“I, well …” Yu scraped the words together. “No. I mean, not now.” He could not let her speak for him. And if she did, he had to twist it back, wrench her words into his own beak. “I know this is important. But I should go now. To the dinner. As Bubs said. As you also said.”
“Your interest is valid. You should learn. As a guard, you will encounter selder.”
Yu felt his talons freeze to the stone. A tide of ice poured through them, into his legs, pressing into the marrow of his bones. It was like the weight of a mountain forced into his joints; all of him would break if he but swayed or shivered. Without touch, without a flicker of movement, the shaman held him where he stood. She bound him to the mask he had put upon himself, this façade of a diligent and caring guard, the obedient servant. She forced him to act it, to continue the play; to be engaged and incompetent and harmless and oh so compliant. It was a suicide game.
Through the mask, his words sought for an escape: “Then … are these spells?”
“They are sevrants,” the shaman said. “The result of sevarran branding. Selders of the Pathfinder Clan carry them.”
Her shoulders shifted, slow as breath. The scales along her chest drew back with deliberate grace.
“In the language of the mountain, they are called the Werisian. It is an ancient clan, the purest among them. Direct descendants of those who came from the Albweiss peaks. Their bloodline has not thinned. They still carry mountain blood in their veins.”
The seam across her collarbone surfaced. It did not open. The maw remained closed as she spoke. Yet Yu could not silence the sounds that rose from within; the slow agitation of wet flesh straining against itself in quiet unrest, the dripping eagerness coiled inside the patience. The restraint was so thin it felt like trembling, civil on the surface and nothing civil beneath.
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