Page 87 of Commanding Scythe and Sky

Maybe you fell in love with a man with no self-preservation instincts, Death seemed to snicker.

My answering growl lodged in my throat.

Something moved before I could retort.

Not for the first time, my eyes swept the horizon in search of an unseen threat. Gooseflesh rippled down my arms, and I forced myself to breathe as my chest tightened—the image of golden irises permanently burned into my retinas.

Impossible.

Demons didn’t roam The Middle…

Did they?

As though answering me, a tingle crept down my back. The pinprick sensation of a hundred brutal gashes pulled at my skin until I rolled my shoulders.

“Somethin’s with us,” Portia observed.

My stomach tightened.

Any number of creatures could lurk inside the shadows. That was why Hazelharbor forbade them in the first place.

You never knew what might be waiting for prey to cross its path beyond the gray.

“Keep moving,” I decided.

There was no telling how long we marched through the shadows. No frame of reference for how far we’d traveled, aside from Portia’s insistence that we drop the gift and rest for agonizing stretches of time.

“The rule of thumb among walkers,” she explained curtly when I finally demanded her reasoning, “is that recovery takes two to three times as long as you spend holding the realm between. Walk too long and your body will put you down before your enemy does.”

“Burnout?” I gasped as she offered me a steel water bottle.

I was still drinking greedily when she lifted one unconcerned shoulder.

“Kind of. You only reach burnout if you exert your magic until the well runs dry. Is your well barren?”

I screwed on the cap, reached inward, and probed my reserves before shaking my head.

“Then you’re not teetering on burnout. Burning out is like shooting yourself in the foot. It takes days to recover, but you know that better than most. Reagan’s predecessor calculated that we can hold the shadows for roughly thirty minutes before the cost becomes too high.”

She paused.

“Umbratime will feel like a lifetime, though.”

“Umbratime?”

“Shadow time.” Concern pinched her brows. “Did Commander Amadeus teach you nothing?”

My flinch earned a grimace and an eye roll.

“Sorry. I merely expected⁠—”

“We only had a few weeks to train, and he⁠—”

“Wasn’t a walker,” she concluded.

Clearing her throat, Portia took the bottle and slid it into a sleeve on her pack.

“Well. We’ll do what we can with what we have.”