Page 30 of The Garnet Daughter (The Viridian Priestess #3)

Chapter

Twenty-Two

I catch a brief shadow of the Viathan ship’s exterior as I’m ejected from its surface. Then nothing but the purple hues of the sky and blackness of the ground below.

My stomach sinks as my vessel spins, the world a blur around me. The pressure inside the pod pushes hard against the backrest and forces me forward, the straps digging into my skin with each flip.

The panel flashes red and a warning alarm blares so loud, it is all I hear over the deafening wind against the metal vessel. Every nerve in my body fries as everything happens all at once, my mind sucking itself away from rational thinking, leaving only survival instincts behind.

I force my eyes open, the buttons all around me blinking in nonsensical patterns.

I’m not familiar with escape pods, my only information from passing conversations with August about Viathan ships, but I’m almost certain this thing is malfunctioning. I’m shook with more turbulence than any time I have flown with August.

Something must be wrong.

August sent me to safely land while he kills the intruders on the ship and will retrieve me after, but there will be nothing to retrieve if I crash into the ground.

And then all at once, I am forced into an upright position, the pod correcting itself so fast the muscles in my neck strain and threaten to tear.

The alarm and lights shut off so abruptly, my ears ring in the same pitch, replacing the rhythm.

The spinning world is now a cloudy mauve horizon, and when I lean to view my landing spot, I can see my pod’s lights reflecting off the fast-approaching sand below.

I brace myself, tucking my arms close to my body, hoping the pod slows and I am not ripped apart in a fiery crash.

Cosima’s pull is sucking me back down and refusing to let go with so much pressure, I am not sure if I have taken a single breath since disconnecting from the ship.

The pod slams hard into the sand, the sound all around me so earsplitting, it leaves a pounding in my head.

I am alive and I am unharmed.

Dusted-up sand and dirt spiral around my landing spot, whirling in dancing coils.

I stare, forcing myself to realize I am no longer moving. I did not explode or break apart on impact like I assumed I would. The pod in all its crude departure at least held together during the harsh touchdown.

I unbuckle myself and peer out the window, the outside world barely visible still.

The vessel shifts, settling into the sand. I wait, pausing for it to acclimate, but it doesn’t stop.

It’s not settling.

It’s sinking and fast.

August said there was a button to press so he could find me once I landed. They all glow with the same calm blue light except one.

I press my thumb hard into the only yellow button that I can see. Immediately, the air in the pod is sucked upward and my hair pulls as the force from the door ripping off the hinges threatens to take me with it.

I breathe in the dusty grit of the birthlands, peeking my head out into the scorching heat. I’ve landed in a pool of sand, smoother than the surrounding area, large boulders and harsh-looking trees dot the outside ring of the silky pit.

Half the pod has sunk into the ground as if it were viscous water, the windows now darker where the base frames have already succumbed to the sand level.

I press so many buttons in a panic to send my location to August, I lose track of which ones I started with.

The sand starts to trickle into the ledge of the opening, falling to the bottom of my chamber with delicate grains at first, and then in an almost sentient waterfall, filling the base.

I can’t leave without collecting the spell book from the layers already encasing it. I climb to the bottom where it fell and dig, pushing the silky grains, but more replaces them, racing in from above.

The windows are almost completely dark now, the pod turning into a metal tomb.

I excavate with both hands, scooping armfuls of sand, but a groan coming from the side wall startles me. The metal crumples just enough to let more in from the seam. The entire thing is going to crush into itself any moment.

The level is higher than I can dig down in time, the spell book too far to reach.

The walls rumble again as I close my eyes and picture the larger boulders I noticed around the edge of the pit.

With squinted lids and a shallow, gritty inhale, I fold.

My backside plummets onto an uneven, rocky surface, the darkness around me a little blurry as my vision adjusts.

My escape pod buckles, crushing anything inside from the weight of the sand forcing its way in. The lights shine outward into the birthlands, flickering as the sides howl, a prey animal succumbing to its consuming end.

Just as Maestra said it would, sand that eats.

