Amina couldn't remember the last time she'd cried. It wasn't fair for her body to betray her now, squeezing her throat and stinging her lips with the taste of salt, anything but helpful. An icky trail dripped from her nose, dirtying her sleeve when she wiped it. She was glad and she wasn't when the tears dried, leaving her eyes sore and her insides bitter and hollow without release.

If she hugged her legs tight enough to her chest, she could hide the way they shook. She buried her head in her knees when soft footsteps tapped behind.

"Amina." Rayanah's voice, hitching at the end, ever pathetic.

Amina refused to move. She barely wanted to listen.

"Amina, look at the stars."

The stars. Her teeth grated against one another, jaw wound so tight it ached. Her emotions chafed underneath her skin, turning wispier when they scraped against the hollow parts until she could only shake. "Go away," she mumbled.

She felt only a trickle of relief when she heard Rayanah comply. Stupidly, she stole a glance over her shoulder to check anyway, though it only earned her an unclear view of Rayanah's darkened retreating back against the night's grey haze. Her cloak swayed, its motion all that detached it from the darkness. The beast she trudged towards was little more than a smudge. Fighting a shudder, Amina looked away.

The dim horizon she faced wasn't much better. So far from the city—far from everything, really—blackness ruled the sky, rich in shade and utterly endless. The stars had multiplied. Their glow was all she had to see by, not that there was much to see. The desert here was just sand and more sand. Nothing breathed. No voices whispered, no people stirred.

The quiet folded over her ears, stifling. It hurt. She swore she could hear every creak in her bones, and every sniffle had a bristled echo. Little sounds were achingly loud, but if she screamed, no-one would hear her.

Were they searching? Would her mother fret and worry? Would Zephyrine dare let anyone venture out this far? Even if they did, this place of empty nothingness was vast. How could they find her?

She would have to get herself out of this. She would find a way back.

Easy, she thought, if only I knew where I was.

Part of her wanted to take off sprinting anyway, to run and run until Rayanah and her massive beastly friend were lost entirely to the darkness, but her limbs were laden with exhaustion. A sliver of sense reminded her that she'd only be more lost that way, and then she really would have nothing to listen to but herself.

She pictured Rayanah astride the beast, sand flying in great chunks as the two of them pursued her tiny, fleeing form. They pounced. Huge feet trampled the vision, burying it under swathes of suffocating darkness, and she jolted back to herself with a chill coiled in the pit of her stomach. No amount of hugging her chest and fixing the horrid, nothing horizon with a glare would make the fear dissipate.

She wasn't afraid of beasts. What she couldn't stop seeing was the other mage's cold expression. Her dark, evasive gaze. Her empty apology. Amina could fight beasts and beastfolk without having to think, but she didn't know what to do with a foe that took the shape of a girl.

Time blurred and the stars wheeled, weaving dotted, unfamiliar patterns, but Rayanah didn't approach again. The later it became, the more it all began to look like some alien world. This was a nightmare in muted colour. Even when Amina finally unfurled enough to lie down on the sand, eyes scrunched shut to block it out as she strained to grasp the sleep her heavy head longed for, all the worst details remained. She covered her ears, but that didn't stop the thump of her heart ribboned through the quiet. The sand scratched her legs and pressed against her bunched shoulder. The air nipped her nose, wielding claws bent on stripping the skin from her fingers. She tossed and turned and shivered and buried her face in the crook of her arm, but there was no comfortable position, no escape from the hard press of reality. If her vigil had been an annoyance, this was utter torture.

Even when she did eventually burrow her way into sleep, it was fitful and scrappy, and squirmed from her grasp the moment the first hazy rays of light began to streak the sky. Ash coated her throat. She groaned, shrinking into a tighter ball with a fist pressed to her forehead, but the horrible weight in her skull remained. She wished the sand was more satisfying to punch.

Her insides twisted uncomfortably and growled when she realised why. There hadn't been time to eat much yesterday, and the more she dwelled on the congratulatory meal she should've had the evening prior, the hollower her stomach felt. With a hiss, she sat up.

Rayanah didn't seem to have moved from her spot beside the beast. She appeared to be talking to it again, fingers combing the grubby fur on its snout, her voice too low to catch. As much as Amina loathed the idea of interacting with her at all, it wasn't like there was anyone else to talk to. She sighed, felt the breath catch in her throat, and made an effort to clear it as noisily as possible to grab the other mage's attention. "Rayanah?"

Rayanah went stiff. She straightened from her crouch in a rush, turning a startled gaze on Amina coupled with an unconvincing smile. "Good morning, Amina."

One sentence in, and Amina's knuckles already ached with the desire to throttle this mad idiot. She scowled. "I don't suppose you have any food to share?"

