Cress

Her head dropped into the sand, sleep threatening to take over. If he would just lie down beside her and take her into his arms, she would never have to get up again.

“Cress—hey, no more sleeping. I need you. Remember the vultures, Cress. Vultures.”

“You don’t need me. You wouldn’t be here at all if it weren’t for me.”

“Not true. Well … only kind of true. We’ve already been over this.”

She shuddered. “Do you hate me?”

“Of course not. And you should stop wasting your energy talking about stupid things.” Scooping an arm beneath her shoulders, he forced her to sit up.

She gripped his wrist. “Do you think you could ever love me back?”

“Cress, this is sweet, but aren’t I the first guy you’ve ever met? Come on, up you go.”

She turned her head away, dread pressing down on her. He didn’t believe her. He didn’t understand how intensely she felt.

“Oh, spades and aces and stars.” He groaned. “You’re not crying again, are you?”

“N-no.” She bit her lip. It wasn’t a lie. She certainly wanted to cry, but her eyes were all dried up.

Thorne pulled a hand through his hair, knocking away a cloud of sand. “Yes,” he said firmly. “We are obviously soul mates. Now please, stand up.”

“You’ve probably told lots of girls you loved them.”

“Well, yeah, but I would have reconsidered if I’d known you were going to hold it against me.”

Misery washing over her, she crumpled against his side. Her head spun. “I’m dying,” she murmured, struck by the certainty of it. “I’m going to die. And I’ve never even been kissed.”

“Cress. Cress. You’re not going to die.”

“We were going to have such a passionate romance, too, like in the dramas. But, no—I’ll die alone, never kissed, not once.”

He groaned, but it was out of frustration, not heartbreak. “Listen, Cress, I hate to break this to you, but I am sweaty and itchy and haven’t brushed my teeth in two days. This just isn’t a good time for romance.”

She squeaked and tucked her head between her knees, trying to get the world to stop turning so fast. The hopelessness of their situation was crushing her. The desert would never end. They would never get out. Thorne would never love her back.

“Cress. Look at me. Are you looking at me?”

“Mm-hmm,” she mumbled.

Thorne hesitated. “I don’t believe you.”

Sighing, she pried her head up so she could peer at him through the curtain of chopped hair. “I’m looking at you.”

He crouched close to her and felt for her face. “I promise, I will not let you die without being kissed.”

“I’m dying now.”

“You are not dying.”

“But—”

“I will be the judge of when you are dying, and when that happens, I guarantee you will get a kiss worth waiting for. But right now, you have to get up.”

She stared at him for a long moment. His eyes were surprisingly clear, almost like he could see her back, and he didn’t flinch before her skeptical silence. He didn’t grin nonchalantly or offer a teasing follow-up. He just waited.

She couldn’t help it when her attention drifted down to his mouth, and she felt something stir inside her. Resolve.

“Do you promise?”

He nodded. “I promise.”

Shuddering at the pain that awaited her, she braced herself and held her hands out to him. The world tilted as he hoisted her up and she stumbled, but Thorne held her until she was steady. Hunger gnawed at her empty stomach. Pain bit into her raw feet, shooting up through her legs and into her spine. Her whole face contorted, but she ignored it the best she could. With Thorne’s help, she retied the sheet around her head.

“Are your feet bleeding?”

She could barely see them in the darkness, and they were still wrapped in the towels. “I don’t know. They hurt. A lot.”

“Your fever might be from an infection.” He handed her the last bottle of water, now half full. “Or you’re dehydrated. Drink all of that.”

She paused with the water bottle already tipped against her mouth, carefully, so as not to lose a single drop. It was a tempting offer. She could drink it all and still be thirsty, but …

“All of it,” said Thorne.

She drank until she could stop without her throat crying for more. “But what about you?”

“I’ve had my fill.”

She knew it wasn’t true, but her tolerance for selflessness lessened with every gulp and soon she’d done as he asked and drank it all. She stood wavering on her feet with the bottle turned up to the sky, hoping to capture another drop, until she was sure there was nothing left.

She swooned, longingly placing the empty bottle into the blanket-sack on Thorne’s shoulder. Peering at the horizon, she spotted the mountainous shadows, still so far away.

Thorne picked up his cane and she forced herself to take in three solid breaths before she started, hoping they would give her courage. She estimated the amount of steps it would take to reach the next sand dune, and then began counting. One foot in front of the other. Warm air in, warm air out. The fantasy of being a brave explorer had long since dissipated, but she still clung to the knowledge that Thorne was relying on her.

She plodded up the dune as her teeth began to chatter again. She stumbled twice. She tried to call up comforting daydreams. A soft bed, a worn blanket. Sleeping in well past the sunrise, in a softly lit room where flowers grew outside the windowsill. Waking up in Thorne’s arms. His fingers stroking the hair off her brow, his lips pressing a good-morning kiss against her temple …

But she couldn’t hold on to them. She had never known a room like that, and the hard-earned visions were too quickly overshadowed by pain.

One dune came and went. She was already panting.

Two dunes. The mountains lingered tauntingly in the distance.

