Chapter 58 — The Road to Revenak
The wind finally remembered how to breathe.
It crossed the blackened ridge in slow, cooling sighs, combing ash from the dune where the Arrowhawks had fallen. Feathers lay like burnt paper. Talon furrows scored the sand in long, ugly arcs. Far enough from the heat-scoured ground to spare their lungs, J-Crew built a small fire and let the quiet settle.
Sera worked a travel pot over the coals, coaxing something kind from rations—bone broth thickened with millet, a handful of desert herbs, a curl of dried citrus peel. The smell—pepper, cumin, a faint sweetness—softened the edges of the night. Ember dozed beside her with his muzzle on his paws, silver fur singed at the tips but already gleaming again in the firelight.
Mara sat with her shield propped against one knee, turning the strap one notch tighter and then back, a habit that kept her hands busy when her mind refused to rest. Lysa cleaned her blades in silence. The sand was still warm under their boots.
Blake poked a charred hawk-feather with a stick. "Add 'almost became breakfast' to the list," he said. "Right under 'nearly got turned into a torch by a lion with wings.'"
Mara snorted. "You just don't like anything that fights back."
"Correct. Prefer my enemies slow and very punchable."
"Eat," Sera said, ladling stew. "Before your jokes start to taste like them."
Across from the fire, Tamara sat close to John and unwound blood-damp linen from his ribs. He was half reclined against a folded cloak, breath measured, eyes dull with pain he refused to name. The gash across his side had knitted under Sera's light, but the flesh still looked angry—deep enough to remind him he wasn't made of iron.
Tamara's touch was steady. "Hold."
He exhaled, held. She laid fresh bandage, fingers pressing just long enough to feel the heat of his skin. A strand of pale hair fell forward; the fire put a halo on it. She didn't notice.
"Why do you push yourself so hard," she said softly. Not accusation. Not quite forgiveness, either.
"I didn't have a choice," John murmured.
One corner of his mouth twitched. "You're shaking again."
She stilled. "No, I'm—"
"Your hands." His voice stayed gentle. He grabbed her hands to steady them.
Her eyes flicked up, frost and green even in the dark. Whatever answer she'd planned thinned into a breath. She tied the last knot with a quick, neat pull. "Eat," she said, quieter than before. "Then sleep. I won't argue with a corpse."
"Yes mam." He sat up with a slow wince.
Blake ambled over and took the bowl Sera offered like it was the first kindness he'd seen in a year. He slurped once, blinked, and announced to the night, "I hereby appoint Sera Head of Culinary Affairs. Any objections?"
Mara raised a brow. "It's good."
Lysa nodded without looking up. "Keep cooking."
Sera flushed, pleased in spite of herself. "It's just broth."
"Then marry me to broth," Blake said.
"Eat," three voices answered at once.
They did. The first mouthful turned down the volume on pain. The second made it possible to speak again without clenching. John finished half the bowl and let the heat sink into the ache under his ribs. Ember bumped his knee and got the last chunk of meat for his trouble, chewing with clear, smug approval.
When they'd scraped the pot clean and set the bowls aside, John pushed to his feet. The motion cost him. He pushed the pain aside.
"We're not heading back to the city," he said. "Not yet."
Mara looked over. "Why?"
"Too far, and we're held together with string." He glanced east, where the dunes climbed into a darker seam of stone. "There's a place to rest that's closer.
"What place?" Lysa asked.
"Old friends," John said. "A temple."
Blake's head came up. The grin he wore was all ruin and warmth. "No way."
John didn't look at him. "Way."
Tamara folded her arms, studied him. She didn't ask for the name. She already knew it. Under the hush of the dune wind, some of the tightness left her shoulders.
Mara considered the horizon, then nodded once. "We move at first light."
"Good," John said
The fire sank to coals. Lysa took first watch, a shadow that breathed. Sera tucked a blanket over John without making a ceremony of it; Tamara didn't move when he drifted sideways and found her shoulder for a pillow. Ember stretched his small weight against John's thigh and exhaled like a bellows emptying.
The desert finally slept.
Dawn painted the sand in sheets of brass and pale rose. They broke camp without hurry but without waste: tents rolled, straps checked, water skins weighed in the palm to guess the day. When they set out, the sun was a coin on the lip of the world and the air still cool enough to forgive.
They walked.
The quiet did what quiet always did when you let it—settled in, made a home between footsteps. Blake whistled under his breath until Mara threw him a look; he turned the whistle into a hum, then into silence. Sera trailed her fingers along the low spines of scrub that somehow found water where there was none. Lysa's eyes mapped everything: sky lanes, fault lines in sand, the far glimmer where heat pretended to be water.
