Food is not usually warm. Food is counted, carried, dried, split, hidden, stretched, swallowed before shame can talk. Warm food belongs in stories told by people who still have enough wood to burn for pleasure.
I bite. The taste hits too fast.
Salt. Fat. Bitter root. The softened strip no longer fights my teeth. The seed mash clings to it, warm enough to release something nutty under the dust.
My eyes burn.
No. Absolutely not.
No tears over food. There must be laws against that somewhere. If there aren’t, there should be.
I chew slowly because if I swallow too fast, he will know. He already knows. I can feel his attention held very still across from me.
“You are staring,” I say without looking up.
“Yes.”
“Don’t.”
His gaze shifts away at once. Too fast. Obedient. The food becomes harder to swallow.
“That was not…” I stop.
What? An order? A rebuke? A request? A plea?
The words tangle. Kavor waits. I swallow.
“Never mind,” I say.
“No.” My gaze snaps up. His is on the threshold, not me. “Not never mind. Later, perhaps.”
I do not know what to do with that. With a male who does not demand the thing immediately. Who leaves it alive for later. Later is dangerous country.
I take another bite. This time, the warmth reaches my stomach and spreads like betrayal. My body accepts it. My body is apparently no longer loyal.
Kavor eats his portion only after I take another bite. He does not make a performance of it. He eats efficiently, but I see the care in the timing. He waits because he wants proof that I will not trade hunger for control the moment his eyes turn away.
I should be furious. I am furious. I am also warm.
The blue glow pulses again. This time, it lasts longer.
The rear crack fills with faint color, painting Kavor’s claws blue where they rest against his knee. Blue along the edge of one horn. Blue over the dark scales near his throat.
He turns toward it, and for one heartbeat, the glow makes him look less like something carved from stone and more like something the deep earth kept for itself. I forget the food in my hand.
“Sera,” he says.
My gaze jerks back to his face. He is not looking at me, but at the food. Traitor. I eat the last bite because dignity is dead and, apparently, being supervised.
The glow fades again.
Kavor shifts closer to the crack, not enough to crowd me, but enough to study the seam. I lean sideways to see past him. The space beyond is still too dark, but the glow leaves ghost shapes when it fades. A curve below. Not a flat pocket. A narrow downward throat in the stone.
“There’s a passage,” I say.
“Yes.”
“Too narrow from this side.”
