In the belly of the airship, tucked away in Kael's cramped and oil-scented cabin, Lysara lay upon a narrow bunk. Her skin had been scrubbed clean of the blood, but trauma was a stain that soap alone could not reach. Kael had given her a bottle of Black Sigh—a thick, tar-like extract designed to sever the mind from the body and sink it into a sleep where the Baron's fingers could never reach.
In her dream, Lysara was a bird. She possessed no skin for another to claim as their own; instead, she had feathers that sliced through the frigid air. She soared high above the spires of Olyndra, and from this height, the Baron's manor appeared as nothing more than a small, filthy speck far below. Here, amidst the drifting clouds, she was untainted. Here, no one wheezed into her ear, and nothing felt sticky or fouled. She was pure movement, she was the gale, and she was free.
In the cockpit, the atmosphere was a suffocating weight, far removed from the fragile peace of Lysara's drug-induced slumber. Kael's hands were clamped around the steering wheel with such force that his knuckles shone white against his scarred skin, mirroring the violent vibration of the overtaxed engines. Beside him, Nyra stood like a statue of salt, her eyes fixed on the trembling needle of the brass compass, watching it dance as they fought the turbulent currents of the upper atmosphere.
"Vaelin isn't the type to let a debt like this go unpaid," Nyra said, her voice dropping several degrees colder than the freezing night air clawing at the reinforced glass. "A blinded Baron is a wounded predator, and he possesses enough gold to buy the loyalty of half the bounty hunters in the Kardeth Empire. They won't just follow us; they'll hunt us with the literal taste of blood in their mouths."
"I know the man's pedigree," Kael spat, the sound sharp against the floorboards. He didn't turn his head, keeping his gaze locked on the horizon. "He doesn't want the girl back because of some twisted affection. He wants her back so he can skin her alive in the town square as a bloody warning to anyone else who dreams of biting the hand that owns them. We've painted a massive target on our backs, Nyra. On us, on the kids, and on this beautiful pile of scrap we call a ship."
Nyra glanced toward the closed door of the cabin where Lysara lay, her expression unreadable in the flickering amber light of the instrument panel. "She won't survive a second time, Kael. If they catch her, death would be the kindest thing they offer. We can't just run; we have to vanish. We need to take her further into the Gray Zones than we've ever dared to go—into the places where the maps end and even the Empire's reach falls short.
Up on the top deck, Arin and Mira were putting on a masterclass in pretending everything was fine, though the act was as flimsy as a rusted hull. They were polishing brass valves with a frantic intensity, their hands vibrating with a tremor that didn't come from the thrumming engines beneath their feet.
"You're rubbing that pipe so hard it's going to melt into a puddle, you absolute moron. Should I give the two of you some privacy, or are you planning on taking that vent out for a candlelit dinner first?" Mira's voice cut through the wind, jagged and sharp, trying desperately to find its usual coat of acid. "Are you trying to buff out your guilty conscience, or is this just a new peak for your stupidity?"
Arin didn't look up. He kept his head down, shoulders hunched against the biting cold of the upper currents. "I'm trying to keep this bucket of bolts from falling out of the sky, you pint-sized brat. If this valve seizes up, we drop like a stone, and then you won't have to worry about my idiocy ever again."
"Oh no, what a tragedy," Mira shot back, flicking a grease-stained rag directly into Arin's face. "The whole world would mourn for Arin: the boy who talked faster than his brain could leak, the legend with a heroic talent for nearly pissing his pants the second a woman looks at him sideways."
Arin ripped the rag from his face, a scathing remark about the state of Mira's teeth already halfway up his throat. But the words turned to ash before he could spit them out. In his mind's eye, the lantern light was still cutting through the harbor fog, illuminating those bloody fingerprints and those hollow, haunted eyes on the pier.
"That... that woman," Arin said, his voice cracking slightly before he could pull the mask of bravado back into place. "That was something else. That wasn't just some Soryn pickpocket getting caught in a bad spot."
Mira stopped. The rag in her hand went limp. For a fleeting second, the foul-mouthed street urchin vanished, leaving behind nothing but an eleven-year-old girl who had looked into a darkness that no amount of sarcasm could brighten. She stared into the void beyond the railing, where the clouds churned like gray ghosts.
"She did it herself," Mira whispered, and for once, there wasn't a trace of malice in her tone. "That old bastard was blind. She tore herself out of there. God, Arin... I didn't know a person could be that... that broken, and still be made of iron."
Arin swallowed hard, forcing a dry, hollow huff that was a poor excuse for a laugh. "Yeah. She's almost as tough as you are when you're fighting over the last crust of stale bread."
Mira glanced at him, and for a heartbeat, a raw understanding flickered between them. The humor returned, but it was thin and brittle—a sheet of paper stretched over a deep, dark abyss.
