Chapter 11
SPOON ME ONCE, SHAME ON YOU. SPOON ME TWICE...
MIKAELA
We run until the air stops tasting like copper and rot.
We run until the deep, bone-shaking rumble of the mountain fades into a distant, sullen vibration beneath our feet, and the only sound left is the harsh, tearing raggedness of my own breathing.
When Sarven finally slows, skidding to a halt in a wider section of the tunnel, I don’t just stop. I crumple.
I slide down the rough stone wall until I’m sitting on the floor, legs splayed, head tipped back against the rock, trying to remember how lungs work.
“Okay,” I wheeze, pressing a hand to the stitch in my side. “Okay. We’re alive. That’s… good.”
The adrenaline crash hits me hard. It sweeps through my system, taking all the energy with it and leaving behind a cold, shaking void.
My hands start to tremble with violent, uncontrollable tremors that rattle the bones in my wrists.
The fever I’ve been ignoring thanks to the terror around us comes roaring back, making the sweat on my skin feel cold and clammy while my insides burn.
Sarven isn’t sitting.
He stalks the perimeter of our small safe-zone, glowing arm held high, red eyes scanning the darkness for cracks, for shifting rock, for the bleeding red slime. He looks like a golden tiger caged in the dark. Pacing. Agitated. And lethal.
“Safe,” he rumbles finally, though he doesn’t look relaxed. He looks ready.
Ready to attack. Ready to fight. Ready to protect.
He turns to me, sweeping over my form with a gaze that feels tactile. “Hurt?”
“No. Just… winded.”
He crosses the space between us in two strides and crouches. The movement is fluid, silent, once again impossibly graceful for a male of his size. He reaches out, hovering a large hand over my shoulder, then pulls back, his fingers curling into a fist.
The air between us is so damn thick.
Not just because of the danger. Not just because the mountain tried to eat us.
Because of before.
Because ten minutes ago, covered in slime and terror, I almost kissed him.
And he almost kissed me.
The memory of it is louder than the water dripping nearby. I can still feel the ghost of his breath on my lips, hot and smelling of spices. I can still see the way his pupils blew wide, swallowing the red, the way his grip on my thigh shifted from saving to claiming.
You are bad.
The words echo in my head, sending a delicious shiver down my spine.
Sarven inhales sharply. A deep intake of air that snaps me back to the present.
“We… rest,” he says, his Drakavian clunky and thick. “Short rest. Then… spring.”
“The spring mouth,” I agree, though the idea of moving again makes my legs want to stage a union walkout. “We have to get above the contamination.”
He nods, then sinks down onto the stone opposite me. His legs are sprawled out long, and in the narrow tunnel, his feet are only inches from mine.
Silence stretches between us, and it’s not the comfortable silence of the main cavern. This is charged. Electric.
I look down at my hands.
They are filthy. Covered in cave dust, sweat, and smears of the red muck from when I grabbed at the wall during the fall. The red stain has dried into the creases of my palms, looking disturbingly like dried blood.
A wave of nausea rolls through me.
“I need to wash,” I whisper, rubbing my thumb uselessly against the stain. “I can’t get it off.”
Sarven’s gaze drops to my hands. His lip curls slightly, a flash of white fang against golden skin. He hates the red rot as much as I do.
He reaches for his waterskin, then hesitates, realizing he doesn’t have it. Every skin in the main cavern is in quarantine. And that’s why this mission is so important.
He lowers his hand with a frustrated growl.
“Soon,” he promises. “Clean water… soon.”
I nod, hugging my knees to my chest to stop the shivering. The fever is getting worse. The cramp in my belly has also returned. With both hammering me, the world tilts slightly to the left.
“Hey, Stabby?” I ask, voice quiet.
His ears swivel toward me. “Mih-kay-lah.”
“Back there. In the rot cave.” I swallow hard. “You said… you said I was safe. Always.”
He goes very still. His eyes lock onto mine, intense and unblinking.
“Safe,” he rumbles.
“Even when I do stupid things for science?”
He probably won’t get what I just said. But then the corner of his mouth quirks up. It’s a small movement, barely there, but it transforms his face from scary alien predator to something… else. Something that makes my heart do a stupid little flip.
“Safe even when… stupid sai-ens,” he rumbles, the translator picking up his words and depositing them in my ear.
I let out a breathless laugh that turns into a cough. “Good to know.”
We sit there for a while, just breathing. The tunnel is still a bit humid here, the heat from whatever’s warming the mountain seeping through the floor. It should be uncomfortable, but with the chills racking my body, the ambient warmth feels like a blanket.
