Chapter 27
SERA
The City takes one look at me and starts counting.
Not numbers. Worse. Uses.
Blood on my arm. Blue light under the bandage. Kavor carrying me out of the broken lower passage like I’m precious, breakable, and already halfway claimed by disaster.
The proof bundles somewhere above us. Epis whispers through the cistern access like a spark finding dry root. People turn as Kavor steps into the torchlight.
I feel the room change.
Fear first. Then relief. Then hunger. Always hunger.
“Sera!”
Ila reaches us before anyone else, shoving past Penr, Virn, two guards, and one startled Zmaj with the kind of focused violence that makes people remember they have other places to stand.
Her hands hover over me but do not grab. She sees Kavor’s arms. Sees my face. Sees the blood. Sees the glow under the bandage and the way I’m trying to tuck it against my ribs without making it obvious.
Which means it’s obvious. Terrible woman.
“You’re alive,” she says.
“Mostly.”
Her mouth tightens. “I hate that answer.”
“Then ask better questions.”
Kavor’s chest shifts against my side. Not quite a laugh. Something close enough to hurt. I hate that too. No. I don’t. That’s the problem.
Virn stands just behind Ila with the proof harness clutched against his chest. His wings are half-spread, making him look larger than usual, more dangerous, more aware of every eye turning toward what he carries. Good. He still has it.
Rosalind arrives behind him, moving fast despite the crowd. Her face is pale and hard, the old commander looking through the exhausted woman. She sees Virn, the bundles, Kavor, me, and the collapse behind us in less than a breath. Then she looks at my arm.
“Get her to the west chamber,” Rosalind says.
Adran’s voice cuts in from the far side. “No.”
There it is. One word, polished flat. The room holds its breath. Kavor’s arms tighten around me. Only a fraction. Enough. I put one hand against his chest. Not pushing. Not soothing. Warning both of us.
“Kavor,” I murmur.
He stills.
Adran steps forward with his guards behind him. Dust streaks his sleeve. He looks like a man who has survived three collapses and still found time to arrange his face into authority. I’ve never trusted that kind of discipline.
“She needs medical care,” Rosalind says.
“And we need information,” Adran says. “The lower district is cracking open. People are screaming about epis. A Zmaj from outside the City is holding classified materials no one has identified. Sera is glowing.”
My stomach turns cold. So that is the list already. Epis. Proof. Outsider. Me. Hope becomes hunger. Hunger becomes claim.
I push against Kavor’s chest. “Put me down.”
His body goes silent. Not still. Silent.
“Sera,” he says.
“Put me down.”
The words cost more than I expect.
Not because I can’t stand, though there’s a strong chance I can’t. Not because I don’t want his arms around me. That is also a problem, one with teeth and a warm place to sleep. Because the second my feet touch stone, I belong to the City again and Kavor knows it.
His eyes find mine. Red gone, only dark left behind. Too much understanding in a face built for stone and claws. He lowers me carefully. Too carefully. People notice.
His hands stay at my waist until my boots find the floor. My knees buckle. Only a little, but his grip catches me anyway. Also only a little. I hate that he learns so fast.
“I’m standing,” I say.
“Yes.”
“Don’t sound proud.”
“I am not.”
“You are.”
“Yes.”
The whisper of an almost-smile is there, hiding under disaster. Then the emergency signal strikes again.
Three. Pause. Three.
Everyone flinches. Duty snaps around my ribs, tight and familiar. It is good because I know this pain. I let go of Kavor and the loss is immediate. I turn to Rosalind before I can think better of it.
“West chamber. Inner doors closed. No public access. Ila, you come. Virn, bring the proof. Kavor, you come too.”
Adran’s eyebrows lift. “You are not in command here.”
“No,” I say. “I’m the only one in this room who’s been under the floor.”
That’s not enough to make him stop, but it is enough to slow him.
Rosalind’s mouth barely moves. “West chamber. Now.”
Her command does what mine cannot. The guards hesitate. Virn moves. Ila steps beside me. Kavor stays close enough that I can feel him without looking.
Adran follows. His guards follow too.
The west chamber is not built for hope. It is built for decisions no one wants witnessed.
Low ceiling. Thick walls. One narrow vent. A stone table scarred by years of maps, ration ledgers, emergency tallies, and old arguments. There are no chairs, because chairs imply time. The City hates time unless it can divide it into portions. Rosalind clears the table with one sweep of her arm.
“Proof,” she says.
Virn sets the harness down. Everyone leans in except Kavor. He watches the room. Watches me.
No. Not now.
Ila catches my elbow as I sway. “Sit.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re glowing through a blood-soaked wrap.”
“Fine has become flexible.”
“Sit or I’ll make you.”
I look at her and she looks back without flinching. She would.
