“You… warm,” I say, tapping my glowing forearm to draw her attention. The enemy is the cold. Not me. I will not let it steal from her.
Her breath leaves her in a short, shaky rush. She trembles with the effort of keeping herself away. But the damp chill of the stone is patient. It seeps through every layer.
Slowly, her resistance fails.
She lets herself sag back, spine settling against my chest as if her bones have finally given up.
The contact is sudden and heavy and very, very good.
“You’re like a giant space heater,” she mutters, voice tight but no longer sharp. “Just… a massive personal heater.”
Hee-ter.
I remember Jus-teen explaining something like this once. A box that humans use to make warmth from nothing. A thing they miss when Ain goes to sleep and the dust cools.
If she wants to think of me that way, I will accept the title.
The stone pulls heat from us fast. For a Drakav, almost all of our warmth comes from inside. Our glow and lifeblood adjust. For a human already tired and worn thin by body-fire and worry?
Not acceptable.
I straighten my spine a little more against the wall, haul her more firmly against me until there is no room left for the cold to slip between us.
I am the hee-ter.
It is a noble role.
I will be the hottest hee-ter in the clan.
On the other side of the gap, my brothers still work to free Kelvan and find us a path.
But here, with Mih-kay-lah tucked between my legs and my arms around her, I have no intention of moving.
Let the mountain do as it pleases.
I have nowhere else I need to be.
Chapter 8
SECOND RULE OF FALLING ROCKS: HUG THE SPACE HEATER WITH KNIVES
MIKAELA
The rock under us keeps… thinking about it.
That’s the only way my brain can make sense of it. Every few minutes, there’s this faint, unsettling tremor, like the ledge is having a midlife crisis. Maybe it doesn’t want to be a ledge anymore. Maybe it’d rather be a tasteful pile of rubble at the bottom of the abyss.
The drop is so close I could spit into it without leaning. My spine is pressed against what is essentially a living furnace in the shape of a seven-foot alien, and above us, the cracked ceiling hangs like a threat that has already followed through once today.
Another delicate vibration shivers up through the stone, through my hipbones, into my teeth.
“Okay,” I whisper. “I’m not liking this ledge. Like, at all.”
Sarven probably doesn’t understand the words, but he feels what’s happening in my body. His arms tighten around my ribs, snug and sure, and even though I try not to lean too hard intohim, they feel good. Steady. Like nothing can pry me out of them.
He says something low and rough against my neck. My earbud does its best and feeds back a single, soft word:
“Mih-kay-lah.”
