Her insides twisted, and not from hunger or the peculiar mix of shit they’d been eating the last week.

“I promise,” she said.

He nodded.

How strange, she thought, that my word still means something to anyone, even after all this time. It’s because you’re such a fucking bad liar, she thought.

He took the bladder and drank.

“Slow,” she said. “Slow at first.”

He drank until he was sated, then gave a good deal of what was left to Isabet. She came around just long enough for him to tell her something in Ras Tiegan. Then he handed the water back to Nyx and walked away from the group.

“North?” he said.

“North,” Nyx said.

He shifted. It was not a pretty thing. Never was, watching a man shake loose from his bones. His body trembled violently, then began to lose mass, twisting in on itself. It looked the way her hunger felt—some dark, feral thing eating itself from the inside. In a few minutes he was free of his clothing, stark naked, growing smaller, sprouting prickly black feathers, his features narrowing, elongating.

Nyx finally turned away.

She portioned out the last of the water with Ahmed, Khatijah, Eskander, and Kage who had just caught up to them.

Kage drank deep. She didn’t seem much better than Isabet.

Eshe squawked at them from the air.

“Come on,” Nyx said. “We keep going north until we find some shelter. Need a good place to hole up.”

“There’s nothing out here, Nyx,” Ahmed said.

“There’s always something,” Nyx said. She crouched next to Isabet and pulled her up over her shoulders. Nyx grunted with the effort. Fuck, she should have been able to carry this girl like she was nothing. She wasn’t any bigger than one of Anneke’s kids.

Nyx plodded forward.

Eshe squawked one more time, then he was off and away, north. Ever fucking north. To the land of missing politicians and, possibly, nutty Ras Tiegans.

Nyx fixed her gaze just a few feet ahead of her. Dangerous thing, to narrow your vision, but so was falling down in the desert. They needed to find shelter. Two days back, they had passed through a voluminous field of giant calcified tubes three times Nyx’s height. She wished for some of those now, but the crunchy dunes ahead of her just went on and on. She could never see past the one ahead of her, and they seemed to get taller and taller.

Beside her, Ahmed trudged along. He was carrying Kage’s gun now, which meant Kage was either half mad or Ahmed had softened her up a great deal the last couple weeks. Nyx had caught them speaking in Drucian a few times—and look what it got him. A heavier load.

And what did it get you? Nyx thought grimly, acutely aware of Isabet’s soft bulk. Look what load you’re willing to carry.

They walked.