"Shut your damn mouth and get back to scrubbing, you gutter-rat," Mira snapped, punctuating the sentence with a kick to Arin's shin. This time, however, the blow lacked its usual sting; it was almost a tender gesture, a way of anchoring each other to the deck.
Far below in the cabin, Lysara soared further away in her bird-dream, but the low, bone-deep growl of the airship's engine remained—a constant reminder that the world was still waiting for her. And that world was blood-stained, ravenous, and closing in fast.
Kael threw his weight against the wheel, the ship banking hard as the timbers groaned and shrieked in protest, finally leaving the shimmering, gilded coasts of Olyndra in their wake. Ahead lay the Gray Zone, a jagged expanse of no-man's-land that official maps dismissed as a void, but which smugglers and outcasts called home.
"Setting course for the Canyon of Sand-Teeth," Kael grunted, mopping a river of sweat from his forehead with a grease-stained sleeve. "There's a gods-forsaken settlement there called Rustpeak. If anyone can hide us and that girl, it's those outlaws. The Kardeth cruisers won't dare drop into those narrow crevices; the crosswinds would rip their wings off before they even caught a glimpse of our tail."
Nyra nodded grimly, her fingers flying over the pressure gauges as she monitored the straining boiler. "It's a gamble, Kael. The people in Rustpeak would sell their own mothers for a pouch of tarnished silver if the price was right. But right now, Baron Vaelin's wrath is the deadlier bet."
Up on the top deck, Arin and Mira could feel the shift in the world. The airship began its descent, and the crisp sea air turned into a shimmering, oven-hot haze thick with red dust. The canyon walls began to rise around them like the gargantuan, blood-stained molars of a buried titan.
"Look at that absolute dump," Mira remarked, leaning over the railing and spitting with pinpoint accuracy toward the cluster of shacks huddled at the canyon floor. "Do you think those hicks get offended if they see people who aren't their own cousins? That place looks like incest is the only hobby they haven't made illegal yet."
Arin let out a dry huff, rubbing grit out of his stinging eyes. "Don't be like that. I bet they're perfectly lovely people, provided you don't use words with more than two syllables or show them a mirror. They'd probably mistake it for dark sorcery and try to burn you."
"I'm betting they've got more toes than teeth between the lot of them," Mira continued, trying to force a laugh at her own jab, but the sound withered in her throat, sounding more like a rattle than a giggle.
Arin leaned his elbows on the rail, looking down at the squalid tents and rusted metal lean-tos of Rustpeak—a town held together by scrap iron and pure desperation. Then, he glanced back toward the hatch leading to the hold. He knew the woman down there was surfacing; the heavy, velvet shroud of the Black Sigh didn't last forever.
"Let's go down and check on her," Arin said, his voice dropping into a register of seriousness that felt alien coming from him. "I think she's waking up."
Mira stopped, her soot-streaked forehead wrinkling into a frown. For once, she didn't fire back a caustic insult. She looked at Arin, and for a fleeting second, her eyes held something that didn't belong to a foul-mouthed street urchin. It was the raw, unshielded vulnerability of a child who had just seen the world's ugliest face.
"Arin," Mira whispered, casting a cautious glance around the deck to make sure they were alone. "I know she's tough, and I know she nearly tore that guy's head off... but do you think she'd get mad if I just... hugged her? On the pier, she looked like no one had ever held onto her just for... just for the sake of being kind."
Arin found himself speechless, the witty retort he was searching for dying in his throat. He looked at Mira, who was clenching a small, uncharacteristically clean hand into a tight fist. He wanted to warn her that Lysara might bite her nose off or simply shatter into a thousand pieces if touched. Instead, he just gave a slow, somber nod.
"Let's go see. But let her wake up on her own terms first."
Down in the cramped cabin, the soft, drug-induced embrace of the Black Sigh was beginning to fray at the edges. Lysara's bird-dream was fracturing. The sky, once pure and limitless, was turning a heavy, leaden gray. The feathers on her wings suddenly felt like solid lead, and the wind no longer smelled of ozone and freedom, but of scorched oil and the Baron's soured wine. The weight of reality returned—the crushing, bed-sinking humiliation that dragged her down from the clouds and back into her own skin.
Lysara thrashed her head against the thin pillow, a low, agonizing rasp escaping her throat.
"No..." she whispered, her first word spoken without the filter of the narcotic sleep. "Don't... touch me."
She forced her eyes open, the dim cabin light stinging her pupils. Two figures stood in the shadows of the cramped space. One was a tall, gangly boy who looked like he desperately wanted to be anywhere else, and the other was a small, bedraggled girl whose eyes were wide and filled with an emotion Lysara couldn't quite name.