“You will sleep longer than twenty breaths.”
“I wasn’t asking.”
“I know.”
“Kavor.”
“Sera.”
The quiet between our names changes the hollow.
She looks away first. “Fine. Thirty.”
“No.”
“Forty.”
“No.”
“I’m beginning to suspect this negotiation is false.”
“True.”
She should argue longer, but she does not. That worries me more than argument.
Her lashes lower again. “Wake me if the rhythm comes back.”
“Yes.”
“Or if the zemlja shifts closer.”
“Yes.”
“Or if the sample changes.”
“Yes.”
“Or if I start dying.”
My claws press into my palm.
Her eyes open, faintly amused and too tired. “That one was a joke.”
“No.”
“It was.”
“No.”
The amusement thins. She studies me across the dim hollow, blue sample-light faint against my chest and dust on her cheek.
“I am not dying,” she says.
“Good.”
“Not everything needs to sound like a vow.”
Some things do, so I say nothing. She closes her eyes before my silence can become another wound.
