Her words struck him deeply, perhaps because he cared for a person for the first time he could remember, perhaps because he had let his guard down. Now Merk wished he hadn’t. He felt a shiver run through his spine, felt her words ring through him like a curse.

“Then why did you save me last night?” he demanded. “Why not let me die?”

She did not respond, which agitated him even more.

Merk saw there was no reasoning with her, and he had enough: fed up, he threw down the shovel, turned, and marched away.

He hiked away from the burning compound and into the breaking sun, heading back for the woods. He could still hear the girl’s crying as he went. He crested a hill, then another, and for some reason, as much as he hoped they would, the cries still did not fade. It was like they were echoing in his mind.

As he crested another hill, Merk finally turned and look back for her. His stomach clenched in a knot as he spotted her, a small figure in the distance. There she knelt, still, far in the valley below, by the graves of her family. Merk was confused by his emotions and he did not like the feeling. It clouded him.

Worst of all, Merk felt a lack of resolve. He knew she would die out there, and a part of him wanted to go back and help her. But how could he help someone who did not want helping?

Merk steeled himself, took a deep breath, and turned his back on her. He faced the woods ahead, and looked out at the pilgrimage before him. On the horizon, waiting for him, he knew, was the Tower of Ur. A place where his mission would be simple, where life would be simple. A place to belong.

Suddenly, as he pondered it, he was struck by an awful thought: what if they rejected him?

There was only one way to find out. Merk took the first step and this time he resolved to stop for nothing—for no one—until he completed his quest.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Kyra rode Andor at a walk, Dierdre at her side, Leo at their heels, miserable, unable to stop shivering in the freezing rain. The rain fell in sheets, so loudly she could barely hear herself think, pelting them for hours, sometimes turning to snow and hail. She could not recall the last time she had been indoors, beside a fire, in any sort of shelter. The driving wind kept at them, and she felt a chill deep in her bones which she did not think would ever thaw.