There was no way to tell how long he had been asleep, but it was still black when Math woke from the pressure of his full bladder. He touched his face to be sure his eyes were actually open. Nothing had even felt right since he began his journey. All his senses were mis-tuned.

  In the time he had been in the Sear, waking at night was routine, the sense that he was being watched in the dark more potent than during waking hours.

  But tonight felt different.

  Perhaps it was the company, he reasoned, rolling onto his left side, facing Dyathne. The direction from which her soft breathing came indicated she was turned away from him.

  He rolled to his back. Maybe he could take her compass. The thought flitted through his half-awake mind, pulling tendrils of guilt and shame along behind it. This strange woman with the blackened arm agreed to help him; all he could think of was of robbing her of her most useful tool. He fisted his hair.

  Math didn’t want to be here anymore. He desperately needed to see the sun. To feel air on his skin. To be among people. Anything other than the frigid, silent void of the Sear.

  At one point, about a month into his journey, he had taken his utility knife out and deliberately nicked his forearm just to see if he was still capable of feeling something other than exhausted. His blood had looked a strange shade of red in the light of the Sear, but he definitely still felt. So he had that going for him, at least.

  Touching the small scar, he turned the idea of grabbing her compass over in his head. How could he do it without his vision? Without waking her?

  He cracked his neck. The nothingness was suffocating, it felt like it was squeezing his whole body and yet left him disoriented as though floating weightlessly. If he couldn’t leave, the least he could do was sleep. He adjusted his vizard, and huffed through his nose.

  Why the hell had he volunteered for this? He could barely remember. The weeks in the Sear had eaten away at what he knew to be true. Desperately, he searched his mind for her face. He blinked his eyes over and over, as if enough movement would jog his memory. Finally, she started to emerge.

  Soft brown eyes, wild blonde hair, creamy mocha skin, and a hint of orange blossom wherever she went. Ariane.

  Just then, Dyathne rolled in her sleep, pulling him from his reverie. He could feel her light breath on his neck through her mask; she’d rolled closer in her sleep, drawn unconsciously toward the only other heat source in the forbidding nothing of the Sear.

  Slowly, Math drew himself up on his left elbow to hover over to Dyathne, using the sound of her breath to direct him until he could feel her body heat emanating off her sleeping form. Possessed by the mounting urge to flee, he raised his right hand, incrementally moving it closer to her supine from.

  Math guessed the compass would have slid off to her left, probably nestled by the crook of her neck. Without overthinking it, he lowered his hand. The delicate chain across her throat kissed the pad of his middle finger. Her throat wasn’t where he had expected his hand to land, but success was success. He told himself that was the only thing that mattered in the moment.

  He barely let the tip of his finger trace the chain down her throat, praying to all the gods he could name, and several he couldn’t, that he would hit paydirt. Guilt and the promise of escape slammed against each other in his guts.

  He reached across her, ever so slowly trying to find the pendant on the chain without reaching under her or making more contact than absolutely necessary.

  Unwilling to breathe, the blood in his ears became a cacophony. So much so that he hadn’t noticed Dyathne’s breathing changed.

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  He heard the metal sing against its sheath before he felt the cold blade at his throat.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” Dyathne growled almost imperceptibly through clenched teeth.

  Her mouth was close enough to his ear so as to make her words tickle, even through her vizard. It was a horrible sensation in the blackness, calling to mind insects crawling over him, into him.

  He snatched his hand back. He could come clean and she would lose all trust in him, or he could lie and let her assume he was trying to assault her. Neither were viable.

  “I wanted the compass,” he confessed, barely audibly. “I wanted to see if I could use it to diagnose what’s wrong with mine,” the lie lingered.

  She didn’t move, didn’t withdraw the blade. He could tell she couldn’t believe him, even if it was a half truth. The wrong half.

  “In the dark?” She hissed, the accusation unspoken.

  “I have an excellent sense of touch,” he bit back. “It comes with my job.”

  Neither moved.

  “I wasn’t trying to take advantage of you,” he rushed. “I couldn’t sleep!” His voice was rising ever so slightly. “I needed to do something. I’ve been out here for months.”

  The last word came out strangled by emotion. Neither of them could tell if it was from the anxiety of the position he had put them both in, or the soul-wracking affirmation of how long he had been alone. Lost.

  Dyathne pulled back slightly.

  Stop it, she chided herself silently. Don’t feel bad for him. He was touching, either to hurt or to steal. And then probably leave. Alone and without a compass.

  Like he had been.

  She winced again at the thought; she had spent more time in the Sear than any living person. But never for more than a week at a time.

  Nine weeks and four days, she thought. And alive. And willing to heal a stranger.

  “You could have asked to see it,” she finally murmured, lowering her weapon.

  “I could have asked—“ he cut himself off. “You said no talking!”

  Dyathne was silent again, weighing her options.

  She should leave. She should leave him to the misery he almost inflicted on her.

  But she couldn’t.

  The Rite was already underway. He was a part of it now, whether he knew it or not.

  And, she realized with disgust dropping in swirls through her abdomen, she wanted his company.

  “You make me sick,” she muttered aloud to herself.

  Math flopped back onto his bedroll, wincing at her words. No one had ever said anything with such naked disdain to him in all his years; not anyone decent, anyway. And she was decent, she was good; she had agreed to help a complete stranger lost in a hellscape.

  The disdain was deserved. He was glad she couldn’t see him, but turned his face away nonetheless.

  He stared over his right shoulder into the abyss around them, feeling queasy at his own turpitude. Then squeezed his eyes shut until his eardrums vibrated in protest.

  When he opened them, he saw a flicker in the dark.

  A trick of the ocular nerve, he reasoned. Even night outside of the Sear could do that.

  The flicker came again, blinking once, then holding.

  It was a tiny red ball of light suspended in the fog, its glow gently diffused by the cloud around it. He had never seen anything like it.

  The fog did not touch it. It parted, leaving a hollow around the light, as if unwilling to cross into whatever space it claimed.

  “There’s something out there,” he breathed.

  Dyathne sat up, flinging her bedroll off her legs and grappling for her pack. Math had no doubt she saw it, too. The need to run was emanating from her in waves, sharp enough he felt it in his teeth.

  No. Her mind reeled.

  She had followed the compass. They were at the waypoint. They had to be.

  “Is that—” he started, barely audible.

  She clamped a hand over his vizard before he could finish, leaning stiffly over him. Dyathne would stuff the fucking thing down his throat if it kept him from making another sound.

  Her eyes never left the light. Math could have snapped the compass off her neck in that moment and she wouldn’t have moved.

  She didn’t breathe, even as every cell in her body screamed at her to flee. Her nails dug into his cheeks involuntarily.

  Math slowly, gently wrapped his palm around her wrist, prying her hand off his face so he could inhale quietly, sitting them both upright in one swift motion.

  His measured movement reminded the smaller woman that this was not the elderly, sinewy Nother with whom she had always walked the Sear. It was clear that Math could probably throw her at the Venemon hovering in the distance if he wanted to.

  He sat up beside her, fear, guilt, and instinct colliding in his chest and touched his cheek to feel wetness. He was bleeding from where her nails had cut into his face, just below his right eye.

  Math didn’t have the chance to be angry.

  A second light appeared to beside the first.

  This one seemed closer.