YAN

  YANICK HAD BEEN FOLLOWING NEMETH for days. Across the broken wastes, the red deserts, the places where the earth cracked open like old scars. Nemeth’s trail was easy enough to follow; he wasn’t hiding it. Sometimes footprints, sometimes ash where a small fire had burned out, sometimes a discarded bone from some dry creature gnawed to nothing.

  At night, Yanick watched from ridges and dunes, keeping his distance. He saw the faint glow of fire far ahead, a flickering orange heartbeat in the dark sea of sand. And tonight, for the first time, he dared to close the gap.

  When he crested the last rise, he saw Nemeth clearly. Sitting by the flames, turning a stick in his hands, some strange animal skewered and sizzling above the fire. Nemeth didn’t even look up.

  “Stop hiding and come down,” Nemeth called, voice dry as the dust around them. “I’m about to roast this lizard thing. You want some or not?”

  Yanick hesitated a beat. Then he climbed down the slope, boots sliding through loose sand. He stopped a few paces from the fire, his hand hovering near the knife at his belt.

  “You’re not afraid I’ll kill you?” Yanick asked.

  Nemeth smiled faintly, turning the spit. The flames licked at the meat, fat dripping and hissing.

  “You won’t.”

  “You’re sure about that?”

  “We both want the same thing,” Nemeth said. He glanced up then, his face half-lit, half-shadowed. “You just don’t know it yet.”

  Yanick narrowed his eyes.

  “Then why were you running from me?”

  “I wasn’t.” Nemeth’s smile widened, something sad in it. “I was giving you time. You needed to cool your head. You were too close to the storm.”

  Yanick sat down slowly across the fire, feeling the warmth creep into his bones.

  “I should still kill you,” he muttered.

  “You could try.” Nemeth carved off a chunk of the roasted flesh and held it out on the knife. “Eat. Or you’ll never make it to Astoris.”

  Yanick stared at the offered meat a moment, then took it. It was tough, salty, tasted like old leather and ash, but it was food. His stomach thanked him even if his pride didn’t.

  They ate in silence for a while, passing the knife back and forth, tearing strips off the carcass until little remained but scorched bone. The fire crackled low, throwing sparks into the vast night.

  Somewhere in the distance, a wolf, or something like it,howled across the dunes.

  Nemeth leaned back against a rock, looking up at the sky.

  “Funny thing, the desert,” he said softly. “Looks empty. But it’s full of ghosts.”

  Yanick traced patterns in the dust with his boot.

  “You talk like a man already dead.”

  Nemeth didn’t answer at first.

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  “Maybe I am,” he said after a while. Then he shifted forward, voice lighter. “How’s your hand?”

  Yanick blinked.

  “My—?” He looked down at the crude splint and cloth wrapping his forearm. The cast had cracked in places, stained with sweat and dirt. “Still stiff. Feels like stone.”

  Nemeth pulled a knife from his belt and crouched by the fire.

  “Let’s get it off.”

  Yanick tensed.

  “You know what you’re doing?”

  “More than you.” Nemeth grinned faintly. “Hold still.”

  He set the blade carefully against the hardened bandage, sawing gently. The knife bit through the cloth, peeling it away in slow strips. Yanick clenched his teeth as Nemeth worked closer to the skin.

  “You’re lucky it healed at all,” Nemeth muttered. “Ellie wasn’t sure it would.”

  “She said that?”

  “She said a lot.” Nemeth cut the last strip, peeling the cast open like a shell. Yanick’s arm was thin underneath, the skin pale and puckered where old stitches had dissolved.

  Yanick flexed his fingers and winced. His wrist barely moved.

  “Shit.”

  Fear flooded him again.

  I will be a cripple.

  Nemeth wiped his blade on his trousers.

  “Don’t panic.”

  “I can’t bend it.”

  “Ellie told me it’d be like this.” Nemeth sat back on his heels. “At first.”

  Yanick stared at him.

  “She told you?”

  “She knew we’d end up together, sooner or later.” Nemeth’s expression softened, almost apologetic. “She gave me instructions. Exercises. Things you need to do every day.”

  Yanick’s lips pressed into a thin line. “She knew?”

  “Don’t look at me like that.” Nemeth shook his head, rolling up a scrap of cloth to bind Yanick’s wrist lightly. “She’s trying to help you. Same as me.”

  He tied the cloth snug, firm but gentle.

  “You’ll get it back. But you have to work for it.”

  Yanick flexed again, slower this time. Still stiff. Still barely a flicker of movement. But under Nemeth’s steady gaze, he felt a strange, unfamiliar flicker too.

  Hope. Or something close to it.

  The wind shifted, bringing a colder edge. Yanick pulled his coat tighter, watching Nemeth’s face across the dying fire. He wanted to ask a dozen things. Why Nemeth had really gone to Astoris. What he planned. If he was a traitor, or something worse.

  “Stop staring,” Nemeth barked. “I need to rest. And if you don’t feel like sleeping, keep training your hand.”

  In the morning, before they set off, Nemeth pressed a small stone into Yanick’s palm.

  “Squeeze it,” he said. “Every few steps. Every chance you get.”

  Yanick frowned down at the rough pebble.

  “Is this part of Ellie’s instructions?”

  Nemeth smiled, already shouldering his pack.

  “You want your hand back or not?”

  So Yanick squeezed. And walked.

  The desert stretched ahead, a sea of red and gold under the rising sun.

  And there, far on the horizon, the jagged silhouette of Astoris rose from the dust. Spires like broken swords. Walls blackened by centuries of war. Smoke rising already, curling into the pale sky.

  Nemeth stopped beside Yanick, shielding his eyes.

  “Looks like we’re right on time.”

  Yanick felt his chest tighten at the sight.

  “It doesn’t look ready to fall.”

  “No,” Nemeth said. “But it’s already burning. From the inside.”

  They pushed forward, step by step, across the ridged flats. The sand hardened beneath their boots into cracked plates, veins of salt running like scars across the earth. Heat shimmered ahead, blurring the distance, turning the horizon into a wavering dream.

  It took another few hours before the first real rise appeared. A long slope of gravel and bone white stone. Yanick climbed behind Nemeth, his breath loud in his ears, sweat stinging his eyes.

  At the top, he wiped his face on his sleeve and stared.

  There it was.

  Astoris.

  The city clawed at the edge of the world, a sprawl of black walls and towering spires, half-eaten by smoke. The towers spiralled high above the battlements, thin and brittle-looking from here, many leaning at impossible angles. Fires already burned inside the walls. Isolated at first, then more, spreading like veins beneath a bruised skin.

  Closer now, Yanick saw the siege in full. An army wrapped the city, a tide of bodies and machines pressing against the stone. Banners snapped over the throngs. Black Moon. Siege towers creaked forward. Rams smashed the lower gates. Archers loosed volleys in shimmering arcs.

  Yanick stared, hollow inside. His breath hitched.

  He’d laid siege before, at the wall, back when he was the Divine Wolf, a loyal general of god Ari’s army. But that had been a border fortress, not this. Not a city swallowing half the horizon. Not an army that looked less like a force and more like a plague crawling over the land.

  A ram the size of a house battered the southern gate. Arrows poured from the ramparts in dark, endless volleys. Somewhere below, a trebuchet hurled a flaming boulder that arced like a second sun, smashing into a siege tower and setting it ablaze. The screams from inside the structure carried even up here, thin and brittle in the wind.

  Nemeth stood beside him, silent. Watching.

  Yanick’s throat felt dry, rough as the desert air.

  “How are we going to get inside?”