TWENTY-FOUR KHARVEK
TWENTY-FOUR
KHARVEK
Irefuse to be helpless.
The hunters are coming. Dawn bleeds across the horizon, red and gold, and somewhere out there in the barren wastes, the Matron’s killers close the distance between us and death. I should be preparing. Should be positioning for combat, calculating angles of attack, doing something useful.
Instead, I’m crouched against the ravine wall, my arm screaming, my channels burning, my body betraying me in ways I’ve never allowed it to betray me before.
Imara approaches. I hear her footsteps on the loose stone, sense her presence before I see her face. She’s been settling the survivors deeper into the ravine, finding hiding spots for Dena and the others, doing everything she can to prepare for what’s coming.
“Let me help.” She crouches beside me. Her hands hover over my bandaged arm.
“I’m fine.”
“You’re dying.”
The bluntness catches me off guard. I look up, find her gaze fixed on mine—unflinching, seeing too much.
“The channels are failing.” Her voice carries that clinical precision she uses when delivering truths she knows will hurt. “The damage isn’t just physical. The pathways that carry your magic are collapsing in on themselves. If you try to fight like this—”
“I know what happens if I fight like this.”
“Then let me fix it.”
“You can’t fix it. You said yourself—days to heal. We don’t have days.”
“I said days if we let it heal naturally.” She shifts closer. “There’s another way. Faster. More dangerous.”
I consider this. “Blood magic.”
“Healing, not harvesting. I can redirect the power flowing through your damaged channels, reroute it through pathways that are still intact. It won’t repair the damage, but it might stabilize you enough to—”
“Might?”
Her jaw tightens. “It’s not a certainty. The working is delicate. If I make a mistake, I could make things worse. I could—” She stops. Breathes. “I could kill you.”
The silence stretches between us. Above, the sky continues to lighten. The hunters continue to approach.
“Do it.”
“Kharvek—”
“We don’t have another option.” I extend my damaged arm toward her. “The hunters get here, I have to be able to fight. If that means risking your magic, then we risk it.”
She stares at my offered arm. Her expression shifts through emotions I can’t quite read—fear, determination, something else.
“This is going to hurt.” She takes my arm in her hands. “A lot.”
“Pain I understand.”
“Not like this.” Her fingers find the edge of the bandages, start unwrapping. “When I work on your channels, you’ll feel everything. Every redirect, every reroute. It’s—” She pauses. “Intimate. In ways you might not be prepared for.”
Intimate. The word sits strangely in the air between us.
“Just do it.”
She nods. Finishes removing the bandages. And begins.
The first touch of her magic is like fire.
Not the clean burn of power flowing through properly carved channels—this is rawer.
Deeper. Her awareness slides into my scarification like a blade, and I feel her inside me.
Not physically, not the way I felt her lips against mine or her body pressed to my chest. This is different.
This is her presence moving through pathways that were never meant to be touched by anyone but me.
I grit my teeth. Refuse to make a sound.
“I can feel the damage.” The words come from far away, muffled by the roaring in my ears. “The channels near your elbow are worst. The tissue has started to necrose—I need to redirect around it entirely.”
Redirect. Such a simple word for what she does next.
Pain. Real pain, not the dull ache I’ve been suppressing for days. This is sharp, bright, the sensation of magic being torn from one pathway and forced into another. My back arches against the ravine wall. My free hand claws at the stone, leaving furrows in the rock.
“Breathe.” Her voice anchors me. “I know it hurts. Keep breathing.”
I breathe. In. Out. In. Out. Focus on the rhythm, on the mechanics, on anything except the feeling of her hands reshaping the inside of my arm.
“The next part will be worse.”
Worse. I almost laugh. What could be worse than—
She redirects another channel, and the world goes white.
Time loses meaning.
I exist in fragments. Pain and pressure and the constant, inexorable presence of Imara’s magic working through my flesh. She speaks sometimes—calm instructions, quiet reassurances—but I can’t make out the words. Can only endure.
She’s inside me. Not just physically, not just magically. She’s seeing parts of me that no one has ever seen. The channels that carry my power, the pathways the Matron carved into me during childhood, the modifications I made to myself in secret—all of it laid bare beneath her touch.
I should hate this. Should hate the vulnerability, the exposure, the complete loss of control.
But her hands are steady. Her voice is calm. And despite the agony, despite the terror of being so completely known, I find myself trusting her.
I’ve never trusted anyone.
The realization hits harder than the pain.
“Almost done.” Her voice cuts through the haze. “One more redirect. This one will—”
She doesn’t finish the sentence. Doesn’t need to.
The final working tears through me, and I hear myself scream. The sound rips from my throat without permission—raw, animal, the cry of something being broken and remade simultaneously. My vision whites out. My body convulses against the stone.
Then it’s over.
I slump against the ravine wall, breathing hard, every nerve ending raw and oversensitized. Imara’s hands withdraw from my arm, and the loss of her presence is almost as painful as the working itself.
“It’s done.” Her voice is rough. Exhausted. “The channels are stable. You should be able to fight without—”
I grab her.
My hands close around her arms, drag her toward me, and before either of us can think, my mouth finds hers. The kiss is brutal—all teeth and desperation, fury and need. She gasps against my lips, and I swallow the sound, devour it, take everything she’ll give me.
“Kharvek—”
“Shut up.” I flip our positions, press her against the ravine wall. My body pins hers, every inch of us touching, and I feel her heart racing against my chest. “You were inside me. You saw everything.”
“I had to—”
“I know.” I kiss her again. Harder. “I know why. That’s not—” I break off. Can’t find words for what I’m feeling. “You should hate me. After what you saw.”
“What I saw?”
“The killing. The blood. Every person I’ve drained, every life I’ve ended—it’s all there, in the channels. You felt it.”
She’s quiet. Her hands come up, rest against my chest. Not pushing away. Just… resting.
“I felt power.” Her voice is steady. “Pain. Survival. I felt you fighting to become something other than what they made you.” Her fingers curl into the fabric of my shirt. “There was nothing to hate.”
The words crack something open. Something I’ve been keeping locked down since long before the pit, since long before I started carving unauthorized modifications into my own flesh.
“Imara.”
“I’m here.”
“I need—” The admission sticks in my throat. Asking is harder than taking. Always has been. “I need you.”
Her eyes meet mine. Dark. Wanting. Understanding exactly what I’m asking for.
“Then take me.”