Chapter 19 Talia
TALIA
The desert moves differently when you’re not walking it.
The rhythm is wrong—too smooth, too removed from effort. I feel it before I fully awake, the way my body sways without choosing to, the subtle lift and fall that doesn’t match my breath. For a moment, disorientation blurs the edges of thought.
Then awareness settles in, slow, but insistent.
Korr’s arms. The rise and fall of his chest. The length of his stride.
He doesn’t cradle me like something fragile.
He keeps me close to his chest, one arm locked beneath my knees, the other firm around my back, weight balanced as if this were simply another configuration of movement he’s already solved.
The heat of him seeps through fabric and air. Warming my skin, pulling on my attention.
I should protest, but I don’t have the strength.
My ankle pulses in time with my heartbeat.
The pain is dulled by exhaustion and epis and the simple fact that my body has reached a limit it can no longer negotiate past. Every step he takes is careful without being hesitant.
He adjusts to the terrain automatically, angles his body to shield mine from the worst of the sun.
He’s accounting for everything.
I close my eyes—not to sleep, or so I tell myself, just to rest them. Just to stop the horizon from tilting every time the ground shifts. The motion lulls despite my resistance, and my thoughts loosen their grip in spite of me. I drift.
The steady cadence of his steps reminds me of a different rhythm, one I haven’t felt in years—the faint vibration of a ship’s life support, constant and impersonal.
I’m sitting at a narrow table. Again.
Metal beneath my palms. Recycled air that carries the faintest hints of antiseptic and ozone. The light is bright and clean. Everything designed to reassure except it doesn’t.
He stands across from me, arms crossed, weight already shifted toward the door like his body knows what his mouth hasn’t said yet.
“They’re sure?” he asks.
I nod. My hands are folded too tightly in my lap. I feel it even now, half-dreaming. The pressure of trying to hold myself together by force alone.
“As sure as they can be,” I say. Calm and measured. I practiced that voice. “There are options. Other ways.”
He exhales slowly, eyes dropping to the floor. Not angry or intentionally cruel, but resolved.
“I can’t live with that,” he says.
That.
The word carries no shape, no definition, and somehow that makes it heavier. It lands between us and fractures something neither of us can quite see yet.
“It wouldn’t be like nothing,” I say, softer now. “We could still—”
He shakes his head. Always the same gesture when he didn’t want the truth anymore.
“You don’t miss it,” he says. “Not yet.”
The accusation isn’t sharp. It’s weary. As if he’s already mourning something I haven’t been allowed to grieve.
“I would,” I whisper. “I just… need time.”
Time was the one thing he couldn’t give.
“I know,” he says, and it sounds like an apology even as he reaches for his bag. “That’s why I have to go.”
The memory blurs at the edges, dissolving back into heat and motion and the solid rise and fall of Korr’s chest beneath my cheek. My fingers curl reflexively into the leather at his shoulder, searching for purchase I don’t intend to take.
I don’t wake all at once.
Consciousness returns in layers—the ache in my ankle, the tight line of his arm at my back, the awareness of being held in a way that leaves no room for denial. My throat tightens.
This changes how the world treats me.
That thought surfaces fully formed and undeniable.
I am no longer moving under my own power. Routes will bend for me now. Pace will change. Decisions will be made with my limits in mind whether I want them to be or not. I open my eyes.
The desert stretches ahead, endless and indifferent. Illadon walks a short distance in front of us with Rverre, matching Korr’s pace without comment. No one looks back. No one stares.
This isn’t a spectacle; it’s reality. I swallow hard, tightening my jaw as I brace myself against the truth I don’t want to accept. That being carried isn’t what scares me, it’s how comfortable I am with it.
I don’t know exactly when it started. It wasn’t a particular moment or a look. Just a shift so slight I almost convince myself it’s nothing.
Illadon slows ahead of us where the sand thins into broken stone, scanning the ground the way Korr taught him to. He pauses, weighing two possible paths—one firmer, one shorter. Normally, he’d glance back at me for confirmation, but instead, his gaze flicks to Korr.
