We stare after it. The skull hums with the settling tremor. The storm outside keeps its distant work, but inside something more patient waits, like the sleep under a cold ocean. The younger Zmaj exhales, a sound sharp as a blade edge. Joran’s curse dies into a whisper.
The scarred warrior doesn’t lower his weapon. He turns to me—not fully, only the tiniest tilt of his head—and his eyes, black and fathomless, hold mine for the space of a breath. There is no softness there, no sudden gentleness of words. Only a look that says what his body has said all night.
Don’t move. Don’t die. Stand with me.
I nod once, small, almost involuntary, and feel the scrape of his scales against my sleeve like a vow.
The creature’s breath stirs the dust deeper in the hollow. Something in the dark exhales, and the sound is older than the storm.
Outside, the sky lightens a fraction—a pale promise of dawn that does nothing to warm us. Inside the skull, the thing we disturbed settles into the space it claims. Patient and waiting. I look at the scarred Zmaj. He narrows his eyes, then lowers his head.
“Tajss provides,” he whispers, lowering his lochaber.
The words sink into me like stone dropped into water, ripples spreading, steadying. But the hollow still groans, the storm still howls, and the creature still breathes with us in the dark. I clutch the knife tighter, pulse hammering, and know that whatever comes next, it won’t be mercy.
17
KARA
The storm dies slowly.
At first the howl lowers, pitch by pitch—the shriek turning to a groan, the groan sinking to a long, uneven sigh. Then the sand stops rattling as hard against the bones shielding us. The drifts at our feet ease from steady pour to trickle. By the time pale light threads through the cracks of the skull, the worst of it has passed.
I uncurl my fingers from the blanket. They ache, stiff from how hard I clutched the weave all night. My bandaged arm throbs, but it’s a distant pain, muffled under the weight pressing on my chest.
He hasn’t moved.
The scarred warrior still stands near the hollow, lochaber balanced across his chest. His head is bowed slightly, as if listening for the storm’s last breath, but his eyes… his eyes never stop sweeping the shadows. Watching, waiting. The scars across his scales catch the pale dawn like white fire, ridges carved deepby battles I can’t imagine. He looks like a statue carved to guard the dead, tireless and unyielding.
And yet, when his gaze passes over me, everything in me stirs to life.
I want to laugh at myself. Yesterday—two days ago—I would’ve said I hated him. Hated the silence, the weight of his judgment, the way his presence presses on me until I feel small. But something shifted in the night. I realize that his silence isn’t dismissal—it’s steady acceptance. His eyes don’t make me small—they make me want to rise.
My stomach growls, sharp and hollow. Joran curses under his breath about being “starved half to the bone.” Harlan mumbles a prayer of thanks, voice shaking but insistent. The younger Zmaj crouches tight, wings twitching with leftover nerves.
None of it touches me. Not really. My awareness has narrowed to him.
The lochaber lowers, slow, deliberate. He doesn’t sheath it, doesn’t relax, but the way he shifts his stance says more than words could. It says the danger has passed for now. It says breathe.
I do, shaky and uneven. My lungs hurt like I’ve been holding them too long.
Sand rasps as he moves toward me. Not loud—he’s never loud—but close enough that I feel the shift of air as he stops in front of me. For a moment he looks down, black eyes unreadable. Then, without asking, he reaches for the blanket I’ve pulled half off my shoulder. His hand—broad, scaled, scarred—lifts the edge and tucks it back around me, firm enough that it won’t slip.
Heat burns up my neck. No one has touched me like that before. My parents were killed when the generation ship came down. I wasn’t raised with parental love, but in communal necessity. His touch isn’t rough, or out of necessity, but… gentle. Caring. Like I matter.
I can’t speak. My throat is a knot.
His claws brush fabric instead of skin, careful, almost reverent. Then he steps back, just enough space to be proper, but his gaze lingers another heartbeat before he turns away.
The meaning slams through me harder than the storm’s winds. He’s not just protecting us. Not just protecting me because I’m weak, or foolish, or human. No—this is different. He’s choosing. Claiming, even if he hasn’t said it.
A Zmaj knows his treasure.
The stories every human girl knows paint it like magic—a bond, instant and absolute. But this doesn’t feel like lightning. It feels like stone shifting, foundations being laid under my feet. Every look, every silent action building something I can’t tear down.
I hug the blanket tighter, heart thudding so hard I’m sure he can hear it. Part of me wants to fight it, shove it down, tell myself it’s desperation talking. That I’m hungry, scared, lonely, and clinging to the one steady thing in reach. But that’s a lie. I know it the way I know the desert sun burns.
When his eyes find mine again, steady and black as obsidian, I don’t look away. The silence between us is fuller than any words.
