Chapter 22
KAVOR
Istare around the cavern and realize what this is. Not a garden. Not a hidden mercy. Not a miracle Tajss kept beneath the City until someone became worthy enough to discover it. A place built. Designed to hold abundance until something wanted to drink. A reservoir.
The pool drains sideways into the old channels, blue light drawn through the water in bright threads. Epis roots beneath the surface flare, struggle, then pale at the edges as the white-gray shape under the pool wakes more fully.
A machine. Old, off-world, or both? The distinction matters. There is no such machine in my people’s lore, so this has to have happened after we left the surface behind.
Sera keeps her injured arm pressed against her ribs, her eyes fixed on the pool as the glow flickers. Too much fear. Too much wanting. Too much blood under the bandage.
The sample pouch beats against my chest. Her bandage answers. The cavern answers. I do not. I cannot.
If I answer everything inside me, I will become teeth and hands and claim. I will become every warning my people carved into stone. I will become danger wearing the shape of devotion.
No. Not mine. Not unless she chooses. And not even then, if the choice is made inside fear.
“The drain,” she says. Her voice steady. “Where does it go?”
I force my gaze from her to the pool. Better. Easier to control the surging thoughts. The desires.
Stone. Water. Glow. Channels. Bloodless things. Except nothing here is bloodless now.
The white-gray shape beneath the pool brightens in sections, revealing long angular ribs buried under mineral crust. The pieces do not look grown or carved. They are too deliberate and too cold. A set of nested arms, perhaps, or a pump that sleeps underwater.
Old Tajss structure around it. Off-world signal waking it. Epis feeding it.
“West,” I say.
“Toward the City?”
“Upward first. Then west.”
She turns toward me. “That means under the lower district.”
“Yes.”
“Can you tell how fast?”
“No.”
Her jaw tightens. “Useful bad or panic bad?”
“Both.”
She huffs out a breath that might have become laughter in another place. “I hate when you steal my categories.”
“They are useful.”
“They are mine.”
“I know.”
The pool drops by another finger-width. Glowing roots stretch beneath the surface, exposed as the water lowers. The brightest strands tremble, then flare white.
Sera takes one step toward the slope, and I move before thought, blocking her path with my arm. Not touching, but being a wall. I hate myself the moment I realize it.
Her gaze drops to my arm. Then rises slowly to my face.
“Kavor.”
I lower my arm, but the restraint is late. Still, it is necessary.
“Do not go closer,” I say.
“That was better before you added the command.”
“The edge is unstable.”
“Then say the edge is unstable.”
“The edge is unstable.”
“Good.”
“No closer.”
Her eyes narrow. I deserve it. I lower my head without taking my eyes from hers. A small act of apology.
The cavern pulses, living blue and wrong white light fighting beneath the pool. Sera’s skin glows faintly under her bandage again. I see it through cloth. Through blood. Through every attempt she makes to hide it. I curl my claws as her gaze flicks down.
“You’re doing it again,” she says.
“What?”
“Looking at me like I’m becoming a problem you can solve by standing in front of it.”
“You are not the problem.”
“We have covered this.”
“The reaction is the problem.”
“Also covered.”
I frown, meeting her steady gaze. The red of bijass boils. I blink slowly, pushing the primal instincts down.
“I am not certain your body understands.”
“My body and I are having several disagreements today. Get in line.”
The answer should irritate me, and it does, but it also breaks something in my chest. I look away.
The black corruption spreads from the far wall toward the pool in thin straight wounds. Every time the distant signal pulses, the old channels drink harder. Blue turns white, then gray. Then black. Some strands recover. Most do not.
The reservoir is abundant. It is also losing.
“How do we stop it?” she asks.
I listen. Not only with my ears. With claws to stone. With tail low against the ridge. With the old training of cavern Zmaj. With everything my people learned from places where sound warned before sight.
The signal travels through metal anchors and old channels. The pool machine answers. The zemlja pressure shifts in response, far below, moving around the district’s edge. Not attacking yet. Not breaching. Positioned.
This is not a single device. It is a network.
“We do not stop all of it here,” I say.
Sera’s face hardens.
“Do not make that face,” I say.
Her brows rise. “My face?”
“The one where you decide dying near the drain is efficient.”
Her mouth opens. Then closes.
“You are learning my face,” she says after a long pause.
“Yes.”
“Annoying.”
“Yes.”
She looks back to the pool. “If we can’t stop all of it, can we slow this part?”
“Perhaps.”
“Useful perhaps or panic perhaps?”
“That categorization is poor.”
“That categorization is excellent.”
