Idon’t know how long we lie there in the dark alcove.
Long enough for my breathing to slow. Long enough for the adrenaline of nearly drowning to fade. Long enough for Sarven’s heat to seep into me like a soothing, cleansing flame, chasing away the phantom chill of the deep water.
I lift my head from his chest, wincing as my neck protests the angle.
He’s watching me.
His eyes are open, but they are still not the deep, burning red I’m used to. They look… ancient. Endless. Deep pools of black filled with pinpricks of light, like he’s holding a galaxy inside his skull. And right now, those galaxies are fixed on my face with intense, unblinking focus.
I shift, pushing myself up on one elbow to get a better look at him.
The way his muscles had locked and twisted has smoothed out. He looks solid. Finished.
Back to looking like a carved statue that finally figured out how to breathe.
But he’s not calm.
His chest rises and falls too fast beneath me.
“Sarven?” I whisper.
His gaze drops to my scale-tunic. It’s a mess. Some of the scales have dislodged from the sinew holding them all together, leaving gaps where my skin shows through. I look like I’ve been chewed up and spit out by the planet, which, honestly, is exactly what happened.
“Noh.” The word is a rumble in his chest.
I blink. “No? No what?”
“You…hurt.” He gestures vaguely at my head, then at the tunnel entrance where the poison spring waits. Then he presses his forehead to mine, his skin fever-hot. “You almost left me alone in the dust. You…went silent.”
The raw pain that comes with the thought makes my heart choke.
Sarven grimaces, pulling himself back against the rock wall, and I can tell that even though he’s not showing it, he’s still feeling a shit ton of pain.
“We…wait,” he rumbles, the words clearly costing him. “After… we return. When you…are strong.”
I look away from him, toward the dark mouth of the tunnel.
I think about the pool. The water closing over my head. The taste of rot.
And I remember what I saw just before I fell. Not just a crack in the rock. A face. Watching.
Someone who isn’t a member of our clan was in our territory. Someone who might only mean harm.
We are miles deep in a contaminated mountain on a hostile planet. We are exhausted, battered, and alone.
There is no guarantee of ‘later’.
The universe doesn’t promise us safety. It doesn’t promise us time to recover or a soft bed or constant safety and blessings. It gives us right now.
I look back at him.
Sarven is glowing with starlight. He is whole. He is alive.
And I am alive.
My chest tightens around a sudden clarity. I’m done being afraid of the wrong things.
I push myself up, closing that inch of distance between us.
