Chapter 22 #2
How every breath of her scent, pain, and courage has become command. How badly I want to take her face in my hands, press her back against the glowing stone, and make the whole cavern understand that she lives. She is wanted. She is fed. She is mine.
No. She is Sera. Sera, who chooses. Sera, who says no. Sera, who saves me. Sera, whose hunger is not permission for me to become another mouth to feed.
I turn away so sharply my wing scrapes the ridge wall. Pain clears enough space for thought. Good. Pain is clean.
“The anchor first,” I say.
My voice is rough. Sera is silent behind me. For one breath. Then two.
“Fine,” she says.
The word does not mean fine, but we return to danger. This is easier.
I cross the natural bridge alone because she allows it, not because I command it. The distinction matters. I hold it like a blade between my teeth.
The bridge flexes under my weight. Sera stands at the ridge, watching the wall, the pool, me, and the channels. She leans forward as if she can catch stone with her will.
The signal pulses. Once. Pause. Again. The bridge shudders.
“Kavor,” she calls.
“I know.”
“Left side is thinning.”
“I know.”
“Not left-left. Your other left.”
I pause. She makes a sound behind me.
“Your right, impossible male. Move right.”
I move right. The bridge holds. Barely.
The lower shelf near the arch is slick with mineral runoff and glowing moss.
The air is colder here, tugged toward the draining channel.
The white-gray shape beneath the pool hums louder, vibrating through my claws.
Epis roots cling to the arch, bright blue at the base and paling where the channel drinks.
The anchor is not like the spike above.
It is embedded inside the arch, almost grown over. It is a crescent of blue-black metal ribbing, half-hidden beneath crust and roots. It pulses beneath my hand without scent. Off-world alloy, but old enough for the stone to have tried to claim it.
Not old Tajss. Using old Tajss. Teaching the reservoir to empty itself. I grip the edge. It burns cold. My claws scrape uselessly across the surface. Of course.
“Kavor?”
“Found.”
“Can you break it?”
“No.”
“Can you loosen it?”
“Perhaps.”
“Useful, or panic?”
“Angry.”
She goes quiet.
Then, “I accept angry.”
I brace one foot against the arch and hook my claws beneath a loosened rib of crust. Pull. The anchor does not move. The signal pulses. The machine under the pool answers. The channel drinks harder. Blue roots around my claws flare white.
The sound that follows is not heard. It is felt. A high, living strain through the root network. Pain. The epis is in pain. Tajss is in pain. My grip falters.
Sera hears something in my silence. “What happened?”
“The roots are tied into it.”
“Can you cut around them?”
I study the anchor and the epis grown around it.
“Yes,” I say after a moment.
“Will that hurt the growth?”
“Yes.”
“Will leaving it hurt more?”
I look at the black line spreading through the curtain. At the dropping pool. At the reservoir losing itself to old channels.
“Yes.”
“Then cut.”
I draw the knife.
Not hers. Mine. Heavier. Built for scale, hide, and the things under Tajss that require force to convince. I cut through the mineral crust first. Then I cut around the pale roots that have grown over the anchor.
The living strands recoil from the blade. My stomach tightens.
“Forgive me,” I whisper.
The word is Cavern Zmaj. Old and soft. Not for enemies. Not for prey. For stone taken. Water spent. Growth cut so others may live.
I have not said it in years. Sera hears. I feel her hear it. I keep cutting.
The anchor rib loosens by a finger’s width. The signal pulses again. The bridge behind me cracks.
“Kavor!”
“I know.”
“No, you don’t. The bridge is splitting from the ridge side.”
I look back. She is right, of course.
The natural bridge has a black fracture running through its middle, crawling toward me. When it goes, the shelf may drop. I have little time. I could return, but we would lose this chance.
The pool drains. The roots pale. The City above waits above a hungry machine. I turn back to the anchor.
Sera swears. Human words. Sharp. Beautiful.
“Do not make me come over there,” she says.
I almost laugh, but it comes out as a snort. It is wrong. Impossible. Badly timed. Still, something inside me warms.
“I thought you disliked heroic mistakes,” I call.
“I dislike yours. Mine are better planned.”
“I am not making a heroic mistake.”
“You’re making the quiet version,” she says.
I wedge my claws under the loosened anchor rib and pull. Stone cracks around it. The anchor shifts. A blast of white-gray light slams up the channel and through my arm.
My muscles seize. For one breath, I am not in the cavern. I am in memory that is not mine. Surface towers. Rolling sand dunes under a red sky.
Zmaj wings in formation over harvest routes. Ships above them, bright as knives. Chains called trade. Stone called freedom. A corridor with no door. Then Sera’s voice cuts through.
“Kavor!”