'...better to die with a dice in your hand than in someone else's.'

Lasura jolted awake at the sound of thunder that shook the rocks above him. A quick glance at the surroundings pulled him out of the dream and reminded him where he was. White rocks, cold floor, freezing wind that whistled as it passed through dagger-edged cracks and crevices of the mountain. Powdery white sand stained with the promise of death that clung to his face, his hands. A breeze that carried the scent of the ocean from somewhere south, along with a hint of spice and rotting dead animals from the harbor.

The White Desert, near the Samarran border.

Not, to his disappointment, the lush, green highlands of Cakora in his dream just now. Not that time when his father was allegedly alive, well, and still Salar. Not that day when he had said those words.

The dream had been a fragment of his memory, a revisit to a hunting trip gone wrong with his father. It wasn't the first time what happened that afternoon replayed itself in his dream. You didn't forget a day like that easily, not even as a story told in taverns, not, especially, if you'd lived it.

It sure made an exciting story––the Salar going after a bear three times his size empty-handed. People loved that tale about their Salar, and Jarem had insisted he wore the pelt often to public ceremonies as a reminder. The truth was, he hadn't really gone after the bear. What happened was a combination of chance and bad calls that had them trapped between the beast and a cliff at their backs that day. The bear itself was also only twice their size, not three times, and his father did have several blades on him, if small.

No one had tried to set the record straight, however. No one had bothered. It was beside the point.

The point, if you weren't trying to be pedantic, was that he had chosen to fight, not flee.

Lasura could still recall his father's face as he went for the beast, the snarl he'd made as he pulled out the dagger strapped to his boot, the firm, deliberate placement of his foot that made a territorial animal back up a step. He remembered his own cowardice and indecision too, how his weight had nailed him to the ground the whole time, how the possibility of his father being mauled to death had numbed his hands and feet, rendering them useless when they could have done something. He also remembered the discovery of what he was made of, how far that was from the man he called father, and the lesson given afterward.

'It's always better to die with a dice in your hand than in someone else's,' the Salar had said later that evening, eyes fixed on the bear he was skinning as attentively, as respectfully, as when he was trying to kill it. 'If you think you can't win in any case, at the very least try to choose your own death and take the son of a bitch with you.'

A painful memory for all the wisdoms it offered. Painful, because he was certain his hands would still freeze the same way should that day repeat itself in the future.

In the future? He stopped himself at that thought. Would have laughed at it if he could.

Was he not, after all, being trapped once more between a beast and a death sentence? He had come to the White Desert on a whim, had taken Djari out of camp and delivered her conveniently––willingly even––right into the beast's jaw out of nothing but boredom, and now his only choices were to wait for her Khagan to find and kill him for losing her, or to track down the possessed Sparrow for...

For what? To save her out of obligation and principle? To save himself from being stranded in hostile territory by rescuing the only person who could keep him alive? To prove himself, somehow, that there was another purpose to his life other than what his parents had wanted to use him for?

To call himself a hero?

There was––he wouldn't deny it––an ugly comfort in seeing that image of Djari's perfect sworn sword being spat on and set on fire by the possessed version of the man himself, and an immense satisfaction in having a valid reason to hunt him down to save a damsel in distress. He could ride on that and call it living the Heroic Fairytale Prince dream.

He might even settle for that explanation, for the sake of simplicity and convenience.

After all, he had chosen to go for the beast this time, hadn't he? Had even tracked the Sparrow all the way out here, knowing the danger, had he not? It was an improvement from last time––it had to be. He was following the footsteps of his father in this, he was sure of it.

Yeah, if your head was big enough for that garbage to fit.

His father hadn't gone for the bear for such validations or obligations––even his pathetic coward of a son didn't miss it. He'd gone after the bear for something bigger, better than that. Something whose presence Lasura could feel but didn't understand.

He wished he had asked his father what it was. It might solve his most immediate problem, which was what to do when he managed to find the Sparrow and Djari.

'Come after me and I will cut her, piece by piece, until you learn to keep your distance.'

Yeah, about that...

Lasura shuddered at the possibility. Should that man keep his promise, he could end up being the Rashai prince who caused a Bharavi to lose her limbs for having come after her without a solid plan, for reasons he himself didn't even understand to top it off.