It’s barely a second. Korr doesn’t look at me. He studies the terrain, the angle of the sun, the way the wind curls against the rock. He lifts his chin a fraction.
“Left,” he says.
Illadon nods and adjusts course immediately.
My chest tightens. It isn’t defiance and it isn’t dismissal. It’s instinct — the kind that forms before thought, before loyalty, before intention can intervene. I swallow and force my voice steady.
“Right is firmer past the break,” I say. “Less slippage once we cross.”
Illadon stops and turns, eyes flicking between us, uncertainty rippling through him.
It’s gone in a heartbeat, replaced by careful consideration.
Korr doesn’t correct me. He doesn’t assert himself.
He just waits while Illadon hesitates and that’s what hurts.
It’s not the pause, but the fact that it exists at all. Finally, Illadon nods.
“Right,” he says, and adjusts again, cheeks flushing faintly as if he knows he’s crossed some invisible line without meaning to.
Korr shifts his grip slightly to compensate for the change in terrain. Still silent, steady, and still carrying me.
The desert stretches on, indifferent to the fracture blooming quietly between us.
Illadon keeps walking, but something in his posture has changed.
It’s not less respectful, only recalibrated.
His awareness angles differently, attention tethered to Korr’s presence in a way that didn’t exist before, but I see it immediately.
This is how leadership moves when pressure is applied — not through argument, but gravity. And gravity has shifted. I press my fingers into the leather at Korr’s shoulder, grounding myself in sensation rather than thought. If I let this spiral, it will become something sharper than it needs to be.
This doesn’t change anything, I tell myself silently.
But even as I think it, I know it’s a lie. Korr isn’t replacing me. He’s becoming structural. And the most frightening part is that no one is wrong for letting it happen.
I try telling myself I’m imagining all of this. That the rhythm feels off because I’m higher than the ground, because my body isn’t doing what it’s used to doing. That being carried rewires perception in ways I don’t like, but it keeps happening.
Illadon slows again when the stone fractures into uneven plates. He doesn’t stop this time. He angles his body slightly, already anticipating a correction.
“Korr,” he says quietly.
It’s not a question. I inhale sharply through my nose.
“Two steps forward, then cut right,” I say before Korr can answer. “There’s a dip there that looks solid but isn’t.”
Illadon looks back at me. His brows knit, calculating. Korr doesn’t interrupt, which should make me feel better, but it doesn’t.
Illadon hesitates just long enough for the choice to become visible then he nods.
“Right,” he says, and adjusts.
Korr doesn’t correct or speak up to reinforce his authority. Which somehow makes it worse. Because now this isn’t him taking over. It’s him being deferred to.
The decision settles around us like dust after a collapse. Quiet and final. No one acknowledging it aloud, but everyone registering the change. I swallow and look away, fixing my gaze on the horizon. The desert doesn’t care who leads. It’s patience is eternal, waiting to see who breaks first.
“I can walk,” I say, too abruptly.
Korr doesn’t look at me. “Not yet.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not.”
His tone isn’t dismissive. It’s factual in a way that leaves no room for argument without turning me into the unreasonable one. Which makes it sting more. Illadon glances back again, concern flickering across his face.
“We can stop if—”
“No,” I say immediately. “We keep moving.”
Illadon’s eyes flicker to Korr again before he nods. The sting of that is as sharp as any blade.
I shift in Korr’s arms, testing my balance, hating how natural it feels to be held like this. How some traitorous part of me has stopped bracing for the drop. The world is quietly adjusting around until the space I used to occupy doesn’t exist anymore.
I catch Illadon watching me, his expression carefully assessing. The same look I’ve taught him to use when figuring out a problem.
“I’m still here,” I say softly, more to myself than anyone else.
Korr’s grip tightens slightly, not claiming, more anchoring.
“I know,” he says.
And despite everything I believe him, because he isn’t erasing me. He’s carrying me forward. The problem is that I don’t know how to survive what it feels like that is costing me.