Page 51 of Thexan

He twisted as we went down, taking the worst of the impact against his uninjured side, one arm locked around me as we hit the lower shelf hard enough to drive the breath from my lungs. Pain flashed through my hip and shoulder, but I was moving before it settled, my hands already searching for him, for blood, for the wound I was afraid had torn open again.

“I’m fine,” he said.

“You don’t know that.”

“I know.”

“Let me check.”

“No time.”

He was right.

Kaer’vas had started moving.

Not fast. Deliberate. Down the cut, toward the angle that would put him between us and the settlement if we let him continue.

Thexan rose in one fluid motion, but I saw the slight change in his breathing, the way the wound pulled even if the bond kept the deeper instability from returning. Stable did not mean unharmed. Functional did not mean whole.

And Kaer’vas knew it.

“He’s trying to make you move wrong,” I said.

“Yes.”

“Then don’t.”

Thexan looked at me.

I pulled one of the recovered weapons from where it had landed near his feet and pressed it into his hand. “Make him move wrong.”

His gaze held mine for one brief second.

Then he turned.

The fight that followed did not look like the others.

There was no clean ambush this time, no silent removal, and no single opening to exploit. Kaer’vas had planned for Thexan’s strengths and was willing to damage the terrain, the ridge, anything around us to limit them. He fired not where Thexan stood, but where he would need to step. He used the broken ground to control angles, forcing movement toward the drainage cut where the footing worsened.

Thexan did not chase him.

He changed the shape of the fight.

Every time Kaer’vas tried to draw him wide, Thexan cut the angle shorter. Every time the hunter attempted to force distance, Thexan used the recovered weapon to deny the path. Energy discharges struck stone, throwing sparks and dust into the air, and through it all I kept moving along the edge of the engagement, not close enough to interfere, not far enough to be useless.

The bond hummed between us, steady and alive.

I could feel when Thexan shifted before I saw it. Not his thoughts. Not words. Nothing that simple. But direction. Intent. The tightening of danger before it fully formed.

Kaer’vas saw me tracking them.

His weapon turned.

I had expected it.

Maybe Thexan had too, but I moved first, dropping behind the stone shelf as the shot burned over me close enough to heat the air against my cheek. Thexan crossed the distance in the next breath, not to shield me, but to use the opening Kaer’vas had created by turning his focus away.

The blade came up.