“Yes,” he says.
I turn before I can undo it. The corridor swims, but I keep walking. Behind me, Kavor doesn’t follow. He lets me go.
And somehow, that is the worst thing he has ever done.
28
KAVOR
Sera walks away. Every instinct in me follows, but I do not. This is the hardest battle I have ever won.
She moves down the corridor on shaking legs, one hand skimming the stone wall, injured arm held tight against her ribs. Too pale. Too wounded. Too alone by choice, which makes no sense to instinct but perfect sense to love.
Love. The word stands in me now. No red around it. No command. No teeth. Only truth too large to fit inside silence.
Sera walks away, and I let her. Because she asked me to keep Adran away from the proof. Because she named duty when she meant pain. Because if I follow, if I place my body between her and the world again, every eye in the City will count that too.
Bond. Claim. Usefulness. Weakness.
They will count her by me, and I will not become another measure used against her. So I stand in the corridor with my claws curled against my palms while she disappears around the bend and I do not follow.
The earth shifts under my feet. Not enough for alarm, but enough for warning.
Stone speaks in pressure. Old channels speak in wrong rhythm. The City speaks in footsteps, whispers, questions gathering like dust in corners. Behind me, the west chamber waits with proof on the table and hunger in the room.
I turn back. It is not surrender, or so I tell myself before I step inside. It is the only way to keep love from becoming another cage.
The west chamber has changed in the few moments I was gone.
Not visibly. The same scarred table. The same low ceiling. The same narrow vent carrying heat and anxious breath. The same wrapped samples separated under mineral cloth. The same broken anchor crouched on the stone like a dead insect waiting to prove it is not dead.
It is the people who have shifted. They have already begun choosing positions.
Rosalind stands at the head of the table, one hand braced beside the map. Virn is at her right, wings tight, eyes on the proof. Syin remains near the door, guarding more than listening. Ila stands beside the healthy sample with her arms folded, face sharp enough to cut through lies.
Adran stands too close to the table. His guards stand too near him. That is the first problem. I step between Adran and the proof.
He looks at me. I look back. His guards tense. Virn’s wings rustle once.
“No one touches the samples,” Rosalind says.
Her voice is calm. The room obeys because old command knows how to move through air without raising its volume.
Adran smiles faintly. “We’re all very protective of cloth and glowing weeds.”
Ila’s eyes narrow. “Careful. Your desperation is showing.”
His smile does not move. “And yours is not?”
“Mine has manners.”
Rosalind’s palm strikes the table. Not hard, but enough to draw every eye to her.
“We are not fighting over access until we understand what almost killed everyone in the lower cistern,” Rosalind says. “Kavor. Report.”
I incline my head. Formal is easier. Formal gives the red nowhere to bite.
“The zemlja has not been moving according to a natural pattern,” I say. “Its turns are too regular. It answers rhythm. The pulse is not zemlja. The pulse uses old channels beneath the City and under the sealed district.”
