Chapter 15 Talia
TALIA
Iwake braced for pain.
That alone should tell me something, but I ignore it—same as I ignore the stiffness locking my joints, the way my ankle feels thick and wrong before I even move.
I keep my eyes closed for a moment longer, breathing shallowly, letting my body remember where it is before I ask it to do anything impossible, like standing up.
Stone. Sand. Open sky.
I shift.
Fire lances up my leg, sharp enough to steal the breath from my lungs. I clamp my teeth together and ride it out, pulse hammering in my ears. The pain crests, then settles into a deep, pulsing ache that feels heavier than yesterday. Hotter. Meaner.
That’s… inconvenient.
I flex my fingers, then my foot—slow, careful. The ankle resists, swollen enough that the skin feels tight against itself. I don’t look at it yet. Looking makes things real.
I sit up instead, moving in pieces, controlling every inch. The desert is still wrapped in early light, the suns just beginning to climb. The air is cool enough to lie convincingly. I could almost pretend this is manageable.
Almost.
I reach for my epis and take it without ceremony, pressing the fibers against my tongue and swallowing fast. Heat tolerance. Endurance. A little dulling at the edges. It helps—just enough to take the sharpest point off the pain—but it doesn’t fix anything.
It never does.
When I finally look at my ankle, my jaw tightens. The swelling has spread overnight, puffed and faintly discolored beneath the wrap. Nothing dramatic. Nothing catastrophic. Just worse.
I tell myself that’s to be expected. We walked hard yesterday. Stress fractures ache before they break. This is still within tolerable margins. I don’t ask what happens if today pushes it past them because I know the answer.
Movement stirs nearby. I don’t look up, but I know it’s Korr. I know the way the air shifts when he moves, the quiet weight of his attention even when it isn’t directed at me.
“Your ankle,” he says.
Not a question.
“I know,” I reply, too quickly.
I start pulling on my boot before he can say anything else, working the leather over the swelling with deliberate care. The pressure makes my vision flicker white at the edges, but I keep going. Stopping halfway would only make it worse.
Korr crouches in front of me, but doesn’t touch or reach out, only watching.
“It needs to be rewrapped,” he says.
“No,” I answer immediately.
His brow furrows. “It’s worse.”
“I said no.”
The word comes out sharper than I mean it to, edged with something defensive and ugly. I hate that he heard it. I hate more that he doesn’t react.
“We can adjust the support,” he says calmly. “It will reduce strain.”
“I can walk,” I say. “That’s what matters.”
“For how long?”
“As long as I have to.”
His gaze holds mine, steady and infuriatingly patient. He’s not angry. He’s not challenging me. He’s just… assessing.
That makes it harder.
“If we stop every time something hurts,” I say, lowering my voice, “we don’t move. And if we don’t move, the children pay for it.”
“That isn’t true,” he says.
“It is to me.”
The silence that follows is heavy with things I refuse to unpack. I finish lacing my boot, hands trembling slightly despite my best efforts. I tuck that away too. Needing help is not an option nor is stopping.
I have built my life on endurance—on pushing past limits because someone always needed me to. Because children don’t get to wait while adults fall apart. Pain is just another responsibility. One more thing to carry quietly so no one else has to.
Korr straightens slowly, not taking his eyes off of my ankle.
“If it worsens—”
“Then I’ll tell you,” I say.
It’s a lie. We both know it.
He shifts his gaze to mine and studies me for another long moment, then nods once. He doesn’t touch the wrap or force the issue and that restraint lands harder than his hands ever could.
I rise to my feet, keeping my expression neutral, my posture controlled. The pain flares, sharp and insistent, but I swallow it down and take a careful step forward.
See? Still standing. Still managing.
I don’t look at him as we start moving again, because I’m afraid of what might change if I do.
We move but it doesn’t take long for something to shift.
At first, it’s subtle enough that I try to ignore it—the way Rverre’s steps lose their rhythm, how her gaze keeps drifting sideways instead of forward. She doesn’t stumble or slow. She just… veers. Not enough to look intentional, but enough to be wrong.
Illadon notices before I do.
He adjusts quietly, easing closer, placing himself half a step to her side. When she drifts left, he drifts with her, gentle as gravity. Not correcting her or trying to command, following with his own form of devotion and care.
It works for a few minutes. Then she hums and the sound crawls up my spine. It’s not loud, but it has weight. A vibration that settles in the bones instead of the ears. The desert seems to hold around it.
“Rverre,” I say softly.
She blinks, startled, like she’s been pulled back from somewhere far away. Her wings twitch once before she tucks them tighter.
