Page 131 of Bride of the Enemy Alien

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Rhazek

Kessa’s fingers tighten around mine. Warm, solid, and full of choice.

Then the sky answers.

For one breath, every person on the ridge stops moving. The wounded forget to groan. The runners stop calling routes. Even the ground seems to hold still beneath us.

The sound comes again.

Thin. High. Far above. Pain flashes beneath the command anchor at my throat, but my body does nothing.

No command catches my arms. No need to reach for Kessa takes hold of my legs. The pain is only pain, a burned pathway remembering what used to travel through it.

Kessa turns on me so fast her braid strikes her shoulder.

“Command?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.” I test the answer before I give her more. My hands are mine. My breath is mine. Her name is only her name. “The anchor remembers. It does not control.”

Some of the terror leaves her face.

Rosalind is looking upward, one hand shielding her eyes from the red glare. Visidion stands beside her with his wings spread, his attention fixed on a sky that shows us nothing.

“That did not come from the ridge,” Renn says.

“No,” Rosalind answers.

Kessa looks at her. “Was it a reply?”

“I do not know.”

Kessa closes her eyes. “I hate that answer.”

“So do I,” Rosalind says.

The ground rolls beneath us and everyone remembers the zemlja at once.

Syin points toward the City. “Move. We can wonder under stone.”

That is the first sensible order anyone gives.

Penr sends runners ahead before Syin finishes speaking. Kessa watches all of it while Renn tries to wrap her arm.

“Hold still,” he says.

“I am holding still.”

“You are walking.”

“Slowly.”

“That is not the same thing.”