7. Cassia
CASSIA
Three days without him, and the storage alcove still radiates faint warmth from the concrete where his hands rested.
Scrubbing the floor twice already, I attempt to embrace the mindless repetition of the task.
I try to erase the hairline fractures he burned into the floor, but the stone stays damaged.
It’s a permanent map of his temper, a physical reminder of the sheer volume of power straining against his skin.
When my brush passes over a crack, I think of the vulnerability of his pulse in his throat alongside the raw, possessive energy that nearly leveled the room.
The fractures are uneven, deep enough to catch the bristles of my brush, and they look like lightning frozen in gray stone.
Elias is doing better. The boy is sitting up today, his face less like parchment and more like a child’s again, though his eyes remain wide and darting.
His constant vigilance forces my gaze toward the ceiling at every odd sound.
Today, I even find myself pausing mid-stitch to listen for the heavy, familiar strike of his boots on the stairs.
While I try to convince myself that I’m only monitoring the structural integrity of this basement clinic, the lie tastes like copper.
The truth is, I’m listening for him—waiting for the air to grow warm again.
Three days pass in a blur of minor infections and scavenging runs.
The clinic serves as a revolving door of the broken, including a scavenger with a corroded shrapnel wound, a weaver with eyes clouded by chemical fumes, and a dozen children with the early-stage rattle of lung-rot.
It’s a vibration that starts in the soles of my feet and climbs up my spine, signaling a presence out of place in this broken space.
When Wen stammers about the identity of the visitor, her face turning a sickly shade of ash as she looks toward the entrance, I cut her off with a firm glare.
I leave the scalpel where it is this time and shove through the heavy, moth-eaten curtain that separates the triage area from my private stores.
Rhykor stands by the supply shelf, his wings tucked tight and his shoulders filling the narrow space until the room feels like a closet.
He looks entirely too healthy for a man who had holes in his membranes seventy-two hours ago.
The rapid Kraaj regeneration is an insult to my human patients I’ve struggled to keep alive.
Where a human would be feverish and bedbound, he stands with a terrifying, renewed vitality.
He drops an industrial crate onto the table.
The metal groans under the weight, iron meeting iron, the ring carrying through the quiet room.
The seal is broken, revealing rows of pristine, high-grade antibiotics and canisters of synthetic lung-sealant.
These are supplies the Kraaj High Command keeps secure in climate-controlled vaults.
It's the second shipment he's delivered through my ceiling, and the realization that this might become a pattern sends my mind spinning in directions I'm unprepared to follow.
Two crates of military-grade medicine require deliberate acquisition from a supply convoy.
His systematic theft reveals a long-term plan, proving his intent to return.
"You're back," I state as I keep my hands busy, straightening a row of empty glass jars to hide how my skin prickles at his proximity.
"The clinic needs supplies, and the families in Sector Four are dying for lack of them," he grits out. His attention remains on the industrial crate, his fingers tracing the metal’s edge. "I don’t leave a job half-finished."
I lean against the doorframe, clutching my own elbows to anchor the tremble in my frame.
"Sector Four is a graveyard, Rhykor. It’s the highest concentration of lung-rot in the district.
If I go there alone with this, the gangs will gut me for the crate to claim the credits the Kraaj pay for returned military property. "
His eyes burn that familiar hue, tracking my movements with a focus that makes the air feel heavy. "You aren't going alone."
My protest at a Kraaj commander entering the most volatile slum in the district dies on my lips as he turns toward the corner.
Keeping his distance from Elias, Rhykor offers a sharp, warrior’s acknowledgment that the boy meets with wide-eyed awe.
A cold observation regarding the boy’s leg follows, the delivery hardened by the inevitability of an absolute truth.
"The leg is holding. Stillness is a skill. Learn it."
Elias bobs his head so hard I’m afraid his head might pop off. Rhykor has that effect on people; he demands a level of discipline most civilians experienced only long before the occupation.