“Sorry,” she says, but her attention doesn’t fully return. Her eyes keep tracking the horizon—no, not the horizon. Something lower. Something angled.
“Is it louder?” Illadon asks.
She nods. “Yes.”
Korr slows without stopping—easing the pace enough to keep us from fracturing into separate orbits. His head turns slightly, scanning, but his attention keeps snapping back to Rverre.
“How?” he asks.
She frowns, searching for words.
“Not loud-loud. Just… closer.” Her nose wrinkles. “And it doesn’t like waiting.”
That makes my chest tighten.
“Does it feel dangerous?” I ask.
She shakes her head, then hesitates.
“No. Not bad.” Another pause. “But not patient.”
I swallow and force my mind into what I know, basic sciences. Environmental feedback. Geothermal resonance. Subsurface structures interacting with movement and sound. The city reacting to vibration, mass, heat.
We’re disturbing something, but that doesn’t mean it’s intentional.
“It might be responding to us,” I say, more to myself than anyone else. “Movement. Pressure. Sound. Large bodies crossing unstable ground can—”
Rverre stops walking. She just… stops, feet planted, head tilted. The hum cuts off mid-note, leaving the air too quiet.
“It’s not calling,” she says slowly.
Korr turns fully toward her. “Then what is it doing?”
She looks up at him, eyes bright and unsettled. “Listening.”
Illadon’s hand hovers near her elbow without touching. “Rverre?”
She takes a step forward—off our line, angling toward a darker seam of stone I hadn’t noticed before. I move instinctively, catching her shoulder before she can gain momentum. She startles, breath hitching.
“Sorry,” she says again, but this time her voice is tight. “It’s pulling. Just a little.”
Korr steps in immediately, placing himself between her and the direction she’d started toward—not blocking, anchoring.
“We adjust,” he says. “Shorter intervals. Tighter spacing.”
I nod, though my thoughts are spiraling. This isn’t a beacon drawing her forward anymore. It’s feedback. Reaction. The land responding to us as a whole—four bodies, mixed blood, shared movement.
I don’t think that the city is summoning Rverre, it’s noticing us. Rverre presses her palm briefly to the sand, then pulls back as if startled by the heat. Her wings rustle, restless.
“It’s closer,” she says again. “And it knows we’re here.”
I don’t like the way Korr’s jaw tightens any more than I like the way my ankle throbs harder, as if in agreement.
We start moving, slower and more deliberate. Rverre stays between Illadon and Korr, guided by their quiet adjustments. I bring up the rear, watching for the moment she drifts again—because I am certain that she will.
The ground turns against us by degrees.
Stone fractures into uneven plates that tilt underfoot, sand pooling between them like traps waiting to swallow a careless step. Every shift in terrain sends a sharp reminder through my ankle—manageable, I tell myself. Temporary. I adjust my stride, shorten it, redistribute weight. I can do this.
Korr slows.
Not by much, but enough that the rhythm we’d settled into falters. He angles us east, toward a longer stretch of broken rock that promises firmer footing and marginal cover. I see it and understand the logic, but I also know we don’t have time.
“Korr,” I say quietly, moving closer so my voice doesn’t carry. “That’s not the shortest path.”
“No,” he agrees. “It’s the safer one.”
“It adds distance.”
“It reduces strain.”
I stop walking. He takes two more steps before realizing I’m no longer behind him. He turns, eyes narrowing—not in anger, but in calculation.
“My ankle isn’t the variable we should be optimizing for,” I say.
His jaw tightens. “It is if it fails.”
“It won’t.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do,” I insist, though my ankle throbs in sharp disagreement. “If we keep adjusting for me, we’ll be out here longer. More heat cycles. More exposure. That’s worse for everyone.”
Rverre’s hum falters, pitch wavering as if the tension itself has disrupted her balance. Korr steps closer to me, lowering his voice.
“This isn’t ego.”
“Neither is this,” I snap softly. “It’s triage.”
He studies me for a long moment, eyes flicking to my stance, my weight distribution, the way my fingers curl reflexively when pain spikes. I hate that he sees it. Hate that part of me wants him to stop.
“If we don’t adjust,” he says evenly, “you won’t make it.”
“And if we do,” I counter, “none of us might.”
The silence between us stretches—tight, brittle. Illadon shifts uneasily. Rverre presses her palm to the ground, wings twitching.
“She’s upset,” Rverre says quietly. Not accusation. Observation.
“I’m not upset,” I say too quickly.
Korr doesn’t call me on the lie. He exhales through his nose, slow and controlled, and looks back at the terrain.