“Don’t.” Cheyenne shrugged out from under the general’s hand.
Maleshi eyed her, nodded, and followed the rest of their group. Corian passed the halfling next, but he didn’t try to offer any comfort. There wasn’t any.
Cheyenne stared down at the destroyed valley. I should’ve been able to do something. What’s the point of kicking Ba’rael off the throne if I can’t help the magicals she left out here to die like this?
“Now you know what it’s like.”
L’zar’s voice in her ear made her step quickly away from him. “Are you here, or is this more drunken crazy coming out of you?”
Her father shrugged. “I’m merely trying to put things in perspective for you.”
“All the perspective in the world can’t fix this, L’zar.”
“No, but maybe it’ll help you understand what’s in store for you. And understand me, however difficult that is.”
“What are you talking about?”
“This is how it feels, Cheyenne, to not step in when others think you should. When others recognize the danger and see you doing nothing because even though they’re begging for help, you’re the only one who knows how much worse the consequences would be if you were to get involved.”
She narrowed her eyes at him, gritting her teeth. “You mean, the way you stand back and let everyone else do the hard work for you?”
“There are reasons.”
“Sure, but you’re still missing one huge difference between us.” Cheyenne gestured at the destroyed town in the valley but couldn’t bring herself to look away from L’zar’s golden eyes. “I tried to help. You’ve had plenty of time to explain to everyone else around you why you’re doing what you’re doing, or why you hang back and do nothing when it counts but can’t stop yourself from taking on a gang of raugs in the streets. You still haven’t told me or anyone else what you’re planning next.”
“When the time is right, Cheyenne, you will know what steps to take.”
“Right. Just like I knew who I was challenging when I dropped my coin on the altar.”
“That was different.” L’zar held her gaze for a moment longer, then took a deep breath and ran a hand over his head. “I’ll settle for agreeing to disagree. But I do recommend chewing on it for at least a few minutes if you can spare that.” He stepped closer and lowered his face toward hers, his eyes roaming over her features as if he’d find someone else there instead of his daughter. “You and I are too much alike for you not to understand what I’ve told you, and we both know that when it counts, you will do what you have to do. Even if that means letting a few O’gúleesh fall to a fate none of them deserve. It’s about the bigger picture, Cheyenne. We can’t all be heroes all the time.”
“Not your best pep talk.”
“Hmm.” He pulled away from her, looked down into the valley one more time, and passed her to head after the rest of their group.
Cheyenne stared daggers at her father’s back and stiffly pushed herself forward. He has no idea what he’s talking about. L’zar Verdys doesn’t do anything for the sake of helping someone else.
Still, somewhere in the back of her mind, she couldn’t quite convince herself he was wrong.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Cazerel’s path through the mountains flattened out noticeably, and the rocky passages gave way to forests. These had already been touched by the blight that spread with no direction and no warning across Ambar’ogúl. The raug chief grumbled and scowled at every area of scorched earth and clump of twisted, lifeless trees they approached before steering their party around the devastation.
Cheyenne stared at the huge, jagged cracks splintering the dead ground fifty feet away. Most of them glistened with thick black ooze, the occasional bubble bursting with a wet, slurping pop. No one is gonna suggest passing through it, not after seeing what it does in real-time.
The chief stopped and cocked his head. A husk of a tree groaned in the gentle wind cutting through the dead forest, then a branch snapped and fell to the blackened earth, shattering in a puff of glittering black dust. Dark sludge oozed from the hole in the tree’s trunk and dripped to the ground.
“Ugh.” Byrd stepped farther away from the edge of the blighted landscape and wrinkled his nose. “And here I was, thinking I’d gotten used to the smell.”
“That’ll keep you up at night, huh?” Lumil snorted and kept moving.
The goblin man blinked at her, surprised she hadn’t smacked or punched or shoved him, and hurried after her.
“I didn‘t know it had come this far.” Cazerel sighed heavily and turned toward Ember. “Have you seen this elsewhere, Healer?”
She raised her eyebrows and shook her head. “No, but Cheyenne has.”
When the raug chief turned to stare at her, Cheyenne shrugged. “Like I said, the Outers are moving in. So is the blight, I guess.”
“But we are not.”
“Yeah.” Cheyenne glanced at Ember, who’d taken her hand off the crawler’s control panel and paused to watch the raug chief and the halfling. “That’s one of the weirder parts to wrap your head around. The farther we are from the capital, the worse it gets.”
“And it’s crossing through the portals,” Corian added. “Bit by bit.”
Cazerel looked at the nightstalker with a confused frown. “You have seen this on the other side as well?”
“A different version of it, maybe. Yeah.” Corian pressed his lips together in thought. “Apparently, this darkness is squeezing its way Earthside and opening new portals. At least, that’s as good a guess as any of us can make.”
The chief grunted. “And if that is not the cause?”
“Then we have a lot more to worry about, don’t we?” The nightstalker spread his arms and dipped his head at their escort. “Which, of course, none of us would ask
