“My smart mate,” he projects, the thought fuzzy with exhaustion but bright with pride. “The clan is safe.”
“For now,” I think back, leaning into him.
Someone jostles my shoulder, and I turn.
Erika appears at my side, a teasing grin on her tired face. She’s covered in stone dust, a smudge of firebloom dust across her cheek, looking like a glorious, grumpy chimney sweep.
“Don’t say I never let you have any field wins,” she says dryly.
“You didn’t let me,” I point out. “I dragged you along for rock-carrying duty and you complained the whole way.”
She huffs. “Semantics. We moved the rocks. The water is flowing. I’m taking partial credit.”
“Take it,” I say. “You earned it.”
A shadow falls over us.
Kol drifts over, his attention dividing: half on the water being boiled, half on us. But as he stops, his gaze doesn’t land on me.
It lands on Erika.
He watches her wipe a streak of soot from her forehead, his eyes tracking the movement with a terrifying kind of focus. It’s not the polite nod of a leader to a subordinate. It’s the look a predator gives to something that surprisingly fought back.
“You lifted heavy stone,” Kol thinks, his mental tone low.
Erika stiffens, looking up at him. “Did you say something?”
Most people shrink under the dra-dam’s stare. Erika just crosses her arms.
“He said that you lifted heavy stones,” I offer.
“I have functional arms, Kol. I used them.”
Kol’s eyes narrow, a flicker of gold lighting up his irises. The air between them suddenly feels very, very charged.
“Many humans are… soft,” he forces through his thick throat, the words rolling around his mouth like he’s testing them. “You are not.”
Erika holds his gaze, lifting her chin. “Careful. That almost sounded like a compliment.”
He pauses, and I feel his presence brush mine, almost as if he’s hearing what she’s saying through me. Ah…so that’s how that works.
“It was…a fact,” he finally replies.
He holds her stare for a second longer, before finally turning to me.
“You have done well, Mih-kay-lah,” he says.
“Team effort,” I say, glancing between him and Erika with raised eyebrows. “Including the mountain cooperating for once.”
Kol inclines his head. “The mountain does not cooperate. We just proved we are more stubborn.” He glances at Erika again. “Some of us more than others.”
Erika must sense he’s talking about her because she rolls her eyes, but I catch the flush rising on her neck before she turns away to help one of the women hold a bowl to drink. Kol watches her, his expression unreadable, before moving off to bark orders at Haroth.
“Interesting,” Sarven’s voice murmurs in my head, rippling with amusement.
“Very,” I agree. But that’s a problem for another day.
Because right now, the crisis has receded enough that I can feel what it left behind.
