Chapter 706: Heat in a Cruel Room (4)
"I think... I don’t mind spending my time with you."
Silence did not crush the words. It held them. He did not make a joke. He also did not make a vow. He only set his mouth against her forehead for a moment, then leaned back enough that they could both breathe the same air without stealing it from each other.
Later, he thought. She saw it move behind his eyes. If later arrives, we will not waste it.
The line slept in little watches. The veil-door forgot them again. The alarm hair lay like a cat on a warm sill. The Brake Choir hummed in a healthier key. Their breathing found each other, then stayed together, without anyone giving an order.
Morning came thinner than before. The crystals were stingy. She woke to the same hand on her wrist, the same weight at his hip, the same tick that now felt like a pact. She could feel the smile trying to be born at the corner of her mouth. She strangled it. Partly. Enough.
"Status," she whispered.
He opened his palm like he was offering the room a coin it had dropped. "Hungry, handsome, humble."
"Two of those are useful."
"Ah. Hunger and humility."
She let the corner move this time. "Don’t push your luck."
He lifted the Anchor’s glow one degree. The day window yawned—small as always. The shaft exhaled a cool smell, iron and mint and dust. Time to work.
They checked the board-that-wasn’t-a-board: three corridors still sulking, one door that had learned to be judgmental, one new ring below where dead echoes rehearsed wrong steps. She hated being funneled. Funnels are for soup. Not armies.
They made the third loop with stubborn neatness. Corridor B tried a trick with light; Hypnoveils slipped a curtain over the lie. C bowed again; Slime’s lattice held; a beetle clicked to itself like a clerk satisfied by good columns. At the listening door they breathed together, then refused to beg. Progress is a long word for three inches. She took the inches.
On the way back a Seraph shard clacked and preened. Mikhailis lifted two fingers without looking at it. "We see you," he said under his breath. We do not admire you.
He’d said once that peacocks feel powerful until you lean a broom against them. She didn’t know what a peacock was. She liked the picture anyway.
Back in the slot, the ritual came before thoughts had time to tangle. The kiss: small, sure, a proof-of-life. Heat moved like a hand being warmed over an ember. She closed her eyes only because there was nothing left in the room that needed watching. When their tongues met, it felt like coming back to a lesson she had finally learned well enough to enjoy without embarrassment. She let it last, then cut it clean. She did not want to greedily steal from tomorrow.
He set the tab between them again. The new wireframes were worse in a way she respected. The place was not dumb. The patrols had changed their routes. The eels had picked different niches. The listening door had adjusted its breath.
The line moved across his inner sight with the calm sarcasm she had learned to hear in his tone when he quoted his invisible assistant.
"What would you do," she asked, "if the door asked for a promise?"
He rubbed his thumb along the tab’s frame. "Depends. If it wanted a name, I’d starve it. If it wanted a breath, I’d lend it."
"Would you give it your pulse?"
He thought about it. Not if I can give it a metronome instead. "Only if it promised to return it."
"That’s not what doors do."
"Good ones do."
She made a small disbelieving sound. It wasn’t unkind.
Her mind wandered for one foolish second to the women who orbited him at court. Lira, the maid Elowen had given him—the woman with the long black ponytail and the patience of a saint with sharp eyes. Serelith, who acted like a riddle that liked being solved and then tied itself back into a knot. Cerys, the red-haired sword who preferred cold air to most people. Thalatha put the names away. Not today. The slot made fantasies useless. Reality needed her more.
He seemed to feel the drift and did not chase it. He just let his knee rest against hers for a second, then took it back to a place that did not argue with her focus.
The fifth morning’s light failed fast, like a candle that had been trimmed too hard. They went anyway. Breath in duet. Steps on exhale. Hands where the other could see them.
At the door they were better. The hinge-of-breath felt less suspicious. The warmth spread into their palms more quickly, more honestly. It opened the same handspan as yesterday and stopped like a teacher who wanted you to say "please."
She did not beg. "Enough. We return."
"Copy," he said. No performance. Just respect.
They eased their palms away from the listening stone like people easing a cup back onto a shelf they didn’t own. Fingers uncurled. Breath unhooked from the door’s rhythm. Frost drew a pale stroke over the warm patch and Ember patted warmth along the chalk’s spine so the temperature would fall like a natural lapse, not a goodbye.
