4. Rhykor #3
I drop through the gap and land in the alcove with enough control to avoid destroying anything else. The curtain separating the alcove from the main room is pulled aside, giving me a clear line of sight into the clinic beyond. And what I see stops me mid-step.
Cassia is everywhere at once.
She moves between patients packed into the narrow corridor and the main room like water flowing through cracks in stone, her work a constant cycle of checking wounds and adjusting bandages while barking instructions at Wen while simultaneously stitching a gash on a man's forearm and arguing with a woman who's refusing to let her examine an infected burn.
The clinic is overflowing. Bodies crowd the available surface, slumping in chairs and sitting on the floor with bloodied rags on various injuries.
The air reeks of antiseptic mingled with sweat and human fear, and the generator is whining at a pitch that suggests it's operating well past capacity.
Her attention is fully on her work. From the alcove, I watch, half-hidden by shadow, as she finishes the forearm stitches and turns immediately to a child convulsing with violent, rhythmic coughs.
Crouching down, she places a hand on the child's forehead, murmuring words too quiet to reach me yet heavy enough to land in my chest. It is a sudden, unexpected gentleness in this sharp, relentless woman that only surfaces when she believes she is unobserved.
Digging through her med-pack, she produces the inhaler from my supply delivery, guiding the child through three careful breaths until the coughing eases.
Then she stands, pushing a cluster of loose curls from her forehead with the back of her wrist before pivoting toward the next patient in line. Patient after patient, she repeats the motion in a weary, mechanical cycle of care that never seems to end.
She keeps moving relentlessly. The dark shadows hollowing her eyes have deepened since I last saw her, bruise-purple against warm brown skin, and her hands, those firm, solid hands that pulled bullets from my chest and packed burns on my flank, are trembling with a fine, constant vibration that speaks of muscles pushed far past their limits.
She's running on nothing except fumes and a stubborn refusal to sit down while someone in front of her is still bleeding.
I've commanded soldiers through campaigns that lasted weeks and watched warriors fight until their bodies gave out and buckled where they stood. Endurance, pain, exhaustion—I understand all of it, because the mission demands it.
But this is different. My soldiers fought because they were ordered to, fear or duty compelling them.
This woman fights because standing still would mean letting someone bleed.
Each wounded body that comes through her door is a battle she refuses to lose, and the war never ends, and she has no reinforcements, and she'd sooner collapse where she stands than admit she needs someone beside her to share the load.
She spots me.
Her eyes snap to the alcove and lock onto mine across the crowded, chaotic room. Surprise and irritation travel through her face, but underneath them is a warmer flicker that she buries so fast I almost miss it.
"You once again." She wipes her hands on a rag and traverses toward me, exhaustion sharpening her words into a blade. "Let me guess. You're here to check the structural integrity of the hole you put in my ceiling."
"I’m doing a security assessment." The lie tastes stale. "The building needs reinforcement after the collapse."
"The building needs a contractor. Instead, it has a Kraaj enforcer lurking in my storage room.
" She stops close enough that the air between us thickens, her presence cutting through the clinic's heavy atmosphere with the subtlety of a chokehold.
"Is this going to be a regular thing? Because I charge rent. "
"You should sleep."
It escapes me without any preplanned purpose. She blinks, and for one unguarded second I see the exhaustion she's been white-knuckling through crack the surface. Her shoulders drop a fraction of an inch. The trembling in her hands intensifies.
"I'll sleep when the waiting room is empty," she murmurs and turns back to her patients.
I loom in the alcove and watch her work until the generator light begins to dim and the last of the evening's casualties have been bandaged and sent home.
She moves through the clinic like a natural disaster in reverse, tireless, focused, burning herself down to nothing because the alternative is letting someone else burn instead.
I've fought in wars, watching cities fall as species collide, letting entire districts dissolve into blood and fire.
None of it unsettles me like this.
I leave before she notices I'm still there, launching through the ceiling into cold air that does nothing to quiet the inferno building in my blood. Varrik's words chase me across the rooftops, tangled with Mother Serak's warning and the lingering memory of her steady hands.
Mated beast.
Stop running.
I fly faster.