Chapter 27 #3
“Then it seems decided for the moment,” he says. “While our route-runner receives medical care.”
Our route-runner. The words crawl under my skin. Kavor hears the wrongness. I know because the air behind me changes. I turn before he can speak.
“I need to talk to you,” I say.
Kavor stills. There. The room hears it. Damn it.
“Outside,” I add.
Worse. No. Better. The room can chew on that while I decide how much of myself to cut away. Rosalind’s face softens by a fraction. I hate that too. Kavor follows me into the corridor. I walk on my own because pride is apparently alive and stupid, and he lets me.
The corridor is cooler than the chamber, but crowded with distant noise. Survivors moving. Children crying. Orders being called. The west stair grinding closed again. The emergency signal has stopped, but the silence it leaves is worse.
My body tilts toward the wall. Kavor’s hand appears near my elbow. Not touching. Waiting. I grip the wall instead. His hand lowers. The hurt on his face is almost invisible, but I see it anyway.
Good. No. Bad. I don’t know anymore.
“We can’t,” I say.
His eyes hold mine. He says nothing. Of course. He will make me say all of it. Because he is fair. Because he is cruel in the most ethical way imaginable. I hate him. No. I don’t.
That’s the whole problem in one useless little circle.
“We don’t have room for this right now,” I say.
His face doesn’t change. Mine wants to. I force it not to.
“The City is cracking. Adran is already looking at my arm like it belongs in a locked room. The source is corrupted. The system can use us. The bond makes us louder. People are going to hear epis and stop thinking. If I…”
My voice fails. Unacceptable. I look away down the corridor.
“If I let this matter right now, I’ll make a mistake.”
Kavor is silent for so long that I nearly turn back.
Then he says, “This does matter.”
My throat closes.
“I know.”
“Then say that.”
I laugh once, small and awful. “I just did.”
“No.” His voice stays quiet. “You said there is no room. You said the City is cracking. You said Adran is dangerous. You said the system hears us. All true.”
I shut my eyes. Do not cry. Do not leak from the face like an idiot.
“Sera.”
I open my eyes. He’s closer. Not touching. Never touching unless I choose. Terrible male. Beautiful male. Mine, if I stop running. No. Not yet.
“Say the thing beneath those things,” he says.
“I can’t.”
“Yes.”
The word should make me angry, but it doesn’t. It feels like water held just out of reach by someone who knows I have to lift my hand myself.
“I’m scared,” I whisper.
His face changes. Not much. Just enough to hurt.
“I know.”
“I’m scared that if I look at you too long, I’ll choose you when people need me.”
“You will choose what you believe is right.”
“That’s not comforting.”
“No.”
“I’m scared that wanting you will make me selfish.”
His jaw tightens. He wants to argue. He doesn’t. Good. I couldn’t survive kindness right now, not if it came with teeth.
“And I’m scared,” I continue, because apparently falling through a floor broke the hinge on my mouth, “that if I go back into that room and let them turn me into a map, a blood sample, a route-runner, a person who can stand between starving mouths and hope, I will let them. Because I know how to be useful. I don’t know how to belong to you. ”
Kavor inhales, slow, controlled, devastated.
“Mine is not a task,” he says.
My eyes burn.
“I know.”
“No,” he says softly. “Not yet.”
That cuts deep because it’s true. I wipe my face with the back of my good hand before the tears can form properly.
“Don’t be good right now.”
“I do not know how to be anything else for you,” he says.
“Liar.”
His mouth almost moves. Almost.
“You’re very bad at lying,” I say.
“Yes.”
The hallway trembles under our feet. Not hard. Just a reminder that the City is impatient with heartbreak. Of course it is. I straighten. Badly.
Kavor watches. He doesn’t help, because I haven’t asked. Because he has learned the shape of my pride, and now it has to live with the consequences.
“Whatever happened below has to wait,” I say.
His eyes close once. When they open, he has already put armor over whatever I have just cut. I hate that I can see the seam.
“Yes,” he says.
That single word hurts more than an argument would have. I nod. Duty slides back over me, familiar, heavy, and cold.
“I need Ila.”
“Yes.”
“I need Rosalind to lock the samples.”
“Yes.”
“I need you to tell Virn and Syin exactly what you felt from the zemlja, not what they want to hear.”
“Yes.”
“And Kavor…”
He waits. I should say thank you. I should say I’m sorry. I should say that the cavern was real. I should say I want you so badly that I’m afraid it will make me less myself, even though some secret part of me thinks maybe it would make me more.
Instead I say, “Keep Adran away from the proof.”
His face goes still. There it is. The break. Small. Clean. Self-inflicted.
“Yes,” he says.
I turn before I can undo it. The corridor swims, but I keep walking. Behind me, Kavor doesn’t follow. He lets me go.
And somehow, that is the worst thing he has ever done.