Hypnoveils slid in front of the seam, veil-edges trembling and then steadying until the panel looked bored, unremarkable. Scurabons retrieved the chalk nubs they’d used, pinched them into powder, and rubbed it into their own carapaces until no bright flake dared sing against the night. Slime dabbed out the last soft prints of their soles with two ugly, efficient wipes. A Tangle tested its anchors—one pluck, then two—quiet little questions answered by ribs above.
Mikhailis waited, head tilted, the way a librarian listens for a page tearing in another room. Nothing hunting us now. Good. Don’t believe in luck; believe in work. He tapped his cuff once.
<Retracing path. Pattern variance minimal. Recommend egress on next exhale.>
"On exhale," Thalatha signed, two fingers drawing the shape of a breath in the air.
They withdrew on count, shoes kissing stone in the exact places they had been told were safe yesterday and the day before. No one dragged. No one tried to be helpful to the point of invention. When a rib under the spindle moaned, the whole line paused, weight held inside knees and hips, not on ankles. The rib changed its mind about moaning. They passed.
Night fell cleanly, like a curtain pulled in one motion. No twilight, no regret—just the light leaving the corners all at once. The slot welcomed them like a habit they had chosen on purpose. Silk breathed once and remembered their edges. The veil-door settled into something that felt like a polite "no."
Her hand found his hip, fingers curling into the worn leather of his belt, a touch that was both anchor and signal. His hand covered her wrist, warm and steady, not claiming but confirming: We’re here. They breathed together, the slot’s tight walls forcing their rhythms to align, a quiet duet of exhales that mingled in the ember-lit air. Words came first, small and careful, sanding down the sharp edges of the day. They spoke of winters and first orders, of moments that shaped them without breaking them, then ran out of words, and kisses arrived like commas—small pauses that kept the day’s line clear, not demanding more than they needed.
"Winter," Mikhailis offered, when the ember ticked down and the slot seemed to lose interest in them. His voice was soft, a low hum that settled into the stone. "The year the books froze. We baked stones in the ovens and slipped them under the shelves one by one. I burned my fingers and pretended I didn’t. Lira brought vinegar for the blisters. Scolded me for being dramatic." A quick crescent of a smile flashed in the dark. "I wasn’t."
"You were," Thalatha said, her tone light but precise, a gentle correction that felt good to give. "You also saved the paper."
"Paper saved me back," he murmured, almost to himself, the words small and private, like a coin tucked into a pocket.
She let that sit, the weight of it settling between them. Then she offered her own piece, a memory she hadn’t planned to share. "My first order someone obeyed without looking behind me." In her mind, she saw the old tent, the slit of cold air, the older captain with a mouth like a closed door. "I said ’hold’ and they held. Not because a better voice was coming. Because mine was there." She breathed once, letting the memory pass through her like a breeze, out and gone. "It felt like the ground agreeing."
They lay quiet for a moment, the ember’s glow softening their faces into simple shapes—cheek, brow, a half-smile stranded at the corner of his mouth. The kiss came like a full stop at the end of a good sentence, small and sure, not greedy. When his tongue brushed hers, she met it without thinking, her mouth already knowing the pattern, her body yielding to what was kind without argument. The taste of him was familiar now—dust, mint-paper, and something warmer, something that was only Mikhailis. The word "addicted" tried to creep in, and she pushed it away, focusing on the press of his lips, the quiet rhythm they were building.
The kiss didn’t stay small. It grew, not by force but by hunger, a slow burn that caught and spread. Their tongues met with more intent, sliding and curling, a dance that was both question and answer. "Slrp!" The sound broke free, wet and raw, as their tongues tangled, sucking gently at each other, pulling and giving in a rhythm that made her pulse race. "MMH!" she breathed, a sound that was half moan, half plea, vibrating in her throat as his tongue pressed harder, exploring her with a need that matched her own. She sucked back, bold and unashamed, tasting him deeper, the heat of it spiraling through her, pooling low where her body was waking up.
It was so great, so fiercely alive, that it felt like a fire she hadn’t meant to start but couldn’t put out. Their tongues moved faster now, a frantic play, sucking and curling with an intensity that made her head spin. "Slrp! Slrp!" The sounds were louder, unapologetic, filling the slot with the raw truth of their want. She pressed closer, the slot’s unyielding walls forcing their bodies together, erasing any distance. Her hand, still at his hip, moved with purpose, sliding lower, finding the hard, hot thing that strained against his trousers. It was gigantic, undeniable, a presence that sent a jolt through her core. Her fingers closed around it, bold and deliberate, feeling its heat through the frayed fabric, its size a promise that made her breath catch.
"GIVE ME MORE,"