She wonders what it would be like if Thierren suddenly rounded the corner to find her there, completely unclothed, then pulled off his own garments, got under the hot water with her, and pressed his long, muscular body against hers...

Sweet Ge’o’din. Sparrow flushes as she breaks off the scandalous thought. She busies herself cleaning off the last of the tenacious sand, briefly turning to Aislinn...

...and the reality of the world crashes down.

Aislinn’s body—it’s covered in bruises. Horribly so, and violent enough to linger so many days past their escape from Valgard. There are lash marks all over her form and bruising on her breasts. And bite marks...

She quickly averts her eyes, heart wrenching, and steps from the water. Deeply troubled, she grabs an indigo towel just as her exposed skin is hit by a stinging spray of red sand.

A furious, eye-battering sandstorm roars into being and Sparrow’s hands fly up to shield her vision against the red, whipping haze as the desert before them rises into a granular typhoon. Alarm slashing through her, Sparrow recoils just as the sand-blurred figures of two giant gray spiders erupt from the desert floor, strange, smoking runes marked all over their thoraxes. A profusion of eyes cover the upper half of their heads, a gauzy gray mist encircling their stretched-out bodies.

Sparrow screams and lunges for the runic sword above her as a spider leaps at her, the impact forcing her to the ground, the air punched from her lungs as her towel falls away.

“Thierren!” she cries as she beats against the beast’s terrifyingly nimble under-legs and their clenching grip on her bare body. The world spinning, strands of sticky silvery silk wrap around her with astonishing speed before she’s lifted up tight against the spider’s hard thorax.

My life cannot end like this, Sparrow rages as she growls her protest, kicking and thrashing against the beast. My life cannot end when we’re only a day away from the East!

“Thierren!” she screams again as the creature launches into a scuttling sprint across the whipping sand.

Bolts of blue light slam into the creature, deflecting off its encircling mist in bright bursts of sapphire light, their Vu Trin protectors’ fierce cries going up as Sparrow spots sand-blurred figures rushing toward her, including a furious-looking Ulluwyn, runic blade drawn.

A hard gust of wind hits the spider, blasting its shadowy shield clear away.

The world spins, the spider toppling to its side as the surrounding sandstorm dissipates. Thierren runs toward her, wand in hand, eyes like green wildfire, looking like he’s ready to rip up the entire desert to get to her. The Vu Trin rush in behind him as a pale white blur streaks toward the second toppled spider and lashes vermilion fire at it, the huge insect’s head exploding into a ball of red flame, its legs flailing.