A wince pulls Rayanah's mouth into a thin line. Rough, short waves of hair thumbled in to hide her face as she turned it aside, gaze returning to the beast. "I don't," she said. "I'm sorry. I left in such a rush that I didn't have time to—"

"I get it," Amina snapped. She pushed to her feet with a huff, not caring how many tangles her fingers yanked at as she dragged them through her sandy curls. She felt dirty all over, sure the grit had crawled inside her very skin, and now she was doomed to starve. This was not a good morning. "We have no food and no water in the middle of the desert. You're a genius. Care to inform me what your plan is exactly other than finding new and exciting ways for us to meet our deaths?"

One of Rayanah's hands returned to the beast's snout while the other swept aside her cloak's edge. It revealed a small flask, no larger than half her forearm, hooked to her waist. "I have some water."

"Incredible." Sarcasm stuck to Amina's tongue.

"And I know where we're going next." Rayanah's voice hardened a little, striking firm enough to clamp Amina's jaw shut. She cast another of those dark, focused stares, the early twilight swathing most of her body's shape in cool shadow. "Or Meag does, but I'll follow her, and you should stay with me."

"I don't have much choice in that," Amina growled under her breath. She eyed the beast warily. "You really trust that thing?"

Rayanah's expression softened, giving rise to a more real smile. "I trust the one who told me to trust her." She waved a hand. "Come over here."

Amina dug her heels in. "Why should I?"

A sigh sagged Rayanah's shoulders. Watching her was confusing: though her stare pierced and took the knived shape of a threat with startling ease, these cracks in her composure were gaping, her body language slipping from bold confidence to timidity so swiftly it was difficult to tell which was the mask. The two sides wrestled as warring tides in Amina's mind, slickening her grip on her anger. She disliked the feeling. It left her caught adrift until her only raft was the coarse itch of the unfamiliar, her skin taut with wrongness.

"I don't blame you for hating me." Rayanah rubbed at one arm, gaze still anxiously pacing the horizon over Amina's shoulder. "I deserve it"—her voice grew tight—"but you're going to have to trust me a little. I swear on my life I don't want you to get hurt."

That could be true, but it offered little comfort. If she kept making such stupid choices, Amina was going to get hurt either way. She barely resisted the urge to say as much and settled for folding her arms instead, hoping the sentiment showed on her face.

"We have to be allies," Rayanah added, words quickening as if desperation were a thick tide shoved into each one. "Please. Come closer."

At least the whole of Amina could agree that Rayanah was mightily annoying. If only to put an end to the dramatic scene, she dragged herself over, ankles feeling like they carried weights. Wariness thrummed through her as she neared the beast, and she made an effort to skirt around so that Rayanah stood between her and it.

Rayanah made a useless shield; she stepped aside immediately, moving to the beast's side. Her hand traced a shaky trail around its small, twitching ear. It grumbled and shuffled its forefeet, shifting an inch nearer to her, but her focus was on Amina. "Closer," she said.

Amina's fists curled. Her heart had sped up, heating her blood. Jaw clenched, she shook her head.

"It's okay," Rayanah said gently, as if those simple words healed the entire situation. She straightened, her fingers curling more firmly into the beast's fur, uneven black locks mussed in a similar shaggy style to the creature. The jewels embedded above her eyes had never looked more out of place. She dipped her chin, gaze steady. "Hold your hand out."

Those jewels winked, reflecting the first specks of daylight. Discomfort itched at Amina's skin as if they were additional eyes that watched. "You want me to touch it."

"I want to show you that she isn't the monster you think."

The beast's dark eyes blinked at her slowly. Bones cold, she struggled not to recoil, attention bouncing between it and the messy, barely-recognisable mage at its side. Her own promise echoed in her ears: the one she'd made to Zephyrine, the vow to eradicate all beasts once and for all. She heard hisses and growls, imagined the winged woman's fangs grazing her throat in icy lines, and gave her head another vehement shake, feeling dirty inside and out. The gold medallion strung in her headpiece swung in front of her eyes.

"No," she bit out. They were all monsters, every one. "You're crazy."

The smallest amount of pity tugged at her chest when Rayanah's face fell, but she stamped it out. Rayanah was misguided and delusional and wrong. Whether a born monster masquerading as a mage or an honest girl driven to darkness, she was a fool, and Amina was not. She held up her head, conscious of her jewellery's weight.

"Okay," Rayanah said, resigned. She turned aside. "I can't force you to follow me, either, but I'm asking you to."

With that, she gave the beast a nudge, bending to murmur something else to it that Amina didn't care to listen to. When they started off into the desert, Amina followed. Everything in her screamed not to, but there was no escape out here. She had no other choice.

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