He holds my gaze for a long beat.
He sees the fever. I know he does. But he also sees the stubborn gleam behind it. The same one that made me decide to come in the first place.
Slowly, he lowers me onto the stone.
My legs wobble but hold. I drop to my knees and crawl a little closer to the outflow channel.
“I just need an idea of how big we’re going to have to make this filter,” I mutter, brows furrowing.
I lean over the edge, squinting at the water swirling into the tunnel.
My heart thuds so hard, wooziness threatening to overcome me, that I have to squeeze my eyes shut to focus.
Opening my eyes, I take a deep breath, gaze automatically finding the shaft of light streaming in from above. The crack in the ceiling is high up. Hundreds of feet, maybe.
I squint, trying to see the sky.
And then I freeze.
There’s something in the crack.
A shape. Blocking the light.
For a heartbeat, it looks like a rock. But then it moves.
It’s not a rock. It’s a face.
Golden. Smooth.
A Drakav?
It’s not Haroth. It’s not Zan. The features are...wrong. Too sharp. Too still.
It peers down, features distorted by the distance and the glare. Eyes. A nose. The suggestion of a mouth.
My gaze darts to Sarven, a chill shooting down my spine.
“Sarven,” I whisper.
He stops instantly, hand going to his blade.
“Up there.” I point, my hand shaking so hard I can’t even point straight. “In the crack. Someone’s watching.”
He moves in a blur, eyes scanning the ceiling, nostrils flaring as he scents the air.
But when my gaze shoots back to the ceiling, there’s nothing there.
The light streams down, empty and unbroken.
“It was there,” I sputter. “The light. The crack. There was a face.”
Sarven stares up into the glare, but the steam and the rot mask everything.
Silence stretches. The water gushes on.
Sarven glances at me, head tilted. “Mih-kay-lah?”
“There was something,” I insist, though doubt is already creeping in. The world swims when I try to focus. My head throbs. “It looked like a person. A Drakav like you.”
