She nodded once toward a seemingly unprotected cave carved into the hillside, its mouth gaping wide. It sat higher up, overlooking the settlement.
“That cave up there,” she said, nodding toward the rocky outcrop, “is visible from literally anywhere down here. Everyone here has eyes on it. It might not have a door, but?—”
“It might not need one,” I finished, catching on. Hiding something in plain sight was smart. The cave’s openness made it practically invisible—no walls, no doors, nothing suspicious. Only a gaping hole in a hill which, conveniently, had an entire camp full of armed zealots casually keeping watch.
Saoirse met my gaze, and in a split second of unspoken well,this is probably a terrible idea but let’s do it anyway, we moved.
We slipped out of the shadows, low to the ground, weaving between tents, bunkers, and inconveniently placed stacks of supplies. The watchmen weren’t exactly slacking, but they weren’t expecting two lunatics to be sneaking through their outpost either.
The hillside loomed closer with each step, the cave gaping like a silent dare.
Open invitation or elaborate death trap? Hard to say. But we were already too committed to turn back.
“How the hell are we getting up there?” Saoirse hissed, crouched beside me behind a stack of crates at the site’s edge. “It’s not like we can fly.”
“Portal?” I suggested, eyeing the dark opening above like it might kindly lower a ladder for us.
She shut it down immediately. “Terrible idea. We have no clue what’s inside. If we portal in and land in the middle of a Radical slumber party, we’ll be dead before we can say ‘oops.’”
I bit back a curse and scanned the rocky incline. Steep. Jagged. Unforgiving. Basically, the exact opposite of a welcoming climb. But there was no other way.
“Then we climb. Fast.”
Saoirse grimaced like I’d suggested we scale it naked. “Fantastic. Just what I needed tonight—clinging to a rock face, looking like a flailing flamingo in freefall.”
“Could’ve been worse,” I muttered, gripping the rough stone and pulling myself up.
Saoirse glanced down at me, already a few feet ahead. “Oh yeah? How?”
“We could’ve brought Sean and his motivational playlist,” I said, hauling myself to the next ledge.
She snorted, boots scraping against the rock. “At least we’d be climbing faster to escape the cringe.”
I snickered, then kept my eyes glued to the rock—anything but the drop yawning below.
The shadows covered us, but not well enough to compensate for stupidity. Every move had to be exact—one wrong step and we’d either plummet to our deaths or attract the attention of the guards below, which, frankly, would only speed up the process.
The climb dragged on forever. Every muscle in my body burned, screaming at me for making suchexcellentlife choices. The incline got steeper, the footholds got smaller, and the jagged rock had a personal vendetta against my hands and boots. Below, the base stretched out in a mess of flickering lights and restless shadows—a reminder we were very much not supposed to be up here.
Translating was out of the question unless I wanted to turn the hillside into a godsdamn fireworks show. Untraceable but visible translation. What a fucking hoot.
So, our brilliant plan remained: climb and hope for the best. The cold night air bit at my skin as we clung to the rock, inching closer to what was either salvation or a spectacular death trap.
Finally, the cave’s gaping entrance loomed above us. Saoirse hauled herself over the ledge first, then reached down to grabme. I took her hand, letting her drag me the last few feet, and we crouched at the entrance, sucking in deep, quiet breaths as we scanned the hillside.
No movement. No alarms. No screaming.Yet.
Satisfied we hadn’t been spotted, we slipped inside.
The moment we stepped in, a wall of freezing air hit us like a particularly judgmental slap to the face.Oh, good. Hypothermia. Just what this mission was missing.
“That went better than I could’ve hoped,” I said, a grin of relief tugging at my lips as I caught my breath.
The words had barely left my mouth when a deep, menacing voice echoed from the shadows of the cave. “Is that so?”
THIRTY-SIX
EMMA
