“You will stay behind me,” I murmur. “You will not touch anything that reacts to you. You will breathe when I tell you to breathe.”
Her breath catches. “Why?”
Because I cannot lose her. But I cannot say that.
Instead, I say only?—
“Because this place wants you.”
Her lips part. Her eyes widen. A shiver rolls through her.
“And,” I add quietly, “because you are mine to guard.”
She exhales—slow, trembling, surrendering in the smallest way.
“…Okay.”
Behind us, Tomas clears his throat and mutters, “I’m gonna… sit. Somewhere. Over there.”
Travnyk shakes his head, tusks catching the dim blue glow.
“Humans,” he grumbles.
But Lia still looks at me. And I look at her, and for one breath—one heartbeat—we are alone in a waking ghost. Outside, the predator circles. Inside, the ship answers her touch. I know, withabsolute certainty, we are trapped between two hungers. And one of them wants her far more than it wants blood.
11
LIA
The metal beneath my hand hums. It’s not loud or sharp, and it doesn’t feel dangerous. It’s soft, warm—a vibration that doesn’t feel mechanical so much as… aware. I snatch my fingers back.
Rakkh notices instantly. Of course he does. He’s been watching me with the focus of a… well, a dragon. Which is what a Zmaj looks like—a dragon guarding something precious and breakable. That thought makes my stomach twist.
“It reacts to you,” he says quietly, stepping closer.
Too close. The faint blue glow fades from the seam I touched, like a heartbeat settling. The hum dies away.
“I don’t want it to,” I whisper.
Rakkh’s chest lifts—slow inhale, slow exhale—as his gaze drags over the walls, the floor, the soft pulsing veins of metal running like roots beneath the surface. His shoulders remain coiled with tension.
“You do not choose what old technology wants,” Travnyk murmurs from across the chamber. “It chooses.”
“Not helping,” Tomas mutters, hugging his knees near a rib-shaped support beam.
I wrap my arms around myself, wishing the cold knot in my gut would loosen. The buried ship feels wrong in a way the desert never does. Tajss is harsh. Tajss is dangerous. But this—this is alien, and it feels like memory, like I’m walking into someone else’s dream.
Rakkh brushes past me—just barely making contact—and even that accidental touch sends heat curling through my chest. I need space. I need to breathe. But the ship’s interior is small enough that every movement feels crowded. The walls curve inward, like the spine of something sleeping.
“We need light,” I say, forcing my voice steady.
“There is light,” Rakkh murmurs, eyes narrowing at the dim blue glow pulsing along the walls.
“No,” I say, swallowing. “Real light. Fire. Heat. Something… normal.”
Normal feels like a lie out here, but Rakkh nods once. Travnyk produces a striker and flint from his pouch. Tomas finds loose scraps of dried root in the seams of the wreckage—old, brittle, but usable. Together, they coax a flame to life in a shallow depression in the metal.
The fire’s glow warms the chamber and makes the alien metal feel less alive, less aware.
