Chapter 16
KAVOR
Blood changes the world.
Not because it is rare. Tajss is made of things that bleed, things that bite, and things that wait beneath sand and stone for the chance to turn warmth into meat.
Blood is not rare. Hers is.
Sera runs softly beside me, one arm clutched tight against her ribs, blood dark between her fingers.
Too much. Not enough to kill if treated quickly.
Enough to slow her. Enough to call predators.
Enough to make every instinct in me sharpen until the passage ahead becomes a throat and I become teeth.
The red at the edges of my vision does not fade. It breathes.
I force my breathing slower. One breath. Another. She said the sample first. She cut through the thing reaching for the epis.
She put her bleeding hand over the pouch at my chest and forced her voice through pain because she saw what was rising in me. She should not have had to do that. She should not have had to bleed at all.
The passage bucks beneath us.
Behind, the dead chamber breaks apart in cracking groans. The wrong rhythm pulses through the old channels. Once. Pause. Again.
Below that, deeper, heavier, natural pressure answers.
Zemlja.
Drawn by sound. Blood. Vibration. The high scream of the gray tendril. Perhaps all of it.
I hold the sample pouch against my chest with one clawed hand, Sera’s pack in the other. My own pack is strapped tight, but the weight no longer matters. Only her pace matters.
Too fast. No. Not fast enough.
She stumbles on a shallow rise. My hand moves. Stops. There is no time for permission. There is no room for pride.
I catch her elbow before her wounded arm knocks stone. She hisses through her teeth, but she does not pull away.
Somehow, that is worse than resistance.
“Left,” she says.
Her voice is thin.
“Right passage is smoother.”
“Too smooth,” she says.
I look.
Ahead, the tunnel forks around a broken rib of cut stone. The right side slopes gently down, its dust unbroken, its mineral walls pale and clean. The left is ugly and narrow, dark with old scrape marks and a jagged lip where a body could trip.
She is right. The right passage lies. I turn left without argument. Her mouth tightens.
“What?” I ask.
“You listened. Again.”
“You were right.”
“Stop making that strange,” she says.
“I am not making it strange.”
“You’re doing the quiet version.”
This is not the moment for the answering curve that nearly touches my mouth. It comes anyway. The passage shakes again. Dust rains down. Sera’s feet slide.
This time she catches herself on my arm. Only for a breath. Fingers digging into scale. Not pushing away. Holding.
My entire body knows the contact. Danger. Gift. Command. Focus.
I move ahead, then slow so she can keep pace. I hope it is not so slow that she notices and argues. She notices. Of course.
“I can move faster,” she says.
“No.”
“I was not asking.”
“I know.”
“Kavor.”
“Run soft. Not dead.”
Her breath catches in something that could almost be a laugh if pain had not gotten there first.
We turn through the left fork. The passage lowers, then widens abruptly into a shallow pocket where the ceiling dips in a curve of old fused stone shaped by natural tunnel pressure. A breathing hollow. Not safe. Safer.
The ground tremor passes under us and continues beyond, toward the dead chamber. We are safe enough, for now.
“In,” I say.
Sera takes two steps into the hollow and stops. Too upright. Too still.
“Sit,” I say.
“No.”
I drop her pack against the wall and put the sample pouch beside it, wrapped and sealed. She sees exactly where I place it. Within reach. Not hidden. Not taken. Her gaze flicks back to mine.
“Sit,” I say again.
“I can stand while you check the passage.”
“You can bleed standing or bleed sitting. Sitting wastes less.”
Her eyes narrow. “That is a disgusting argument.”
“Effective.”
“Unfortunately.”
She lowers herself onto a curved stone shelf with controlled hatred. Her wounded arm stays pinned against her body. Blood slides between her fingers, down her wrist. My claws flex. Red breathes harder at the edges of my sight.
No. Not now. Not with her watching. Not with her needing precision.
I kneel in front of her.
The hollow is dim, lit only by the sample’s faint blue pulse through its wrap. The light stains the lower wall and catches on the blood at her wrist, turning the red almost black.
“Let me see,” I say.
Sera’s hand tightens over the wound. “It’s a scratch.”
“It is bleeding through your fingers.”
“Large scratch.”
“Sera.”
She looks away. Pain I expected. Fear I expected. Shame, again, I hate.
“I need to know if the gray thing left anything in the cut,” I say.
Her gaze snaps back. Good. Practical fear is easier for her to accept than care.
“Residue?”
“Maybe.”
“Poison?”
“I do not know.”
Her jaw tightens. “You are very bad at soothing.”
“I am trying to keep you alive.”
“That is also bad soothing.”
“Let me see.”
One beat. Then she removes her hand.
The wound opens along the outside of her forearm, from wrist to below elbow. Shallow in places. Deeper near the middle where the ash-gray strand struck hardest. Blood wells in a clean red line except for three small marks along the center, each edged with faint gray dust.
