The view beyond the window was breathtaking.
Below a sky blazing crimson with the dying sun, sand-colored dunes rolled on without end. From them came a dry, rasping wind.
That’s the desert.
She had been told the village sat at the desert’s edge — she simply hadn’t expected it to be this close, as if she could reach out and touch it.
Kasha stood at the window for a long moment, unable to look away.
The desert was something altogether different from the sea or the forest. Desolate, vast, bare — and yet beneath the evening light, it shifted through shades of breathtaking color in every passing moment. She closed her eyes and breathed in the dry, mineral scent of the wind.
An unexpected encounter with something immense and still. And in the face of it, the cord of tension she had been unable to set down for weeks slowly loosened, almost without her noticing.
She stayed at the window until the desert had gone dark and the sky above it was scattered thick with stars. Only then did she turn away.
Perhaps the quiet had settled something in her — that night, for the first time since the expedition began, she fell asleep early. So when a knock came in the grey before dawn, she was already surfacing toward waking and opened her eyes without difficulty.
Knock. Knock.
“Who is—”
Before her sleep-blurred question was finished, the door opened silently in the dark. Kasha blinked in confusion. A dark shape moved toward her — fast.
She pulled in a breath to scream.
A hand covered her face.
I should bite this person, Kasha thought rapidly. She had already decided she would — and then a familiar scent filled her lungs.
If it had been anyone else, she truly might have done it.
“Leon?”
Shhh.
The word was barely breath. But the voice — low, calm, carrying a warmth too particular to mistake — confirmed it.
Leon.
Her heart responded before the thought could form. She was very aware of his breath against her ear, and bit down quietly on her lip. Every hair on her body stood at attention.
Then he spoke again, a little more than a whisper.
“Would you be willing to get dressed and come outside? There’s somewhere I’d like to take you. Just the two of us.”
“Where…?”
The sky through the window was still entirely dark. Deep night, or the earliest edge of morning.
He had come every night while she slept, given her what healing he could, and left without once waking her. This was not like him.
“Did something happen?”
His low laughter touched her ear in the dark. Her heart lurched again.
“Nothing like that. There’s something I want to show you. I’ll wait outside.”
She nodded like an idiot, and Leon rose and let himself out of the room.
Left alone, Kasha sat very still. His warmth seemed to linger at her ear, stubbornly. She rubbed at it for no good reason.
“Where are we going?”
Kasha kept her voice low as she followed where he led.
“A little further.”
His reply was equally quiet.
They were winding through the village’s narrow lanes toward the entrance. The thunderous snoring from the inn behind them and the utter stillness of the streets confirmed it was still very early.
What on earth at this hour?
She tilted her head with a puzzled expression. Then her foot caught on something in the dark.
“Oh—”
But before she could fall, a firm arm had already caught her — faster than her own reaction.
“I’m sorry. I rushed you too much in the dark.”
He steadied her and, without ceremony, extended his arm.
“…….”
Understanding what he meant, Kasha took his forearm without refusing. Like a formal escort at a ball.
Perhaps it was being so far from the capital, in an unfamiliar place. The resolution she had made to keep distance from him — for his safety — seemed thin and far away. A strange desire rose in her to simply be present in the moment, nothing more.
When her grip on his arm tightened slightly, she felt the muscle beneath her hand go taut in response. Kasha’s chest fluttered. She concentrated on following his lead.
It was strange. She had shared far more than this with him — and yet walking through the dark like this, side by side, his arm in both her hands, felt almost unbearably tense and sweet.
Just as her head had begun to swim slightly with the sensation, Leon stopped.
“This way.”
A moment later, as he spoke, something appeared from beyond the village gate. A small figure leading two enormous, shadowy shapes.
“What — what are those?”
At her tense whisper, his quiet laugh came again.
“Camels.”
“Camels?”
“More common than horses in desert terrain. They’re used far more often here.”
“We’re going to ride them?”
He nodded in silence.
The two massive animals drew close enough now that she could make out their outlines. Their owner — a small man stifling a yawn — handed the reins to Leon.
They have humps on their backs.
