Quiet. Terrible. The air goes thin. Adran looks at him.
“Then perhaps Kavor can explain whether his bond with one of my people has compromised her usefulness to the City,” Adran says.
The room freezes. There it is. Not her safety. Not my agency. Usefulness.
Kavor moves. Barely. Enough that Virn shifts, too.
I step between them. My legs shake. I stand anyway.
“I’m not one of your people,” I say.
Adran’s eyes return to me.
“I’m City,” I say. “That doesn’t make me yours.”
The words leave a mark on the room. On me, too. Strange. I didn’t know I had them until they were out. Kavor’s breath changes behind me. Rosalind watches like she just saw a door crack open in a wall she thought was solid.
Adran’s expression doesn’t change, and that worries me.
“Then, as a City citizen,” he says smoothly, “you understand why personal entanglements must not interfere with survival decisions.”
Personal entanglements.
The cavern. Kavor’s hands. His mouth. His refusal to claim me in the dark. His voice saying fear is not consent. Pain is not consent. Survival is not consent. All of it reduced to a phrase that could sit in a ledger. Something in me wants to claw at him. Something else wants to run back into duty, where language is safer and wanting can be locked away.
Duty wins, because it always knows the route.
“I understand survival decisions better than you do,” I say. “Which is why I’m saying no one goes below until we know how to block the signal, contain the corruption, and keep the zemlja from turning under us.”
Adran studies me. “And who decides when that is?”
I look at Rosalind. Then Virn. Then Syin. Then Kavor. A mistake. His eyes meet mine. Everything under the City looks back at me through them.
Want. Fear. Choice. His promise not to take. The ache of being seen when I need to be useful. I look away first.
“The Council can decide structure,” I say. “Rosalind, Virn, Syin, Ila for City routes, Kavor for zemlja movement, me for the map.”
Kavor’s jaw tightens. He knows. I named him by function. I named myself by function too. Clean. Efficient. Cowardly. Necessary, maybe.
Rosalind’s eyes narrow. “You need a healer.”
“I need ten minutes.”
“You need a healer,” Ila says.
“Ila.”
“No. I am using my full-name voice now, even without saying your full name, because I don’t think you have one,” Ila says.
“I have one.”
“Then stop acting like a corridor with legs,” she says.
Kavor makes a sound. I glare at him. He looks away. Coward, I think. No. Not coward. Letting me have the room.
Adran steps toward the table. “Until this structure is decided, the proof should remain under City guard,” Adran says.
“No,” Rosalind says.