Some hero you are.

"Stop sighing like a bored mule and pack your things, Rashai."

A few steps from him, Saya, who had decided to disregard both the Shakshi blood in him and his name––fake or real––altogether for reasons she didn't find necessary to share, appeared with a pack already slung over her shoulder, ready to leave. They had been traveling together by circumstance, him for Djari, her to hunt down the Sparrow as per her father's request. To hunt, yes. Her instructions, he'd overheard, was to kill on sight and bring Djari back safely. He couldn't tell if she would do either. She had good reasons to fail both tasks, especially the latter.

"What's going on?" he asked.

The sky lit up once more, followed by another thunder. Saya jerked her chin toward the sky.

"Hear that?" she said, not forgetting to insert the unconcealed irritation that seemed to always be there whenever she spoke to him. "Storm's coming. Better start climbing before it rains."

"Climb?" They were somewhere in a pass deep in the Djamahari mountain range; apparently the shortest way to cross over to Samarra according to Saya, and where they'd found evidence of the Sparrow having passed through. The narrow path, walled on either side by steep cliffs seemed to him an adequate shelter from the rain.

Saya sighed, either at his ignorance or the complete unawareness of it, or both. "Look around you. We're in a gorge without a single tree."

She spread her arms to the side, waited for perhaps a count of ten, then gave up. "The water will come. This entire pass will flood. It wil––"

Lightning struck again. This time the sky cracked open, and from it piss-size rain came down without a warning. Saya swore and started running toward the cliff, yelling at him to follow, but never once looked back to see if he did.

***

The rain had come down sooner than expected. The storm was closer than she had estimated before they went to sleep. Saya cursed at that miscalculation as her left hand slipped from the rock she was trying to reach, groaning at the pain on her other hand that kept her alive. Anchoring her foot on an edge nearby, she hurled herself up again, this time reaching for a closer slab, and succeeded. It was close, too close. Next time she might not be so lucky.

The crag above and below her was soaking wet and difficult to see. The truth was, they wouldn't be able to climb at all had these white rocks not glow somewhat in the dark. Around her, streams of rainwater branched down the crag like numerous engorged veins rushing to fill the pass below that had already turned into a raging river. A fall from where she was might be survivable if she landed straight into the water, but it would still require an ability to swim she didn't have, and the sheer, dumb luck that the current wouldn't crack her skull open against one of those rocks below.

It was stupid, suicidal even, to have picked this pass during the storm season, but she had been instructed to track and kill Rhykal izr Zoren and bring the Bharavi back safely before they disappear in Samarra without being given a choice in the matter. To make the matter worse, she was strapped unwillingly in the back with the useless baggage of a prince who had decided to come along for the Bharavi without whom she might have caught up with those two by now. It irritated her to no end, on top of everything else that had already been going downhill the moment that Bharavi showed up.

The Royal Baggage could climb––she'd give him that––but without experience and sufficient strength, he was still too far behind and had slipped three times since they'd started. From her calculations, they would never reach the shelter she'd picked in time. Their clothes were already wet, and the desert at night could sometimes freeze water if you left it there long enough. There must be at least four more hours before the sun would come up again to warm the area. They'd freeze to death out here, or die falling off the cliff when one of their limbs stopped working if they didn't reach that shelter in time.

She should have left him behind days ago. She would have, had her father not insisted the prince be kept safe and alive for reasons he hadn't explained. Akai izr Imami didn't always explain things you needed to know. She'd always thought that lack of communication might have been why Za'in izr Husari had turned out to be what he was. She might die here, for the same cause. It was possible.

But he was the father who had raise her, and despite every instinct telling her to keep moving, despite the rain getting heavier by the minute, despite the river roaring louder every time another thunder struck nearby as if to remind her she could be next, she stopped climbing to wait for the prince.

It would be the last time she did so, she promised herself. He would have to improve his rate of climbing, or she would leave him.

That last thought came to her as she looked down and saw, at the same time the Rashai prince did, someone she didn't expect to see in the river but glad she did.

***

There were times, when instinct had made him reach for the right slab of rock, picked the right door, or walked the right path to get somewhere better or safe. Lasura often wondered if it had been some kind of premonition gifted to him by his mother's blood, or just plain, dumb luck as Deo liked to say.