My stomach chooses that moment to let out a growl so loud it echoes off the stone walls.
I flinch, wrapping my arms tighter around my middle. “Sorry. Ignore that.”
Sarven’s brows draw together. He looks at my stomach, then at my face.
“Eat?” he asks.
“I’m fine,” I lie. “I’m not hungry.”
I am, in fact, starving. I haven’t eaten since we left the clan caves, and I’ve burned about ten thousand calories just trying to survive. But the thought of eating with these dirty hands, of putting anything into my mouth when I smell like rot… it makes my throat close up.
Sarven ignores my lie completely. He stands up, his shadow falling over me.
“I smelled…green,” he murmurs. “That is why we stopped here.”
He walks a few paces down the tunnel to a section where the ceiling is fractured. High above, a jagged crack lets in a faint, distinct draft of fresh surface air.
Crowded into that crack is a tangle of thick, pale roots that have burrowed down from the desert above, seeking the cave’s moisture. Bulging from the tangle is a large, swollen tuber, protected by a thick rind.
I recognize it immediately. So that’s where the gourds come from.
Sarven reaches up, his claws scraping gently against the stone as he snaps the gourd free with a quick twist of his wrist.
He brings it back to our little circle, sitting down cross-legged this time. He turns the gourd in his hands, checking it, I suppose, for blemishes or red spots from the rot.
Finding none, he prepares to open it.
But then he pauses.
He looks at his own hands. Dark red smears of the slime still cling to his fingers.
He grunts, a low sound of displeasure.
Then, he closes his eyes for a second.
The glow under his skin flares hot—much hotter than before. It rushes down his arms, concentrating in his hands until they shine like molten gold. Heat radiates off him in a sudden, intense wave, hot enough to make me scoot back a few inches.
On his skin, the slime residue hisses. The dry heat of his internal fire is nothing like the damp rot of the cave. It incinerates the moisture instantly, starving the bacteria. The red slime dries, turning from red to gray ash in seconds.
He shakes his hands once, and the dead dust flakes away, leaving his golden skin perfectly clean.
“Clean,” he says simply, the glow fading back to a safe, warm hum.
I stare at him, wide-eyed. “Did you just... thermally sterilize your hands?”
He tilts his head, not understanding the words, but understanding the shock. He blinks at me, as if turning his hands into an autoclave is the most normal thing in the world.
With clean hands, he sinks a claw into the top of the gourd and splits the tough skin open with a satisfying crack.
The flesh inside is pale, fibrous, and glistening with moisture.
A cool, clean scent drifts out, earthy and sweet, like a carrot crossed with a melon.
My mouth waters instantly. Painfully.
He scoops out a chunk of the soft flesh with his fingers and holds it out to me.
“Eat,” he commands gently.
I stare at the offering.
It looks amazing. It looks like life itself.
But then I look at my own hands.
I can’t flash-fry bacteria with my mind. The red smear on my palm seems to settle in even more at that thought. I imagine the bacteria crawling on my skin, the poison that’s killing us waiting to get inside me.
I recoil, shrinking back against the wall.
“I can’t,” I whisper, feeling bad now.
Sarven freezes, hand still outstretched. “Noh?” He asks in English. Then the earbud pulses his next words. “You… hungry.”
“I am,” I admit, tears pricking my eyes. Stupid fever tears. “But my hands… Sarven, look at them. They’re covered in that stuff. If I touch the food, I’ll poison myself.”
I hold up my trembling, stained hands as proof.
“I can’t wash them. And I can’t do the...” I gesture vaguely at his hands. “...the hot-hands thing. If I touch it, I die.”
His brow tightens as his gaze drops, looking from my dirty hands to the clean, white chunk of fruit in his own sterilized fingers.
He could feed me.
The thought slams into my brain, unbidden. He could reach out and put the food in my mouth.
The intimacy of that idea makes my face burn hotter than the fever. No. Absolutely not. That is a line we are not crossing. I might be “bad,” but I’m not fed-by-hand-by-an-alien bad. Not yet.
Sarven seems to reach the same conclusion, or perhaps he senses my distress. He lowers the food, eating the piece himself with a thoughtful chew.
He swallows, then wipes his hand on his thigh.
Slowly, he reaches for the small pouch at his hip. I don’t know what he carries in there. Whatever’s inside doesn’t look heavy enough to be a weapon.
He unfastens the tie now and his movements grow slow, as if he’s trying not to spook a startled animal. When he finally pulls something out, I don’t catch what it is because he keeps his fist closed around it, knuckles tight against his golden skin.
He looks at his fist. Then at me.