No!
I throw myself forward, jamming my good hand against the wedge before it kicks free. Pain explodes through my wounded arm from the angle. My bandage flares so brightly that blue leaks between my fingers.
The rack drops half a finger. Kavor catches it with both hands. Too much weight. Too much vibration. The floor cracks wider.
“Kavor, no!”
His eyes blaze red at the edges. He does not listen. No. Not true. He hears me. He just chooses the children. Ila pulls Miri free.
“Out!” I shout.
Kavor releases the rack the instant the children clear. It slams down. The cracked floor caves beneath it. The rack, the wedges, and a section of stone vanish into the dark. Dust blasts upward.
People scream.
Kavor grabs me around the waist and hauls me backward before the edge takes me too. For one second, I hang against him. Then duty tears me loose.
“Back from the hole!” I shout. “Everyone to the east hall. Slow, not running. If you run, the floor answers.”
No one moves. Fear has made them stupid. Frozen in place. I climb onto a fallen stone block so they can see me and ignore the way my legs almost fold.
“Look at me!”
They do. Slow. Numb. Terror written across their faces.
“East hall. Single line. Hands on the wall. Children first. Injured second. No running unless you want the floor under you to do that again,” I say, pointing at the hole.
That works. My people move.
Ila has Miri. Lysa has Tavi. Penr is crying and trying not to. Someone takes the children from them. Someone else starts guiding the line. The City remembers systems when someone tells it how not to die.
My arm burns. Blue glow leaks through the bandage, brighter than before. I tuck it against my side. Kavor sees and moves to stand between me and the room without making it obvious, body angled to block too many eyes.
A wall with a door. My throat tightens. Not now.
“I told you to keep the proof safe,” I say.
“I did.”
He gestures to show the bundles strapped against his chest, higher now, away from dust and grasping hands. Good.
The crowd parts at the far end. Adran enters with two human guards and Virn behind him. Of course. Of all the terrible timings available, politics chooses the one with dust in its hair.
Adran’s face is pale but controlled. Always controlled. He takes in the collapsed floor, the evacuating survivors, Kavor, me, the blood, the bundles against Kavor’s chest. His eyes linger there too long and my body goes cold.
“Sera,” Adran says. “You’re alive.”
A correct statement wearing the wrong expression.
“Yes.”
Virn’s gaze shifts from me to Kavor, then to the hole. His wings tighten. “Where is the zemlja?”
“Beneath the lower district,” Kavor says. “Moving through old tunnels. Being guided.”
Virn’s face changes. Adran’s does not.
“Guided by what?” Adran asks.
