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"That's what I thought too."

Halver crouched near the passage wall, Jade cradled carefully against his chest where he'd carried her the whole way from the alcove, and even in the dim light I could see how much worse she'd gotten. Her skin had gone the color of old paper, sheened with sweat despite the cavern's cold, and her breathing came shallow and quick enough that I found myself slowing my own breathing without meaning to, like doing it slower might convince her body to follow.

"How is she," I asked, though I could see well enough for myself.

"Fever's worse," Halver said. "She's been in and out for the last hour."

Ashter lay solid and unmoving against her side, steady in a way that was starting to look less like calm and more like effort, holding himself together on nothing but stubbornness while the girl he was bonded to burned up beside him. I found myself watching him as closely as I watched her.

As if summoned by the words, her eyes fluttered open, glassy and unfocused, and for a moment none of us moved, watching to see which way this particular surfacing would go.

"Corian," she said, voice cracked and thin.

He was beside her in an instant, crouching close, one hand finding her uninjured shoulder. "I'm here."

"I'm sorry."

"For what?"

"For arguing with you. In the tunnel. About stopping." Her eyes tracked toward him, struggling to hold focus, and something in her expression had gone raw in a way I'd never once seen on her, all her usual careful control burned away by fever and left with nothing standing between what she felt and what showed on her face. "You were trying to keep everyone safe and I made it harder because I didn't want to be the reason we slowed down. I'm always so afraid of being the reason."

"Jade-"

"I'm sorry I'm slowing you down now. I know I am. I can feel it." Her hand found his sleeve, weak, insistent. "If it comes down to it, you get the others out. That's an order I'm allowed to give too."

Corian's face did something I'd never seen it do before, not during the collar argument, not during any of the small clashes they'd had over the months since we had been placed together. Something in him simply broke, quiet and total, gone as fast as it arrived but not fast enough that I hadn't caught it.

"Nobody's leaving anybody," he said, voice rough. "You don't get to give that order. Not to me."

"Corian-"

"No." He said it gently, but there was no give in it at all. "You listen to me the way I listened to you back in that tunnel. We're not doing this. Not today, not ever."

Her eyes had already started sliding shut again, the moment of clarity spending itself as fast as it had arrived, but I watched her mouth curve, small and exhausted, like some old argument between them had finally settled itself in a way that satisfied some part of her even half-conscious.

"Okay," she whispered, and went under again.

Corian stayed crouched beside her a moment longer, jaw tight, breathing carefully controlled in a way I recognized as a man holding himself together through sheer force of will. None of us said anything about it. We all mirrored it.

I looked away first, mostly because watching him fall apart quietly in front of all of us felt like the kind of privacy a person deserved even in a cave with nowhere private left to have it. Nykos had gone very still beside me, and even Halver, usually the steadiest of all of us, had a muscle working hard in his jaw that he wasn't quite managing to smooth away.

"We need to move fast," he said finally, standing. "Whatever we're doing down there, we do it now."

The plan came together quickly, out of necessity more than confidence.

"Nykos, you're on the gap," Corian said. "Watch the rotation, find the window, signal when it opens."

"Without the sweep, that's guesswork."

"It's guesswork either way. Yours is better guesswork than anyone else's."

Nykos didn't argue further, though I caught the tightness around his eyes that said he understood exactly how much weight had just landed on his eyes and instinct alone.

"Alex, Halver, you're in the tent," Corian continued. "Fast and quiet. Samples, ledger, anything that looks like it documents where this actually goes. I'll stay with Jade."

"You sure," I asked. "Extra hands in there might-"

"I'm not leaving her alone in a cave full of armed men, Alex."