Chapter 9 Hektor #2
“Dangerous,” Hektor corrected.
Pythorus tilted his head. “Naturally. But efficient.”
The siblings exchanged a look. Liora raised her brows like she was watching theater. Elian tried, and failed, to hide a smirk.
Hektor ignored them.
“How long to cover Solkaris in full?” he asked, voice clipped.
Pythorus tapped his chin thoughtfully. “Less than a week. Even if our land is vast, habitat is limited. Basilisks prefer specific climates, stone densities, proximity to the heat caverns.” He gestured elegantly. “There are only so many places where we live, and fewer still that house old blood.”
Zara leaned forward again, interested, smiling, too close to basilisk charm for Hektor’s comfort.
He stared at his plate instead of her expression.
Why would he even look? Why would he care who held her attention? She was free to flirt herself into a coil’s nest if she wanted.
He cleared his throat. “Then we begin immediately. The deeper caverns first.”
Pythorus nodded. “I’ll prep transport.”
Zara clapped softly like someone had just announced a parade. “Adventure,” she whispered, turning to Hektor.
He only answered, “We are working.”
She rolled her eyes. “You make everything sound like a tax form.”
Elian snickered. Liora grinned. Pythorus looked amused.
Hektor reached for his drink and willed himself, every inch of him, not to look at her again…not to think about basilisk charm…or the absurdity of feeling anything at all about who Zara leaned toward.
Professional. Focused. Untouched.
That was the plan. It had been the plan when he arrived. It was going to remain the plan no matter how pink her cheeks got or how golden-eyed a basilisk fixer happened to be.
After breakfast, they loaded into the sand-cruiser and left the polished stone facade of the Stonestare Suites behind.
Outside the city center, Solkaris sifted past, paved streets giving way to scorched clay, architectural symmetry dissolving into jagged sandstone and low, sun-bleached domes built half into the ground for heat protection.
Basilisk banners hung from basalt pillars each stamped with coiling serpents in gold leaf that shimmered against the glare. Markets thinned, caravans scattered, until the road became nothing but carved steps descending into a fault seam in the earth.
Here, ancient cooling systems hummed faintly beneath the surface, a lattice of steam vents and stone conduits older than any written language.
Pythorus keyed open a gate of sand-smoothed iron, and the temperature changed at once: from blistering desert glare to cavern heat, heavy but a little bit cooler.
Then the tunnels yawned before them. And the true Solkaris, basilisk territory beneath the sun, opened its throat and swallowed them whole.
The deeper they walked, the thicker the heat pressed in. Humid, mineral-rich, the kind that wrapped around the lungs rather than filled them. The tunnels wound in slopes and narrow ribs of stone, Pythorus leading with an easy confidence that suggested he’d walked these caverns since childhood.
Hektor kept to the rear, not because he needed space but because someone had to watch their backs. In close quarters like this, shift-scent and heartbeat revealed too much, and he refused to be readable.
Despite himself, Hektor noticed how the basilisk moved. Even on uneven stone, Pythorus seemed to glide, silent, balanced, as if the ground simply arranged itself for him.
Zara, naturally, was the opposite.
Ahead, she slipped on a patch of slick rock, and Pythorus’s hand shot out to steady her. Useful, Hektor noted. Necessary. And yet the basilisk’s fingers lingered a fraction too long on her arm, his head tipped just a little too near hers as he asked if she was alright.
Every dip, ledge, or stray shard of rock found her boot, and Pythorus was there each time, steadying her with a hand at her elbow or waist. His touches lingered, polite but familiar, and Zara only flushed and muttered something about low lighting and traitorous rock formations.
Hektor forced his gaze away, cataloguing the cavern’s branching passages instead: left route sealed by collapse, right route freshly reinforced, center path marked by carved serpent sigils. All information. All relevant. And far safer to think about.
“How much farther?” he asked, voice intentionally businesslike.
Pythorus glanced over his shoulder, expression polite but threaded with satisfaction, like he’d expected the question.
“It should be another twenty minutes or so,” he said.
“Once we reach the lower vaults, the active cluster of basilisks makes their homes there. Heat vents, stone gardens, plenty of territory.”
“Good,” Hektor said, though the word came out more clipped than intended.
Zara looked back at him, smile bright, oblivious to the way the air between the males hardened. “See? Easy. We’ll be there before lunch.”
He nodded, shifting his weapon harness, eyes fixed ahead, but senses stretched wide.
