14. Rhykor #4
"I know that." Her grip tightens. "But it changes what you're doing.
And I spent three days trying to convince myself that the documents were the whole truth, and they're part of it—a terrible and permanent part—but they're not all of it.
" She exhales, and the sound carries a ragged, surrendering edge, a position fought hard and finally released.
"You walked that scared old man through the tunnels before the sun even rose. Later, I saw you offer your wing to a child you’d never met.
My own life is yours, too—you pulled me clear just before that wall came down.
" She releases my wrist and flattens her palm against my torso, directly over the oldest marking, the first scar I earned at fourteen, when the academy commanders opened my skin with a ceremonial blade and told me pain was the foundation of strength.
"Tell me about this one," she whispers.
The request cracks open a memory lock that I've kept sealed since the academy barracks, since that night I slept in a room full of soldiers who measured each other by the depth of their old injuries.
"I was fourteen years old when the academy's first marking happened.
They cut you on the first night to teach you that your body belongs to the military before it belongs to you.
If you cry, they cut deeper. If you scream, they start over.
" I look at her hand against the old wound.
"I screamed the first time. They started over. "
Her fingers curl into my frame. I feel the insistence through the skin, through the scales, through the years of compacted silence I built around the memory.
"The others came after missions. Successful operations earned a new marking, proof that you contributed; proof that you mattered.
By the time I was twenty-two, I had thirty-seven markings and no memory of what I was before they started cutting.
The boy who screamed on the first night—I buried him under the webbing of aged injuries because that's what survival demanded.
And when they pointed me at human settlements and called it pacification, I signed the orders because signing orders was what earned the next marking, the next proof that I was worth keeping alive. "
Cassia leans her forehead against my shoulder. The contact burns through me with a heat entirely separate from the energy coursing under my scales.
"My father believed everyone should know how to stitch skin.
" She murmurs against my arm, and the warmth of her breath seeps through the gaps in my scales.
"He was a doctor, you know that. But what you don't know is that he believed all settlement members should understand basic wound care.
He used to say that medicine hoarded is medicine wasted.
" A tremor moves through her. "So he taught my mother first. Spent hours at the kitchen table walking her through suture patterns on scraps of synthetic hide until her hands were as stable as his.
And then they both taught me—same table, same hide scraps, and same patient repetition.
She used to hold my fingers and guide the needle through, over and over, until I could do it blindfolded.
" She pulls back enough to peer at me, and her eyes are wet but fierce.
"After the outbreak took my father when I was sixteen, my mother kept teaching me.
Everything he'd shown her—wound care, infection management, triage protocols, how to manufacture medicine from salvage when the supply lines collapsed.
She poured the knowledge he'd given her into me, like she was trying to keep him alive through what my hands could do.
" Her chin trembles. "When she got sick years later, I tried to save her with the techniques she taught me.
Every single one. And none of it was enough. "
I lift my hand—slowly, giving her time to pull away—and cradle her face. The scales of my fingers rest against her warm brown skin, and the warmth in my hand stays banked, contained, because the thought of harming her, even accidentally, makes the air in my lungs solidify.
"What I can do," I tell her, "is stand between your people and the ones still trying to destroy them. The choices I make from this point forward will be worth the trust you are giving me right now. That is what I can promise you."
She leans into my palm. The weight of her cheek resting against my hand rewrites a fundamental aspect inside my chest, laying new tissue over old scars.
"I'm still angry," she whispers, and I feel the tremor of it travel through her forehead into my shoulder.
"I know." I curl my fingers against her scalp, careful to keep the claws retracted. "And I’ll be here for every day of it."
Closing her eyes, she surrenders to the quiet.
My wing curves around the rim of the cot, allowing the silence to hold us while the compound eases into the grey hours before dawn.
Against my shoulder, her breathing slows.
Our pulses have fallen into a steady, warm synchronization, resting now instead of clamoring, as if they understand that what is building here is too fragile and too important to rush.
The flaws on my chest feel different tonight, less like identity and more like history.
And the woman resting against my shoulder feels like the future I stopped believing I deserved.