Chapter 21 Talia
TALIA
Korr keeps moving, his stride is steady, but I feel a change through him before I see it myself. The resistance eases. The drag on each step lessens. The subtle, grinding fight between sand and stone that’s been chewing at us since morning simply… lets go. The ground becomes firm.
The tension I’ve been holding without admitting it loosens in my shoulders. Korr’s breathing evens another fraction, deep and controlled. He doesn’t look around or slow, but his grip adjusts in a way that tells me he feels it too.
Ahead of us, Illadon’s pace smooths and then Rverre stops humming. That’s what makes my chest tighten. She lifts her head slowly, wings flexing once before settling. Her gaze drifts outward, unfocused, tracking something that isn’t distance.
“It knows,” she says.
No fear or wonder, she’s stating a fact. Illadon halts, looking at her with narrowed eyes.
“Knows what?”
Rverre doesn’t look at him, keeping her gaze focused on the horizon and whatever it is she sees that we don’t.
She kneels, pressing her palm to the stone at her feet, fingers splayed, breathing shallow but controlled.
I recognize the signs in her—the edge of overwhelm she is trying to ride instead of fighting.
“That we’re listening,” she says.
The wind shifts as if in response. It’s not stronger or weaker, but coming straighter. It stops worrying at loose sand instead sliding cleanly along the surface, as if guided. I swallow.
“That happens,” I say, as much to ground myself as anyone else. “Land reacts to movement. Weight. Heat.”
Rverre’s eyes lift then, and when they meet mine there’s no challenge in them. In her eyes I see something older and quieter than disagreement.
“Different than yesterday,” she says.
I don’t have an answer ready and that bothers me.
“Does it want us to stop?” Korr asks at last, like he already trusts the reply.
She shakes her head once. “No.”
Illadon’s shoulders ease a fraction. Mine don’t.
“What then?” he asks.
Rverre hesitates long enough to make the pause matter. She frowns, brow knitting, pulling her small horns down.
“It wants us to keep going,” she says. Then, softer, “Just… not the same way.”
Korr nods as if that confirms something he’s already been weighing. He adjusts his course by degrees, angling us slightly left where the stone ribs break through more consistently. He doesn’t announce the change, he just moves. And the land responds.
The faint vibration I hadn’t fully admitted feeling fades. The subtle wrongness that’s been needling at my awareness loosens its grip. It’s not gone, but it is quieter.
Coherent.
The word presses into my thoughts again, unwelcome and persistent.
Korr shifts me higher against his chest without breaking stride, redistributing my weight as the grade changes. His forearm firms at my back. I hate how natural it feels. How part of me is happy to be in his arms.
Ahead, Illadon guides Rverre with an ease that tells me he trusts this adjustment without understanding it.
No one looks back. No one questions. The desert stretches on, vast and indifferent, and yet—it feels like we’ve stepped into something already in motion.
Something that noticed the moment I stopped fighting the fact that I can’t hold everything together on my own.
I don’t say that out loud. There’s no way I’m going to announce that, but it gnaws at me. Dancing around the edges of my thoughts, throbbing in time with the pain in my ankle.
I stare out at the horizon and tell myself this means nothing.
It’s temporary. Once we reach the city—if we reach it—everything will return to the shape it had before.
But the problem with coherence is that it doesn’t care how you feel about it.
It doesn’t announce itself or ask permission.
It simply works, and in doing so, exposes everything that doesn’t.
We move for another stretch without incident. The kind of calm that feels borrowed instead of earned. I watch the way Illadon’s steps align with Korr’s adjustments, how Rverre drifts just slightly ahead of her own body, attention tethered to something deeper than terrain.
And despite all the apparency of calm, I feel pressure. Consistent, ramping up, making it hard to take a full breath.
My ankle throbs in a low, steady rhythm, not sharp enough to demand attention, but insistent enough to refuse being ignored. Epis dulls the edge, but it can’t erase the truth. I am not healing out here. I’m managing. And management has a cost.
