Chapter 13 #2
“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.”
“For me.”
“Not for me.”
His head turns slowly.
“No,” he says.
There it is. The wall. I knew it would come. I smile sweetly enough to poison something small.
“That sounded almost like a command.”
“It was a boundary.”
“Your boundary does not get to live around my body,” I say.
His jaw tightens. Good. No, not good. Dangerous. Useful. Both.
“The crack may cut you,” he says.
“I have been cut before.”
“That is not an argument for being cut again.”
“The route may widen beyond the seam.”
“Or close,” he says.
“Or lead to the third site.”
“Or to a drop.”
“Or to the only living epis we’ve seen,” I say.
His claws flex once against his knee. The glow has given both of us a thing to want. Want makes everyone stupid in different directions.
I look back at the crack. It is narrow, yes, but not impossible. The rear seam angles down, then to the left. My shoulder might pass if I strip my pack. My ribs might not enjoy the experience. Ribs are famous complainers.
I know how to read tight places. City crawl ducts. Half-collapsed passages. Heat vents. Old service channels children were sent through before they grew too broad to squeeze inside.
This is not so different. Except for the wrong rhythm. The black veins. The fact that the ground may be listening with teeth. Small differences.
“We don’t go now,” I say. Kavor stills. I hold up one finger. “Do not look relieved. It’s insulting.”
“I am not relieved,” he says.
“You are doing the quiet version.”
“Yes.”
Progress. Good and bad.
“We can’t go now because the heat outside has us pinned, and I am not crawling into an unknown passage while the exit behind us is a furnace.” I nod toward the threshold. “If it tightens, we need options. Right now, we have one option, and it glows ominously.”
“Ominously?”
“Do not defend the glow. It rolled our water skin at itself.”
“It may not have been the glow.”
“Fine. The ominous crack rolled our water skin toward itself,” I say.
Kavor looks toward the seam. I do too. The blue light breathes once more, faint and patient. There is no rhythm this time. Only glow. It’s worse somehow. Quieter hope always is.
“We wait until the heat drops,” I continue. “Then we check outside. If the slope is passable and the third site is still reachable, we approach from above, not through the crack.”
“And if the third site cannot be reached from the outside?”
“Then we discuss the crack.”
“No.”
I raise my brows. “We discuss your feelings about the crack.”
“No.”
“And then we discuss how my shoulders are smaller than yours.”
His eyes darken.
“Kavor.”
“No.”
This “no” is not like the others. Not clipped. Not merely stubborn. Fear.
The realization lands soft and strange. He is afraid. Not of the crack. Or maybe not only the crack. Of me inside it, where he cannot fit. Where he cannot follow. Where he cannot catch.
The heat outside roars in silence. The shelter breathes around us. Blue waits behind stone. I should press. I should argue. It is what we do.
Instead, I break off the last tiny corner of warmed seed mash still clinging to the stone shard and hold it out. His gaze drops to it. Then to me.
“Eat,” I say.
He does not take it. Something shifts in his face.
“Sera.”
“You’re larger,” I say.
“That argument has already failed,” he says.
“You’re afraid.”
The words come out quieter than I mean. His stillness goes complete. I cannot believe I said it. I cannot believe he lets it stand. For one breath, the shelter feels too full of truth. Then he reaches out and carefully takes the piece from my fingers. So carefully that our skin barely touches.
“I am,” he says.
My throat closes. The blue glow pulses behind him, soft as a secret waking. I look away first, because if I do not, I will want to touch his hand. And wanting is still the most dangerous passage I know.