The buildings on either side lean precariously, walls crumbling as stone shifts beneath them.
“We’re going to lose them,” Alina gasps.
“Not if we hold,” I growl.
“Hold what, Dagan?” she snaps, wild-eyed. “This isn’t a door, it’s a rupture! You can’t just?—”
“Yes,” I cut in. “I can. And you can help.”
She stares at me like I’ve lost my mind. “How?”
The zareth between us flares at her question, hot and insistent.
The earth wants her.
“Trust me,” I say.
Her throat works. The fissure widens—three feet, four—stone crumbling into the dark.
She nods once. “Okay.”
I take her hands in mine and drag them to the ground.
“Feel it,” I order. “Like at the Stepped Vale. Listen.”
Her palms hit the dirt.
Her eyes slam shut.
For a second, nothing happens.
Then I feel it.
Her.
She is sliding into the rhythm I’ve known since before I could speak.
Attuning to the stress lines, the points of tension, the way the rock wants to move.
“There’s a shear plane running under the north edge,” she says through gritted teeth. “If it fails, that whole section slides.”
“Can we anchor it?”
“Maybe. You need a buttress here.” She jerks her chin toward the uphill side. “And reinforcement there.”
The fissure jerks closer.
I let go of my restraint.
Power floods up from deep beneath the Marches, roaring through my legs, my spine, my arms.
If I take it all into myself, it will burn me out, leave me a hollow shell like the Prime fell.
So I don’t.
I push it through her.
My viyella.
