Chapter 4
“Good,” he whispered against my lips, so close I could feel the faint, uneven puff of his breath. “Very good, my guardian. The collar is holding. Your mind is safe.”
I closed my eyes, letting the quiet wrap around me like a shroud.
“Where to now?” I asked quietly.
Julian stepped back, his posture regaining its scholarly composure, though his fingers still twitched with lingering adrenaline. He pulled his brass compass from his pocket, checking the trembling needle against the jagged peaks rising ahead of us in the north.
“The Sunken Caldera,” he said, his voice steadying, laced with a grim, triumphant resolve. “The heart of their territory. The Sleeping Matriarch is there, Sariyah. When she falls, the war ends. Humanity will be free.”
He looked up at me, offering that patient, victorious smile that always made my heart ache with devotion.
“And then,” Julian added softly, reaching out to tuck a stray strand of soot-stained hair behind my ear, “I will take this collar off you forever, and we can finally go home.”
I looked toward the north, where smoke rose into the bruised purple sky like pillars supporting the heavens, and nodded.
“Let’s finish it,” I said, drawing my clean dagger to harvest the beast’s horn for his research, burying the strange, quiet sorrow deep beneath the weight of cold silver.
The lip of the Sunken Caldera broke before us like the rim of a cracked cauldron, dropping thousands of feet into a churning sea of violet mist and sleeping embers.
Up here, the gale screamed. It tore at the hem of Julian’s wool cloak, threatening to pluck him from the narrow shelf of pumice like an autumn leaf. I stepped forward, planting my boots firmly into the crumbling shale, and caught him around the waist before the updraft could steal his balance.
He flinched at my sudden touch, then melted against my shoulder with a ragged sigh. His body was so light in my arms, so terribly fragile. Through the layers of homespun and cured hide, I could feel the sharp ridge of his ribs, the frantic flutter of his pulse beneath his throat.
“Thank you,” he breathed into my ear, his breath a plume of white steam in the freezing upper wind. “The air... it’s thin up here, Sariyah.”
“I’ve got you,” I said, tightening my arm around him. The vertical drop to our left, jagged rocks plunging down to jagged needles of basalt, would have terrified any sane traveler. To me, looking down into that boundless abyss triggered no vertigo. Instead, an odd, phantom sensation stirred between my shoulder blades—a strange, phantom itch, as though something vast and broad ought to catch the howling updraft and lift me into the sky.
I shook the thought away, irritated by my mind’s persistent foolishness.
“Hold on to my neck,” I commanded gently. “The descent trail is half-collapsed. The shale won't support your boots.”
Julian didn't protest with his usual scholarly pride. He was too spent. He reached up, looping his thin arms around my neck, burying his face into the hollow of my throat to escape the stinging dust. His silver-buckled satchels clattered against my back as I scooped him into my arms, shifting his weight against my chest as easily as an infant.
“Close your eyes,” I murmured.
I leapt.
We landed fifteen cubits below on a narrow outcropping with a dull, heavy thud. The shockwave of the landing should have jarred my ankles, should have shattered my knee joints into powder; instead, my legs absorbed the kinetic crash like coiling springs, the stone cracking slightly beneath the iron tips of my boots. Julian let out a choked gasp, burying his fingers deeper into the collar of my tunic, his knuckles white with strain.
“You leap like a falling boulder,” he muttered into my collarbone, though his voice lacked any real bite. “No mortal woman should have knees made of pig iron.”
A low chuckle vibrated in my chest. “Be glad I do, my scholar. Otherwise, you’d be scraping yourself off the rocks below.”
Step by step, ledge by ledge, I carried him down the throat of the caldera. Where the path vanished into scree, I vaulted; where the volcanic glass was slick as wet ice, my boots found grip in invisible crevices. The descent, which Julian’s maps had estimated would take two agonizing days of rope-work, took us under three hours.
By the time the violet mist thickened around our ankles, we had reached the caldera floor.
It was not a barren wasteland like the plains above. Here, sheltered from the mountain winds and fed by subterranean warmth, the world had mutated into an eerie, luminous wilderness. Giant ferns with black, leathery fronds sprouted from the edges of obsidian crevasses. Pale moss clinging to the cavernous overhangs glowed with a faint, phosphor-blue luminescence. And throughout the silent air ran the ever-present heartbeat of the earth—a deep, subterranean hum that resonated directly against my breastbone.
Julian slipped from my arms, his boots touching the mossy basalt. His legs wobbled, and he had to lean against his staff for several long breaths, his chest heaving as he acclimated to the dense, warm air.
“The air down here is heavy,” he wheezed, loosening the linen scarf from his face. “Full of heavy gases. Can you smell the sulfur?”
I drew in a long, quiet breath through my nose.
“I smell rain,” I answered honestly, watching the bioluminescent moss pulse in the twilight. “And crushed needles. It smells like hot stone after a thunderstorm.”
Julian paused, his staff hovering an inch above the ground. In the faint blue glow, his slate-gray eyes fixed on me with a sudden, piercing scrutiny. The warmth drained from his expression, replaced by that taut, vigilant stillness that always appeared whenever I spoke of things not written in his imperial books.
“That is the trick of the caldera,” he said, his voice flat, measured, dropping half an octave. “Draconic spores. They dull your senses, Sariyah. They make a poisonous bog smell like home so you lower your guard. Do not trust what your nose tells you down here. Trust what I tell you.”
A tiny prickle of defensiveness rose in my throat. “I killed the drake, Julian. My guard is never down.”
His expression softened, the hard scholarly mask melting back into the affectionate devotion I knew. He reached out, his cool fingers brushing a lock of matted hair from my cheek, his touch feather-light against my skin.
“I know,” he whispered, his thumb lingering at the corner of my mouth. “Forgive me. I am tired, and the closer we get to the Sanctum, the more my nerves fray. You are my only wall against the dark, Sariyah. If you fall to their illusions... I have nothing.”
The vulnerability in his voice disarmed me instantly. The small knot of irritation dissolved into a familiar, warm ache of devotion.
“You won't fall,” I told him, pressing my hand over his where it rested against my cheek. “Not while I have steel in my hand.”
He smiled—a faint, tired curve of his lips—and leaned his forehead against mine for one lingering second. “Let’s find shelter for the night. The mist grows thick, and the stars won't reach us here.”