My vision tunnels. Something inside me surges toward those marks with a violence that wants to tear the wound from her body and take it into mine.
Impossible. Useless. Bijass does not care about usefulness. It cares about mine.
No. Not mine. Not unless she chooses. Not when she is bleeding. Not when fear is trying to put claws on love before that love has been named.
I press one hand flat against the stone beside her thigh. Hard. The rock cracks under my claws. Sera looks at the crack. Then she looks at me.
“Kavor.”
Her voice is quiet. Warning. Anchor. I breathe. Once. Pause. No. Not that rhythm. My own rhythm swelling from deep in my heart. My soul. The dragon.
Mine.
“I am here,” I say.
“I can see that.”
“No. I mean…” The words scrape. “I am here.”
Her expression shifts. She understands enough. Maybe not all, but enough.
“Good,” she says. “Then stay there and fix the scratch.”
The command should irritate me. Instead, it steadies me.
“Yes.”
I take water first.
“Do not waste drinking water on blood,” she says.
I give her one look and she closes her mouth. Small mercy. Rare creature.
I rinse the wound carefully, using as little as possible, though still more than she likes. Blood thins and runs down her arm. Gray dust clings stubbornly to the three center marks. This is not dust. Residue. The red of bijass returns, stronger. I bite it down.
Sera watches my face too closely. “Bad?”
“Yes.”
“Useful bad or panic bad?”
“Both.”
“Pick one. I’m busy,” she says.
“With what?”
“Not panicking.”
I look up at her. Her face is pale under the dust. Mouth tight. Eyes too bright, but steady. Always fighting toward steady.
“Useful bad,” I say.
“Good.”
“I need to remove the residue.”
“With?”
I pull the quiet knife from her belt.
Her brow lifts. “Stealing from the injured?”
“Borrowing.”
“That knife likes me better.”
“It has poor taste.”
A tiny sound escapes her. Pain catches it halfway through. I hate her pain more than the gray thing. No. Hate is too small.
I heat the knife’s edge against a shard of warm stone near the sample’s glow, then wipe it clean. It is not perfect, but enough for Tajss. Nothing is perfect here but danger.
“This will hurt,” I say.
“You’re supposed to lie then.”
“No.”
“I know. Annoying.”
I set two fingers around the first gray mark, holding the skin steady without widening the cut. Her pulse pounds beneath my touch. It is too fast.
Mine, something whispers. No.
I scrape the residue free. Sera goes rigid. No sound. Her free hand grips the stone shelf hard enough to whiten her knuckles. I want her to make sound. I want to take the pain. I want to rip the dead chamber apart until nothing gray remains in the world.
I scrape the second mark. Her breath hisses between her teeth.
“Good,” I say.
“Do not praise me like a child.”
“I was praising the breath.”
She grimaces and shakes her head.
“Then the breath accepts.”
I scrape the third. This one is deeper.
Gray threads cling inside the torn skin, as thin as hair and too straight to be natural.
I hook them with the blade tip and pull.
They resist. Then they come free in one tiny strand.
The strand curls against the knife. Jointed.
Scentless. Dead, perhaps. Perhaps not. Sera sees it and her eyes go flat.
“That was in my arm,” she says.
“Yes.”
“I dislike that.”
“I agree.”
“Are you going to become terrifying now?”
“I am trying not to.”
Her gaze holds mine. Not mocking. Not afraid of me. Afraid for me, perhaps. That is worse.
“Keep trying,” she says.
The red of bijass retreats one finger-width. I wrap the gray thread in a scrap of mineral cloth and set it apart from the sample. Then I reach into my pack for the treated hide strip.
Sera watches my hands. “You know how to do this.”
“Yes.”
“Cavern Zmaj bleed often?”
“Everything that lives underground bleeds eventually.”
“Grim.”
“True.”
“Your people need better motivational sayings.”
“My people are alive.”
“Low bar.”
“The only one that matters.”
Her eyes flicker. Wrong thing. No. Right thing, but too sharp against her wound.
I clean the cut again, then press a folded pad against the deepest part. She flinches before she can hide it. I still.
“Continue,” she says.
“You are in pain.”
“Observant.”
“Sera.”
“Stopping does not make it hurt less. It only makes it last longer.”
I do not like the truth of that.
I bind her forearm, tight enough to slow blood, not tight enough to steal feeling. She watches every wrap, every knot, every placement. Not because she distrusts my skill, but because seeing pain managed makes it less like surrender. When I finish, she flexes her fingers.
“Can you feel them?” I ask.
She wiggles two fingers. “Can you?”
“I am choosing not to answer that.”
Her gaze sharpens. Then she understands. Color, faint and impossible, rises beneath the dust on her cheeks. Good. No. Bad.