Page 22 of Bride of the Enemy Alien

“You should not place yourself beside him.”

“He’s beside all of us. That’s the problem with corridors. They’re narrow.”

Rhazek looks amused. Syin bares one fang.

“He is dangerous.”

“So is falling behind because his wing catches on every bad stone. Move him inward or carry him. I’m not explaining to Rosalind that we lost the warning because everyone was too busy looking protective to count walls.”

Rosalind doesn’t turn around. “Switch.”

Syin’s silence has texture that could scrape the rind from fruit.

I trade places with one guard and end up between Rhazek and the inner drop wall, close enough to feel heat pouring off him in waves. I don’t think it’s fever, but something deeper, like a furnace banked behind armor and stubbornness. He smells like smoke, blood, metal, and the sharp bitter-root scent clinging to whatever Merra packed into his wound.

His wing brushes my shoulder once. He jerks it back, and pain cuts across his face before he buries it.

“Try not to collapse on me,” I mutter.

“You would step over me.”

“I said that when I had more optimism.”

He huffs. It’s almost a laugh, but not quite. Even so it makes the air between us change, which I refuse to examine because I’m busy leading a group of half-armed leaders toward a dead cistern to open a warning from some rebel on a world I learned existed less than an hour ago. My feelings can stand in line and wait their turn like everyone else.

The dry cistern under East Three sits beyond a cracked arch sealed with two old crossbars and a prayer someone scratched into the stone long before I was born. I don’t know what it says. Half the old City markings are dead language, dead code, or warnings nobody bothered translating because starvation makes poor room for archaeology. The bars come loose with a groan that travels through the floor and up my legs.

Everyone freezes, waiting. When nothing answers I take the moment to hate how relieved I am by silence.

Inside, the cistern is round, low-ceilinged, and dry enough to make my throat hurt. Old waterlines stain the walls in gray rings. The floor slopes toward a central drain filled with collapsed stone and mineral crust. A person could hide here if they were desperate, small, and uninterested in breathing. As strategic rooms go, it has all the charm of a buried bowl.

“It’s ugly,” Merra says.

“It’s available,” I say.

“Those are often the same thing in my experience,” Merra says.

Rosalind steps to the center. “Will it hold?”

“I hate that question.”

“Kessa.”

“It should hold if nobody shouts, stamps, bleeds dramatically, activates alien devices, wakes the source, or invites a zemlja to dinner.” I look around the room. “So we’re doomed, but efficiently.”

Virn snorts once. Syin looks offended by the existence of humor during crisis, which is probably why my sense of humor keeps showing up. It likes the challenge.

Rosalind unwraps the sphere.

The copper has darkened since the council chamber, or maybe the cistern makes everything look older. Fine lines run over its surface in patterns that shift when the light moves. It isn’t writing. It reminds me of the way old route maps look when water damage eats the ink but leaves the shape of intent behind.

Rhazek inhales. The sound is small, but I’m close enough to hear it catch.

“What?” I ask.

He doesn’t look at me. “This room is quieter.”

“That’s usually what dead rooms are best at.”