I fight down panic, the urge to scream bubbling up my throat.
“Ember.Move.”
I force my body forward. Raking skin against rock, tearing fabric, not caring about anything except getting out of this space before it crushes me.
Luke’s hand locks around my wrist. Pulls… hard. So hard that he yanks me from the tiny space in one fluid move.
I slide forward into a wider chamber, sprawling on slick stone as rocks continue to rain down behind me. The grinding sound builds to a roar. Then—
Crash.
The passage collapses completely. A wall of rubble where we just crawled through, sealing us in.
I lie there gasping. Shaking. Trying to process what just happened.
“You hurt?” Luke asks.
I take inventory. Scraped elbows. Torn pants. That damned ankle screaming. But alive.
“No.”
He crouches beside me, torch beam sweeping the new chamber. It’s larger than the alcove we slept in—maybe twenty feet across—but that’s not what freezes the air in my lungs.
It’s a dead end.
Solid rock on three sides. The fourth now blocked by tons of collapsed stone.
He doesn’t say anything more. Just keeps sweeping his light across the walls. Looking for cracks. Passages. Anything.
There’s nothing.
We’re trapped.
Chapter 13
Luke
We’re trapped. The reality settles into my bones as I sweep the torch across the chamber one more time. Rock walls surround us, the only access point sealed by tons of collapsed stone.
No way out except through a passage that would take dragon strength to clear.
And we can’t shift.
I kill the torch to conserve battery. The darkness presses close, suffocating. Beside me, Ember’s breathing comes too fast.
Not panic. But close.
Two days since the crash. Two days of running on stress hormones and dwindling supplies. One bottle of water between us. Maybe half a ration bar each. The torch battery at thirty percent.
We should have reached extraction by now. Should be debriefing in a safe house while medics check us over and Vanya tears me apart for letting this happen.
Instead, we’re sealed in a stone tomb with no way out and time running short.
I crouch beside Ember, keeping my movements slow. “You sure you’re good?” I ask again. She replied too easily the first time, considering what just happened.
She doesn’t answer immediately now. Just lies there on the cold stone, staring at the collapsed passage.
“No,” she finally says.
