Four hundred strides away from the bones of the first dragon.

Three hundred.

Ahead, the bones flickered. Glowed. Shone like noorestones. But when I blinked, the effect was gone.

I was hot. Sweating. It must have been a mirage.

Or a greeting.

The hoofbeats behind me were gaining, heavy on the packed road. Then a horse groaned and something—its body—thumped to the ground, and all I could hear were the hard footfalls and panting of my pursuer.

I jerked faster, but it wasn’t enough. Hot, blinding pain ripped down my back.

Shock made me scream, and I tried to scramble forward, but my pursuer kicked me. I dropped to the ground on all fours, rock and sand digging against my palms.

“I can’t let you do this.” The voice was soft, empty of emotion, but short with exertion.

Paorah.

I dug my fingertips into the ground, counting breaths—three, four, five—and then hauled myself up, even as the wound in my back tore wider, making red and white shimmer in the corners of my vision. I gasped for the breath that wouldn’t fill my lungs. Fire flared over my back, centering on the spot where a blade had pushed through skin, through muscle, through something vital. That was bad. Maybe really bad. But if I could get back to the ruin noorestones, this would heal. I just had to hang on until then.

I had to.

My head swam as I pulled myself straight, turning to face him.

His chest was heaving with want of breath, and sweat trickled down his face in thin streams. But when he looked at me, his gaze was steady. Beyond him, a horse lay dead on the rocky ground, an arrow sticking from its leg. “I can’t let you do this, Mira Minkoba,” he said again.

“I don’t see how you can stop me.” Somehow, my voice didn’t shake. Maybe because I could feel the first dragon at my back, only one hundred strides away. So close.

But she wasn’t like the noorestones; I couldn’t tap into her power from here. No, we had to touch, and one hundred strides might as well have been one hundred leagues.

Paorah lifted his knife, the blade still dripping with my blood. “You know I’m not afraid to use this.”

I knew. And we both knew that I was injured, barely standing. He could kill me faster than I could make a run for the first dragon.

“You must be afraid of something”—I clenched my jaw—“or you wouldn’t have come all this way. You wouldn’t have felt the need to stab me.” My legs trembled with the effort of staying up, but I clenched my jaw and locked my knees. No matter what, I would make it back to the ruins and finish what I’d come to do.

“You’ll spoil the sacrifice.” His gaze was steady. Even. The knife lowered to his side, and my blood oozed down the point, into the sand. “It may already be spoiled, but I’ll do what I must for the chance at saving it.”