The dragon’s talons threatened to crush her ribs with their perilous strength, but she clutched at them with a determined fire and grit her teeth against the pain. She had just been given a second lease on life, and Oza and Letti, too. If Doufan had run her through, he would have gone after them next without a doubt, and they wouldn’t have stood a chance. It chilled her to think how close they had all been to meeting their end just moments before, but as they rose higher and higher over the Imperial City, exhilaration and relief filled her instead, swallowing up all the fear that had weighed her down like the night clouds blanketing the moon. They were leaving. They were leaving, and she had managed to keep everyone alive. Her heart pounded harder when she thought of Kai and how she had had to leave him, but surely he would have done the smart thing and left the Imperial City as she had told him to do before parting ways. And he would be safe, she told

It was easy to find Sa-Khente. He was with Kai on the other side of the small camp, just over the large dune. She hadn’t asked where either of them were and had simply followed the niggling feeling inside her that told her to go that way, that way, and she had. At its end, she had found the chieftain with a new ceremonial golden collar around his shoulders, and an exceedingly tall man standing beside him. She gave up trying to explain to herself how she had known Kai would be here, and there was a knowing, satisfied gleam in his golden eyes as he watched her approach over his shoulder. It was as if he was reeling her in despite standing still, and it was only when she came within arm’s reach that he turned and pulled her close with his arms around her waist, ignoring the man standing next to him. “Kai—” “Sa. Look at my mate, standing here with me. You had so little faith.” The large man g

It was so hard to trust unknown magic, still. She was such a hypocrite. Hadn’t she resorted to using her own not too long ago to save Oza? And yet she couldn’t scold away the uneasiness lurching and twisting in her gut as the oasis sailed over the sands, like the desert was but water on the sea. This wasn’t the cold, pruned Empire anymore. This was the wild Adaraat where the desert nomads wandered, and strange foreign magic came from here. Not rigorously trained and schooled magic with rules and pinpoint regulations in the ranks, but free magic, unconstrained, unpredictable. Like the kind that could move vibrant palm trees over sand - or a spring, because there was no mistaking that sound, however distant: water. But it stopped moving suddenly, and after a moment, she understood it was waiting for her. She glanced behind her at the camp’s edge, wondering if anyone was watching her, and indeed, met the gazes of a few of Kai’s men as they watched on eagerly. Time to go. Bes

Could she even call this creature a dragon? Could she even call it a creature indeed—so massive, so titanic, so enormous that it seemed to take up the whole world from end to end that it couldn’t be a product of creation at all. He was so all-encompassing that mountains could come out of him, the highest ones, and the deepest trenches, and sprawling valleys in between. And just as disturbing, the glassy golden eye that dwarfed her entirely was still staring at her, unblinking. What was it waiting for? It was clearly seeing her. It had come to her. And now it said…nothing. But this wasn’t real, after all—this was all in her mind. If she concentrated hard enough, she could still feel the waters of Ash’s oasis weighing cold and heavy on her skin, although the sensation was ghostly and faint as if she were only feeling its echoes from another life. But it wasn’t. That was her real life, that was the real world. This other one, this halluc

The memory passed over, through, and around her like a surge of stormy water sloshing through a ditch. It tossed Anzi around and spun her like a top, and an invisible force ripped her out of Tet’s body and consciousness like a slab of meat pulled off a hook. She came free with a gasping scream, every part of her utterly raw and freezing and vulnerable as if someone had taken a blade and flayed the skin off her bones before tossing her out into a wintry blizzard. But the sensation of soul-deep coldness faded fast, and it wasn’t long before she stopped shivering as her body soaked up the rays of the hot Adaraat sun. So she was back here again. Whatever kind of magic Ash was using on her, it had pulled her across the land from place to place. She’d recognized the first one, her home village on the fringes of the desert when she had been but a child. The second was far from here, to the south where the flatlands began to roll up and down to meet the mountai