She was staring, wide-eyed, when Leon extended his hand to her.
“Their temperament is far more docile than they look. No need to be nervous.”
He moved with the easy familiarity of someone who had done this before and held the reins with a practiced ease.
Kasha hesitated, then took his hand and stepped up into the unusual saddle.
As she seated herself, his large hand closed firmly around hers for a moment — and then released. The warmth that vanished so quickly left her unreasonably bereft. She felt foolish for it.
They rode for about thirty minutes into the desert.
The silence around them was extraordinary — the kind that made her wonder whether they were truly the only living things in the world.
Strangely, she did not find it uncomfortable at all.
This feeling of being alone in the world with Leon. It was simply peaceful. A warmth without edges. She did not want to wake from it.
I want to show you the desert. I remembered how happy you looked looking at the sea.
He had said it out of nowhere, in a quiet voice, while guiding his camel in silence.
Kasha didn’t know how to respond. Her chest felt wide and full — an unfamiliar kind of fullness — and she was too caught up in the feeling to find words. She ended up nodding several times like a fool.
She had thought exactly this at Elror Bay. When all of this was over, I want to see more places like this — the sea, and the desert, and waterfalls, and islands in the south.
She had thought the same thing last night, looking at the desert from the inn window.
I just never imagined it would happen so soon, or so simply.
She had no way of knowing that Leon had seen her standing at that open window, rapt and still in the lamplight, and had watched her for a long time from the street below.
The horizon beyond the next dune was beginning to lighten.
Leon slowed the camel.
A moment later, he dismounted first and helped her down safely. Kasha looked around, not understanding.
“What are we doing here?”
“There’s something else I want to show you.”
He hesitated a moment, then held out his hand.
Kasha looked at the hand that had held and guided and caught her — and was still holding her in memory.
“We need to climb a dune — it’s not like flat ground. It’ll be easier with my help.”
He glanced at her, half-checking. She nodded without a word.
The desert night was cooler than she’d expected. And his hand, when she took it, was large and warm — warm enough to forget the cold entirely.
They climbed slowly. Sand gave under every step, dragging at her feet. Each time she fell behind, he turned to check on her — and without a word, stopped.
“…If you don’t mind, I’ll presume.”
“What—”
Before she could finish the question, her feet left the ground.
The sensation was so effortlessly light, so like lifting off from the earth, that she almost laughed out loud.
She had grown used to being held in his arms. The thought surfaced clearly, and with it, she wrapped her arms around his neck and turned her face into his chest. His heartbeat was right there — solid, faster than her own, unmistakable.
She listened to it and thought:
Just for this moment, I want to forget everything. The unseen hand behind it all. The war that’s coming. The knowledge that I must push him away in order to protect him.
Just for now, she wanted nothing more than to stay here, in this impossible quiet, and listen to his heart.
In moments like these, regression and death and vengeance all felt small — felt like things that could be set down.
While she was thinking this, breathing him in, Leon climbed without a sound. He was carrying her entire weight across loose sand and not one breath came harder than the last.
After a while, the air felt different somehow. Kasha lifted her head.
The sky had brightened considerably. In every direction, the desert swept out without end, and the silence of it settled something deep inside her.
Then Leon shifted and held still. He sat down with her still in his arms and pointed toward something.
She looked.
A sound left her involuntarily.
“The sun—”
Above the endless desert, the sun was rising.
Against the vast canvas of sand and the deep blue of the lingering night sky, a thread of golden light split the horizon and began to blaze.
It was a beauty she had never imagined, not once in either of her lives.
“…It’s beautiful.”
She said it softly, finally, half to herself.
The arm holding her tightened, gently and deliberately.
Neither of them moved to separate. Neither seemed to want to.
Kasha was still watching the sunrise when she turned her head.
The sun was rising inside Leon’s violet eyes.
That look on his face in this moment. The desert wind lifting his silver-white hair. The perfect, encompassing warmth of the arms holding her.
Kasha understood, with quiet certainty, that she would carry this image to her last breath.
She understood, too, that Leon was thinking the same thing.
Complete happiness and a hollow ache arrived together, side by side.
