not to attempt to navigate the maze unless a monk was with them—but already Preter believed that he would have to search for them and lead them out.
So they would likely stay in this abandoned city a few days . . . which seemed no hardship at all to Lizzan. They finally came to the great hall, and she was only thinking of a bath, and a bed, and Aerax as they stepped through the monastery doors and onto the crystal walk.
Where all around them, pale flakes fluttered from the sky.
CHAPTER 24
AERAX
Snow.
Despair ripped holes through Aerax’s chest, and sheer determination filled them again. He would not lose her. And even as everything within him rejected what the snow meant, his senses rejected that it was there at all.
The day was too warm. And he could not smell the snow. Always it lent a distinctive taste to the air.
Beside him, Lizzan gave a desolated cry. “I’m not done.” Tears swam in the lake of her eyes. “My heart is so full—and I am not done.”
“You are not.” Throat shredded by the emotions tearing through him, Aerax caught her against his chest, buried his face in her hair. “It is ash, Lizzan. It is only ash.”
Muffled against his tunic, she shook her head as if believing he only meant to comfort her. And so he did, but not with a lie.
“Look and see,” he urged her. “Perhaps the dragon set a nearby forest afire.”
“I do not think so,” said Kelir, stopping beside them. All were still on the bridge, their eyes searching the sky. “That dark cloud has an unnatural shape and comes from farther south, over the flaming mountains.”
“Perhaps it is Snagtooth Peak again.” Ardyl brushed away ash that had fallen onto her hair. “I recall the last time it erupted. The ash did not fall south, but I remember how red the moon became each night as the smoke cast a veil across the sky. That was near the same time the firebloom tribe took me in—and I wondered for days if, in that territory, they used the firebloom’s petals to dye the moon as they did our linens.”
Kelir gave a short laugh. “That would have been a fine trick.”
“The ash fell north of the flaming mountains then, too—even as far north as Koth,” Aerax said grimly. “And was the beginning of the Bitter Years.”
Two years without a summer, and the first snow had fallen a full turn before the harvest usually began. Expression clouded, Lizzan raised her face from his chest and looked up at him, and Aerax swept the remaining tears from her cheeks with his thumbs before gently kissing her mouth.
They were not done. Taking her hand, he caught up to Preter.
“Do you intend to immediately begin the search?”
The monk shook his head. “First I will find an inn, food, and sleep.”
“After those, will you marry us together?”
Lizzan’s fingers clutched tight on his. He glanced at her face, looking for any objection, and saw only happiness.
“I can,” said Preter, looking pleased. “And that will also call for festivities.”
Lizzan huffed out a soft laugh. “I do not care for festivities. But I would like a bath.”
And so she would have one.
* * *
* * *
Familiar with the workings of an inn, Aerax quickly found the bath in the washing chamber beyond the kitchen, though Lizzan told him not to bother with carrying it up the steps to a bedchamber. They set the cistern to heating over a fire and Lizzan took his hand, yet she did not lead him to where he expected.
Already Preter, Seri, and Tyzen had taken to a bed, and Kelir and Ardyl were on their way to bring the Kothans and the Parsathean warriors into the city with them.
With Caeb padding beside them, she led Aerax to the public room, where the scarred man sat near the open shutters of a window, watching the ash fall outside. After they had freed the dragon, his gaze had not seemed so wary—yet as Lizzan and Aerax approached him, Aerax saw that it was again.
On a heavy sigh, Lizzan sat across from him and said, “Goranik is in the northern forest. He seeks to invade Koth.”
The man’s jaw tightened and he turned to look through the window again. When he spoke, his voice was as a rusty hinge.
“How did you know?”
“I saw him in the Kothan outlands,” Lizzan said, drawing Aerax down to the bench beside her and bringing Caeb closer to scratch beneath his chin. “There