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He had never felt anything like it. But he knew what it was, the same way he had known the words when she said them. The knowledge rose from somewhere deep inside him, unfamiliar but certain. It was a machine, cutting steadily into the stone. Her people were digging.

He lay there for a long time with his cheek against the rock, feeling the slow, steady pulse of it. He tried to judge how far away it was, and how fast it was moving. He couldn’t be sure. It was louder than he wanted it to be. When he went back to the channel and put his hands in the water again, he could feel it there too, faint and patient and relentless.

They were coming for her. The thought crashed over him like a wave of frozen water, and something inside him rose up snarling. He wanted to go and find the machine and tear it out of the rock with his hands. He wanted to go back to the hollow and gather her up in his arms. He wanted to carry her deep into the river, into the dark places where no machine would ever reach her, and keep her there. She was his, and they could not have her.

He stood in the channel with his fists clenched and his scales raised and his heart pounding, and he made himself breathe.

She was not truly his. She had not chosen him yet.

And she had people up there. He had heard her talk about them. The foolish man called Ethan, and the others who worked with her, and the mother who had teased her for singing. The domes where she lived, and the small room with its window looking out on the red dust. She had a life above the stone. She had a world that she belonged to, and it had come looking for her. She deserved to know. She deserved to choose.

He had never lied to her. He wasn’t going to start now.

She was awake when he came back to the hollow. She was sitting cross-legged on the moss with her hair loose on her shoulders and her silver blanket pulled around her. She was eating a handful of the dark fruit and frowning at her tablet. She looked up when he pushed the vine curtain aside, and her face lit up in a smile.

Then she saw his expression, and the smile faded.

“Korrak? What’s wrong?”

He sat down on the moss in front of her.

“Your people are looking for you,” he said quietly. “They are close.”

She stared at him blankly. For a long moment she didn’t say anything. The fruit slipped from her fingers and rolled away across the moss, and she didn’t notice.

“What?” she whispered. “How do you know?”

He took her hand and pressed it against the rock floor of the hollow. “Here. Feel.”

She was quiet, concentrating hard, and he watched her face and knew she couldn’t feel it. Her hands weren’t made for listening to stone the way his were. But she believed him completely. He could see it in her eyes.

“Machines,” he said. “Cutting. Up there.” He pointed towards the north, towards the falls.

“A drill,” she breathed. “They’ve brought in a drill. They’re trying to reach the collapse.” Her fingers tightened around his. “How close?”

“Days.”

She drew in a sharp breath. He saw surprise in her eyes, then hope, and then something that looked like fear. Her face had gone pale beneath the flush of sleep.

“They didn’t give up,” she said, almost to herself. “Ethan. They didn’t give up on me.”

He had known that was what she would feel first. He had known it, and it still hurt terribly. He kept his face calm and his voice even, and he said the words he had practiced all the way back through the gardens.

“You can go home, Frrankie. To your people. Your window.” He swallowed. “It is right.”

She looked at him for a long time, searching his face intently, the same way she had looked at the carvings on the dome. As if she was trying to understand something she had never seen before. He didn’t know what she found in his face. He tried to hide the snarling beast inside him that wanted to keep her, and the ache that already missed her. But he didn’t think he hid it very well.

“Is that what you want?” she asked quietly. “For me to go?”

“I want you safe,” he said. “I want you happy.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

He couldn’t answer her, because the words stuck in his throat, and he looked away.

She was silent for a long time. Then she set her tablet aside, very carefully, and pushed the silver blanket off her shoulders. She rose onto her knees in front of him. She put her hands on either side of his face and turned it back towards her.

“Days,” she said softly. “That’s what you said.”