I straightened, blinking once. Hard. “You didn’t.”
Her hands fidgeted, twisting the hem of her shirt as if she could wring the self-condemnation out of it. Her lips parted, and her voice wavered. “I’m so?—”
I shot up a hand. “Shh.”
Footsteps rang out—sudden, loud, too close.
We froze, breath locked, and the tension stretched between us as the footsteps closed in—boots striking rock in a slow, deliberate rhythm.
I motioned her back, pressing her into the wall and shifting in front of her, shielding her with my body. If someone stepped into the tower, all they’d see was me. And if it came to it—I’d make damn sure she had time to portal out.
The steps paused, lingered…then faded.
I exhaled slowly and eased her out of the shadows. She scanned the corridor—quick, focused. I glanced behind us. Still clear. For now.
"Keep your head down and cloak us as much as possible," I whispered, leading her toward the stairwell. "We need to get more intel on this Layer of Protection around the mountain before we portal out there. Can you see any Radicals from here?"
Emma leaned forward, scanning the drop, then shook her head. “No. But I could open a portal—get eyes on what’s below?”
“Negative,” I said quickly. “If they’re here, it’ll give us away.”
I exhaled through my nose, irritation pressing behind my ribs. We were working blind. “We’ll have to go see for ourselves. One hour of recon. Then we move out of here.”
Emma nodded quickly.
We had barely set foot on the stairs when muffled voices reached us from below, ringing through the ancient corridors, distorted by the old architecture. Too many walls between us to pinpoint their direction. Too many places they could be.
Then, out of nowhere, an explosion hit.
A deafening blast cracked through the air, followed by the subterranean rumble of collapsing masonry. The entire fort shuddered violently under our feet. Dust rained down from the ceiling. A support beam groaned somewhere above us, then snapped with a gut-deepcrack.
“Move,” I barked, shoving her to safety just in time.
A chunk of ceiling crashed down just behind us. I grabbed Emma by her wrist, and dragged her toward a jagged hollow in the wall—an irregular, shadowed gap, as if the building had cracked open just wide enough to let us slip inside.
We pressed into the space as the building around us trembled, debris clattering down in bursts of rubble and splinters.
Emma covered her head instinctively, her body pressed up against mine. My arm braced across her as another tremor shook the floor beneath us. Somewhere deeper in the fort, something gave way entirely—a distant roar of stone falling into black.
We stayed like that, breath held, dust thick in our lungs. The voices had gone silent now—either scattered or drowned out by the chaos. For a few long seconds, all we could do was listen to the crumble and shift of the fort around us, hoping it didn’t decide to bury us alive.
Finally, the tremor eased. The air settled. I lowered my arm, scanning what I could see of the corridor.
“Are you okay?” I murmured.
Emma gave a breathless nod, eyes sharp despite the dust on her lashes. “What the hell was that?”
“No fucking idea,” I muttered, frustration biting deeper. As if the situation wasn’t bad enough already.
She shifted to move, but I caught her wrist again, and pulled her back—hard. She slammed into me, her back flush to my chest, hips locking against me.
Fuck, I felt that.
“Don’t move yet,” I breathed against her neck. “We don’t know where they are. Give it a minute before you go charging ahead.”
She nodded, but the tension in her body was unmistakable—shoulders drawn, every muscle coiled tight. The air around us was thick with dust and the acrid bite of scorched concrete. It reeked of collapse, of panic barely held at bay.
She was pressed against me in the narrow space, every breath short and uneven, her chest rising and falling. I could feel the frantic rhythm of her heartbeat—fast and full—like it belonged to me.
