High above the western compound, the dry afternoon sun baked the red sandstone bluffs on the eighth day of the lockdown.
Down in the shade of the barracks veranda, Kaelen lay motionless in his hemp hammock. The yellowed paper cover of Book 4 of The Bandit King’s Secret Bride rested across his chest, rising and falling with his breathing.
When a pulp romance serial reaches Book 4, the author always introduces a masked sword-saint, Kaelen thought drowsily. That saint inevitably challenges the hero to a duel on an erupting volcano. Life in an iron-mining gorge follows the exact same lack of originality.
He closed his eyes against the canyon glare.
Everyone wants to settle family grudges with explosives and dramatic speeches, he reflected. Nobody ever suggests taking a proper afternoon nap.
Beside the porch steps, Sera Thorne adjusted the leather straps of her steel-reinforced cuirass for the fifth time in twenty minutes.
Inside the lining of her armor, six rectangular Iron-Skin Talisman Plates sat flush against her ribs. They hummed with faint, latent warding power.
At her waist, nestled beside her dagger, hung a wax-sealed horn vial containing two zero-poison Tier 2 Cloud-Veined Supreme Pills.
