Miriam’s lips were split and sore. She tipped the flask over her tongue and waited for a drop of sweet and delicious mercy.

Too desperate to blink, she watched the single drop form at the flask’s rim. It was not enough.

Across the firepit, Divine and Sophie rubbed their grimy fingers together near the flames. A useless attempt, as if the fire alone could give them a reason to keep going.

Weeks in the desert had squeezed most of the arguing out of them, like a lemon, leaving nothing but the bitter rind.

Divine kept swallowing, but Miriam wondered if there was anything left to conjure.

Miriam’s spine tightened at the sight. Divine and Sophie had drunk first, but it had not been enough. She wanted the last drop. But she remembered—she had already drunk it. She dug her dirty nails into her flaky skin.

Miriam met Sophie’s blue eyes and knew what Sophie would say. The desert was suicide. Even Vinar would not bless it.

But where else was there to go? Solaris owned the lit roads, and Covenants owned the cold dark. The desert had taken them in and nurtured them as best it could—like an abusive parent.

Miriam reached for a stick beside the fire. She bit her tongue to help extract a lick of moisture from the bark. Just one drop—anything.

That was all.

She gnawed into it. Her teeth scraped through the bark. It was not wet or dry. Just cold. No, frozen.

Strange.

Earlier that day, Miriam had seen an oasis shimmer in the distance. At the sight of its water, she had tasted sugary lemonade. But it was all a mirage. Now she was feeling things that did not exist.

“No luck?” Sophie asked, warming herself near the fire. A lone strand of her black hair danced near the flames.

“Your hair, Sophie,” Miriam said.

Sophie tucked it behind her ear, where it sat, clinging on for dear life.

“And no luck.” Miriam fed the gnawed stick into the fire. If it held no moisture, it could at least offer solace as it burned.

The firepit swallowed it beneath Sophie’s silence.

“It would have been easier to surrender to Solaris,” Sophie said.

Miriam’s eyebrow twitched, her neck drawn tight like guitar strings. “No, it wouldn’t.”

She took a deep breath, filling her lungs with crisp air laced with fine sand.

She counted the days since they’d last found water, the distance covered, how often Sophie’s body had shaken, how long Divine’s face had looked hollow.

However she counted it, they were running out of time.

“You two—” Divine said. “Please. Let’s not have another argument.”

“Divine’s right,” Miriam said. “Let’s just rest without one.”

Miriam froze.

The idea tore itself apart once she saw the same stick in the blaze.

It did not burn.

It was another mirage.

Except the blaze kept folding around it, and the wood stayed whole.

“Sleep in this weather? This cold is awful!” Sophie buried her hands into the sand, then pushed herself upright. Sand trickled from her fingers, while moist clumps clung to them.

“Trust me, Sophie. If it weren’t winter, we’d already be dead,” Miriam said.

Sophie rolled her eyes. “And it wasn’t my bloody choice to come here. We didn’t need to come to a desert at all, but you were so certain this was the only way!”

Sophie’s voice had that brittle edge again—the one she used when fear got too close. Miriam preferred it over her sharp, vindictive silence. From Sophie, silence meant something worse.

“It was the only place they wouldn’t follow,” Miriam said.

The desert had no roads worth taxing, no forests worth hiding in, and no villages left close enough to report them.

It only had Zidar.

Miriam ignored Sophie’s silence and focused on Divine.

Divine rested her chin in her hand, elbow braced on her knee. “I get it, Soph. It’s not like home.” The corners of her mouth curled downward.

Ardwynd had beds, water, and walls. And Amos.

But Ardwynd was gone.

“The last thing we need to talk about is home,” Miriam said.

Miriam pushed the thought of her brother down and kept it there before the memory swallowed her, chewed her and spat her out.

A sharp crackle erupted as a piece of wood shifted in the fire.

Sophie recoiled. “Let’s rest.”

Divine raised her free hand. “I’ll take second watch. Soph’s done it two nights in a row.”

Sophie gave a tired thumbs-up. “Thanks, Di. I’ll set up the tent.”

The tent spilled out of its bag in a tired pile, its seams peeling and frayed. Sophie and Divine put it together without speaking, in the efficient way only people too exhausted to argue would.

Sophie paused at the tent flap and placed her palm on her chest. “Anything else you need, Miriam?”

“Nothing at all. Thank you, Sophie.”

Sophie held a judging gaze. It pierced through Miriam before Sophie went inside.

Was the stick still untouched? Miriam was about to check when Divine stepped closer, her face drawn with worry.

“Listen, Miriam, I’m sorry about earlier,” she said.

Miriam still felt the shape of it: Divine standing beside Sophie, saying nothing while Sophie looked at Miriam like the desert was her fault.

She couldn’t bear to talk to Divine. Those honey-brown eyes would make her forget.

Miriam picked at the flask’s leather strap. “Divine, it’s fine. I don’t want to bring it up anymore.”

For a moment, neither spoke.

“Okay,” Divine said. “I won’t bring it up.” Her gaze caught on the fire, the tent—anywhere but Miriam’s face. “Do you think anything followed us this far?”

“Only your ravens,” Miriam said. Even in Ardwynd, ravens flocked towards her first. Even before the food.

Divine smiled. “Then maybe one will keep you company. I’ll be in the tent. Shake me for second watch.” She slipped inside and zipped the tent shut.

Now it was time.

Miriam turned back to the stick.

It still hadn’t burned.

