Chapter 6 Zara #2
“I’m sorry. I should have—”
“It’s fine.” I force myself to hold his gaze. “You were checking the injury. That’s all.”
But we both know it wasn’t just that. The bond made it something more. Made his touch feel like—like belonging. Like homecoming. Like every nerve ending in my body was paying attention.
He pulls back quickly, putting distance between us. “The splint is holding. You’re healing well.”
“Thank you.”
Awkward silence settles over us. The bond pulses between us, unsatisfied with the distance, wanting connection we’re both trying not to acknowledge.
Finally, I break it. “Are you hungry?”
He blinks, clearly not expecting the question. “I—yes. Actually.”
“Then let’s eat.” I nod toward the dried provisions he packed. “Unless you’re planning to starve me into compliance.”
“I would never—” He stops when he sees my expression. “You’re joking.”
“Starting to wonder if Deep Runners have a sense of humor, or if that got lost in the isolation.”
This time, I definitely see him fight back a smile. “We have humor. We just don’t usually share it with prisoners.”
“Then I’m honored to be the exception.”
Eating with bound hands is an exercise in humility. I try to manage on my own, but the dried fish keeps slipping through my fingers, and eventually Torin just sighs and moves closer.
“Let me.”
“I can—”
“You’ve been struggling for five minutes. Just—” He breaks off a piece of fish and holds it out. “Open your mouth.”
I want to refuse. Want to insist I can handle it myself. But my stomach growls, and he’s looking at me with something that might be amusement or might be exasperation, and the bond is humming with contentment at his proximity.
I open my mouth.
His fingers brush my lips as he places the fish, and electricity sparks—literal electricity, crackling between us before I can stop it. He jerks back with a hiss.
“Sorry! I—I didn’t mean—”
But he’s staring at his fingers. At the place where my lightning touched his scales. And instead of burns, there’s—iridescence. A faint golden shimmer where electricity met water, like I left a mark on him that isn’t quite a wound and isn’t quite a scar.
“It didn’t hurt,” he says slowly.
“What?”
“Your lightning. It should have hurt. Should have burned.” He looks up at me, and there’s wonder in his eyes. “But it didn’t. It felt like—” He trails off, searching for words.
“Like what?”
“Like warmth. Like—” He shakes his head. “The bond is changing us.”
The words hang between us. Changing us. Not just connecting us. Transforming what we are into something neither of us fully understands yet.
I should be afraid. Should be rejecting this, fighting it, maintaining my independence. But all I feel is curiosity. And something that might be hope.
“Try again,” I say.
He hesitates. Then reaches out with another piece of fish, and this time when his fingers touch my lips, I let the lightning come. Just a spark. Barely there. Enough to see if the first time was a fluke.
The spark dances across his scales, and he inhales sharply—but not from pain. His eyes darken, pupils dilating, and I feel what he feels through the bond. Not pain. Pleasure. Connection. Like my electricity is something his water has been waiting for.
We stare at each other.
“This isn’t normal,” he says, his voice rough.
“Nothing about this is normal.” I swallow the fish, my mouth suddenly dry. “But maybe that’s not a bad thing.”
He doesn’t respond. Just breaks off another piece of fish and holds it out, and this time neither of us pretends the spark that passes between us is accidental.
Something has shifted between us by the time we finish eating. An unspoken understanding, maybe. Or just an acknowledgment that fighting the bond is exhausting and we’re both too tired to keep pretending.
“Tell me about your people,” I say as he packs away the remaining provisions.
He pauses. “Why?”
“Because I’m a diplomat. Because understanding is the first step toward peace.” I pause. “And because I want to understand you.”
The last part is more honest than I intended. But it’s true. I want to know what made him. What shaped the man who saved an enemy’s life despite every reason not to.
He’s quiet for so long I think he won’t answer. Then: “We’re dying.”
The bluntness of it catches me off guard. “What?”
“The Deep Runners. Every generation, we grow smaller. Weaker. Genetic bottlenecks, declining birth rates, old sicknesses returning because our healers have forgotten how to treat them.” His jaw tightens. “Caspian isn’t wrong about everything. We are dying. He’s just wrong about the solution.”
“He thinks isolating further will protect you.”
“He thinks drowning the surface world will give us room to expand. Space to survive.” Torin looks at me, and I see the conflict written in every line of his face.
“And part of me understands it. When you’re watching your people fade away, when every choice seems to lead to death—violence starts to look like the only option. ”
“But you don’t believe that.”
“I don’t know what I believe anymore.” The admission sounds like it costs him.
“I believed isolation would protect us. That the surface world was poison. That keeping our borders closed was the only way to preserve what makes us Deep Runners.” He gestures between us.
“And then you fell from the sky, and everything I thought I knew became—complicated.”
I understand that feeling. The ground shifting beneath your feet, certainty crumbling into questions. I’ve built my whole identity around being controlled, diplomatic, careful. And now there’s this bond pulling me toward chaos and connection and a future I never planned for.
“Tell me about your traditions,” I say. “What do the Deep Runners value? What would you want to preserve if the borders opened?”
He looks surprised by the question. Like no one’s ever asked him that before.
“Water rituals,” he says slowly. “When a child is born, we release bubbles into the current—one for each year we hope they’ll live.
When someone dies, we weight their body with river stones so they become part of the riverbed. ”
“That’s beautiful.”
