Page 23 of Scorched By Fate

I sighed. “Is it always this goddamn hot?”

“It can freeze at night,” Vyne responded, his clipped reply carrying just enough authority to kill any expectation of sugarcoating.

“Hell of a tourism ad.”

One wing shifted just slightly, setting the wind curling close enough to rattle the strands of hair clinging to sweat at the side of my face. “We don't get many tourists.”

A hot wind slammed against us, fierce with its timing. His grip tightened briefly, just enough to keep me steady as he adjusted in a single motion. That seamless control—sharp and effortless, even as the gust clawed at us—set something coiling low in my stomach. I ignored it. Tried to. But it lingered, sparking against frayed nerves and tuning me too closely to the heat of his body pressed to mine.

We flew on like that, stretched tight between the hovering nowheres of earth and sky. The weight of his closeness grated against my already shredded composure, impossible to shake. By the time the broken peaks of volcanic cliffs rose beneath us, cracks against the sky, my muscles felt stitched together with something fragile and thin.

“Hold on,” Vyne said, his voice cutting through the thick air.

Instinct tightened my arms around him. Before I had the chance to second-guess, his wings folded in, angling us into a dive so sharp it seemed to pull the breath right from my chest. The wind churned around us, violent and hot, testing his control, but his hold didn’t falter—not once. Just before we hit the outcrop where rock jutted out from the cliffs, his wingssnapped open. The force of it caught us, slowing us just enough for what should’ve been a smooth landing.

For him, at least.

My knees immediately tried to quit on me the moment my boots hit the ground. Adrenaline licked through me in waves, raw and unsteady, but his hand stayed firm on my arm, keeping me upright until I finally found my balance. Blood pounded in my ears, tangled up with the burn in my chest and the heat soaking into my skin. When he let go, slowly, it was almost too careful. Like he wasn’t sure if I’d crumple or not.

I didn’t. Not physically, at least.

A breath rattled through me, but it scraped too harsh, nearly sticking to the thick heat swallowing the plateau like a second atmosphere. My hands drifted to my knees as I leaned just far enough to keep the vertigo at bay.

“That,” I said between gulps of air, my voice cracking at the edges, “was objectively terrifying.”

A low sound escaped him—not quite a laugh, but close enough to knock my focus off-center. “You held up better than I expected.”

“You’re lucky I didn’t …” I trailed off. No way I was about to admit I’d been five seconds away from losing my lunch all over his armor. “Forget it.”

Vyne’s gaze lingered, heavy enough that I didn’t need to look up to feel it. It was the silence that got me more than anything—the weight of what wasn’t being said. Loud and crushing, louder than any words ever could’ve been. I straightened, swallowing hard against the dryness clawing at my throat.

A shadow flickered in my periphery, and I turned to see him holding out a small canteen. Its surface gleamed against the distorted light—dented and scuffed, as though it had survived more miles of this harsh terrain than I had any hope of matching.

I hesitated, just briefly.

Then I reached for it.

Our fingers brushed.

The contact was so small, barely enough to count, but it sparked through the noise of everything else. The heat of his hand—too warm, somehow even hotter than the blasted air around us—touched the clammy bite of mine, and something inside me jolted. My spine stiffened, my lungs turned traitor, choking my breath into a brief, stuttering hitch before letting go again.

He flinched first.

Just barely, but it was there. The canteen passed into my hand, but his fingers pulled back like he’d touched live flames. A sharp, gruff sound slipped from him, as if he’d meant to smother the reaction but hadn’t quite managed to rein it in. His wings twitched, a tension barely breaking through before snapping back under tight control.

I looked down, pretending I hadn’t noticed. Pretending my hands were busy with something as ordinary as unscrewing the cap of the canteen and not still trembling.

"Thanks," I said, my voice scraping against the dryness in my throat as I uncapped the canteen. I focused wholly on the cool stream of water sliding past the harsh burn of the sulfur-thick air. For a moment, it was the only relief in the oppressive heat pressing on every part of me, carving its way through the metallic taste left there by Volcaryth’s unrelenting assault.

Capping the canteen, I tossed it in his direction—not out of recklessness, exactly, but out of some base-level frustration that had hitched itself to my nerves and refused to let go. Vyne caught it so cleanly he might as well have anticipated my motion, his claws folding around the dented metal without a word.

“Rest.” The command was impassive, his focus barely darting toward me before it turned to survey the ridge surrounding us. “We’ll camp here for the night.”

“You don't have to tell me twice,” I said, retreating to a wide, flat rock hugged tight to the plateau’s central ridge. The surface burned against my skin when I perched on it, but I sank into the contact anyway, resisting the urge to lean back fully for fear my shirt might melt into the stone.

Vyne moved with sharp efficiency, every step precise. His tail snaked behind him, shifting grains of stony grit as he crossed the edge of the plateau to comb its perimeter. His body remained taut with focus, though nothing about it telegraphed alarm. It was a rhythm of constant readiness, practiced and almost predatorially smooth—the kind of presence that demanded awareness even when it didn’t actively threaten.

I hated that he drew my focus the way he did. His movement, the way the dark gleam of his scaled form swallowed every trickle of heat shimmering between the molten landscape below and the rock pressing beneath me. With each measured turn, his arms adjusted their balance against his armor, claws flexing—not in unease but in idle control, as if each sharpened edge had been designed down to its smallest detail for lethal purpose.

---