Chapter 35 Talia
TALIA
The council doesn’t end with applause, but with movement. A feeling of acceptance tinged with inevitability.
Zmaj peel away in deliberate groups, wings brushing the fractured light as they shift from debate to action. Humans cluster closer together, voices low but threaded with something I think is new. Hope.
Korr remains beside me as the chamber slowly transforms from tribunal to staging ground. We hold hands, watching the movement, and I’m not sure what we should be doing next. For the moment at least I am content to wait. To have his hand in mine.
Illadon isn’t patient, though. He crosses the space to where Virn is talking with Syin and another of the Zmaj without hesitation.
Illadon’s posture is straight, chin lifted to signal confidence without arrogance.
I catch the words “load-bearing walls” and “reinforcement brackets” drifting back to us.
He gestures upward toward the exposed ironwork near the ceiling.
Virn listens. Really listens. Syin stands with arms folded, but he doesn’t interrupt.
Rverre drifts toward a wide crack in the lobby floor where sunlight spills down like a blade. She kneels, pressing her palm flat to the stone, humming soft and steady. It strikes me that she’s not calling to something, but answering.
As if in response to her several Zmaj glance down at the ground beneath their feet. They don’t flinch, but their wings shuffle and their tails twitch in response. One after another they glance towards Rverre.
“They feel it,” I murmur.
“Yes,” Korr says.
His voice is quiet, but there’s something almost reverent in it.
“They sense she is not claiming,” he adds. “She is listening.”
A human steps into the center of the chamber carrying a small reinforced case. She sets it onto a table that is partially broken and carefully opens it. I shift close enough to see small vials that have an unmistakable, if subtle, purple glow. Epis.
A murmur ripples outward. The other humans form an orderly line, but not all of them. It takes me a moment to understand that only those who are hurting the most are stepping forward. No arguments or debating.
A gaunt woman with hollowed cheeks is first in line. The administrator carefully opens a vial then inserts a pair of tweezers. She breaks off a piece of the life-giving plant and places it in the gaunt woman’s mouth.
The woman inhales sharply, shoulders loosening by degrees. A Zmaj male stands close, ready if she stumbles. She doesn’t.
Watching the scene play out as others line up, but so few of the total, breaks my heart. The group of human survivors I crashed with have had it rough, but nothing we’ve been through compares to what I’m witnessing.
“They’ve been surviving in pieces,” I say softly. “Cutting themselves down to fit the shade.”
“And now?” Korr asks.
I watch as the woman lifts her face fully toward the light.
“Now we can help. Together, with all of us, we can do more than just survive.”
Across the chamber, a small human boy edges toward Illadon, curiosity outweighing caution. Illadon turns, crouching a little to meet him at eye level. He displays patience and compassion. A future leader.
The way he makes space for others is not only the sign of one with the charisma and power to lead, but with the wisdom to be a good one. My throat tightens.
For years, I thought my legacy was defined by the absence. My inability to have children of my own, but now I see it everywhere.
Rverre rises from her crouch, brushing dust from her palms. She meets my gaze across the chamber and smiles. There is knowing in her small body, not triumph, only certainty. This city and these survivors aren’t healed, but there is hope.
A young Zmaj—the same one who had accused Korr—approaches us stiffly. He stops at a respectful distance.
“We will clear the eastern district tomorrow,” he says, voice measured. “Your people… may reside there.”
“That would be very kind,” I say.
He nods once, then turns away, already issuing instructions to two others. Korr watches him go.
“He will challenge us,” he says.
“Yes.”
“He will also defend what he builds.”
I glance up at him.
“You sound certain.”
“I am.”
There’s no arrogance in it, he’s speaking from experience. I frown as I nod. Hope is not a promise. It’s opportunity. And it will be on us to make something of it.
Around us, humans and Zmaj begin marking spaces along the floor with charcoal and broken tile. Someone is sketching supply routes. Someone else is arguing over load distribution for the upper floors.
Adran crosses toward us then, expression thoughtful rather than guarded.
“You’ve changed the equation,” he says quietly.
“No,” I reply. “We’ve expanded it.”
His gaze shifts briefly to Korr, then back to me.
“You’re certain about this alliance?” he asks.
I don’t look at Korr when I answer.
“Yes.” Because I am. That faint memory tugs as I look at him. “Do I know you?”
It slips out without thinking about it. I can’t shake this feeling he is someone I should recognize. Someone I knew a long time ago or something, but can’t quite put together the face and the name.
A slow smile forms on his face and he shrugs. He pauses long enough to inhale deeply and let it out as a sigh.
“Once, I would imagine,” he says, a weight and sadness layering over his words.
I shake my head, frowning. It’s still not coming to me…
“I know I should… but…”
“I was… of some significance once. No longer. On the ship though, my face was in many places.”
“No!” I exclaim.
The face is different. He looked much younger in the vids and on the screens. Youngest member of the Council. Youngest leader ever to earn the title…
“Yes,” he says. “Time has worn my face, but I was the Secretary General.”
“Oh,” I say, covering my mouth with my free hand, tightening my grip on Korr’s with the other.
Adran studies my face for a long moment, then nods once and steps away, already calling for a headcount of available engineers. I release a slow breath.
He survived. The de facto leader of all humans. Or he was on the ship. What will Rosalind think of that? How will the two of them get along?
“You know him?” Korr asks.
“Yeah,” I exhale. “But you know? It doesn’t matter. Once he was something; now he’s something else. It’s a new world and somehow Tajss keeps reinventing itself or us.”
“Tajss provides,” Korr says softly.
He steps closer, placing his arm around my shoulder and pulling me tighter against him. I put my arm around his waist and rest my head on his shoulder. The tension that has lived under my skin for months doesn’t vanish. It settles. Becomes something I carry — instead of something that carries me.
Across the chamber, Illadon laughs at something the human boy says. The sound is bright and startling in the cavernous space. A few Zmaj glance toward it. One of them, an older, scarred warrior, allows the faintest hint of a smile.
Rverre resumes her humming, softer now, weaving between conversations like thread through cloth, as she drifts towards him.
“They’re already changing each other,” I say.
“Yes,” Korr answers.
“And you?” I ask, turning toward him. “Are you satisfied?”
His gaze moves over the chamber. The light. The children. The Zmaj who cast sidelong glances at him.
“I am… hopeful,” he says carefully.
The word feels larger than any vow. I squeeze him. Above us, sunlight filters through fractured steel and broken glass, cutting gold lines across stone that has known only survival for too long.
“We will build something here,” he says.
“We already are,” I answer.
The city is still wounded. So are we, but the light reaches farther than it did yesterday.