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Alora frowned and bit back the countless words racing through her mind. “Then what are you doing out here, alone. And you sent Ghost away?”

Garrik swallowed. “I have a debt to settle.”

“I could burn it closed.”Alora nibbled on her cheek, watching him.

The scratch of his torn tunic held firm against his neck. The gash hadn’t stopped bleeding since she punctured his skin nearly an hour before.

Garrik knelt by the calm, fresh stream, its water trickling slowly around smooth pebbles and forming gentle rapids. With a twist, the fabric released pink water and washed down the stream before he pressed it to his neck once more.

“Strange,” was all he said. Eyes pinched and focused on thick dark lines of crimson across his empty hand. Mouth in a thin line, drawing his fingers together, the blood swirled and spread as he examined them.

“What’s strange?”

“This bleeds like a mortal wound. One this shallow should not bleed so much.” Garrik stretched his neck, allowing the fabric to press firm.

Alora crouched, running another ripped shard of fabric through the stream before stretching out her arm, offering it to him.

They made a fire next. A glowing orb of white flames and glistening sparks hovered through the air and fell into a stacked pile of branches that Garrik had collected. The glow illuminated both of them, casting dancing light across their skin. And in that dancing light, Alora’s eyes nervously roamed from the wound to a long, raised ridge nestled on the side of his neck.

“Did that one bleed the same?”

Garrik’s eyes flicked down as if he could see the old scar himself. “That one killed me.”

She crossed her arms. “Yes, because you look entirely like a walking corpse.”

“Why do you suppose I can transform into shadow? I am an entity, clever girl. I am not real.”

“Funny,” she mocked, and he smirked. But his eyes revealed something different. Garrik appeared nervous, scanning the fire, the stream, and trees around them. “Are you worried?”

“Of course not.” His grin turned wolfish as the fabric released another long stream of crimson down the lump of this throat. But she could see that sudden flash in his eyes when it reached inside his leathers.

Garrik’s head pivoted over his shoulder, gazing to Alynthia’s dim light cast in the sky and cold peaks of the mountain. When his eyes met hers again, urgency rushed over his features. “We should move. There is not much time left.”

Again, he said it. ‘Not much time left.’

But time for what?

“You’re still wounded. We shouldn't be going anywhere.”

“I have fought countless days while clinging to death’s door. A stroll in the dark will not kill me. Come.” Garrik rose to his feet before she could protest.

Her eyes widened in horror as he pulled a charred stick from the fire, its ends smoldering with glowing embers, trailing smoke in the movement to his neck. His bleeding wound sizzled against the blazing wood, and he held it there with eyes sealed shut before a pained hiss matched the searing noise. From a small saddle bag, Garrik wrapped a long cloth several times around his neck before they began moving.

Every step. Every tree they passed. His eyes focused forward in silence as if he was tethered to something far ahead.

“Where are we going?” Alora shuffled around a tree branch that Garrik held aside for her.

“Just ahead, through those trees.” The branch snapped back, and he found himself beside her.

The edge of the forest was mere steps ahead.

Blackened silhouettes of jagged pines were stark against a crystalline glow. Shards of prisms and light glares cast rays through the trees like the dancing auroras from what she imagined Evanoran—Kingdom of Crystal and Glow—would look like. As Garrik’s rippling figure, monstrous in Dragon’s armor, emerged from the trees in front of her, the light seemed to brighten, then swallowed him whole in a way a dying star faded.

She knew her eyes were reflecting every burst of light and unbelievable spectrum of color when she, too, emerged from the darkened forest. A sharp sting crossed behind her eyes from the sheer beauty of the glorious shine. Before her, a meadow pulsated with the magnificence of diamonds and crystals and gemstones.

Only, they weren’t stones.

Flowers.