“Foot’s free,” Axel says, quiet triumph buried under calm. “Circulation’s slow but present. We’re going to stand on three, yeah?”
Evan nods, eyes on mine now like they’re ropes too.
I brace his shoulders. Axel takes his weight. “One. Two. Three.”
Evan screams once, voice shredding as his trapped foot wakes. He wobbles hard; Axel takes all of it, that impossible steadiness he carries around like extra bones locking in.
“I’ve got you,” Axel says, low and certain. “You’re not going anywhere but up.”
We clip Evan to the line and begin the crawl back, inches, then feet, then the blessed flat of the path. Captain appears like a pissed-off mountain goat then, half his beard covered with ice, eyes soft even as his mouth says something gruff about fools and maps.
We burrito Evan in blankets, hat, extra jacket, an indignity of kindness that makes him sob again. I check vitals, watch the numbers climb a hair, then another hair. The margin is thin. The margin is everything.
“We sled him,” Axel says. “You monitor, I pull.”
I know better than to argue. He’s built for the pull; I’m built to fight a body back into itself. We settle Evan in the rescue sled, strap him like a gift we’re not losing, and start the descent.
The wind wakes up for real. Snow needles my face. Trees lean into it, shoulder to shoulder, the whole ridge exhaling a warning.
Axel takes the front rope; Cole and I guide the back. Every step is a decision. The sled wants to run; the slope wants to teach us about physics the hard way. Evan moans once, a sound that threads under my skin. I talk without stopping, useless things on purpose—how Phantom River got its name, the best pie in town, the way sunlight looks through ice on the eaves if you catch it at seven a.m.
Halfway down, the gust we were promised arrives. It shoves hard. The sled jerks sideways, hits a hummock, and skates. Cole swears. I dig my boots in and feel the rope saw my gloves. Axel plants his entire weight and becomes an anchor.
We stop.
I taste adrenaline like pennies and hate how good it tastes.
“You okay?” Axel throws the words over his shoulder without looking back.
“Fine,” I lie.
“Sav—”
“Move,” I say, because the longer we stand still the more heat Evan loses, and the more time I spend staring at the notch to my left where one misstep is a fall I can’t solve.
We move. We make the next switchback. And then it happens.
The ice under my right boot looks like snow. It isn’t.
I step.
The ground goes.
I don’t scream—only because there’s no time. The world tilts. The ledge below yawns like a mouth.
And then Axel is there.
I don’t see him move. One instant I’m losing; the next I’m slammed into a wall of heat and muscle and breath. He grabs the back strap of my pack with one hand and the trunk of ascrubby pine with the other, body twisting with brutal economy. The rope burns across his forearm where his sleeve hitches. He grunts once, low and violent, and wrenches us back to the trail like he decided gravity works for him now.
My boots find purchase. I shove into him without thinking, both hands fisting in his jacket. We’re fused chest to chest, breath to breath. The world shrinks to the thud of his heart under my palms and the clipped, savage sounds he makes when he’s terrified and furious at the same time.
“Savannah,” he says, voice shredded. “Are you hurt?”
“I’m okay,” I manage.
He doesn’t believe me until his hands verify it, sliding quick and competent down my arms to my wrists, my ribs, my hips, hard enough to reassure, careful enough not to take anything I’m not offering. Heat rolls off him like a furnace. The cold doesn’t exist while he’s touching me. Nothing exists except pressure and breath and the way my body answers his without permission.
“Ax.” My voice is unreliable. “We’re good.”
