The broken anchor at our feet sparks white-gray. The pool shudders. The blue flare around us turns sharp. Too bright. Too responsive.
Sera breaks the kiss first, breath shaking against my mouth. Her eyes are wide, but not with regret or fear of me. Fear of what has answered.
Across the cavern, every strand of epis points toward us.
Then the old system beneath the pool wakes again.
23
SERA
For one impossible second, the cavern stops pretending it isn’t watching.
The pool shudders. Blue roots beneath the surface twist toward the broken anchor at our feet, toward the sample pressed between my palm and Kavor’s chest, toward the blood under my bandage, and toward the place where his mouth was just on mine.
Where I put it. I kissed him.
That thought should be simple. It isn’t. It opens inside me like one of the old sealed seams, spilling blue light through places I thought were stone.
The old system beneath the pool wakes again. The water pulls sideways with a sudden, hard lurch. The white-gray shape below it brightens, its angular ribs unfolding beneath the blue like something stretching after a long sleep. The blackened channels pulse once, then again.
Not the old rhythm. This one is faster. Hungry.
Kavor’s arm tightens around my waist for half a breath before his hand opens against me again. Still holding me. Still offering release. Still fighting himself with every muscle in his body.
My lips burn. His eyes aren’t fully tinged red, but there’s a rim of danger around the dark iris. There is heat behind the restraint, and a wanting so fierce I feel it even through the space he refuses to cross without my choosing.
I should step back. Obviously. The cavern is reacting. The system is waking. My arm is bleeding. The City is above us, hungry and unwarned. Every practical piece of me lines up with its little ration ledger and writes: Not now. Not here. Not this.
But my mouth remembers him. My body remembers the second he answered. My heart, traitorous little thing, has thrown down its tools and wandered off through blue light.
“Kavor,” I say.
His name comes out rougher than I mean for it to. His gaze drops to my mouth again. Just for a fraction. Then he looks away as if the cavern wall has become fascinating. It hasn’t.
“We need to move,” he says.
Formal. Controlled. Knives wrapped in cloth. I almost laugh. Not because it’s funny. Because I can still taste him, and he’s trying to sound like stone.
“Yes,” I say.
Neither of us moves.
The pool drains faster. The machine hums under the water, a low vibration that climbs the ridge and slides into my bones. Thebroken anchor sparks at our feet, dead-looking except for a faint white-gray flicker caught in its ribs.
Kavor bends to retrieve it, careful not to touch me. That hurts more than the burn in my arm. Unreasonable. Unfair.
Mine. No. Not mine.
The word comes too easily after kissing him, which means it needs to be buried under something heavy until I can inspect it when I am not bleeding.
Kavor wraps the broken anchor in spare hide and tucks it away from the sample. Proof. Evidence. Danger folded into a pouch.
His shoulder is bleeding again. The tear near his wing has opened wider from the climb. Dark blood runs down scaled skin, catching blue light until it looks almost black-purple. He ignores it because, apparently, enormous Zmaj males are allowed to bleed strategically while everyone else counts as a crisis.
“Sit,” I say.
His head turns slowly. Good. Let him feel hunted by his own nonsense.