I sit on the edge of the table because collapsing in front of Adran would be a gift, and I refuse to hand him one wrapped this nicely. Kavor shifts nearer. I don’t look at him. I can’t.
Rosalind unwraps the first bundle carefully. A healthy epis strand. Even diminished, even cut, it glows blue-purple against the mineral cloth, like a piece of impossible night.
Silence devours the chamber. Adran inhales. Virn’s pupils narrow. Syin appears in the doorway, pulled by rumor, instinct, or some City message chain I didn’t hear. His gold eyes lock on the strand, then on me, then on Kavor.
No one speaks.
For one breath, everyone is beautiful with hope. Then the wanting arrives.
“How much?” Adran asks.
Not what is it? Not is it safe? How much.
Rosalind’s fingers close around the edge of the cloth. “Not enough for distribution.”
“But there is more,” he says.
I close my eyes for half a second. Mistake.
The cavern comes back. Blue curtains. The draining pool. Kavor’s mouth. His hands opening. The old system watching us like an eye. Then I open my eyes.
“There’s a source,” I say.
The chamber changes again. Even Ila. Even Rosalind. No one is immune to enough.
“There’s also a machine eating it,” I continue, before they can make salvation out of it. “A network under the old sealed district. It’s using old channels, tied to the wrong rhythm and the zemlja movement. Parts of the epis are corrupted. The source is not safe to access.”
Adran looks at the glowing strand. “But it exists.”
“Yes.”
“That changes everything.”
“It might kill everything.”
His gaze lifts. “Fear is not strategy, Sera.”
“No. But neither is starvation with a flag.”
Ila makes a tiny sound that might be approval.
Adran ignores her. “If there is a viable source below us, the City cannot sit idle.”
“The City nearly dropped a storage chamber into a channel because the system twitched,” I say. “If we rush this, we don’t harvest epis. We crack ourselves open.”
Rosalind unwraps the blackened sample next. The room recoils. Good. Let them see the rot, too.
The piece is small and sealed inside layers, but even through the treated hide, it gives off a sick white-gray flicker. The healthy strand dims near it.
“That is not natural,” Syin says, snapping his wings tighter while Virn growls.
“No,” Kavor says.
Everyone looks at him.
He steps forward then, quiet and massive, still marked with dust and blood from carrying me through a breaking passage.
“This corruption moved when the signal pulsed,” he says. “The system uses resonance. Blood. Epis. Living signatures. Bond. Perhaps more.”
Adran’s gaze cuts to me. There. There’s the blade.
“Bond?” he asks.
Kavor’s face goes still. The room tilts. I hate that word in this room.
In the cavern, bond was warmth and terror and his forehead resting against mine while he said he wanted my choice more than the bond. Here, it becomes evidence. A political tool. A thing someone can use.
“Unfinished,” I say.
The word tastes like blood. Kavor’s gaze touches me, only for a breath. I don’t look back. I can’t.
Adran studies us both. “So your connection woke the system?”
“No,” I snap. “The system was already waking. It noticed the pattern.”
“The pattern being you.”
“The pattern was blood, epis, old channels, and Kavor’s burned hand after the anchor reacted.” I push upright despite Ila’s warning grip. “Don’t make this cleaner than it is just because a person is easier to blame than a machine.”
Rosalind looks between us. “What anchor?”
Virn sets the broken anchor on the table.
Blue-black metal. Ribbed. Wrong. The room stares at it.
Rosalind’s expression changes in a way I do not like. Recognition, maybe. Not of the object. Of the category. Off-world. Hidden. War, coming through small things first.
“This was embedded in the channel system,” Kavor says. “Not old Tajss. Using old Tajss.”
Syin hisses something in Zmaj. Virn answers. Adran watches the exchange with too much calculation in his eyes.
“Translate,” he says.
Syin’s eyes cut to him. “No.”
Adran smiles thinly. “This is still our City.”
“No,” Rosalind says. “It’s everyone’s death if we waste time fighting over whose floor is cracking.”
That shuts him up. Briefly. The table pulses. Not a metaphor. The stone under the samples gives a faint white-gray flicker. The healthy strand brightens. The blackened sample twitches inside its wrap. My bandage flares cold.
I bite down on a gasp. Kavor is beside me before anyone else sees me sway. No. Not anyone. Adran sees, too. His eyes go straight to my arm. Damn him.
Rosalind slaps another layer of mineral cloth over the samples. “Separate them.”
Virn moves at once. Ila takes the healthy strand with careful hands. Syin takes the blackened sample like he wants to throw it into the suns. Kavor lifts the anchor without being asked.
The pulse fades. The room breathes again. I don’t. Kavor’s hand hovers near my back. Not touching. Waiting. Always waiting. It should comfort me. It does. That is the problem.