“I need to see.”
My fingers hover over its hide, tracing the strange discoloration. The pattern is… wrong. Tajss predators do not get sick like this. Their bodies fight almost everything—parasites, bacteria, venom. They are too evolved, too perfectly adapted. But this? This looks like…
“Chemical burns,” I whisper. “But not on the surface. Inside. Like something is rotting it from its core outward.”
Tomas makes a disgusted noise. “Maybe it ate something bad.”
“No,” I say sharply. “Look here.” I peel back one patch of cracked hide. Black streaks trace the veins beneath. “This is systemic. Internal. It did not eat the poison. It absorbed it.”
“From the ground,” Rakkh says, his voice deep and low.
“Like the plants,” Travnyk says, nodding grimly.
My pulse spikes as my thoughts leap from one assumption to the next.
“It means the contamination is spreading through the food chain.”
The carok suddenly spasms, legs flailing weakly. It lets out a soft, pitiful cry—a sound I have never heard from a creature like this. My throat tightens painfully.
“We cannot save it, can we?” I whisper.
Rakkh studies it for one long moment. Zmaj expressions are not easy to read to most humans, but just as I have learned to read plants, I am learning to read him. His jaw tightens.
“No.”
The carok twitches. A shudder runs through its body. Its breath rattles. Rakkh lowers one hand to its head. Quiet. Steady. Respectful. Then he presses down, and the creature goes still.
My breath catches—relief and sorrow mixed into something sharp enough to hurt. I swallow hard.
“Thank you,” I say before I can stop myself.
Rakkh looks at me sharply, as though the words surprised him.
“It was suffering,” he says softly.
“I know.” My voice comes out softer than I intend. “Still… thank you.”
Something flickers in his eyes. Not heat and not exactly tenderness. Recognition. As if he sees something in me he had not expected, and maybe something he did not want to.
“We need to move,” he says, his voice rough. “If one creature found this place, more may come.”
Tomas shifts nervously. “And the stalker?—”
“Is still circling,” Rakkh finishes. “It will strike when it thinks we are weak.”
I stand, brushing sand off my palms. “Then we cannot give it the chance.”
Rakkh rises beside me in a single fluid movement—tall, imposing, wings half-spread as though ready to shield me again. This close, I can hear the steady double-thrum of his hearts, and heat rushes over my skin. He looks at me, and his voice drops lower.
“Stay near me.”
My breath tangles in my chest, embarrassingly warm. I nod. As we leave, something glints in the sand behind the carok—faint, metallic, catching the moonlight. I stop, stepping toward it.
“Lia,” Rakkh warns.
“I saw something,” I murmur, crouching again.
My fingers brush sand aside. A shard of metal gleams. It is smooth, curved, and definitely not native to Tajss. It is also not handmade. This fragment was machine engineered. A chill races down my spine.
