"Good," I said. "It means we can still beat you back. Now tell me what's going on in the compound?"
"How's Sylis?" he asked instead.
"Alive," I promised.
But Rymar had a better answer. "He with Drozel and Omden. You saw them. The green and the tan. Meri too. Drozel see if Meri help him, and the doctor make good. We not see him, but he fine. Injury was..." And he made a raspberry sound, getting the point across without the word he was clearly lacking.
"Callah?" I asked Tobias next.
"She's good," he assured me. "Ayla, she's convincing the women to no longer tolerate their mistreatment. They're starting to push back. Most are too scared to do much, but they're all doing something. Like how women are now healed in the infirmary, just like men. If there's no room or they want privacy, Callah cares for them in our nursery."
I grumbled at the name for that room. "If you hurt her, Tobias..."
He chuckled. "Ayla, I won't. I'm also more scared of seeing disappointment on her face than any of those weapons you're wearing. She's safe from me, and I will make sure she stays safe from everyone else, okay?"
"Do you love her?" I asked next.
He paused with his mouth half open. "I.." Then he pressed his lips together. "Ayla, the way I felt about my father is nothing like how I feel about Callah. My mother is closer, but Callah is more than that. She's…" He paused again, glancing away like he was searching for the right words. "She's my friend."
"Do you love her?" I demanded. "Like a friend, or family, or something else? Tobias, is the word 'like' no longer enough?"
No, he didn't understand these feelings, and I was asking him the same way the Dragons had all tried to speak to me about feelings. Still, what he'd said about her disappointment mattering so much to him? That sounded like how I felt about Rymar, Zasen, and Kanik. It felt like something real.
So I changed tactics and asked, "Would you die for her, Tobias?"
"Without regret."
And that was what I'd needed to hear. When I'd come to the surface, I'd been convinced love was a form of abuse. Marriage was torture to women down there. Sex was pain, and pregnancy always led to death. Those had been truths, but they'd beenmytruths. That didn't mean they had to be Callah's.
"Then I'm going to stop worrying about her marrying you," I told him. "Callah is our friend, so that makes us friends, right?"
He looked up, hitting me with eyes that weren't quite blue. They were close, but had flecks of other colors mixed in, and the shade was too muddy to be the same color as the rest of the Moles.
"I swear, Ayla. I don't know you well, but I trust Callah enough to believe in you too."
I leaned back, liking how that felt. He'd just said exactly what I'd needed to stop worrying about her. Well, with him. Callah still had plenty of threats, but Tobias really was on her side, and he'd been proving it every time we met.
Rymar didn't give me the chance to get distracted, though. Leaning in, he asked, "What about quarantine?"
Tobias blew out a breath. "Yeah, I don't know. I'm not allowed in there anymore. Not since I was a kid. I do know that three of the elders are no longer talking about wives. I don't think they've married the Reaper women yet, but they likely will. Gideon said something about the women and possible demon children, though. My hope is they'll be given three months like the widows are." To prove they weren't carrying another man's child, he meant.
"Which means we need to get them out before then," I said. "So, that's how long you have to get promoted."
"And if I can't?" he asked.
"No," Rymar said, slashing his hand to make his meaning clear. "You, Tobias, need to get code. If no?" He looked at me and switched to Vestrian. "The Wyvern cannot make these people be patient forever."
Before I could translate that to Tobias, someone in the distance called out in English, "Pull back. Retreat to rally point A."
"You have to go," I told Tobias.
He nodded. "Yeah. I'll figure it out. But Ayla, I don't know why they're not telling us anything about the hunts. I'm not important enough to be included in those talks. All I know is we're told the night before, then we find out where we're going the morning we leave.Theymight not even know before then. It's entirely possible they're making it up on the spot, but I'm worried they have a bigger plan than that."
I nodded. "Okay. Sadly, we can't do much about that yet. Not until you're promoted." And I realized we had another problem. "How are you explaining the lack of wounds?"
"I haven't been," he admitted.
Which made Rymar laugh once, then lash out. His fingers were crooked like claws, and his talons caught Tobias across the jaw and neck. The hit was quick - and then done. By the time Tobias jerked back in shock, he'd already been marked.