I don’t move from my large orange rock, too afraid the ground around me is just as ravenous. I skim my surroundings, looking for another place to fold farther away but still hesitating.

I pressed every button. Surely one of them sent my landing location to August. I simply have to wait here for him to come find me.

“How did you do that?” An inquisitive woman’s voice from farther up the rocks spooks me.

She squats, perched like a bird, her hair braided but messy. She is only a few years older than I am, but her skin is damaged from the elements, and her dark clothes are bleached at the high points like the men living in the town over.

She hops down from her boulder, pointing a trailing finger from the escape pod then to me. “I watched you in that metal thing, in the sinksand, and then you were . . . there.”

“Sinksand,” I mutter and watch the last of my vessel as it’s swallowed up. Sinking doesn’t cover it. It’s more of a devouring, the grains having a mind of their own.

“Smooth, like a pool, no stone on the surface.” She points to the edge with fingers wrapped in frayed, dirty cloth. “Sinksand. Do not walk.”

The natural line around its perimeter where pebbles and dry flora grows is obvious to her, but in the dim conjunction light, I have to strain to make sure I am well away from it.

“I see it.” I nod my head in an acknowledgment of her warning.

“You are a priestess. That’s how . . .” She juts her chin from the small bump remaining in the sinksand of my escape pod and then to me.

“Do I look like a priestess?”

She examines me, turning her head to the side for so long I shift on my feet, the curve of the boulder making it difficult to balance.

I wonder what she is looking for, what she would see other than the obvious missing veil that would convince her.

I am not poised or refined, a quality I thought Selene embodied naturally until Ferren came to our village and moved the same way.

Even without her priestess clothing, she held herself in the same manner as Selene.

Perhaps it isn’t as obvious to others as it is to me.

The woman seems satisfied with her inspection. “Divine then?”

I don’t answer her, but I don’t need to. She witnessed me fold with her own eyes and there isn’t much I can do to deny that.

“I’m called Calliape.”

She nods in understanding of my caution. “I am Sav. You should not stay here. Others will come.”

“I have to.” If I leave, how will August find me? “And what do you mean, others?”

“Others.” Her tone comes out as a flat warning.

I glance around at the vast landscape I can barely make out in the eclipse light. We are within a grouping of large boulders, but all around us is never-ending orange sand, drenched in purple tones.

She turns her back to me and starts walking away, hopping over rocks with ease.

I step down from my safe spot on the sinksand’s edge and follow after her.

“Wait!” I fight the urge to fold back to where I know I will not be swallowed up.

“Every scrapper in the area saw you fall from the sky. The pod is gone, so there is nothing for them to take but you.”

An unsettling chill runs down my spine despite the intense heat.

“You are very fortunate,” she continues. “But I am very unfortunate. I chose the wrong pod to follow.”

“The wrong pod?” Shock quickens my steps, but she is still striding farther away from me.

“The other is over that ridge.” She weaves through some prickly looking bushes.

I don’t know if I am still in distress or the pressure of the air change is making it harder to process information. So I fold right in front of her, blocking her way.

“What other pod?” I demand.

She gasps and steps back. “I . . . watched your pod fall, another and then the ship that birthed both.”

“The ship? You saw the ship land?”

“Over that ridge.” She points. “Both fell faster than yours, and then I saw orange light beyond the ridge and then smoke.”

I blink so rapidly, as if it will lessen the view of a thick trail of smoke coming up from behind a hill in the distance.

I swallow hard. The ship did not land—it crashed.

“The pod is there too,” she says.

There is only one trail of smoke. I’m instantly hopeful that August put himself in an escape pod because he had to abandon the ship when the First Son soldiers took over the cockpit and he is waiting for me just over that ridge.

“I can show you the way if the scrap is mine. You won’t make it there on your own. Sinksand is not the worst thing between us and there,” Sav proposes.

I could fold right to the ridge and call out to him. But the thought of landing somewhere more dangerous than where my pod settled is enough to make me take her offer.

“Fine,” I confirm. I don’t trust her, but from what she has insinuated, someone much worse could have found me first.

