Chapter 20 Talia
TALIA
Being carried changes how you read the land.
I don’t feel the stone through my feet anymore.
I feel it through Korr’s body instead—the way his stride adjusts before the ground gives, the minute shifts of muscle and balance that tell me when a surface lies.
He absorbs the terrain for both of us, translating it into motion I’m not choosing.
That loss of feedback unsettles me more than the pain.
The stone plates ahead fracture, angled just enough to threaten ankles and momentum. Korr slows without comment, steps lengthening and shortening as needed. His grip doesn’t tighten, but it firms.
Rverre stops. Illadon halts instantly, hand hovering near her shoulder, his posture protective without being possessive. Korr stops two steps later.
“What is it?” he asks.
Rverre doesn’t answer right away. Her wings flex once, then still. Her gaze drifts sideways, tracking something I can’t see.
“It’s louder,” she says.
“Louder how?” I ask.
Rverre kneels, pressing her palm to the exposed stone. Her brow furrows, focus sharpening her features into something older than she should be allowed to be.
“Closer,” she says. Then, softer, “And paying attention.”
My chest tightens.
“To what?” Illadon asks.
Rverre’s eyes lift. They land on me first. Then flick to Korr.
“To the change,” she says. “To pressure.”
The desert wind slides between us, a warm breath shifting the loose surface of sand. I force myself to breathe slowly, grounding myself in the familiar even as something shifts.
“Land reacts all the time,” I say. “Heat, movement, imbalance. We’re not—”
“Different than yesterday,” Rverre says, quietly cutting me off.
I close my mouth, unsure how to respond to that.
I know, as well as anyone, that she knows things no one should.
Korr is breathing heavily as he studies her for a long moment.
I’m lifted with the rise and fall of his chest. The subtle shift of his arms as he continues to cradle me as if I weigh nothing.
“Does it want us to stop?” he asks.
She shakes her head.
“No. It wants us to keep going.” Her gaze drifts again, unfocused. “Just… not the same way.”
Illadon glances at me then stops himself, rerouting his attention to Korr instead, instinctive and immediate. That hurts like a bruise being pressed.
“We move,” Korr decides. “Slower through this stretch. No shortcuts.”
Illadon nods and adjusts course without hesitation, guiding Rverre forward without a backwards glance. I don’t say anything, though it feels like I’m losing them. The kids, they’re not mine, but I’ve taught them for so long there is a sense of… not ownership. Responsibility.
Korr shifts me as we start again, compensating for a subtle change in grade. His forearm tightens at my back. The motion feels restrained, careful to not be claiming or comforting, purely structural.
The problem is I hate how safe it feels.
My ankle flares as my body reacts late to the motion, pain spiking sharp enough to steal my breath. I ride it out with clenched teeth and a practiced calm that fools no one.
Korr’s hand lifts reflexively then stops before he touches me. The restraint is clearly deliberate and no matter how I try to deny, it hurts more than help would have.
I look out at the horizon, jaw tight, and refuse to meet his gaze. If the land is listening now, if it’s reacting to imbalance and pressure and change—then I cannot afford to let it see me break. Not while I’m being carried, forced to forfeit free will.
The stone beneath Illadon’s boots shudders. It’s not a collapse, or quake, it’s a subtle, wrong vibration that carries up through the ribs of rock like a breath drawn too deep. I feel it secondhand through Korr’s body. His stride falters half a fraction and then he stills.
“Stop,” he barks.
Illadon freezes. Rverre stiffens, wings flaring instinctively before she reins them in.
The sand ahead sloughs sideways in a slow, unsettling slide, spilling into a shallow depression that hadn’t been there moments ago.
“That wasn’t weight,” I say quietly.
“No,” Korr agrees. “It wasn’t.”
Rverre’s clamps her hand onto Illadon’s forearm.
“It’s testing,” she murmurs.
Illadon swallows. “Us?”
She hesitates, swallows, then nods. My stomach tightens. The urge to be on my feet—to do something—flares hot and immediate. I shift in Korr’s arms without thinking.
Pain lances bright and sharp and I hiss before I can stop myself.
Korr reacts instantly, widening his stance and adjusting his grip to take the stress off my ankle. He doesn’t look at me, or comment, but his body rearranges itself as if he’s already mapped the damage.
The efficiency is infuriating. It shouldn’t be. He’s helping. I know it, but that raw, gnawing sense of helplessness will not be denied.
“I can stand,” I say.
“No,” he replies, flatly.
Illadon glances back, eyes widening, wings fluttering.
“Should you set her down?”
“No,” Korr repeats, this time sharper.
Rverre’s looks at him.
“It’s watching now.”
“Then we don’t give it a reason to push harder,” he says. “We move. Carefully.”
I clench my jaw. Being discussed like terrain is scraping something raw inside me.
“I’m not a liability,” I snap.
Korr finally looks at me. There isn’t a hint of apology in his gaze, not even an assessing look. His face shows nothing but absolute certainty.
“You are injured,” he says. “That is not the same thing.”
“It becomes the same thing if everyone treats it like—”
“Enough.”
The word is quiet and controlled. It cuts clean through the argument without raising his voice. Illadon stiffens. Rverre goes very still.
I stare at Korr, breath shallow, anger sparking hot and useless. I want to argue. I want to insist. I want to be right. But the ground shifts again. It’s a whisper of movement. The stone settling where it hadn’t before. Rverre inhales sharply.
“It doesn’t like fighting,” she says.
