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“How are you learning this so fast?” she asked, half to herself. “It’s been an hour. Nobody learns a language in an hour.”

He was quiet for a moment, as if he was searching for the words. Then he touched the side of his head.

“Not… learn,” he said slowly. “Know. Before. Words here.” He tapped his head again. “Sleeping. Frrankie talk. Words… wake.”

She stared at him. “You already knew them? You just forgot?”

He shrugged, a strangely human gesture, and she decided that was a question for another day. There were too many questions already. What was he? Where had he come from? How long had he been down here? Were there more like him? She wanted to ask all of them at once. She wanted to study him, to take samples of his scales and scan the webbing between his fingers. She wanted to figure out how a creature like him could exist on a planet everybody said had never supported life.

She also wanted to touch the fine scales along his jaw and find out whether they were as smooth as they looked. She firmly decided not to think about that.

The passage opened out into a wider space where the stream slowed and spread into a series of shallow pools. The lichen was thick here, glowing soft green and blue across the walls, and the air felt a little warmer. He stopped and pointed to a dry shelf of sand at the base of the wall.

“Rest,” he said. “Safe.”

She was so tired that she could have wept. She started towards the shelf, picking her way across the loose rock at the edge of the pools, her lamp swinging.

She didn’t hear the crack, but he did. One moment she was walking, and the next a hard arm had wrapped around her waist and yanked her backwards off her feet. She hit something warm and solid and heard a sharp, grinding crunch. A slab of rock the size of a kitchen table crashed down from the wall exactly where she had been about to step. Dust billowed up in a choking cloud, and stones rattled and bounced across the sand.

She clung to the arm around her waist, her heart hammering so hard she thought it might break her ribs.

“Oh God,” she gasped. “Oh God, oh God.”

“Frrankie.” His voice was a deep, urgent growl right next to her ear. He turned her in his arms, running his hands over her shoulders and her arms and her face, checking her over with quick, anxious touches. “Hurt? Frrankie hurt?”

“No,” she said shakily. “No, I’m not hurt. You caught me. Again.”

He let out a long breath, and she felt it shudder through him. He was holding her against his chest, and his heart was beating as hard as hers. His skin wasn’t cool anymore. It was warm, and it smelled faintly of clean water and something green and spicy that she couldn’t name.

She didn’t stop to think about it. If she had thought about it, she wouldn’t have done it. He was already bending over her. She simply put her hands on his shoulders and went up on her toes and pressed a quick, grateful kiss to the fine scales along his jaw. His scales were exactly as smooth as they looked.

He froze, and when she drew back, the scales on his face had darkened, flushing a deep, rich blue from his temples down to his throat. A low sound rumbled up from his chest, startled and rough, a sound she felt through her palms more than heard. He stared down at her wordlessly. His eyes had gone dark, the slit pupils widening until there was only a thin ring of sapphire left around them.

Her face flamed. She let go of him and stepped back quickly, nearly tripping over a stone. “Sorry,” she blurted. “That was, um. That was just a thank-you. Humans do that. Sometimes. When someone saves their life.”

He touched his cheek where she had kissed it. He looked at his fingers as if he expected to find something there. Then he looked at her again, and that wicked smile curved his mouth.

“Again?” he asked hopefully.

“No!” she said, and then laughed, because she couldn’t help it. “No. That was a thank-you. You don’t get a thank-you without a rescue.”

He considered that for a moment. Then he glanced up at the wall where the slab had fallen, and back at her. She could have sworn he was weighing the odds of arranging another rockfall.

“Don’t you dare,” she told him.

He grinned at her, and her stomach did that strange little flip again. She turned away quickly and went to sit down on the sand, and she wrapped her arms around her knees and stared hard at the glowing water.

She was in so much trouble. And for the first time since the ledge had crumbled beneath her feet, she wasn’t sure she wanted to be rescued from it.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Korrak couldn’t stop touching his cheek. He caught himself doing it again and again as the moss dimmed around them. His fingers kept drifting up to the place just above his jaw where her lips had pressed against his scales. There was nothing to feel. The scales were smooth and cool, the same as they had always been. But every time he touched it, he felt her again, the quick warm softness of her mouth and the small cold hands on his shoulders. Then the heat rushed back into his scales so fast that he had to turn hastily away from her to hide it.

She had called it a thank-you. He didn’t know the word yet, but he understood what it meant, because she had made him understand. He did not get one without a rescue.

He had thought about the slab on the wall for a long, tempting moment. Then she had told him not to dare, in a voice that was trying hard to be stern and wasn’t. He had decided he would find another way.

Now she was sitting on the sand at the edge of the pools with her arms wrapped around her knees. She had taken the hard shell off her head and set it down beside her, and she was eating a small piece of her food, slowly and carefully. She was also talking, because she was always talking. She was telling him about the man called Ethan, who was apparently a great fool. She told him about a bolt that should have been fixed, and about something called a schedule that seemed to make her very angry.