She points directly at the small bowl. I see her soft mouth working silently as she tries to string the ancient Drakav sounds together. She requires the wordss’kahn-tul. Water tool.
She opens her mouth.
“S’kahn-kol.”
My entire body instantly, violently stiffens.
The cavern is plunged into absolute silence. No sudden scraping of bone against rock. No shifting of limbs. All my warriors cease breathing at the exact same moment. The sudden quiet presses painfully, incredibly heavy against my skin.
She did not say water tool.
She aggressively, loudly saidKol’s water.
In the ancient language of the dust, there is no more complete claim one can make. It is a vow of absolute belonging that the deep dust has not heard in a thousand seasons.
Mydra-kirslams violently against my ribs. Once. Twice. The impact physically bruises the bone.
Sarven’s thought arrives first. It carries a crystal-clear image of my form, sitting rigidly and unmoving on the upper ledge for the last three solmarks, obsessed with watching her. Deep, resonant amusement ripples powerfully through the mindspace.
”Your small leader female calls to you, dra-dam.”
A bruising wave of totally unfamiliar possessive heat hits my bloodstream so fast my vision actually blurs.
My fangs ache and a low, completely uncontrolled, ragged noise tears out of my throat before I can bite it down. The searing glow illuminating my entire chest flares out of control.
I turn my back on the open cavern and shove both of my hands straight into the solid stone wall of the ledge.
My sharp claws sink completely in to the hilt, and the solid rock loudly cracks under the extreme pressure.
I must bury my claws into the rock to stop my own legs from moving. To stop myself from vaulting off this upper ledge, crossing the cavern floor, throwing her small body over my shoulder, and dragging her into the deepest, unmapped dark of the tunnels to press my burning skin against hers until this terrifying fever breaks.
She does not understand the language,I tell my own mind, my chest heaving as I drag hot, searing air into my burning lungs.She does not know what she just claimed.
Mydra-kirdoes not care.
I rip my claws free and immediately leave through the tight, dark access tunnel at the back of the upper vents. If I stay in the exact same cavern as her for one more second, the fragile control I have will completely shatter.
Zan tracksmy escape to the cold, narrow confines of the lower armory.
He does not announce his presence, but I can feel the rigid tension of him bleeding into the dark space.
I do not look up. I am furiously sweeping a rough grinding stone across a bone spear I do not intend to use. The friction of stone against bone is the only physical outlet keeping my claws from tearing the armory walls apart. The blinding heat of her spoken claim is still roaring in my veins.
Zan ducks through the low archway. He stops a respectful distance away, his amber eyes locked on the aggressive, mechanical strike of my hands.
His posture is wrong. The thick muscles in his arms are locked. It is a deeply defensive stance.
He stands there for so long in complete silence I begin to wonder if the dust has ruined his brain.
His projection finally hits the mindspace. It is not amusement. It is stark terror.
”They do not know our ways,”Zan projects. The thought is sharp enough that my thick brow furrows.”They argue with you. They blindly interrupt the council. The females butcher our most sacred vows in front of the entire clan, and we simply submit to the amusement of it. The females do not understand what they are destroying.”
I slowly ease the movement of the grinding stone.”She is learning. The human translation is imperfect.”
”It is not the translation,”Zan shoots back.”Rok yields to his human. Sarven yields. Tharn yields. If these tiny females reshape our warriors, what becomes of our survival?”
I completely stop grinding the stone and look up.
