CHAPTER 691: PROFESSIONALLY ALIVE, PERSONALLY SHAKEN (1)

"No," she said—too sharp, then softer to match the room, "Don’t... wriggle."

The corners of his mouth pulled, not in triumph, in relief. "Understood." He leaned back in, barely. He was absurdly careful with her mouth in a place where stone and bone had done nothing carefully for hours.

Why are you noticing his jaw. The thought came hot and petty. The line of it bothered her. It was made for heavier things than jokes. A jaw like that should have belonged to a man who chose silence more often than not. She disliked that the mismatch fascinated her.

They kissed again, learning a small language built out of the strict space the sling allowed. A brush, a rest, a slow return. Her tongue found his and retreated, then pressed forward the smallest degree. He answered by mirroring her pressure, then eased, giving her the shape. It wasn’t a technique she knew from messy camp interludes or wine-fueled errors of judgment. It was... patience. It was asking. It made something at the base of her skull go quiet, and the quiet felt like standing in a forest that has finally agreed to your presence.

She tried not to think about the way heat kept building in her body where they were most closely bound. She failed. The sling turned every small adjustment into a lesson; her nerves enrolled without permission. Her head, so good at holding maps and orders, threatened to empty itself of all content that did not involve breath, salt, the faint mint, and the steady give-and-take of a mouth that refused to be cruel.

She forgot the count for a heartbeat and felt cold at her own carelessness. Count. She found it again, not with numbers, but with the way he shaped the kiss—hold, hold, bite, slide, reset—Rodion’s strip translated to lips and heat and self-control.

He paused often enough that if she’d wanted to end it, no one would have bled. She did not end it. She collected those pauses like rare seeds and tucked them away: proof that permission could live in a place like this.

His tongue described a curve along the edge of hers—a question mark. She answered it with a line, simple and direct, and felt him smile into the kiss. It wasn’t mockery. It was recognition. He adjusted to her grammar, softened a beat, then deepened again when she returned the pressure. It was ridiculous, to negotiate with mouths while a vault shifted around them, and also exactly right; what else was there to do in a world built out of rhythm and restraint?

Time did not stop. It thinned and lengthened, like silk drawn out and held up to the light. The room’s noise faded to a smear and then returned. Her mind—faithful slave to drill—kept counting under everything because that is what it had been taught: one, two, three... His mouth moved steady against hers—four, five—gentle. Six, seven. She tasted him again, and the taste planted itself in a part of her that did not keep lists and hated surprises.

You are not a fool, she admitted to him in the courtroom of her head, where he was not invited. You only act like one so people underestimate how careful you are. The admission annoyed her. She could not unthink it.

She found herself pressing closer, the control she valued turned toward this utterly impractical task of chasing his warmth. Her palm flattened on his chest. Her fingers learned the slope of his collarbone, the place where muscle met leather. He did not seize the opportunity. He did not even breathe faster for it, though his pulse told its own version of events under her hand.

A small part of her—the part that had been made into a general long before she ever wanted to be one—took notes even as heat blurred the edges of sense. He stops when I stiffen. He returns when I choose. He is reliable at the small. That may be worth more than his jokes.

Another fraction deeper and she made a second involuntary sound when the sling tightened to correct their angle. It was not pain. It was the body telling the truth too loudly. She swallowed it and felt her face burn—anger first, then a strange, unwilling humor at her own loss of poise.

He pulled back just enough to check her again, and she realized with a strange, dangerous gratitude that he would have stopped if she had even tilted her head in reproach.

"Don’t," she said, but this time the word had no edge. "Just... hold."

"Copy." His breath brushed her cheekbone, warm and shaky now, and she catalogued that too: he was not immune; he only behaved.

They went on like that—three breaths, then four, then one she forgot, then the memory returned because forgetting the count is how soldiers die. Her tongue met his with a little more confidence, circled the edge of his, then retreated to test whether he would follow. He did, a fraction, then let her lead again. It was maddeningly civil. It made wanting him feel less like falling and more like stepping onto a stone that had been placed for that exact purpose.

Heat climbed her neck. Her head went bright and empty at the same time, like light pouring into a room that had never had windows. She did not trust the feeling. She took it anyway.

He shifted once—small, controlled, nothing that could be called a wriggle—and the sling translated that into a change in pressure that stole another sound from her throat. She caught it behind her teeth and felt ridiculous and absurdly alive. You are a general, she told herself. Be one later. For one minute you are a woman who remembers she has a mouth for something other than orders.

