Chapter 34
KARA
equestion hang between us. For a long time there’s only the whistle of wind across the open desert.
“I can wait,” I say quickly, the words tumbling out. My chest knots with guilt. “If it’s too much—”
“No.” His voice rumbles deep, cutting off mine. He doesn’t look at me. His eyes stay pinned on the horizon, but his hand shifts, brushing the back of mine—not quite holding. “You should know.”
My throat goes tight. I let the silence stretch, giving him space, until at last he speaks again.
“He was older.” The words are low, raw, like they scrape him on the way out. “Stronger. Everything I wanted to be. We fought together when the Perixians came—you humans call them the Invaders. The last time I saw him—”
His voice breaks, sharp as a crack in stone.
He swallows hard, his hand clenching and unclenching at his side.
I remember the Invaders. I was in my teens when they came in earnest. Monstrous aliens that wanted to wipe out all life on Tajss.
I’d heard the stories—that they were part of the Devastation that destroyed the planet before we humans crashed here.
“The last I saw him, he stood against them alone. He bought me seconds—only seconds—to crawl from the blood and sand. Seconds I wasted. I should have gone back. I should have died with him.”
The air leaves my lungs like I’ve been struck. His scars, his silence, all the weight he carries—it crashes into place, and I can barely breathe under the force of it.
“He died?” I ask, forcing the words past the lump in my throat.
“Our city was under siege,” he says, eyes narrowing as if he’s seeing something more than the empty desert stretching ahead of us. “It was a desperation move. Attack because if we didn’t, we were dead anyway. Food and supplies were running out. We figured it was better to die fighting. Trying.”
The ache in my chest deepens. I want to stop marching, wrap my arms around him, and hold him until the pain eases. But he doesn’t slow, so I don’t either.
“This was before…” I trail off, not wanting to say the word, the Devastation.
It’s always said by the Zmaj with a capital D—the event that destroyed Tajss. From all the stories I’ve heard, I don’t think Tajss was ever hospitable, but it was less harsh. And there were female Zmaj. And children. Cities full of them before that world-ending event.
It was similar to what happened to us humans—crashing onto Tajss and losing the only home we’d ever known.
Our generation ship was the only reality we’d ever known.
The generation before mine—and mine—were never meant to walk on a planet.
Our intended home is still far, far away, being terraformed for my grandkids or great-grandkids or something like that.
The math was never my strong suit because I never cared.
Even as a small child, I knew my life was meant to be on the ship and only on the ship.
The idea of a planet—of real suns overhead, real sky, fresh air—was too unreal to comprehend.
“Yes,” he says. The long delay in his response, the distance of his stare—all of it indicates his thoughts are far away from our trudging across the endless sand dunes.
“Did it… work?”
“Work?” He chuckles, shaking his head.
“Yeah,” I say, cheeks flushing despite the constant heat of the double suns. “You know. Did you break the siege?”
He lowers his head, and his wings open, flapping idly at the air, stirring a warm yet cooling breeze over the two of us.
“In a manner, yes,” he says. “I retreated, leaving him.” He falls silent for a long moment. “The last time I saw him, he was atop a rock outcropping, his lochaber flashing as he wielded it against six of the monsters.”
“Six?” I exclaim.
I saw the Invaders when they returned to Tajss.
They were terrifying—massive, blue, four to six arms each.
Unstoppable. Marching through rifle bolts, beating down mighty Zmaj warriors with little to no effort.
Losing to them was what led the powers that be to set off the massive bomb that drove the surviving humans and Zmaj underground: into the Bunker, which then led us to leave it and go deeper beneath the mountains, where we met the Cavern Zmaj and the orc-like Urr’ki.
“Yes,” he murmurs. “They overran him. I saw him disappear as I was dragged away by healers.”
“You don’t know he died, then,” I whisper, desperate to give him something, anything. “He could have lived.”
His eyes finally meet mine—black, fathomless, filled with something jagged and raw.
“If he lives, it is because I left him. If he died, it is because I failed him. Either way, I carry it.”
I stumble on the sand, my chest twisting.
“You were injured—”
“I am Zmaj,” he snaps, not at me but at the memory. His voice drops, guttural. “And Zmaj do not leave their kin. Not ever.”
The silence is heavier than anything I can imagine. I share his burden now. Understand it. Without thinking, I catch his hand. He lets me. His claws curl, careful, holding without crushing, and for the first time I feel a tremor under his scales—a crack in the warrior’s armor no one else sees.
