"Tell me again why we're not running."
I gripped the hilt of my sword so hard my knuckles went white. The ground shook beneath us, a constant tremor that had become the heartbeat of this nightmare. Smoke painted the horizon in shades of rot and ruin.
"Because there's nowhere left to run to." Kael's voice was steady, which only made me angrier. How could he be calm? How could anyone be calm when the sky was literally cracking open above our heads?
"There has to be somewhere." I turned to face him, and the desperation in my own voice made me sick. "We can go north. Past the Frost Ridge. The monsters can't survive the cold, right? That's what the legends say."
"The legends also said the border wards would hold for a thousand years." He finally looked at me, and there it was—the fear he'd
