Zev doesn’t say a word. Just keeps staring at me, his expression unreadable, his thumb absently tracing a circle on my shoulder.

“Why were you with him, then?” he finally asks. His voice has gone cold. His hand stills.

Fuck.

“He didn’t know my feelings had changed. I tried to stop him, avoid … touching him, but I-I didn’t try hard enough. I couldn’t admit to myself how I felt about you then, let alone to someone else. What you saw—that was my goodbye to him. He just didn’t know it. I swear by the Tides, I was going to tell you everything when you returned.”

He regards me for a moment before a deep, pained sigh escapes him. He scrubs his hand over his face, shifting onto his back.

“Say something,” I plead. “Is there a path forward for us?” I grab his hand and splay it over my heart, hoping he’ll feel his name in its frantic beat.

He doesn’t draw his hand back, and hope breathes air into my lungs. I rise up on my elbow, tracing each white scar across his chest with the tip of my finger.

He lets me. When I rest my cheek over his heart, he lets me do that, too. I’m completely surrounded by him, and for the first time since I woke shackled in his carriage, my soul finds contentment.

My eyes have nearly drifted shut when he speaks.

“I gave you everything I had, Mayah,” he whispers hoarsely. “I have nothing left.”

I swallow thickly. “Then … then why are you here?”

He sighs, turning his face away as if wondering the same thing.

“I can’t seem to stay away.” A muscle ticks in his jaw. “But I can never trust you again. When I close my eyes, I see you with him. In his arms. On your knees, grief and rage swirling in your eyes. For him. When I thought you were mine.” He swallows hard. “I’ll keep being cruel to you. Pulling you close, then pushing you away. Like I did in the tent.” His voice cracks. “You deserve to be happy, Mayah. Just not with me.”

A tear drops onto his chest, then another.

Zev lets me weep against him until I have nothing left inside me. It’s a strange feeling to lose something, even as it's wrapped tightly around you.

CHAPTER SEVENTY-SIX

“MAYAH!” ZEV’S VOICE IS urgent in my ear, his arms locked tight around me. There’s a low, violent rumbling.

The room trembles. The lantern on the dresser crashes to the floor and shatters.

Zev sits up and brings me along with him.

“Earthquake?” I clutch his bicep as another powerful rumble shakes the bed.

“Earthwielder.”

Zev rises smoothly despite the literal vibrating floor and yanks on a shirt before tossing me one to wear over my nightgown. He frantically rummages in the dresser before turning back to me. “Let’s go.”

Hands intertwined, we exit into the hallway. Torches rattle in their holders. Zev bangs on every door we pass. Sura’s door doesn’t open, and I unlace my hand from his and slam my fists against the door.

“Sura!” I shout. “Tumaas!”

The floor shakes violently beneath my bare feet.

“There’s no time,” Zev growls. He reaches for me, but the building rocks again, and I stagger to the floor.

Sura’s door flings open, revealing a wide-eyed and bare-chested Tumaas. Behind him is a tiny woman with disheveled chin-length blonde hair. Mona.

“Where is Sura?” Panic seeps into my voice.

“She said she was with you!”

Tides drown me. Sura was with me—she’d planned to spend the night in my room. Where had she gone after leaving me with Zev?

“We need to go. Now,” Zev bites out. He reaches for me again when—

The building rattles, an earth-shattering crack freezing the blood in my veins. I crash backwards. Tumaas topples onto me, crushing my lungs. Vaguely, Mona’s sharp yelp echoes through the din.

The floor splits open in a jagged chasm as giant roots erupt from the ground like massive snakes.

Wood shudders beneath me as it splinters. I can’t see Zev anymore.

The ghost of my name is on his lips, shouted again and again, growing fainter and fainter, through the rumbling around us.

Wooden beams groan and crack overhead.

Dust shakes from the ceiling.

And people scream.

I don’t hear my name anymore.

“Zev!” I shout. He was on the other side of the crack that rent the floor in half. “Ze—”

We plummet.

My stomach jumps into my throat.

Tides save us.

The building is splitting in two.

“Shit, shit, shit, shit,” Tumaas mutters in my ear. He slings his arm around my waist, the other arm hooked into the doorway. “Mona!” he shouts over his shoulder, but the sound is lost in the destruction.

My arms tighten around Tumaas.

I brace for death.

Time slows. We fall for hours, though it must be only seconds before there’s a loud, bone-rattling boom.

The air rushes from my lungs.

My head rears up and slams back into the crumbling floor.

The building crushes us in a shower of broken stones and cracked beams. Tumaas takes the brunt of it, shielding me with his massive body, though we’re lucky we’re near the door frame.

An eternity passes before the shaking stops. Tumaas staggers to his knees, knocking away debris. “Mona!” he shouts. “MONA!”

It’s dark and suffocating. With my every breath, dust invades my throat, until it feels like I’m breathing through sandpaper.

“…in here…” Mona’s voice is faint, but close.

Tumaas hefts jagged pieces of wood and broken furniture, each movement sending fresh dust floating through the air. He manages to crawl through the chaos around us.

I cast out my powers, searching for moisture, but there’s not enough to summon. Eyes clenched, I try again and again, but it’s fruitless.

Rocks scrape together nearby. It’s pitch black.

“Stand back, Mayah.” Tumaas’s muffled voice calls through the stone. Loud thuds, more scraping, and then he pulls free.

“Come on, love,” he says, climbing through the remains of his room, Mona’s arms slung around his neck. “I’ve got you.”

“Are you hurt?” I rasp, coughing through the dust coating my throat as I crawl closer. My knees and palms are shredded.

“I think my leg is broken.” Her voice is steady. A good sign.

My hands glow, the light glinting off the faint sheen of sweat coating Mona’s forehead. I set my palms to her leg, and swiftly heal the break.

“Better?”

She nods, breathless. “You’re awfully handy in a crisis, Mayah.”

I don’t respond. My stomach is twisted in knots.

“Did you see anyone else?” I ask Tumaas.

“No. I’m sorry,” is his soft reply.

My heart twists in my chest. No, no, no.

“Zev!” I shout into the crumbling darkness.

There’s no answer.

“ZEV!” Again and again, I call out his name.

“Enough, Mayah,” Tumaas says, his voice hoarse from the dust that’s likely invaded his lungs. “He might already be digging his way out. We need to do the same.”

I repeat his words in my mind, holding onto them like a promise as Tumaas digs out a path through broken stone.

I lose sense of how long it takes. Just a mindless loop of climbing, hefting, shoving. My hands are scraped raw, knees aching and bloody, every step sending pain lancing up my calves. When we stop at brief intervals to rest, I alternate healing myself, Mona, and Tumaas, but not extensively. I need to save my reserves—we don’t know what awaits us at the surface.

We finally emerge, atop a mountain of rubble, the camp sprawled below.

Or what remains of it.

It’s pure, utter chaos. We’re under attack.

Buildings leveled, screaming people, thick coils of smoke.

Roots clawing through the ground, electricity crackling in the air.