“We trade in pearls and aquatic plants. Our healers know medicines the surface has forgotten. We can read currents like you read the wind—sensing weather patterns days before they arrive, finding safe passage through floods and rapids.” His voice has warmed, animated by pride.
“We have songs that carry through water for miles. Stories passed down for generations about the first Deep Runners who chose the river over the land.”
I listen, and I hear what he’s really saying: we are more than isolation and fear. We are a people with beauty and wisdom and value. Don’t erase us in the name of integration.
“The Alliance doesn’t want to erase you,” I say gently. “It wants to learn from you. To share what you have and offer what it can in return.”
“And what happens when what we offer isn’t enough?
When the surface decides our traditions are primitive, our ways outdated?
” His eyes meet mine. “Integration is a pretty word for assimilation, Zara. You take a little from us, we take a little from you, and eventually there’s nothing left that makes us different. ”
“Or,” I counter, “we share what makes us unique and become richer for it. The Alliance isn’t about creating sameness. It’s about creating space where difference can thrive without conflict.”
“Pretty words.” But there’s less bite in it than before.
“True words.” I lean forward as much as my bound hands allow.
“I’ve seen it work, Torin. Storm Eagles and earth-bound clans.
Fire-wielders and ice-shapers. Species that should have destroyed each other finding ways to coexist. It’s messy and imperfect and requires constant negotiation—but it works. ”
He’s quiet, considering. Then: “You really believe that.”
“I do.”
“Even now? Even after we shot you down and I tied you up and dragged you through tunnels that nearly broke you?”
“Especially now.” I hold his gaze. “Because despite all of that, you’re still taking me to someone who can judge fairly.
Because you saved my life when you could have let me die.
Because you’re questioning orders you were raised to follow without hesitation.
” The bond pulses, urging truth. “And because I think you want the same thing I do—a future where your people don’t have to choose between survival and isolation. ”
Something in his expression cracks. Not breaking. Opening. Like I’ve said something he’s been thinking but couldn’t admit.
“My sister,” he says quietly, “she used to ask me about the surface. About the sky. She wanted to see it so badly it consumed her.” He swallows hard. “I told her it was dangerous. That curiosity would kill her. And then it did.”
“You didn’t kill her, Torin.”
“I didn’t save her either.”
“Could you have? Really?” I keep my voice gentle. “If your healers didn’t know how to treat surface sickness, if isolation meant you had no one to ask for help—what could you have done differently?”
He closes his eyes. When he opens them, they’re wet. “I could have fought for her. Could have demanded Caspian allow surface healers to come. Could have—”
“Could have become a traitor years earlier.” The words are harsh, but necessary.
“Could have been outcast. Could have watched her die anyway, just with a different kind of guilt.” I lean forward until he has to look at me.
“Or you could stop blaming yourself for a system that was broken long before your sister got sick.”
A single tear tracks down his cheek, and without thinking, I reach out—bound hands and all—and brush it away. My fingers come away damp, and lightning sparks where water touched my skin. This time, neither of us flinches.
“She would have liked you,” he says, his voice rough with emotion. “Mira. She would have loved that a Sky-dweller came in peace. Would have asked you a thousand questions about flying.”
“Then tell me about her,” I say. “Not how she died. How she lived.”
And he does. Slowly at first, then faster, like a dam breaking.
Stories about a girl who laughed at everything, who collected surface debris like treasure, who once tried to ride a current all the way to the sea just to see if she could.
A sister who saw wonder where everyone else saw danger.
Who dreamed of bridges instead of walls.
I listen, and the bond carries his grief to me—still sharp, still raw, but edged with something that might be healing. And I realize: this is what I came for. Not treaties or negotiations or political maneuvering.
Understanding. Connection. The fragile, precious act of seeing another person’s pain and saying: I see you. You’re not alone.
When he finally trails off, the cavern is quiet except for the distant sound of water. He looks exhausted but lighter somehow. Like talking about Mira was both painful and necessary.
“Thank you,” he says.
“For what?”
“For asking. For listening.” He meets my eyes. “For not being what I expected.”
“You’re not what I expected either.”
The bond hums between us, satisfied. Content. Like it knew all along that this was where we’d end up—not fighting each other, but sitting in the dark, sharing stories and grief and something that feels dangerously like trust.
Torin looks at me for a long moment. Then he reaches out and touches my cheek—just for a second, barely a brush of webbed fingers against my skin—and pulls away.
“We should rest,” he says, his voice carefully neutral. “We have a long journey ahead.”
“Yeah.” My cheek tingles where he touched me, electricity and water leaving their mark. “We should.”
But neither of us moves. We sit there in the bioluminescent glow, the bond pulsing between us like a second heartbeat, and I think: I came here to prove I was more than Kael’s sister. More than the safe diplomat. More than the careful, controlled person everyone expected me to be.
I didn’t expect to find someone who makes me want to be more than I ever imagined I could be.
Torin settles against the cavern wall, and I do the same. Close enough that the bond is satisfied. Far enough that we can both pretend we’re not desperately aware of every breath, every heartbeat, every small movement that brings us infinitesimally closer.
The last thing I see before sleep takes me is him watching me in the moss-light. His expression is soft. Wondering. Like he’s trying to figure out the same puzzle I am.
How did we get here? And where do we go from here?
The bond has no answers. It just hums contentedly, wrapping around both of us like a promise neither of us is ready to make.
But we’re getting there. Despite everything. Despite ourselves.
We’re getting there.