lunge, or flee. Just…looked.
“Go!” Lark grabbed me, spun me around, and pushed. “Go, go!”
I dug my heels in. “But Draven—”
“If he wants to dance with it, let him!”
“He’ll die!”
Draven still wasn’t moving. He stood with his back to us, and the beast kept on rising out of the sand, growing larger and larger with every passing moment.
“Draven!?” I took a step closer.
“Don’t,” Lark warned. “You’ll die with him.”
“We can’t leave!”
Lark’s pained expression fell. In a single, swift turn, he bolted back toward Draven, toward the beast.
They were both idiots. They’d die, and for what?
Draven stared and the sand spun around him, like it had in the storm. But now there truly was a beast at its heart. The creature reached its full height and tilted forward, about to dive and consume them both. “Hurry!”
Lark skidded to Draven’s side, grabbed his arm, and attempted to pull him out of whatever madness had gripped him. But Draven didn’t move. Had he lost his mind?
