Page 229 of Starside

It’s the forty-first day of the quest. Maybe if I use the oaths on my sword, I can portal to a Great House and gain passage back to the gates in time to make it through. Maybe this journey does really kill me. Either way … I’m almost to the gods. I’m almost to the end of this.

“Ready?” I ask Raker, as I stare at the endless sea of sand. Somewhere out in that desert sits the creature even Vander Evren couldn’t face.

I’m not afraid of anything, Raker said. He looks hesitant now.

“Let’s get this over with,” he says.

The dunes shift in sparkling shades of sunset. Flecks of silver are speckled throughout, catching the light, before being covered by another layer.

“I wonder how many things have been lost here,” I say, thinking an entire city could be buried below, and we wouldn’t even know it.

Raker’s eyes are on the horizon. His sword is already in his hand. It’s as if he can sense something I can’t.

But it doesn’t come. We walk the entire day, and through the night, without any movement at all. Though we’re protected by the starlight necklace, the demons don’t pierce these sands even beyond the light, just like they didn’t pierce the mists. Which only makes me more afraid of what is slithering within them.

Every brush of wind makes me tense. I turn at even the slightest shift in the dunes. Nothing.

I start to wonder if the creature Vander mentioned has moved on. Maybe his own effort was centuries ago—I never asked. Or maybe this beast has better things to do than torment two humans.

We drain our pouches, washing our faces and soothing our throats. I wish for my high collar again, if only to hide my face from the dust. Then the thirst begins.

We don’t speak. We just keep moving, feet dragging through the heavy sand.

Until my foot doesn’t move.

I frown down at it. I try to pull it free, but it doesn’t budge. “What?”

I jolt with pain as nails sink into my flesh—

And pull me under.

I don’t gasp. I shut my eyes, shuddering as the sand scrapes my cheeks and slices against my clothes.

What feels like a lifetime later, I’m finally deposited in another part of the desert. I emerge clawing and gasping, shaking away the sand that has scorched every inch of exposed skin.

It’s everywhere. I blink the grainy dryness away—and the dunes in front of me begin to shift. They rise, sand flinting, glittering, making shapes.

They make … people.

I tense, watching as the worst of my memories form around me.

My sister and I slipping out of the house in the rain to pick wildflowers. It was my idea.

Her eyes widening as the lightning strike came right toward her—and the rush of air from her lungs as I pushed her out of the way.

I shouldn’t have pushed her away.

In that moment, I thought I was saving her. I acted on instinct, without question, putting myself in danger instead of her. Always instead of her.

Instead, I unknowingly sealed her fate.

As quickly as they are formed, the glittering sand falls away, and another gust of wind brings more figures.

My mother. Combing my hair in front of a mirror.

“Look at yourself, love. You’re beautiful.”

I shake my head. “I’m ugly. I’m strange.”