Page 54 of Bride of the Enemy Alien

I was young enough and wide-eyed enough then to think all warnings were for other males.

Kessa’s hair brushes my arm. Dust and sweat and bitter root. The second tracker pulses in the distance and the green line at my throat answers before I can bury it.

She looks up. We are too close. Her eyes are brown, not soft, not gentle, not safe. There is no safety in her at all. There is attention. A frightening amount of it.

“Does it hurt?” she asks.

“Yes.”

“The wing?”

“Yes.”

“The glow?”

I should lie. I have lied with blood in my mouth, knives at my throat, collars on my skin. I have lied to owners, guards, rebels, kings, dying men, and myself. This should be simple.

“Yes,” I say, instead.

She grips the brace strap once, then releases it and steps away.

“Then stop pretending it doesn’t.”

“I do not pretend.”

“No. You perform indifference badly.”

Renn chokes somewhere ahead. Syin says, “Move,” in a tone that promises future violence if we continue existing near each other.

Good. Violence I understand.

We enter the spillway.

The air changes immediately. Cooler, mineral-thick, and old enough to taste. The passage slopes downward beneath the ridge, wide enough for humans to walk upright but too tight for wings. The Zmaj move with visible hatred for the ceiling. Kessa leads without hesitation, one hand brushing the wall every few steps. She does not lean on it. She listens through her fingers.

I listen too.

Stone. Breath. Scales against rock. Human heartbeats, too fast. My own blood, slower than it should be. Beneath all of it, the second tracker.

Once.

Pause.

Again.

Closer than it was.

I stop.

Kessa stops at the same time. That is what makes the others afraid.

“What?” Syin asks.

She looks back at me. I say nothing. She understands anyway and her face goes tight.

“No,” she says.

The young route runner, Lio, whispers, “No what?”