What made him look down toward the gorge below that night, knowing the only way he needed to go was up, didn't feel like luck or instinct. It was the light tap on the shoulder that wasn't there, the pull of some invisible thread he hadn't been aware of, the same unexplained force that had caused lightning to strike in the lair of the Rishi that did.

Or something else closer to heart.

A possibility he wouldn't bet on or give it weight, not now, and not yet anyway.

Not––he'd known it from the start––when it being true was the last thing he needed to happen.

In the river, a hundred paces or so upstream, visible only because of her near-white hair that stood out against the dark, Djari was clinging to a rock on the opposite side of the gorge, struggling to pull herself up and away from the current that tried to drag her under. Above her, up on the river bank, Rhykal izr Zoren stood watching the scene like someone observing an event in the past or the future, or one happening elsewhere. He looked, as if there was time to look, to think, to decide what should be done, as if she wasn't there, hanging on desperately for life, as if none of this had happened at all because of him.

He knew something about that, knew how it felt to be on the receiving end of someone who had to decide whether keeping him alive was a good idea, knew it well enough that the image of Rhykal turning away to start climbing without her tore open a cage and brought to life something he'd kept contained for as long as he remembered.

It took him unaware and all at once––the pooling pressure that materialized in his belly, clawing its way toward his chest to fling itself against his ribcage, the mixture of pain, of rage, of fear all rolled into one he had come to recognize, of years and years of being trampled upon, pushed aside, left to die in some storage as the excess, the outcast, the shameful mistake who was better off dead or not worth saving without some kind of compensation. The thread that kept pulling him towards Djari tightened as the pressure grew in mass, in intensity, dragging him toward somewhere he knew he shouldn't be, twisting his insides as it did. Somehow, he could feel everything from the other side of the gorge––the force of that current clashing against her side, the sharp edges of the rock she was holding onto that bit into her palms, and the pain––the most unbearable of all her pains no river, or rock, or rain could have caused––one that was brought to life by the man she loved and trust the most who'd now decided to leave her behind.

"Rhykal!" The shout came without thought, in a useless, desperate cry that scraped the lining of his throat as it forced its way out. "Hasheem!"

It didn't reach him. The distance was too far, the noises around them were too loud, and the man who needed to hear it wasn't listening. Above them, the rain continued to pour and stab them with thick, icy fingers, numbing every patch of skin it touched. The river roared louder as if in chorus, its current slamming faster, harder into Djari. It would soon rip her off, pull her under, drag her along with it.

Somewhere above him, Saya was yelling something, her words muffled by the wind and rain. "Climb, you idiot," was what he thought she said. "You can't save her."

And perhaps she was right. Perhaps he couldn't. Perhaps what he was thinking of was the most suicidal idea he'd ever come across.

Perhaps there was also a reason why he had been given that dream just hours before.

He thought of his father then, in that forest, on that day. He thought of his limbs feeling numb just like this, of being trapped between the cliff and the beast, of that same crippling feeling not too different from tonight, of reasons he couldn't find back then to move, to do what should be done.

Reasons that began to materialize in his chest now, carried and hammered into shape by a memory of one night in a cave, by the fire. A memory that felt like a lifetime ago.

"One day," she had said. "I will find a place for you. Somewhere without walls, without prejudice, without laws that dictate us to kill each other."

It was then, in the middle of the storm that fell upon the Djamahari, that Lasura began to understand why his father had gone for the bear, and why there had been no fear on his face, no hesitation in the steps he had taken, no regret he could see even if he were to die that day.

My hands, he thought as he let go of the slab he was holding onto, allowing himself to fall into the river, just as it tore her away from the rock, are not numb anymore.

***

A/N: I'm feeling a bit better and could come up with this update now. But I'll be on a diving trip I booked months ago and couldn't cancel between 1-11th October. Not sure if I can get anything done. For the first time in my life I don't feel ready to travel bc I'm so broke,  and I hope things don't fall apart again when I return.  Anyway, just want to thank you guys for still waiting for the update and assure you I will not leave this book unfinished unless I die or something. See you next chapter and if you can, please buy a copy of book 1 on Amazon or leave a review or rate at goodreads. It helps this book be discovered. I need as many reviews as I can get to break the algorithm. Thanks again for your support.