Each time they topped one, she would focus on the next. We’ll just crest that hill, and then I’ll sit for a minute. Just one more …

But instead of letting herself rest when the goal was reached, she chose another and kept going.

Thorne didn’t comment when she slipped and landed on her knees. He just picked her up and set her back on her feet. He said nothing when her pace slowed to a mere crawl, so long as they didn’t stop. His presence was reassuring—never impatient, never harsh.

After ages of delirious, mind-numbing progress through the sand, when she felt as though every limb were about to fall off, the sky to the east began to brighten, and Cress realized that the landscape was changing. The sand dunes were becoming shorter and shallower and, not far in the distance, they seemed to end in a long, flat plain of rocky red soil, dotted with scarce, prickly shrubs. Beyond that began the foothills of the mountains.

She glanced at Thorne and was surprised to catch the evidence of exhaustion etched into his features, though he replaced it with steadfast determination as they came to a stop.

She described the sight as well as she could.

“Can you guess how long it will take to reach those shrubs?”

She estimated, unable to bury the panic that it would turn out to be another illusion and that the respite of sand and swells would flee farther away with every step they took. “No.”

He nodded. “That’s all right. We’ll try to get to them before it gets too hot. We might be able to get some dew off their branches.”

Dew. Water. Even just a lick, just a taste … never again would she snub a single muddy gulp.

She started again, her legs screaming with the first few steps, until they began to numb again to the endless walking.

Then her eye snagged on something big and white, and she froze.

Thorne crashed into her, and Cress would have collapsed if he hadn’t wrapped his arms around her shoulders, steadying her.

“What’s wrong?”

“There’s … an animal,” she whispered, afraid to startle the creature that stood at the top of the dune.

It had already seen them and was staring serenely at Cress. She tried to place it with what she knew of Earthen wildlife. A goat of some sort? A gazelle? It had slender white legs atop enormous hoofs and a rounded belly that showed the edges of ribs. Its calm face was tan with swaths of black and white, like a mask around its eyes. Two towering spiral horns twisted up from its head, doubling its height.

It was the first Earthen animal she had ever seen, and it was beautiful and regal and mysterious, watching her with dark, unblinking eyes.

For a moment, she imagined that she could speak to it with her mind, ask it to lead them to safety. It would recognize the goodness inside her and take pity, like an ancient animal goddess sent to guide her to her destiny.

“An animal?” Thorne said, and she realized he’d been waiting for her to further explain what she was seeing.

“It has long legs and horns and … and it’s beautiful.”

“Oh, good, we’re back to this, then.” She could hear the smile in his tone, but she dared not take her gaze from the creature, lest it dissolve into the air like a phantom.

“Could mean there’s a water source nearby,” Thorne mused. “We should keep going.”

Cress took a tentative step forward. She felt the slip of sand more keenly than she had before, and recognized just how clumsy she and Thorne were, stumbling and scrambling over the dunes, while this creature stood so elegant and calm.

The creature tilted its head, not moving as Cress inched closer.

She didn’t realize she was holding her breath until the beast’s eyelids flickered and it turned its head toward something on the other side of the dune.

The crack of a gunshot rang out across the desert.

Twenty-Four

The creature balked and tumbled down the dune, blood dribbling from the wound in its side. Cress cried out and fell backward. Thorne pulled her down into the sand. “Cress! Are you all right?”

She was shaking, watching as the animal fell and rolled the rest of the way, gathering clumps of sand on its hide. She wanted to scream, but any noise was paralyzed inside her, and she could think of nothing but that the animal had wanted to say something to her and now the world was tilting and fading and she was going to be sick and there was blood in the sand and she didn’t know what had happened and—

“Cress! Cress!”

Thorne’s hands were on her, searching, and she realized dully that he thought she had been shot. She grabbed his wrists, holding them tight and trying to convey the truth through her grip when words wouldn’t come to her.

“I’m—I’m all—”

She paused. They both heard it. Panting, along with the slip and scramble of footsteps.

Cress cowered, pressing into Thorne’s embrace as terror washed over her. A man appeared at the top of the dune, carrying a shotgun.

He saw the animal first, dying or dead, but then spotted Cress and Thorne from the corner of his eye. He yelped, barely keeping his balance, and gaped at them. His eyebrows disappeared beneath a gauzy headdress. His brown eyes and the bridge of his nose were all she could see of his face, the rest of him covered in a robe that draped nearly to his ankles, protecting him from the harsh desert elements. Beneath the robe peeked a pair of denim pants and boots that had long been sun bleached and caked with sand.

He finished his own inspection of Cress and Thorne and lowered the gun. He began to speak and for a moment Cress thought that the sun and exhaustion had driven her mad after all—she didn’t understand a word he said.

Thorne’s grip tightened on her arms.

For a moment, the man stared at them in silence. Then he shifted, his eyebrows lowering and revealing flecks of gray in them.

“Universal, then?” he said, in a thick accent that still made it a struggle to capture the words. He scanned their ragged clothes and sheets. “You are not from here.”