Illadon lets out a breath he’s clearly been holding. Rverre relaxes by degrees, tension draining from her wings, but I don’t soften. I can’t. I can’t let him inside any further than he already is.
I need him to get angry. I need him to react — to prove that calm has a breaking point.
“You adjusted for the wrong variable,” I counter.
“Yes.”
“You chose control over coherence,” I accuse.
His eyes flick away, then back. “I chose speed.”
“And we’re paying for it. It almost cost us everything. The children?—”
I cut off, letting the words hang between us. He shifts his grip, slower this time, deliberate in a way that acknowledges risk rather than denying it.
“We stop. Reassess.”
Rverre nods immediately. “The ground needs a minute.”
I swallow hard, pain pulsing where my ankle throbs, anger threading through it. Not because he failed — but because he failed for me.
“You don’t get to make me the constant,” I say quietly.
His gaze locks on mine. “Then don’t let me.”
That answer is not enough, but it’s honest. And for the first time since he picked me up, I realize something that chills me more than the misstep ever could, he can’t carry me and decide everything alone.
The desert has just proven it.
Korr exhales slowly and shifts his stance, lowering us both until my weight rests more fully against his chest and less against his forward leg. He doesn’t set me down — but he stops moving.
He looks past me to the ground, then to Rverre, then to Illadon. Then back to me.
“What do you see?” he asks.
The question lands harder than any apology. Illadon’s head snaps up. Rverre stills completely.
I blink. “What?”
“You’re the one who caught it,” he says. “You knew before I did. So tell me — where does it hold?”
For a heartbeat, I can’t breathe. He isn’t testing me. He isn’t humoring me. He’s waiting.
“You want me to decide?” I ask.
“Yes.”
Not help me decide. Not confirm my choice. Decide.
Something in my chest twists — sharp, almost painful — because this is the part that never lasts. This is the moment that always turns temporary. Conditional.
“Stone breaks two lengths to the right,” I say finally, voice steady despite myself. “The seam’s shallow there. If we angle wide and cross diagonally, it’ll distribute instead of shear.”
Korr doesn’t argue. Instead he nods once.
“Then we do that.”
Illadon doesn’t hesitate, adjusting and guiding Rverre into the new line without a backward glance. No one looks to me for permission and no one challenges it either.
