But then the ground lurches.
Not a vibration this time. A heave.
A cracking sound splits the air like a gunshot, echoing from deep inside the wall behind the red flow.
Sarven rips himself away from the moment, spinning us around, shielding me with his body as a chunk of red-coated rock breaks loose from the ceiling and smashes into the spot where I had been standing three seconds ago.
“Go!” His roar vibrates through me and pulses in my head at the same time.
The moment is gone. Shattered.
He doesn’t let me walk this time. He scoops me up, gourd and all, tucking me against his chest like a football.
“We leave!” he bellows, and takes off running back toward the tunnel.
I cling to his neck, heart breaking for two very different reasons: the terrifying realization that the mountain is falling apart, and the devastating realization that I…didn’t get to kiss him.
Priorities, Mikaela.
But as I look back over his shoulder, I see the red slime pulsing.
It’s moving. Not just flowing.
Growing.
“Faster, Sarven!” I yell. “Go faster!”
SARVEN
I run.
My feet know the stone, even where it is slick with the fake-blood.
Mih-kay-lah is a warm, solid weight in my arms. She does not fight me this time. She buries her face in my shoulder, her hands gripping my neck.
My dra-kir hammers a rhythm that has nothing to do with the run.
She touched me.
On her own. She wanted to.
I saw it in her eyes. The dark, hazy heat. The way her breath hitched. She looked at my mouth as if it were water and she were dying of thirst.
I almost pressed my lips to hers in that way I have seen Tharn do to Jah-kee and ached to experience myself.
Right there. In the middle of the rot. In the middle of the danger.
My beast roared to claim her, totasteher, to lick the red slime from her skin and replace it with my own scent.
Focus, I snarl at myself.
The tunnel groans around us. The heat-pressure is building.
Whatever is bleeding that red poison into the water is also breaking the mountain. Ain’s heat has reached this place? The thought bothers, because some deep part of me knows this is not the dry, clean heat of Ain. It is wet. Heavy. It clogs the lungs instead of filling them.
I reach a wider shelf and skid to a halt, setting Mih-kay-lah on her feet but keeping my claws on her shoulders.
“Stay,” I command.
