The path took the sun and gave nothing back. By dusk, the sky was the color of a bruise and the wind carried the taste of rust. Elvon's legs burned. He'd pushed since dawn, chasing the Black Spire's pull like a lodestone in his blood. Somewhere ahead, Seraphina waited. Somewhere behind, Elderwood's green was already a memory.
Lira stopped without warning. One moment she was a flicker at the edge of his vision, the next she stood still as a sapling, head tilted.
"We rest," she said. It wasn't a suggestion.
Elvon scanned the dead plain. No cover. No water. Just cracked earth and the skeletal hands of long-dead trees clawing at the sky. "Here? We're exposed."
"Here," she repeated. "You'll fall over in three miles. Then you're no use to your princess."
The vyr'thala twinged in his chest — her exhaustion mirroring his, or maybe just her irritation. He ground his teeth but dropped his pack. Pride wouldn't get him to the Spire.
Getting a fire lit on the Steppes was a joke with a cruel punchline. No wood. No dry grass. Just ash that smeared and stones that refused to spark. Elvon struck flint until his wrist ached, each failure echoing in the vast quiet.
Lira watched for a while, arms crossed, the white flower still tucked behind her ear. Finally she sighed, a sound like leaves turning. She knelt and pressed both palms to the earth.
"Don't," Elvon started. "The blight—"
"I know what lives in this soil," she said. Nothing grew. Instead, the ground exhaled. Heat. From the barren dirt, a circle of dull red embers breathed into existence, as if the earth itself remembered fire. No flame, just a low, sullen glow that pushed back the dark.
Elvon sat heavily. "Could've done that hours ago."
"And let you think you didn't need me?" Her smile was thin. "You humans and your suffering. You wear it like armor."
He didn't have an answer. He unwrapped the last of his hardtack and dried meat. It tasted like dust. He held half out to her.
Lira shook her head. "I don't… eat like you do." She leaned back, closing her eyes. The vine at her brow dimmed, its leaves curling inward with the night. "Moonlight is enough, when it's clean. Here, it's thinner. But I'll manage."
Silence settled with the cold. The ember-circle gave heat but no light to speak of, just enough to keep frost from their bones. The Black Spire was a jagged absence against the stars, too far to see, too present to ignore.
"You never told me why," Elvon said eventually. "Why Ashera picked you."
Lira didn't open her eyes. "Because I stood too close to the edge for a century. Because I asked questions about the world. Because I once healed a human child who wandered into the heartwood, and they called it treason."
"You saved a child."
"I broke isolation. To them, it's the same." She breathed out. "And because I'm the only one young enough to still be angry. The Elders are patient. The Spire doesn't deserve patience."
Elvon poked at the embers with his father's sword. "Seraphina would like you. She was out in the Royal Gardens, and was hanging about, until something happened."
"Go on," said Lira.
His voice went rough. "She ran toward it. The Spire opened, and Leomar's voice came out. It promised to stop the blight if she came willingly. She went to buy us time." He looked up. "So I'm buying it back."
Lira was quiet a long time. Then she said, "Sleep, Elvon of the Sunfire Palace. I'll keep watch. Nothing moves on the path that I won't feel."
He wanted to argue. He didn't. The vyr'thala pulsed once, slow and heavy, and his eyelids were suddenly stone. He was asleep before he hit the ground.
He dreamed of Seraphina. Not screaming, for once. Laughing, in the castle gardens before the sky split. She was telling him he worried too much.
He woke to grey pre-dawn and the sound of soft singing.
Lira sat cross-legged at the edge of the ember-circle, which had faded to cool ash. She wasn't singing words, not human ones. It was a low, wordless threading of notes that made the dead air feel less dead. As she sang, frost on the stones nearest her retreated, and for a moment he swore he smelled green things.
"You didn't sleep," he said, sitting up. His muscles screamed.
"Vila trance," she said, stopping. "It's enough. You snore."
"I do not."
"You do. Like a bear with a cold." Almost a smile. Then it was gone. "We should move. The Spire's shadow gets longer after night. It'll be watching for us today."
Elvon kicked dirt over the dead embers. They didn't need hiding, but it felt right. He shouldered his pack, wincing. Lira was already standing, the white flower at her ear now faintly silver with morning dew that shouldn't exist here.
"How far?" she asked.
He pulled out Seraphina's signet, the one she'd pressed into his hand. It was warm, always warm, and it pulled north. Three weeks, if we don't break. Maybe two, if we do."
"Then we break," Lira said simply, and started walking.
The path didn't get easier. The wind picked up, carrying grit that stung the eyes. Twice, shapes moved on the horizon — hunched, wrong things that belonged to the Spire. Both times, Lira stopped, placed her hand to the earth, and the shapes veered away, as if the ground itself had whispered a warning.
By midday, Elvon's water was half gone. He offered the skin to her out of habit. She took it this time, just a sip, and nodded her thanks. Small things. But the vyr'thala didn't ache so much when she did that.
"Your princess," Lira said as they crested a rise of black stone. "What is she to you? Truly. Oaths don't make people walk into death."
Elvon didn't answer right away. Below them, the path rolled toward a smudge of open land: they were out of the forest. "She's my friend," he said finally. "When the court called me nothing more than a prince, she called me brother. When my father died, she stood with me. The throne is with her by right. But she's more than a throne. She's the only person who ever looked at me and didn't see a last resort."
Lira was quiet. Then, "Good. It's easier to protect someone who's real."
Elvon glanced at her. "And what are you to this? Just the Vila who drew the short branch?"
She stopped walking. For a second he thought the binding had flared, but it was just her. "I'm the one who remembers when the forest was not afraid," she said. "And I'm tired of remembering."
She turned, and the vine at her brow bloomed again — two flowers now, bright against the grey.
"Come on," she said. "We still have a long journey. And I would hate for her to wait, given what's at stake."
When she said this, the weight in his chest eased.
They walked on, last hope and ancient guardian, two embers in a dead land, burning toward the dark.