The floor beneath them vanished. The drop yanked Nirveli downward into black spray, tearing an abrasive curse from her throat. Sickly jade sparks from the talisman blurred above Dakor's shoulder plates before the updraft snapped her head back. She flailed, her arms windmilling, but a powerful force spun her around, pulling her against a solid chest. Dakor, even as they plummeted, had twisted his body, positioning himself beneath her. The black pool slammed into them like a dropped flagstone, driving the air from her ribs. A dull thud echoed through the gloom, not from her, but from the man who held her. The crack of his armor against submerged limestone rattled directly through her collarbone. Turbulent froth dragged them sideways into the silt. Nirveli clamped her teeth shut, thrashing her boots against the drag. She saw Dakor’s face, contorted in agony, a thin stream of dark blood blossoming from his mouth into the murky water. He was trying to push her up, his movements sluggish, hampered by the crushing pressure and his injuries. Her lungs burned with memories of silt in the Sarosian canal. But here, the brute was still taking the blunt force for her, his arm locked like an iron band across her waist.
Furious, she grabbed his collar. She kicked against the current, dragging his dead weight through the churning foam. They broke the surface, gasping, sputtering, the frigid air a shock to their burning lungs. The subterranean canal was a vast, winding artery of rushing water, dimly lit by phosphorescent algae clinging to the damp rock walls. Limestone teeth dripped black water thirty feet above the canal. She dragged him, her muscles screaming, towards a narrow, slippery ledge jutting from the rock face. He slumped limp across her shoulder, his chest wheezing wetly.
“Dakor!” Her shout bounced harsh and flat against the limestone. She scrambled onto the ledge, then pulled with all her might, grunting as his heavy frame scraped over the slick rock. He lay sprawled, chest heaving, a dark stain spreading across his tunic from his fractured ribs. He groaned, his heavy lids lifting over clouded irises. Snot and canal water dripped down her chin as fury burned her throat; seeing him battered on her account made her teeth grind.
“You colossal idiot,” she snapped, her knuckles smacking his dented cuirass. “Who told you to take the impact?!”
He managed a weak, pained smile. “Habit,” he rasped, a cough shaking his frame. “Always… been there… for you.”
Barking her shins on wet gravel, Nirveli dropped over his breastplate. She pressed her palms against his chest, her eyes closing, focusing. The drainage basin hummed with subterranean moisture. She reached for it, not with the brutal, explosive force she usually wielded, but with a delicate, intricate touch, coaxing the scattered energy, weaving it. An azure current surged from her palms across his cracked steel breastplate. The fractured bone began to hum, knitting itself back together, the ragged edges smoothing, the internal bleeding slowing. This was the Rain-Singer’s Mend, a complex, highborn technique taught only to those of the ruling Vashana lineage, requiring absolute mental clarity and generations of inherited skill. Jinxia, a mere commoner guard, could not possibly know this.
Dakor stared at the sapphire threads twining through his broken ribs, then up at her mud-smeared face. His mouth parted, the severe lines of his brow slackening into utter disbelief. His wet gauntlet rose, dripping water onto her jawline. “Nirveli,” he croaked.
Her eyes snapped open. The spell faltered for a bare second, the light flickering, before she forced it back to full intensity. The jig was up. He knew. Her meticulously crafted gruff voice, her violent antics, her carefully maintained commoner persona—all of it shattered in that one simple, tender utterance. The urge to shake him until his teeth rattled collided violently with the urge to hold his stupid face.
“You reckless, thick-skulled brute!” she snarled. Clamping both glowing hands around his stubbled cheeks, she slammed her mouth against his, biting his lower lip amid tastes of silt, copper, and salt. She wrenched back just far enough to glare into his nose bridge, panting hard.
“Don’t you *ever*,” she hissed, her voice cracking, “ever, *ever* do that again! Don’t you dare risk your life for me! Do you hear me, Dakor? I forbid it!”
Dakor exhaled a ragged chuckle that set his bruised chest rattling. “You forbid it?” he whispered, a hint of his old, dry amusement in his tone. “My guard forbids me?”
“Yes! I forbid it! You’re the Duke! You can’t just go around getting yourself mangled! What would I do without you, you idiot?!” In her previous life, admitting she relied on anyone would have tasted like hemlock. Right now, she simply wanted him to stop bleeding on the moss.
His hand tangled into her soaked sentry braids, tugging her down into a firm, lingering press of his mouth. When he pulled back, his thumb wiped canal grime from her cheekbone. “It really is you,” he murmured.
“You never lost me, you blind ox,” she muttered, locking her fingers tightly between his.
An iron grate clattered open in the cavern ceiling forty feet up, followed by Grand Maester Yulza's dry, echoing drawl: “Jinxia! Dakor! If you are finished rolling in the drainage basin, Chardak has moved the Winter Solstice Coup forward by three hours. The loyalist sentries are being bound at the Zenith Tower right now.”