I shook my head. “That may be a while.” I got out of the bed, pulling one of my thickest coats around me. “It’s colder up here, isn’t it?”
He nodded, and I went to the small basin of water. I dipped my hands in it, splashing water carefully on my face. I looked up and my reflection stared back at me, my brown cheek stained purple and black, the area around the cut swollen and red.
“It feels fake,” I told him. “The way it looks—this isn’t my face.”
Kairos’s lip curled. “Wait until you see how colorful bruises can look on his pale skin.”
“You can’t hit the king, Kai.”
“Galen got to,” he grunted.
“Calix isn’t your brother.”
“Brother by marriage.”
“Besides,” I told him, with as much of a smile as I could muster, “you were never the brother who hit back. You were the one to put a scorpion in a bedroll.”
He looked at me, calculating and dangerous. “Yes,” he said. “So just imagine what your husband has earned.”
I looked at him. “Perhaps I’m the scorpion in that situation.”
“You’re a daughter of the desert, Shalia. You have always had the ability to pierce and sting.”
“It’s getting close to dawn; do you want to take a walk with me?”
He grunted. “No. I’m exhausted. But I will if you want to.”
I nodded. “I won’t tax you. I just want to see the world outside.”
He went and opened the door. “After you, Shy.”
I walked through the door, and we went down the hallway side by side. The hallway led to a huge room and the platform at the top of the city beyond that, and the areas were deserted. “Maybe it’s earlier than I thought,” I murmured to him.
“It definitely is,” he grumbled.
We went outside, and a wind immediately whipped around us. It was still dark, in the shadow of the mountain, but at the edge of the world a pale blue light spread over the sky, and I had my first look at the deep valley and the city we had come up through. The city dropped sharply downward into green grass coating the bottom of the valley, cresting up into gray-blue mountains and trees, rolling out like the ocean made green and immobile.
Kai stood beside me, looking out. “I need to say something, and I don’t know what to say about it,” Kai said, pushing out a breath. With his hands clasped behind his back, he looked so much like Father that it stole my breath for a moment. “I want to ask if I should be worried about Galen. He chose this place to comfort you, and that … means something, Shalia.”
I opened my mouth to speak, but he shook his head.
“And then I thought, maybe I should speak to him—play the big brother like Cael or Rian would. Threaten him, accuse him, poke his chest or something. Or maybe speak to you and warn you of the way he looks at you. But I think you know, don’t you?” My mouth was dry, but as I glanced down, heat didn’t just fill my cheeks—I felt it rush around my chest and heart, and flutter in my stomach. Yes, I knew what Kairos meant. I nodded.
“And you look at him too.”
Slower now, I nodded again. I still wasn’t sure what it meant, but yes, I had looked at Galen in the same manner he’d looked at me.
“And that’s as far as it’s gone.”
Nod.
He sighed. “I should do all those things. But instead I’ll just say that I want you to be happy, and I want you to be safe. Unfortunately, I don’t know that you can have both at the same time right now.”
I looked down. “I don’t know that I can have either, Kai.”
He put his arm around me. “One day. One day.”
Leaning against him, I watched as the sky grew brighter, slowly illuminating the mountain around us. Soaked in new light, I felt the threads against my hands, tingling and strong.
I pulled away from Kairos, going to the back of the flattened platform. There was an outcrop in the rocks maybe fifty feet up, and I desperately wanted to climb.
I put my hands to the rock, searching for a handhold, and it felt warm, like it moved against me to feel my touch. The threads were weaving together, tight and substantial enough to be fabric.
“Shalia,” Kairos said, grabbing my waist. “Do I need to remind you you’re with child?”
I slapped his hands, and he let me go. “I don’t think I could hurt myself here if I tried,” I told him, gazing up rather wondrously at the rock. “I feel … tied to it somehow.”
He lifted an eyebrow, watching me go. The climb was quick and easy—everywhere I put my hand or foot, the rock responded, giving me a hold on it.
“Shy!” Kairos protested.
I stopped, glancing down at him. I looked at the space between us curiously.
“I wonder,” I said softly. I curled the threads around my fingers and tugged through them gently.
The rock shook a little, and Kai shouted my name again, but the mountain was already moving. Small pieces falling and breaking, pushing back and jutting forward, as the stone shifted and changed beneath me—until a perfect staircase was cut into the mountain face, connecting me and my brother.
I was breathing heavily, stunned and a little winded.
“Great Skies,” Kairos murmured, stepping up tentatively.
The staircase went all the way to the outcrop. I climbed the stairs, sitting on the flat rock while Kairos came up behind me. He squatted down. “That was incredible,” he said. “I’ve known what Kata was for a long time, but I never saw her use her power like that.”
I sighed, feeling the weariness in my bones. “Honestly, it was a little more exhausting than I expected.”
“Stay up here. I’ll get you something to drink,” he told me.
I nodded.
He went down the stairs quickly, trotting inside.
Rolling my shoulders, I rubbed my neck a little. It helped my discomfort, my weakness, but as that eased, there was something else. My power was humming, tense, alive—and insistent.
Curling the threads around my fingers, I felt a tightness to it, like the threads had all been interwoven to form a dense, strong fabric. Following it upward with my gaze, I saw a small opening in the rock.
Osmost screamed and sailed past my head, landing on the lip of the opening. He stood there and shook his wings out at me, calling me forward.
Slowly, I got to my feet. Rather than climb this time, I called up a set of stairs first—narrow and steep, but leading straight to the mouth. Drawing a deep breath and feeling the rocks buzzing back at me, I started up the steps.
I was breathing hard by the time I reached the lip. There was an arch carved out of the rock and it went straight through, leaving a small chamber within. The carving was too smooth and perfect to have been made by man or nature—it was an Elementae dwelling.