The next kiss landed with that knowledge folded inside it. It wasn’t deeper, not exactly. It was clearer. Her tongue traced the inside of his lower lip; his breath stuttered, just once. She stored the sound, not to use later like a weapon—she refused to become that kind of person—but to reassure herself: the balance here was not tilted against her.

Then the world remembered them.

Somewhere above, a slab decided it had been a ceiling long enough. The noise it made when it let go tore the silk-thin attention they’d woven. He moved without calculation, turning to cover her. The sling dragged him back into the only geometry it trusted. The stone hit a distant net with a crack, and dust fell like a grey rain.

She turned her face aside and coughed hard. He did too, the sound rough and human. When she looked back, the soldier had walked back into her face and put on the uniform. The heat did not vanish. It stepped aside, respectful of rank.

"Not wounded," she said, hearing her own voice steady as if from far off. "Dizzy. Don’t cut me free. The load isn’t balanced yet."

"Agreed." His hands were exactly where they should be. Good. He lifted his chin toward the darkness beyond her shoulder, using his neck like a compass needle. "Rodion?"

Adhesion stable. Recommend distributed support platform before detachment. Also, your pulse is elevated. Please pretend to be a professional.

"I am pretending so hard," he muttered, then added for her benefit, dry as paper, "Apparently I lack the face for it."

"If you were any more professional," she answered, refusing to look at his mouth, "you would be boring."

"You take that back." He drew a careful breath, the sort of inhalation that tried not to wrinkle the air. The humor slid to the back of his voice, making room for instruction. "We’re going to have to build you a chair."

"I refuse to be carried." Reflex clamped down on the softer thing inside her chest. Armor put itself on one buckle at a time.

"Not carried," he said instantly. "Seated like a terrifying magistrate while the world apologizes. You can direct fire from a throne."

A ridiculous image rose against her will—tower shields as a seat, spear hafts as rails, silk knots achieving insultingly perfect symmetry. Her first answer curled on her tongue—no—but pins and needles still prickled her legs, and command from the floor is how you lose men and your pride together.

She exhaled through her nose, conceding ground to sense. "Fine. No skeleton hands."

He gave a small tilt that counted as a bow where there was no room for a bow. "Noted. Silk and air only." His chin flicked to the nearest captains. "Roll call. Quiet."

Hands spoke. Skulls nodded in neat beats. A shield tapped a rim twice. A bow lifted and lowered. The room’s grammar returned in tiny motions. The Myco-Archivist, clinging to a rib with three delicate toes, tapped twice against its toolkit—approval—and fanned gills to taste the air for hidden teeth. The Crymber Twins traced the dome’s seams. Frost left a thin line of white like chalk in a schoolroom. Ember touched each white with two habitual knuckles, warming them into strength.

"Good," he said. "We’re ugly but alive."

"Ugly is efficient," she answered, reciting a line from a book she had read a thousand times—its spine long broken, its pages frayed with rereads on cold nights beneath quiet, flickering light.

He let a smile slip for just a heartbeat. It wasn’t a bright thing, nor fleeting in the way most smiles were, but something sharpened down to utility—like a tool that had been honed again and again, until nothing remained but the part that worked.

His hands began to speak for him. He didn’t need his voice anymore. One finger pointed—there. The next nudged a curve into a taut line—anchor. The way he moved was precise but quiet, as if the air itself agreed not to interrupt. Two tower shields rolled forward on rails, groaning slightly as the weight of their purpose met the dome’s air. Spear hafts clicked into rope-stitched slots. Silk Guards moved like trained wind, their spinnerets trailing whisper-thin lines of support. Slimeweave creatures, squat and ugly, skittered underfoot and dabbed drying compound across the pads meant to stop slippage—dull grey and clingy, like wet ash.

Tangle lines snapped taut and bit into a rib above, vibrating with a tight, humming note—like a lyre that had been tuned by someone with a soldier’s memory.

Thalatha watched the skeletons work with a strange sense of calm. They were elegant, in their own dreadful way—moving with the memory of hands they no longer possessed. They avoided her. That was not chance. She had asked them to. Or rather, she had asked the one who commanded them. And he had obeyed.

Dignity is a loan, her first commander had told her. And if you stop paying attention to it, it gets repossessed.

She could feel the weight of that loan pressing just beneath her collarbone.

"Your Grace, your litter awaits," he said, gesturing with an open hand like a stage magician. There was no mockery in it, though it danced close to that line.

"Please do not wave at the peasants; they bite."