His voice falls into silence after the confession of leaving his brother behind, and I think that’s the end. I think he’s given me all he can bear. But then his jaw flexes, his wings twitch tight against his back, and he adds, almost as if the sounds are being dragged out of him,
“There is more.”
My chest knots. I stay quiet, letting him choose the words.
“When the bombs fell,” he says, voice low and rough, “I believed I had saved something of my brother. Something to… lessen my failure. A way to make up for not being there at his side…” He falls silent, but his hand clenches tighter on mine and his wings rustle.
“His mate. His treasure. She was all he had left beyond me, so I found her. Ran with her, got her to shelter before the bombing began. Fled the city for an old cavern system he and I would play in as younglings—deep underground. Far enough from the surface to be safe.
Or so I thought.”
He falls silent, dark eyes staring over the dunes. The suns make the sand sparkle, waves of heat rising, making it hard not to hallucinate. I blink, wiping grit from my eyes. That’s all it is. Not tears. Tears are wasteful on Tajss. Water is too precious.
“I hunted and fed her with what I could find,” he continues. “Not easy. What life survived the bombing… was changed. Some of it was not safe to eat even if I found and killed it. Others were… changed. More dangerous than ever. Still, I guarded her as though she were my own blood.”
The desert wind whistles between us, thin and empty, and I feel the weight of every word drop like stones into my chest.
“Then she became ill. At first it was… weakness. Tiredness. I thought it was only sadness and melancholy at all that had been lost. I thought…” He trails off, shaking his head, a low grumble slipping out. “It doesn’t matter.”
His eyes fix on the horizon, unblinking.
“Soon enough I came to understand it was the poison in the air, in the ground, even in the meat I was bringing her. It took her slowly. Her scales paled, eyes dimmed day by day. She clutched my hand and begged me to make it quick at the end, but I… couldn’t.
I watched her die. Every breath drawn through pain and blood. ”
His voice catches—the smallest fracture—quickly smoothed over by a swallow, by the tightening of his jaw. But I hear it. I feel it.
“I thought saving her would mean I had honored him. That maybe, when we met again, in the next life, I could tell him she lived. That I had kept her safe.” He shakes his head once, sharp, violent. “But… I failed him twice. Failed them both.”
The air leaves me in a rush, sharp as pain. My hand curls at my side, aching to touch him, to take some part of this weight from him. To do something, anything.
“That was the last breaking,” he says at last, his voice nearly a whisper. “The scars are nothing. The silence, the exile, the battles—nothing. But losing her after losing him…” His hand curls into a fist, claws cutting into his palm. “That ended what was left.”
He doesn’t look at me. Doesn’t need to. The truth is written in every line of his scars, every angle of his jaw, every beat of silence that follows.
And in that moment, I understand—this warrior at my side has been shattered three times over, and still he walks. Still he fights. Still he carries it.
And I vow, fierce and desperate, that I will never let him carry this alone, never again. The silence stretches, raw and jagged. The dunes stretch empty ahead of us, but I barely see them.
His words echo in my head—brother, mate, death. Loss layered on loss until it’s a wonder he hasn’t crumbled into dust with the rest of this planet. My throat tightens, and I bite down hard against the ache behind my eyes.
This is why he’s always just out of reach. Why he touches and pulls back. Why every moment between us hums with want but stops short of claiming. Not because he doesn’t feel it. Not because I imagined the heat in his gaze or the way he calls me mine.
Because he already lost everything he loved once. Twice. Three times. Because he believes that to love me is to risk that same ruin again. That he might fail me.
My chest twists, sharp and merciless. I ache for him—ache for the boy who once had a brother to follow, for the man who carried hope in his arms only to watch it wither and die. I ache for me too—for the bond sparking hot and alive between us that he holds at bay.
I want to tell him he’s wrong. That I’m not fragile. That I won’t be ripped from him like the rest. But the words lodge in my throat, heavy with the truth that I can’t promise him that. Not here. Not on Tajss, where death waits under every stone and in every shadow.
So I walk beside him, quiet. My hand in his. His tail flicks, restless. His jaw sets harder. His stride never falters. And I understand.
It isn’t that he doesn’t want me. It’s that he does. Too much. Enough that losing me would be the final breaking. The realization burns like a brand under my skin, and with every step I feel the weight of it settle in my bones.
He’s mine. This… this is meant to be. He’s been pushed aside. Lost and broken. Like I have. Worse than I ever had it, but still…
Even if he never lets himself take me fully. Even if every kiss, every touch is edged with the ghost of all he’s lost.
I want him.
And somehow, I’ll find a way to make him believe that wanting me isn’t another road to ruin.