That douses my flaring anger and stops me cold.
Korr adjusts his hold and starts forward, angling wide around the unstable patch. Illadon follows without question, guiding Rverre with a gentleness that mirrors Korr’s precision. No one asks me again.
The worst part is that the land seems to respond. The vibration eases. The stone holds. The path ahead firms enough to walk. I swallow hard, as an understanding settles unwelcome and heavy, but also undeniable. This isn’t about control. It’s about coherence.
Right now, the world makes more sense when I stop fighting the fact that I can’t hold everything together on my own.
Bile rises in my throat. I swallow it down, struggling to hide the cold chills that race over my body. Because if I admit that, then I have to ask myself who’s carrying what—and whether I’ll ever get it back.
Korr sets his pace, each step measured and economical. I feel the difference as I become attuned to the minute adjustments of his body. It’s similar to the way I read lesson plans. It’s an instinct. Taking in little details and sensing the pattern.
He shifts his weight before the ground does. Anticipating the pull of sand before it gives. His breathing is the first indicator, shallow for a stretch, then deeper when the stone firms beneath his boots.
He’s working. Not in the obvious way Illadon works when he’s overthinking something, or the way I work when I’m pretending not to hurt. This is quieter. A constant, low burn of effort that never quite surfaces as strain.
I wish him being so good at this, being so perfect in the way he’s handling me, didn’t needle at me, but it does. It’s tiny pinpricks, poking at my pride. At my identity. At who I am, who I became, shaped by the pain of surviving.
I shift in his arms, trying to redistribute my weight, to find some angle that makes this feel less lopsided. Less like I’m something being carried instead of someone moving alongside him.
It’s a mistake.
The change throws his balance off by a fraction. Barely perceptible, but enough that his stride stutters for half a step. He compensates instantly, but I feel the correction ripple through his body like a tightened cable. He stops moving for the briefest moment.
Not long enough for anyone else to notice.
Illadon keeps walking, guiding Rverre ahead, unaware that anything has shifted behind them.
Korr doesn’t look at me as he adjusts his grip with precise efficiency.
Tightening one arm under my knees, the other repositioning at my back to lock me more securely against his chest. It isn’t rough, just practical.
“Don’t,” he says quietly.
One word with no explanation. It rankles me with its finality and I freeze. Not because he hurt me or because pain flares—though my ankle does throb with protest. I freeze because I understand exactly what he means.
Don’t help. Don’t fight the balance. Don’t pretend this is something it isn’t.
My throat tightens and I clench my jaw, biting down on the urge to snap back. Words that would have no purpose but to hurt. I stare out at the endless stretch of sand ahead, the horizon wavering in the heat. The urge to argue clawing up my spine, sharp and reflexive.
I am not dead weight. I am not helpless. I am not—the thought fractures under its own weight.
I am being carried. And the truth I don’t want to face is that I feel how much effort he’s expending not just to move forward, but to make it look effortless. To make it stable. To keep me from noticing the imbalance any more than I already have.
I swallow hard and force myself to still. The difference is immediate.
Korr’s shoulders ease by a hair. His breathing evens. The tension humming through his frame settles into something sustainable. He doesn’t comment. Doesn’t acknowledge the change. Simply resuming walking as if nothing happened.
I also don’t miss that the desert responds.
It isn’t dramatic. There’s no visible shift, no sudden quieting of the ground. It’s more subtle than that, more of an easing of resistance. The sand firms underfoot. The faint, wrong vibration I’d felt earlier through his body fades into nothing.
Coherence.
The word presses into my thoughts, unwelcome yet undeniable.
I close my eyes, not to sleep, but because the alternative is admitting how much this costs me. How much it costs him. How much it costs us both that the world seems to make more sense when I stop insisting on doing everything myself. When I allow myself to rely on him.
My fingers curl into the leather at his shoulder before I can stop them. I’m not gripping or clinging, just… anchoring. He doesn’t react. No shifting away or tightening of his hold in response. It’s as if he understands the difference between grasping and grounding. Between need and balance.
The motion of his stride carries me forward, steady and relentless.
Each step eats distance, brings us closer to our destination.
I no longer measure progress by the ache in my legs or the burn in my lungs.
I measure it by the rise and fall of his chest beneath my cheek. By the quiet certainty of his pace.
A weight I don’t have a name for presses onto me. There is nowhere to put it. It presses in from nowhere and everywhere. It’s not pride, or not pride alone, nor is it denial. It’s more a truth, burning away the lie that I can hold everything together alone.
I can’t. Part of me knows it. Has always known it. But armor, carefully built and long worn doesn’t let go that easy. He’s done everything right, but somehow it’s still not enough.
I know why. It echoes in every beating of my heart.
He’ll go away when it matters most. When I need him most, he’ll be gone.
That’s what happens to girls like me. I can’t open my heart because I can’t take that pain again.
I swore it then and no matter all that’s happened, that promise to myself remains.
Korr glances down and our eyes meet. It’s a moment. The weight of his gaze studying my face, searching for something I can’t name. A ghost of a smile brushes his lips, he lifts me a little higher in his arms, cradling me a little tighter against his chest.
In that glance I see him. I know that he’s decided, feel it burning behind his eyes, but this is a two way passage and I can’t. Pressure builds behind my eyes. Shoulders tighten. That weight is heavier than ever. How do I forget the past?
Korr has and Tajss seems accepting of the change, but I’m not. I can’t. I won’t ever hurt that way again.