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“Left!” Dreven shouted.

She moved without questioning him. A rift stalker lunged through the space she had occupied. Dreven met it with his knife. The creature twisted with impossible speed, six limbs scraping across the glass as its vertical mouth opened. Dreven drove the blade beneath the lower jaw and turned with the attack, using the creature’s own momentum to throw it aside. Another shape moved behind Kesta. This one she saw herself. She drew the knife Dreven had given her. The stalker came low.

Kesta remembered the training yard. Do not watch the mouth. Watch the shoulders. The creature bunched. She stepped sideways before it sprang and drove the blade toward the softer tissue beneath one eye. The angle was imperfect, but the point went in. Black fluid struck her sleeve. The creature screamed. It did not die. Kesta stumbled backward as it reared.

Dreven appeared beside her and opened its throat with one violent sweep of his claws. For a moment he stood between Kesta and the collapsing animal, fangs fully descended and silver eyes almost black around the widened pupils. The sight should have frightened her. Instead, some profoundly unhelpful part of her remembered kissing him. Dreven turned. His gaze moved over her body.

“Bitten?”

“No.”

“Clawed?”

“I don't think—”

His eyes stopped at her thigh. Kesta looked down. Three shallow red lines cut through the fabric.

“Apparently.”

Dreven’s jaw clenched. The expression would once have made her prepare for an argument. Now she recognized fear trying to become control.

“I can walk.”

He looked toward the storm, then at her leg.

“I believe you.”

The answer surprised her. Dreven moved to her injured side and lowered one shoulder slightly.

“If the leg weakens, use me.”

Kesta almost refused on reflex. Then another stalker called somewhere in the dust. She put her hand on his shoulder. Dreven’s tail curled briefly around the back of her legs—not restraining, merely keeping contact when the storm erased visibility. Together they climbed.

By the time Ash Camp’s outer wall appeared through the dust, Kesta’s lungs burned despite the breathing cloth. Dreven’s breathing had become heavier too, though he continued matching her pace rather than forcing her to move faster. The gates opened just wide enough to admit them.

Keth and two guards pulled them inside before the heavy leaves slammed shut behind them. Sera was waiting. One look at Kesta’s torn trousers brought murder into the healer’s expression.

“Table.”

“It is superficial.”

“Table.”

Kesta sat. Dreven stayed near the wall while Sera cut away enough fabric to examine the claw marks. The scratches were shallow, exactly as Kesta had thought. Apparently that fact did nothing to improve Sera’s mood.

“You walked into a salt storm.”

“I walked back through one.”

Sera looked at Dreven.

He lifted both hands slightly. “I warned her.”

Kesta sighed.

“He did.”

The room became strangely quiet. Dreven turned his head toward her. Kesta met his eyes.