Twenty minutes. He could manage that. Even if their steps echoed with Pythorus’s low laughter, Zara’s soft thank-yous, and the unmistakable pulse of something he refused to name, beating under his ribs like an irritated drum.
Work, he reminded himself. This was just work.
Nothing more.
When they reached the underground neighborhood, a shallow cathedral of stone lit by sputtering lanterns, Pythorus excused himself, spotting a fellow basilisk overseer across the cavern. The siblings wandered off toward a vendor stand, debating juice flavors like they were life-or-death decisions.
Zara stayed.
Of course she did.
She hovered at his side, pretending to study a map or admire the cavern ceiling, but her foot kept tapping, her fingers fidgeting with her water bottle. Hektor braced. Whatever she was about to say, she would say it directly. Zara didn’t believe in subtlety.
“So,” she finally nudged, “what do you think?”
He didn’t look at her. “It doesn’t matter what I think.”
“It does,” she insisted.
“What matters,” he corrected, “is how you feel.”
She blew out a breath, cheeks puffing slightly. “I’m…not sure,” she admitted. “That’s why I want your opinion.”
He gave the smallest huff, close to a laugh, but not quite. “You suddenly value my judgment?”
“I always value it,” she said, and the earnestness in her tone almost made him flinch. “I just don’t always obey it.”
His mouth twitched. “Clearly.”
She elbowed him lightly. “Come on. You can tell me if he’s a good guy.”
“He’s a good guy,” Hektor said, careful, measured.
“To you,” she clarified, tipping her head. “I mean…for me.”
He forced his gaze toward the distant stalactites. “Yes. For you.”
But in his head he added, a little too handsy for my liking.
Zara hummed. “So…you don’t hate him.”
“I don’t hate anyone.”
“You don’t glare at anyone with that intensity either.”
He shot her a look, an accidental one, too sharp, too exposed, and immediately shuttered it.
Zara only smiled, recognition bright and maddening. “That’s all I wanted to know.”
He wasn’t sure what, exactly, she thought she’d learned, but her grin told him she believed herself victorious.
And the worst part?
He didn’t correct her.
She opened her mouth, and he felt it coming, the question, the poke, the tease, but Pythorus reappeared, clipboard in hand, tail flicking in an efficient arc.
“We can triangulate from here,” the basilisk announced.
So they did. Again. And again.
Through the afternoon, heat clung to stone, air turning heavier, their world shrunk to tunnels, echoes, measurements, and the persistent, hollow nothing of no results.
What grated wasn’t the boredom, nor the hours, it was Zara’s laughter, soft and easy beside the basilisk.
The way she nudged him. The way he nudged her.
The way they shared looks and low-voiced jokes, and how Pythorus seemed to know exactly when she was about to trip and caught her elbow every time.
Hektor stood to the side, monitoring silently, taking readings, and deliberately not watching.
Barely not watching.
By the final triangulation, when Pythorus declared they were done for the day, Zara drifted back to him, bright, flushed with heat and…something else.
“Don’t ask me again,” he said before she could speak.
She laughed. Of course, she laughed. “Fine, fine. I wasn’t going to ask that again. I was just going to ask if you think it’d be a good idea for me to go on a date with him.”
Something in his jaw clicked. “He asked you out?”
“No,” she said cheerfully, “I was going to ask Pythorus out.”
He made a sound, half grunt, half disbelief. “You’re—”
“Oh, come on,” she cut in. “Don’t tell me you still think girls aren’t supposed to ask first.”
He just looked at her, expression unreadable stone.
“You are so old-fashioned,” she teased, tapping his arm.
“Do what you feel is right,” he said, voice flat, too even.
She nodded like that was actual permission. “Okay then.”
And she walked away.
Back toward Pythorus. Back toward comfortable laughter and quiet, easy joking and the brush of hands on elbows.
Hektor watched her take her place at the basilisk’s side.
He wasn’t sure why it felt like a displacement.
Only that it did.
Heavy.
Unsettling.
Unwelcome.
And entirely not his business. Or so he told himself, until the telling sounded like a lie.
They got back into the sand-cruiser, and soon enough the city lights of Solkaris spread below them like molten gold as evening settled. At the hotel entrance, Zara said goodbye and left with Pythorus.
“See you tomorrow!” she chirped, waving at Hektor before turning away.
He lifted a hand, minimal acknowledgment, maximum neutrality, and watched her walk off with the basilisk fixer, her laugh floating back like it belonged here.
Not my problem. Not my concern.
“Elian and I were about to get dinner,” Liora said at his shoulder. “You should come.”
He shook his head. “I should get some rest. Long day.”