The pod groans from the sandy pool, arching up in a final crumbled mess. The lights flicker just beneath like it’s sinking into deep waters. The ground sputters, and then it’s gone.

My heart sinks again. The spell book is lost inside, filled with sediment and crushed metal. I can’t fold to retrieve it. I would not survive.

“What is lost to the sand is lost forever,” Sav whispers like a prayer.

The path we take is like a dead birthlands version of Frith.

I am used to the incline, to uneven ground, the massive boulders and fallen trees.

But here the heat radiates from below. The sand resists my every step, breaking me out in a layer of sticky sweat and restricting my lungs with its grittiness.

I try to keep up with Sav as she weaves through the harsh terrain. She never checks to make sure I am following, moving with confidence and a knowing of this land that makes me homesick for mine.

As we cross the valley, I can see the trail has turned into a full-on billowing storm of black smoke.

But now that we climb the slope of a small mountain, it is no longer visible, and for some reason, that is scarier than being able to smell the faint odor of metal burning, now blocked by a wall of compressed sand and rocky ground.

Sav wants the scrap from the escape capsule. I remind myself of that whenever my mind starts to think of August still being aboard the ship when it crashed. We are headed to the pod, where August landed safely, I repeat to myself.

I stumble over a rock when a flash of the chaos inside the cockpit shoots to the front of my mind, the scene of violence I saw just before I escaped.

He’s alive. He has to be.

“How long after my pod landed did you see the second?”

“Do not brush against that kind of tree, has thorns. You will drop dead. It wants fertilizer.” She ends each sentence with a labored huff and glances back. “Does it matter how long?”

“Yes, it matters.” Maybe I can grasp at some hope in the details. I step widely around the tree she pointed to, noticing the thin, dark thorns dotting each dry branch.

“I was already close to you when I noticed the other one. The ship was low and smoking.”

“Was it already on fire?” I panic at the new detail she did not mention before.

“We know that it is now,” she deadpans, her voice straining slightly as she jumps from one boulder to another.

She would not be so determined to get to the next pod if there was nothing to salvage. My eyes line with water, unsure whether it’s from the dry air or picturing August crashing into the birthlands or being swallowed up by sinksand like mine was, except he would not be able to fold out of it.

I wasted so much time overthinking how I feel about him and talking myself out of his feelings for me, even when he told me outright he did not see me as a friend.

The truth is, I can’t see him as a friend either.

I should have kissed him when I had the chance.

I wanted to, but I would not allow myself, and now he could be dead.

Even the thought of that makes me want to fall to my knees and let the sob that’s fighting to be set free spill forth.

“You are not tired?” Sav asks me suspiciously.

“No.” I wipe my eyes. Even if I were, I would push myself. I would not stop until I found him.

We finally crest the ridge, a sharp top connecting clusters of boulders all around with many more rocky mountains in the distance.

The drones were leading us here. It’s the terrain we were searching for.

Behind us is as vast and empty as the space between worlds, but here the entire landscape is speckled with rock formations jutting into the sky.

We climb over the peak and then weave down until the large boulders nestled into the ground block some of our view of the other hills. The valley below is shaded in the deep purple of the immense terrain around it.

“There,” Sav says and scrambles to gain purchase on the crumbly path.

An escape pod blinks with faint exterior lights on the next ridge, jammed into rock and sand. I sprint toward it and can’t help the fold my body makes the rest of the way to reach it.

I press my hands against the dirty windows, desperate to look in and see his face. The outside surface is charred and damaged by the harsh landing, but the structure seems intact.

“Please, please,” I chant and skim across to the other side.

The hatch is open, blown off from the inside like mine was.

I can’t help but prematurely celebrate just a little knowing he made it out safely, that we are both alive.

“August? I’m here.”

But when I look inside, it’s empty.

I step back and look around. Maybe he left when the hatch opened and he’s looking for me.

“August!”

And as I fill my lungs to bellow his name again, I notice dark red smudges streaked across the pod’s windows, distinct handprints in the stains and a blood-soaked rock at my feet.