Korr slows.
It’s subtle. Barely perceptible unless you’re being carried by him. His stride shortens by a fraction, cadence shifting to something more deliberate. Illadon notices though, easing Rverre to match without being told. I close my eyes for a heartbeat.
Don’t react. Don’t fight it.
When I open them again, the land has changed.
Enough that my breath catches. Ahead, the stone ribs rise higher, clustering closer together, forming shallow channels where sand has been trapped and compressed. It’s not shelter or our destination, but it’s direction. A path shaped by patience instead of force.
“This feels wrong,” I murmur.
Korr doesn’t answer immediately.
“The ground isn’t settled,” he says at last. “Load-bearing is inconsistent.”
That makes my stomach tighten. Not because it’s dramatic — because it’s precise.
“Meaning?”
“Meaning it will behave unpredictably under stress.”
Illadon glances back, brow furrowed. “From us?”
Rverre crouches, fingers brushing the rock. She doesn’t press her palm down this time. She barely touches it, as if listening through her skin.
“From movement,” she says. “From things not agreeing where they want to be.”
I frown. “That’s vague.”
“Yes,” she agrees calmly. “Because it doesn’t know yet.”
Korr stops. He shifts his weight, testing the surface before committing to stillness. His arm tightens at my back.
“What doesn’t it know?” Illadon asks.
Rverre’s wings rustle. “How much to hold.”
The words settle uneasily and the two children look at me, expectantly. I don’t know what it is they expect me to say though.
“I’m not doing anything,” I say, sharper than I intend. “I’m just here.”
She looks at me then. Not accusing. Observing. “Being here is doing something.”
I open my mouth to argue, then stop. There’s no superstition in her voice. There never is. She’s making a statement, the way Rverre does. No matter that her statements so often carry weight and knowledge a child should never have.
Korr exhales slowly. “Then we minimize strain.”
“For what?” I snap. “For me?”
“For distribution,” he replies. Remaining calm, but also unyielding. “Uneven weight causes failure. That’s physics, not judgment.”
I look away, jaw tight. Embarrassment burns on my cheeks. I’m the burden being discussed. I’m the one causing the problem, putting the mission in danger.
“I didn’t ask to matter this much.”
“I know,” he says.
Illadon shifts, clearly uncomfortable. “So… what’s the move?”
Korr scans the terrain again, not searching for a path, reading risk.
“We keep going. But we stay flexible. No forcing clean lines where the ground doesn’t want them.”
“Balance isn’t about stillness,” Rverre adds. “It’s about listening when things start to slip.”
I swallow, staring at the stone I can’t feel through my own feet anymore. The truth presses in, quieter than fear, heavier than denial. I’m not shaping the land, but I am part of the load. And if I don’t learn how to exist inside that reality, something else will decide the breaking point for me.
“Follow my path,” Korr says and takes the lead.
Korr adjusts course by degrees, angling us toward what looks like firmer stone. The decision is sound. I see the logic — the way the surface tightens, the way the sand thins where rock ribs break through.
It should hold. It doesn’t.
The ground shifts under his next step, not collapsing but sliding. The rock plate shearing sideways on a seam hidden beneath sand. He compensates instantly — too instantly —redistributing weight to protect me first.
That’s the mistake.
The correction prioritizes stability, not load.
The stone groans. A low, grinding sound vibrates up through his legs and into me, jarring enough to steal my breath. Korr freezes, stance locked, muscles coiling as he recalculates in real time.
“Don’t move,” he says.
Illadon stops mid-step. Rverre stiffens, wings snapping tight against her back.
The ground beneath Korr’s forward foot continues to creep, slow and relentless, the seam widening by fractions. Not enough to drop us. Enough to punish hesitation.
I feel his micro-adjustments, tension building as he realizes what he’s done.
“You shifted wrong,” I say quietly.
“I compensated for imbalance.”
“You compensated for me.”