“The pool drains into the old channels there.” I point to the low arch beneath the waterline, half-covered by glowing roots and mineral crust. “The white-gray structure wakes when the signal comes. If the channel mouth is blocked, the siphon may slow.”
“Blocked with what?”
“Stone. Growth. Collapse.”
“Collapse sounds like a permanent solution wearing a murder cloak.”
“It is dangerous.”
“That was implied by murder cloak.”
I look at her. Pale. Bleeding. In pain. Still making words sharp enough to keep fear from finding her throat.
I love—No.
The thoughts and feelings rise again, too large for the chamber inside me where I keep my restraint.
Not now.
Not while blue light answers her blood. Not while the sample beats between us like a second heart. Not while the old system is drinking and everything beneath the City becomes a trap.
“Could we break the anchor?” she asks.
“The one above is gone.”
“There may be another near the pool.”
“True.”
“Can you sense it?”
I close my eyes. Signal. Stone. Water. Living growth. Wrong metal. Zemlja pressure. Sera’s breath. Sera’s blood. Sera, too close. Too much. I open my eyes.
“There.” I point to the broken arch, half-swallowed by strands beyond the pool. “Something answers there first.”
Sera tracks my finger. “Can we reach it from the ridge?”
“No.”
“Can we reach it from the lower shelf?”
“Maybe.”
“That is becoming one of our least comforting words.”
“Yes.”
The lower shelf lies beyond a narrow natural bridge of hardened zemlja leavings and mineral crust. It is slick and curved, bright at the edges with moss. Beneath it, the pool continues to drain sideways. The shelf sits near the arch, close enough for me to reach if the stone holds.
Too close for her. She sees my thought before I speak.
“No,” she says.
“I did not speak.”
“You breathed like a heroic mistake.”
“That is not a thing.”
“It is when you do it.”
I look at her. She looks back. The cavern glow shifts between us.
“This one is mine,” I say.
Her lips draw into a tight line. Her brow furrows.
“No,” she says again, softer now. Worse. “You don’t get to decide that.”
“The bridge may not hold both of us.”
“Then we test it.”
“You are injured.”
“You are too.”
“My weight is the problem.”
“That is not helping your argument.”
“If it fails, I can reach the shelf with claws.”
“And if the whole section drops?”
“Then you remain here.”
Her eyes go dark, but not with fear. With fury.
“There it is,” she says, her voice so low it is barely a whisper.
“Sera.” I exhale her name, but that will change nothing. I change tactics. “There what?”
“The part where you make yourself the acceptable loss.”
The words strike too close. I go still. The cavern does not. The pool drains. The epis flickers. The signal trembles faintly through stone.
Sera steps closer. I want to step back. I do not.
“You think I don’t know what that looks like?” she asks. “You think sacrifice only counts when it is small and quiet and ration-shaped? You think throwing yourself at danger because you’re larger and harder to kill is morally different?”
“It is tactically different.”
“It’s the same lie wearing claws.”
I have no answer, which is answer enough.
Her chest rises and falls too quickly. Her hand presses over her bandage, not because she is weak. Because she is furious enough to forget pain until the body reminds her.
“I need you alive,” she says.
The words are sharp. Angry. Dragged out of her. The cavern seems to catch them before I do.
Need. You. Alive.
My lungs seize. Sera hears what she has said after she says it. I see that in the way her face changes. It is not regret that I see. It is fear of truth in the open.
I should give her somewhere to hide, but I cannot move.
“You need my tracking,” I say.
Coward.
Her eyes flash. “Yes.”
That is safer. Not now. Not here. Back away from the truth pounding between us.
“And your claws. And your deeply annoying ability to hear rocks thinking. And your bad answers. And your face when you’re trying not to smile,” she says.
That is not safe. My chest opens around each word like stone cracking under pressure.
“Kavor,” she says, lower. “I need you alive.”
No mission added after it. No explanation thrown over the truth like dust.
The sample pulses hard against my chest. Her bandage answers. The hanging epis around us brightens.
I cannot breathe through this. The red edges my sight. Not rage. Not only desire. Need.
The mate pull rises from somewhere older than thought, catches her words, and makes them into law. She needs me alive. Mine to protect. Mine to feed. Mine to hold. Mine to answer.
No. Not mine. Chosen. Choice.
The red deepens and Sera sees, but she does not step away. That is worse. She sees me fighting myself and does not flee.
“Sera,” I say, my voice almost a growl.
A warning. A plea. Both.
“I see you,” she says.
No. She cannot. If she sees, she will know how close to danger I am.