Ember scouted ten paces ahead, darting left and right to investigate interesting smells, returning each time with the importance of a messenger who had discovered absolutely nothing and was proud of it anyway.
Tamara walked beside John, cloak quiet. "Tell me the truth," she said, after the morning had aged into heat. "Can you make it without stopping?"
"Yes."
"And if I asked Sera?"
"I'll be okay."
Tamara's mouth curved. "You're impossible."
The dunes softened to stone. Sand ran out like spilled grain into flat shelves of pale rock, veined with old mineral and newer carvings. They passed the first of the markers at noon—a crescent-blade monolith lying half-buried, rune lines faintly lit where the sun touched them.
Mara slowed. "These wards are active."
"Good," John said.
The second marker stood straight. The third formed a gate with another, two crescents kissing at the tips across a path paved in slabs that heat couldn't warp. Between the slabs, water threaded—a thin, impossible ribbon, clear and cold.
Sera stared. "Here?"
"Here," John said.
The path curled up the shoulder of a low mesa. When they crested it, the temple lay below—no ruin, no ghost. Revenak rose from the rock like it had grown there, not been built; its lines were spare and perfect, its stone too pale to be anything but carved moonlight. Runes breathed in the seams. Wind chimes hung where the breeze knew to pass and turned air into sound.
Lysa stopped walking altogether. "This wasn't on any map."
"It's not for maps," John said. He didn't raise his voice; the stone seemed to carry it anyway. "Keep close. And let me speak first."
Children played in the lower court, their laughter thin as glass. Four guards in grey leathers watched from the terrace—calm, not soft. The moment the closest saw the strangers, he lifted a hand—not to summon blades, but to shade his eyes.
His expression didn't change when he noticed John. It deepened. He said something under his breath and started down the steps at a trot.
Tamara flicked John a glance. He shook his head a fraction: not yet.
The gate guardians met them at the arch. They wore no crest, only the sigil cut into the lintel above—an old oath given shape. Their eyes took in faces, weapons, the way they moved. Their attention returned to John and stayed there.
The leader bowed—not deep, not servile. Respect made simple. "Welcome back."
John inclined his head. "Thanks."
His gaze slid to Ember. The small bear straightened, as if reminded he was, in fact, magnificent. The man's mouth softened. "And welcome to you, little light."
Ember huffed, pleased.
Behind John, Mara, Lysa, and Sera exchanged looks that said the same thing in three dialects: what is this place, and why do they act like they've known you for years.
"Come," the guard said. "He'll want to see you."
They crossed the first court, water whispering along the stone at their feet. The air was cooler inside the walls, washed by channels that fed small gardens and a square where pale trees held leaves like coin-silver. The scars of survival still lived in the details—new mortar in an old seam, a pillar whose twin had not been rebuilt yet—but the whole was clean, deliberate, alive.
Steps rose to the inner terrace. At the top, a figure waited in the shadow of the arch.
He came down into the light without hurry.
Tall. Spare. Hair bound back with a strip of linen, the color of old bronze. Lines at the corners of his eyes that had nothing to do with age and everything to do with squinting into too much sun, too much poison, too much grief. When he smiled, it rearranged his face in a way time could not teach.
"About time you visited," he said. Voice like smoked tea. "I thought I'd have to poison half the desert to get your attention."
Blake's laugh cracked out of him, raw and delighted. "Rin, you bastard."
Mara blinked—name, not context—Lysa went still, Sera's mouth formed a silent oh.
John stopped three steps from the man who had taught him how to turn slow death into medicine and worse things into knives.
"Rin," he said.
"John," Rin answered.
He looked at Tamara next and nodded once, as if to a queen who'd lent her crown to the wind.
His gaze flicked over the bandage under John's cloak, the slowed way he held himself, the shape of the crew at his back. "You look like crap."
"It's not that bad," John said.
"Liar." Rin's eyes warmed. "Come inside."
He stepped aside.
The Revenakians on the terrace had gathered now—men and women who moved like students with good teachers, six children weaving between their legs, wide-eyed but unafraid. None of them spoke John's name. They didn't have to. Recognition lived in how they made space, in how their shoulders eased, in how their hands didn't go near blades.
Tamara shifted closer until her arm brushed John's. She didn't move away as she supported him.
John set his palm on Ember's head once, like an oath he didn't need to say aloud.
Then he climbed the last three steps toward the arch, toward Rin, toward whatever came next.