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" Dear reader,
IF IT FEELS LIKE A TRAP,
YOU'RE ALREADY IN ONE"
—YI HELD HER BREATH AS THE SQUALLERS SENT THEIR SKIFF FORWARD.
She pulled the ragged cloth that would serve as a shawl tighter around her body, as though trying to ward off the ghosts of the volcra that once haunted these sands. It was quiet, and the sun shone like an infinite beacon of protection, yet it offered Yi no sense of security. She could feel everyone else's anticipation and discomfort, and beneath it all, the only thing that filled her thoughts was the acute awareness that there must have been thousands of bodies beneath the ground below them, reduced to mere sawdust. Would she find Harshaw's skull? Would she find whatever remained of Zoya's found family? Would she find the Darkling's bones, dark with the promise of the evil that had once lived?
No, Yi reminded herself, the Darkling is gone.
But he wasn't, not really. If he truly was, they wouldn't be here.
"They're listing left," Yi heard Zoya murmur as the young Squallers sent another gust of wind towards the sails of the skiff, kicking up sand into the air.
"They're doing their best, Zoya," Nikolai countered quietly.
"I watched my friends die on these sands. The least these young dullards can do is learn to pilot a half-empty skiff across them," Zoya growled, her fury barely contained.
Yi looked back and placed a hand on her friend's shoulder. The latter stiffened, her icy gaze hardening. Yi gave her a smile that she hoped came off as reassuring but it felt more like a false promise rather than anything.
"What is that?" Nikolai asked. Yi looked over at him as he squinted at the horizon.
She followed his gaze and saw a dark blob up ahead, like a massive shadow on the bleak sands, but there was nothing there to block any remote scrap of sunlight. "A lake?" she offered hesitantly, but even as the words left her mouth, she didn't even believe herself.
"No," Yuri breathed. "A miracle."
Yi stifled her irritation as they drew closer. Her eyes widened as it became more and more evident as to what it was; a black disk of what resembled obsidian, flawlessly rounded as though by the hands of a talented jeweler, glimmering underneath the summer sun as though it was, indeed, a lake of darkness.
An excuse for a village made up of tents and half-hearted shelters were littered around it, dark banners flying in what little wind there was, making Yi's chest tighten. The sun in eclipse.
The Darkling's symbol.
"This is the place where the Starless One fell," Yuri said, almost triumphantly, as though every mystery in the world had been solved, as though everything in his life had fallen into perfect place.
