relief filled Tauran. He wouldn’t have had the strength, mental or physical, to take the stairs all the way to the top.
They stepped inside. Tauran worked the crank himself, giving his mind the only available distraction, although it wasn’t enough. The ache in his leg felt suddenly more acute. He was grateful that it had at least been some time since he’d eaten breakfast.
By the time the elevator came to a jerking stop, Tauran was covered in a layer of sweat, and he couldn’t decide if it was from the effort of working the crank or if it was the sickening, barely contained terror clawing away inside him.
Kalai’s gaze lingered on him before reaching for the latch and pushing the door open.
Tauran swallowed. The sight that met them was innocuous - a tunneled pathway just a few feet deep, leading to a handful of stairs carved into the rock. Bright daylight flooded in from the top, making the smoothened stairs shine like silver.
Tauran inhaled. The air felt thin, but he wasn’t sure if it was his imagination.
Kalai’s arm around his waist drew Tauran’s eyes from the stairs.
“You should go back down,” Tauran said. “I don’t want you to get unwell.”
Kalai seemed hesitant, then nodded. He pulled Tauran into a hug. “You can do this. I believe in you,” he whispered.
Tauran closed his eyes for a moment and imagined they were still on the ground. The scent of chamomile still clung to Kalai from that morning’s serving of tea. It felt like years ago he’d stood like this, pressed against Kalai on the Solar Tower balcony. He tried to convince himself he was back there. That that was all this was.
“I’ll be okay,” Tauran said, more to himself than to Kalai.
Kalai released him, far sooner than Tauran was ready for. Tauran couldn’t smile, but he hoped he controlled his expression enough to at least not look terrified as Kalai stepped back into the elevator. Kalai held his gaze for one more moment before closing the door. A moment later, Tauran heard the crank and the creaking of wood as the elevator descended once more. He tried not to think about the fact that if he chickened out, he’d be stuck up here until Kalai reached the bottom and he could crank the elevator back up. Would he even be able to if he panicked? Closing his eyes again, he took a deep breath of the too-thin air.
“Get yourself together, Tauran,” he whispered. “You used to love this sort of thing.”
He turned to the stairs. It was true. Even before he’d started riding Itana, he’d gravitated towards dizzying heights. Climbing the Solar Tower had gotten him thrown out of the Ground Guard before he’d been there even three months, before Falka had taken him in and given him the key to the open sky.
“This is your territory,” he said, stroking a hand along the wall as he went. “You love it up here.”
He took the seven steps into the open air before his resolve could abandon him… and froze.
He was surrounded by nothing.
On the ground, everything else rose above him. Houses, trees, hills and mountains. Something was always higher up. But there was nothing higher than the peak of Kel Visal as far as the eye could see, and the only thing between him and a terrifyingly long drop to certain death was roughly eighty feet of flat mountain top in all directions. No railings, no handholds, just flat rock and open sky and the uneven, crumbled section where the cavern below had collapsed.
“This is the worst idea you’ve ever gotten, you fucking idiot,” he hissed.
Suddenly, he felt as alone as he had in that hostel room with Kalai unconscious on the bed beside him. Panic clawed at his insides, weakening his muscles. His left leg couldn’t hold his weight and he awkwardly sank to his knees, fingers spreading against the warm rock to ground himself, but it didn’t work. He looked over his shoulder. The darkness of the tunnel invited him. He’d only have to crawl a few feet backward to reach it. He could go down and pretend this never happened.
He closed his eyes again. Kalai would hug him and tell him it was okay, that he couldn’t do it, that he wouldn’t fault him for it. But ugly shame still curled inside Tauran at the thought. More than anything, he wanted to make Kalai proud. Kalai had spent twenty-two days in a bed, fighting for his life, and here