I came back to myself all at once.

My hands shook a little as I loaded them into the gun. The sky was the color of a healing wound. Somewhere across the horizon, the sun was taking its sweet time. I didn’t know if I could make three bullets last.

A Nightmare unstitched itself from the shadows two feet away, and I fired before my eyes could focus.

Two bullets now. One more dead Nightmare. Dozens more crawling in the sand. I knuckled my eyes tiredly.

“You all right?” Jin’s hand was on my shoulder, but his eyes were still on the desert. The faint glow on the horizon sent light and shadow playing across his jaw.

“I’m alive,” I said. “You seem to be, too.”

“You know, there’s a saying at sea: Red sky in the morning, sailors take warning.”

I glanced at the horizon. “Yeah, well, it’s a little late for a warning. We could’ve used that yesterday.” I cracked my fingers; my hands were sore from clenching the gun so tight. “How many bullets do you have left?”

Jin just shook his head, spreading empty hands wide. I opened the chamber of my gun. My tired fingers fumbled for the bullet.

“No.” Jin shook his head. “You’re the better shot.”

“One bullet each. It’s only fair. You cover the back, I’ll take the front.” Jin hesitated only a second. Then he took it and flicked open the chamber of his gun as I trained my own pistol on the desert, covering long enough for him to reload and drop back. The sun was almost up now.

Two of them leapt at once. I aimed for the second. And hesitated. The first was racing across the sand, straight for Yasmin. She yelped. Jin shoved her out of the way, firing before I could take aim. And he missed.

The Nightmare latched onto Jin’s chest. Its teeth sank straight into his heart.

I fired without thinking what would happen if I missed the beast and hit the boy, or about how it was too late to save him anyway. My last bullet caught the Nightmare in the head and the beast tumbled off Jin in a roll of thrashing wings, dying in the sand as the sun broke the horizon.

The desert came alive with the noise of screaming and scurrying as the Nightmares burrowed back into the earth.

I rushed to Jin, my useless gun by my side.

“Hey, hey.” I tapped his face so that I didn’t have to look at the huge black puncture wound in his chest and the blood and venom mixing just below his tattoo. He must have had a shot of venom straight to his heart. I was sure mine was pumping fast enough for the both of us.

My hands were shaking so hard, I couldn’t find a pulse. His eyes were closed, his body sprawled, gun still in his hand like he was a fallen soldier. Finally I saw his chest rise and fall ever so slightly, his breathing shallow.

A shadow made long by the early morning light fell over us. I squinted up at Parviz.

“Help me.” I wasn’t much for begging, but I might as well so long as I was already on my knees. I didn’t have any lower to go.

“He’s as good as dead unless he gets treated properly,” Parviz said, taking in Jin’s worth now that he was injured. His pulse was beating too slowly against my knuckles. “We’re days from civilization.”

I tried to remember how long it took for Nightmare venom to get through the whole body. A night? A day? Less?

Parviz scraped his knuckles across his beard. “We’re wasting sunlight.”

He was right. I moved to put my weight below Jin’s shoulder, to lug him to his feet. “Help me get him to a camel.”

Parviz frowned, like I might be simple. I supposed he thought I was, since I wasn’t a man any longer. “He’s as good as dead. The dead are just more weight.”

“Jin’s not dead yet.” I couldn’t help but feel they’d help me if they still thought I was a boy. “And everyone here would be if it weren’t for him.”

“And we’ll all drink to him in gratitude when we get to safety.” Parviz didn’t waver. “But until then we are mighty low on water, and it’s a waste of it to try to help a boy who isn’t going to live to see another dawn. You can stay with him and die, too, or you can come with us. You’d best decide quick, though.”

He was right. Jin was as good as dead anyway. And I’d sworn I wasn’t going to die in this desert, not on anyone’s account. I’d told Jin once that he wasn’t worth dying for. Not when I was so close to Izman.

It would be so easy.

No. It was Jin. It would be impossible. I’d been dreading Dassama because I didn’t want to take a separate path. I wanted to stay with Jin more than I wanted Izman. I liked what life felt like with him in the desert. Like we were equals. Like we fit together. Too tangled to pull apart so easily.

I thought of the ruins of Dassama. If Jin died there’d be no one to take news of what the Gallan were doing to his people. The desert didn’t give mercy and it didn’t deserve any. It left the weak for dead if it didn’t outright kill them.

But not Jin, who belonged to some other country. Who didn’t belong to this desert at all—at least not enough to die with it. Or whatever stupid thing he was trying to do. Who didn’t deserve to get left behind by a desert girl for her own life.

Like Tamid had. Like Noorsham.

“You can go to civilization or go to hell, for all I care.” And it felt like the sand was stretching around my feet until that was all there was in the world, until Izman crept farther and farther away. “I’m not leaving him for dead.”