Page 42
Instead, remembering Draxon’s mouth leaves warmth low in my stomach and fury close behind it.
The linen tears across my thumbnail.
I drop it into the basin and reach for another piece.
The guards outside shift. Armor scrapes stone, followed by a quiet command too low for me to distinguish. Their boots retreat several paces.
Draxon fills the doorway.
He has removed the cloak he wrapped around me after pulling me from the corridor. Soot streaks his slate-grey carapace. A shallow scrape runs along his left forearm, crossing two plated ridges before disappearing beneath a leather bracer. His long black hair remains loose and tangled. The broken primary horn above his right temple casts a blunt shadow across the wall.
He looks as if the damaged spire has taken a piece of his control with it.
Not enough to make him harmless.
His silver eyes move over the room, the basin, the damp cloth in my hand, and the bruise visible above the neck of my borrowed shift.
“Zog has stabilized the regulators,” he says. “The southern levels remain sealed.”
“My solarium?”
“Unsafe until every conduit has been examined.”
“And my supplies?”
“Grolm’s guards recovered what they could.”
What they could.
I picture broken jars beneath collapsed stone, fylvek grass soaked in filthy water, metallic seedlings crushed under ceiling plates. The loss is practical. I can replace plants, dry new stock, bargain for glass.
I cannot rebuild while trapped in this room.
“Am I permitted to inspect the damage?”
“No.”
“Then your protection order is confinement again.”
“Tonight, it is survival. Argue about the distinction tomorrow.”
The old Draxon would have sounded amused. This one sounds tired enough to fracture.
He remains at the threshold, leaving the doorway open behind him. Perhaps he thinks that proves I am not a prisoner. The two guards beyond him prove otherwise.
I rinse the last grime from my fingers and watch the dark water spiral from my skin.
There will never be a clean moment to ask him. I spent ten years waiting for an explanation he had no intention of giving. Then the Council chained us together, sabotage nearly suffocated me, and desire tore through the barricade I built from his absence.
If I delay now, I will build another barricade and call it discipline.
I set the linen beside the basin.
“Why did you leave without a word?”
Draxon’s attention fixes on me.
The storm flashes beyond the narrow window at my back. White light passes over his horns and catches in the scrape along his arm. His claws curl, then flatten against his palms.