He grunts, the sound vibrating in his chest as the stone slips another inch. Rverre inhales sharply.
“It doesn’t like being told where the weight goes.”
Illadon swallows. “Korr—”
“I know,” he snaps, sharper than I’ve ever heard him. Not anger — urgency. “I know.”
He lowers his center of gravity, bending his knees, trying to distribute pressure back into the ground without transferring it to me. The move is careful. Controlled.
And too late.
The plate drops.
Not far enough to be catastrophic, but enough.
His footing gives, boot skidding as the seam collapses inward. He catches us, but the recovery costs him. His knee hits stone hard. The impact jolts through both of us.
I gasp. He grunts.
Pain flares in my ankle where it jars against his leg. I hiss, fingers digging into his shoulder before I can stop myself.
We don’t fall, but the illusion does. The ground settles again, as if satisfied it’s made its point. Silence stretches.
Korr stays still for a long moment, breath measured, shoulders rigid. When he finally looks down at me, something in his expression has changed. It’s not doubt, but accountability.
“That was on me,” he says.
No excuses or qualifiers. He accepts responsibility with that same calm he continues to display.
Would he still be this calm if it all came down? If what you want most is taken from you the way mine was?
I stop that train of thought. Now is not only the time, never is. He’s breaking through the walls of my defenses. His constant care and attention without demanding in return. The way he is… it’s subtle and I have to stop this before it goes too far.
Illadon lets out a breath he’s clearly been holding. Rverre relaxes by degrees, tension draining from her wings, but I don’t soften. I can’t. I can’t let him inside any further than he already is.
I need him to get angry. I need him to react — to prove that calm has a breaking point.
“You adjusted for the wrong variable,” I counter.
“Yes.”
“You chose control over coherence,” I accuse.
His eyes flick away, then back. “I chose speed.”
“And we’re paying for it. It almost cost us everything. The children—”
I cut off, letting the words hang between us. He shifts his grip, slower this time, deliberate in a way that acknowledges risk rather than denying it.
“We stop. Reassess.”
Rverre nods immediately. “The ground needs a minute.”
I swallow hard, pain pulsing where my ankle throbs, anger threading through it. Not because he failed — but because he failed for me.
“You don’t get to make me the constant,” I say quietly.
His gaze locks on mine. “Then don’t let me.”
That answer is not enough, but it’s honest. And for the first time since he picked me up, I realize something that chills me more than the misstep ever could, he can’t carry me and decide everything alone.
The desert has just proven it.
Korr exhales slowly and shifts his stance, lowering us both until my weight rests more fully against his chest and less against his forward leg. He doesn’t set me down — but he stops moving.
He looks past me to the ground, then to Rverre, then to Illadon. Then back to me.
“What do you see?” he asks.
The question lands harder than any apology. Illadon’s head snaps up. Rverre stills completely.
I blink. “What?”
“You’re the one who caught it,” he says. “You knew before I did. So tell me — where does it hold?”
For a heartbeat, I can’t breathe. He isn’t testing me. He isn’t humoring me. He’s waiting.
“You want me to decide?” I ask.
“Yes.”
Not help me decide. Not confirm my choice. Decide.
Something in my chest twists — sharp, almost painful — because this is the part that never lasts. This is the moment that always turns temporary. Conditional.
“Stone breaks two lengths to the right,” I say finally, voice steady despite myself. “The seam’s shallow there. If we angle wide and cross diagonally, it’ll distribute instead of shear.”
Korr doesn’t argue. Instead he nods once.
“Then we do that.”
Illadon doesn’t hesitate, adjusting and guiding Rverre into the new line without a backward glance. No one looks to me for permission and no one challenges it either.
Korr shifts his weight carefully and follows the route I named, every step deliberate, trusting the call even when it slows us. The ground holds. Not perfectly, but enough.
My throat tightens, and I hate it — hate the warmth behind my eyes, hate the way something fragile stirs where armor used to sit. Because he didn’t take over. He listened.
And worse — he stayed.