The pressure in her head built with every second she looked at the stick until the left side of her body went numb, detached from her like a being of its own.

Something flew past her ear, too fast to be a raven.

Miriam flinched sideways, her good hand flying to the cold hilt of her blade, Mercy, at her hip.

It wasn’t the wind.

Sweat slid down the side of her face nearest the fire, while her left arm hung useless at her side.

The darkness gave nothing back. No howls, footsteps, breath, or shape beyond the firelight.

The fire crackled behind her. Still, the hairs on her neck rose. Her legs would not move.

“Miriam.”

Her heart lurched.

It wasn’t Divine. Nor Sophie. The voice was low and distant, like a creature in the deep sea taunting her to come closer.

Sand pressed beneath her knees as she shifted her weight, slowly enough not to wake the tent. There were no tracks left by the creature. Only firelight and the dark past it.

“Miriam. You can’t ignore me, or the tent, forever.”

The voice felt like it knew every choice she had left—and how few of them were good.

Her fingers closed around Mercy’s hilt. The angle was right to strike. With only one pull, the blade would be free.

But there was nothing to strike or hide from, which made Mercy useless.

The starless sky pressed low over the camp, threatening to collapse upon the shivering Miriam.

“Give me an answer,” Miriam said. “Who are you?”

She could not risk waking the others—not when the voice had already made its threat.

“You notice it—the stick?”

The fire folded around it—still whole and wrong.

“Then touch it,” the voice said. “Your friends can keep sleeping.”

“That’s—”

Shuffling came from the tent, and the creature watched Miriam and her friends. She knew the tent’s insides hid nothing from it.

“What’s wrong?” The voice was so sweet it made Miriam sick.

Miriam bit the inside of her cheek.

“So, touch it. I won’t hurt your friends.”

Her grip tightened on Mercy, the blade half-drawn.

Behind her, Sophie exhaled, and Divine snored.

Miriam let go of Mercy.

Her friends were alive.

For now.

She stretched her right hand toward the fire, shaking hard enough that her teeth drew blood from the inside of her cheek. She inhaled hard, willing her palm to still.

Fuck it.

Fire wrapped her wrist, her knuckles, and her palm. At first, a flash of euphoria struck her. Then it warped into burning, blistering agony.

Her fingers closed around the stick.

It was colder than before, as though it had been buried in the north.

Tears blurred the firelight into a haze.

The stick remained hostage between the burning pieces of wood. She braced her numb left hand in the ground, feeling coolness and life flood back. Her fingers wiggled, and she pulled.

The smell of burning flesh hit first.

The voice said nothing.

Miriam’s jaw locked, and thunder rumbled in her ears. Whatever this thing was, it had told her to touch the stick. Now it relished watching her burn.

The stick wouldn’t move.

She couldn’t.

“Ah,” the voice said at last. “It’s stuck. No need to pull it free. You can let go.”

No. Miriam pulled harder. Letting go was not an option, especially not after it had used her friends against her.

Sense told her to let go, but sense was stupid. She pulled harder, her weight now backward. She pulled again, crushing the scream into something closer to a growl.

At last, the stick came free, her burned hand clenched around it.

“There,” she said through her teeth, raising it like a weapon. “Got it. Come on, then.”

Leaves shuffled somewhere in the dark—but that was impossible. There were no trees in sight.

“What’s going on?” Divine whispered.

Miriam jolted and shifted the stick into her left palm.

Divine stood at the tent opening, bleary, rubbing her right eye. She sprung at the sight of Miriam’s hand. “What happened?”

Miriam curled her burned palm toward her body, though it was already too late.

Before Miriam could answer, Divine crossed the sand.

“There’s no water,” Divine said. “This might be gross, but—”

She gathered what little saliva she had, spat into a rag, and wrapped it around Miriam’s blistered palm. There was no juice left in her mouth, not even the bitterness of rind. Only dust for a remedy.

The rag did little to cool her palm—it only provoked more pain. It made Miriam’s skin crawl until the thought of Divine became the new antidote.

“You’ve been acting strange,” Divine said, knotting the rag around Miriam’s hand. “And what’s with that stick? Let it go.”

“It’s cold.” Miriam refused to let it go.

Divine stopped. “Miriam, what aren’t you telling me?”

“Nothing.”

“That to me sounds like you want me to stop asking.”

“Sophie’s tired. She’ll hear us bickering.”

“Don’t change the subject.”

“What subject?”

“Tsk.” Divine’s shoulders dropped. “Alright. I’ll take second watch now. You get some rest.” She gave a faint smile that convinced Miriam of nothing.

Miriam withdrew into the tent, her last-ditch act before Divine could ask again. Her palm pulsed to her heartbeat. They had no cure for the desert—just a barely damp rag and hope.

She zipped the tent with her blistered fingers, blinking back tears. The stick stayed locked in her left.

Inside the tent, she could pretend the voice had remained outside.

If Divine had come to relieve her, Miriam had been outside longer than she thought.

She waited to adjust to the shadows, then lowered herself beside Sophie.

Miriam tried to sleep.

But a faint glow from the stick warmed and throbbed beneath her left fingers, bright enough to stain the dark behind her eyelids.

She swung her eyes open, only to find herself surrounded by blur.

Before she understood why, her head thumped and every muscle in her body pulled taut.

Miriam could not breathe. She tried to move, but her body refused her.

Death had found her, and she knew it.

Death would find the tent too.