Reaching for my heavy canvas bag, I check the strap for any sign of fraying.
A thick wool scarf comes off the hook, wrapping it twice around my neck and lower face to guard against the caustic air of the lower slums. Inside the field kit, everything is accounted for—from the bandages and a portable nebulizer to the few clean needles I have left.
"Very well, but if we’re doing this, we do it my way.
We go through the sub-levels to avoid the main patrol routes, and we keep attention away from us.
No melting people unless they try to kill us first."
"I make no promises regarding the melting," he grunts, but he shoulders the heavy crate as if it weighs no more than a feather.
Walking through District Seventeen with Rhykor is like trailing behind a moving fortress.
We move through the oxidized skeletal remains of the lower markets, where the air tastes of metallic tang and dust. Usually, I move through these streets with my head down, a ghost in a lab coat, hoping the scavengers see me as too poor to rob.
Today, the crowds part like a physical tide.
Gawkers hang out of broken windows, and urchins pause their thievery to watch a human woman walking in step with the Dragon, an impossible sight.
Smog thickens as we cross into Sector Four.
It clings to the base of the throat, oily and bitter.
Buildings here lean against each other like tired old men, held together by rusted rebar and desperation.
The path twists through a labyrinth of compromised masonry and frozen machinery.
We pass directly under the shadow of a derailed mag-lev train that hangs precariously between two tenements, its metal hide groaning in the wind.
Each stride Rhykor takes dominates the space around him.
Occasionally, his wings flare to balance his massive frame over unstable rubble, their membranes catching the light.
Watching the muscles in his back shift beneath the harness, I see a display of raw power that makes the air feel thin.
We arrive at a crumbling apartment block where oily rags stuff the windows, sealing out the drafts.
I point toward the upper floors. "The families here. They’ve been trading their rations for air filters that fail to purify.
The children are the worst off. Most of them manage only a few minutes on their feet before their lungs seize. "
Rhykor remains silent, shifting the pack on his shoulder to follow me into the dim, dripping hallway.
The walls are slick with moisture, and the smell of rot is so thick I have to force my scarf tighter against my face.
I knock on a door marked with a faded smear of grease, a sign that scavengers have already picked through the hallway.
It opens a crack, revealing one terrified eye, a gaunt woman in her mid-forties, maybe, with lank hair sticking to a forehead shiny with fever sweat and fingernails bitten down to raw crescents.
When she sees me, she begins to unlatch the chain, but then her gaze drifts up to the horns nearly touching the ceiling.
He halts the door’s retreat by resting a hand against the wood, his strength turning the barrier into a fixed wall.
"Medicine," he grunts. His words are a deep rumble that rattles the floorboards.
I step forward, holding up a vial of the sealant so the light catches the blue liquid. "It’s okay. He’s with me. He brought the supplies for the kids."
The woman trembles, her teeth chattering with a staccato clack, but she recognizes the vial, so she lets us in.
Freezing air and the stench of sickness fill the one-room apartment.
Approaching the pallet in the corner, I watch the baby struggle for breath, his chest heaving with that shallow, terrifying rasp.
I crack the seal on the canister, and as the mist begins to swirl, I move to the two older siblings, administering the doses they've needed for weeks.
Standing by the door with his back to the room, Rhykor resembles a statue carved from weathered iron.
His massive presence fills the tiny space, forcing the woman to press into the corner just to breathe.
From the hallway, he monitors the approaching footsteps, his ears twitching at the neighbors' movements while he leaves the interior of the room to me.
Nobody gets through that door unless they go through him first, and the woman knows it.
I can see the exact moment her shoulders drop half an inch; trust is still out of reach, but panic is finally gone, which is the closest thing to safety anyone in Sector Four has felt in months.
"They're breathing better," I whisper after a few minutes, watching the baby’s chest settle into a more natural pace.
The gray tint is fading from the toddler's skin, turning into a faint, healthy pink. It’s a small victory, a temporary reprieve from the rot, but in this district, a reprieve is everything.