Korr reacts instantly, widening his stance and adjusting his grip to take the stress off my ankle. He doesn’t look at me, or comment, but his body rearranges itself as if he’s already mapped the damage.
The efficiency is infuriating. It shouldn’t be. He’s helping. I know it, but that raw, gnawing sense of helplessness will not be denied.
“I can stand,” I say.
“No,” he replies, flatly.
Illadon glances back, eyes widening, wings fluttering.
“Should you set her down?”
“No,” Korr repeats, this time sharper.
Rverre’s looks at him.
“It’s watching now.”
“Then we don’t give it a reason to push harder,” he says. “We move. Carefully.”
I clench my jaw. Being discussed like terrain is scraping something raw inside me.
“I’m not a liability,” I snap.
Korr finally looks at me. There isn’t a hint of apology in his gaze, not even an assessing look. His face shows nothing but absolute certainty.
“You are injured,” he says. “That is not the same thing.”
“It becomes the same thing if everyone treats it like?—”
“Enough.”
The word is quiet and controlled. It cuts clean through the argument without raising his voice. Illadon stiffens. Rverre goes very still.
I stare at Korr, breath shallow, anger sparking hot and useless. I want to argue. I want to insist. I want to be right. But the ground shifts again. It’s a whisper of movement. The stone settling where it hadn’t before. Rverre inhales sharply.
“It doesn’t like fighting,” she says.
That douses my flaring anger and stops me cold.
Korr adjusts his hold and starts forward, angling wide around the unstable patch. Illadon follows without question, guiding Rverre with a gentleness that mirrors Korr’s precision. No one asks me again.
The worst part is that the land seems to respond. The vibration eases. The stone holds. The path ahead firms enough to walk. I swallow hard, as an understanding settles unwelcome and heavy, but also undeniable. This isn’t about control. It’s about coherence.
Right now, the world makes more sense when I stop fighting the fact that I can’t hold everything together on my own.
Bile rises in my throat. I swallow it down, struggling to hide the cold chills that race over my body. Because if I admit that, then I have to ask myself who’s carrying what—and whether I’ll ever get it back.
Korr sets his pace, each step measured and economical. I feel the difference as I become attuned to the minute adjustments of his body. It’s similar to the way I read lesson plans. It’s an instinct. Taking in little details and sensing the pattern.
He shifts his weight before the ground does. Anticipating the pull of sand before it gives. His breathing is the first indicator, shallow for a stretch, then deeper when the stone firms beneath his boots.
He’s working. Not in the obvious way Illadon works when he’s overthinking something, or the way I work when I’m pretendingnot to hurt. This is quieter. A constant, low burn of effort that never quite surfaces as strain.
I wish him being so good at this, being so perfect in the way he’s handling me, didn’t needle at me, but it does. It’s tiny pinpricks, poking at my pride. At my identity. At who I am, who I became, shaped by the pain of surviving.
I shift in his arms, trying to redistribute my weight, to find some angle that makes this feel less lopsided. Less like I’m something being carried instead of someone moving alongside him.
It’s a mistake.
