Two days into the journey, and they'd barely spoken.
Gabriel walked ahead, his pace steady and relentless. Tess followed a few paces behind, watching the set of his shoulders, the way his hand occasionally moved to the pack where the book rested.
The compulsion hadn't returned. Not since they'd left the farmhouse. With the book this close, carried on his back, the pull had lessened to something manageable. Almost ignorable.
Almost.
The road stretched east through dead fields and skeletal forests. Winter held everything in its grip, the ground frozen hard beneath their boots. They'd passed two abandoned farmsteads already, their roofs collapsed, their walls crumbling.
No one spoke of what had been left behind. No one mentioned Mera's face when Gabriel had rejected her help, or the others heading south toward ships and the Isle of Giants.
They just walked.
