“No,” I say. “This is exactly the time.”
I step down from the platform. Pain nearly folds me. Merra swears, but I keep my feet.
Kavor is across the hall. Still at the junction. Still where duty placed him. I walk toward him, and people part. Every step hurts. Let it.
The City has always understood pain better than it understands joy. Maybe it needs to see both in the same body before it believes either can lead anywhere.
The floor pulses again. Once. Pause. Again. I stop halfway across the hall and raise my voice.
“Keep moving north. Slow. Sideways. Children first. Elders next.”
The lines continue. Good. I keep walking.
Adran says behind me, “Sera.”
I don’t turn. For once, I don’t turn when usefulness calls my name.
Kavor rises slowly as I approach. His burned hand hangs at his side, blackened at the palm. Dust and blood streak his scales. His eyes are dark, not red, but the red waits inside them, leashed by choice.
He looks at me like he wants to catch me, but he doesn’t move. Terrible male. Beautiful male. Mine if I say it. Mine if I choose it.
I stop in front of him.
Close enough to feel his coolness. Far enough away that everyone can see he has not pulled me there. My voice nearly fails. I let it shake.
“I’m scared,” I say.
His face changes.
Behind me, the hall breathes. The evacuation continues. Adran is silent. Rosalind watches from the far side, her expression hard and unreadable. Ila stands at the north gate, one hand on the rusted frame, eyes too bright.
Kavor says, “I know.”
Of course he does.
“I’m scared wanting you will make me selfish.” His jaw tightens, but he says nothing. “I’m scared that if I choose something for myself, someone else pays for it.”
Good. This one is mine.
“I’m scared of being counted. I’m scared of being needed. I’m scared of being looked at like salvation and used until there’s nothing left.” My breath catches. “And I’m scared because when you look at me, I don’t feel useful.”
His eyes close for one beat. When they open, they are raw. I step closer.
“I feel wanted.”
The word lands between us like a living thing. The floor pulses. The blue under my bandage answers. Kavor doesn’t look at my arm. He looks at me. Only me.
That nearly breaks my ribs worse than the fall did.
“I don’t want less anymore,” I say.
A murmur moves through the hall. I ignore it.
“I don’t want to be the part of myself that gets cut smaller so everyone else can call it discipline. I don’t want to pretend survival is the same thing as living. I don’t want to leave what happened below buried because the City is hungry and Adran knows how to make hunger sound like duty.”
Adran starts to say something.
Rosalind cuts him off with one sharp, “Enough.”
