I clicked off my flashlight. The darkness crashed in like a physical weight, so complete I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face. But I could see that other light, distant still but getting closer. Sweeping back and forth as he searched.
Too soon. Way too soon. There was no way thirty minutes had passed.
That lying bastard.
I pressed myself against the wall, not breathing. The cold rock bit into my shoulder blades through the thin silk. His light swept closer, painting shadows that stretched and shrank across the stone.
“Come out, come out, little prey. I have such plans for you. Are you scared here, where there’s so little air? I would be if I were you.”
His voice echoed through the tunnels, bouncing off surfaces until it seemed to come from everywhere at once.
I edged backward, feeling my way with one hand, not daring to turn on my light. My fingers found an opening in the wall—a side passage I’d missed in my rush to escape the narrowing tunnel.
I slipped into it.
The passage was tight. Barely shoulder-width, the walls rough and jagged. I had to turn sideways to fit, the rock scraping against my chest and back as I squeezed through.
Breathe. Just breathe. It would open up ahead. It had to. But once again, I froze.
One step at a time, Kitten. You can do this. But move. Right now.
The passage narrowed further. I could feel the ceiling lowering, pressing down. The walls squeezed in. My lungs couldn’t expand fully.
Oliver’s light swept past the opening behind me. I held my breath, heart slamming against my ribs, certain he would see the gap, would follow, would find me wedged into this crack in the earth like an insect pinned to a board?—
The light moved on.
His footsteps faded. Following the main tunnel. Following the dead end that would buy me time.
It won’t take much time for him to double back, Kitten. Move. Now.
I forced myself forward through the narrow passage. Inch by inch, the rock tearing at the stupid dress, at my skin. Something sharp caught my palm, and I felt warm wetness—blood, though I couldn’t see it in the total dark.
Then the walls fell away.
I stumbled into a wider space, gasping. Clicked on my flashlight with shaking hands. Another chamber, smaller than the last. One passage leading out.
I took it.
Time blurred. More tunnels. More branches. More desperate choices made in the dark. My hands were slick with blood now—torn on rough stone, scraped raw from feeling my way through blackness. My knees ached where I’d crawled through low passages. The dress hung in tatters, silk shredded by the mountain’s teeth.
But I kept moving.
That’s it, Kitten. You’re tougher than this place.
Oliver’s voice found me occasionally, echoing through the stone. “You can’t run forever, Mia. Aren’t you tired of worrying about when this whole place might collapse, burying you? Slowly suffocating you?”
I didn’t answer. Did everything I could to keep Oliver’s voice out of my head and hang on to Coop’s.
But I was slowing down. I could feel it—muscles burning, movements growing clumsy from the cold that had seeped into my bones. And Oliver knew these tunnels. Knew the shortcuts. Every time I thought I’d lost him, that bright beam would appear from a direction I didn’t expect.
I was smaller. Faster in the tight spaces. I could squeeze through gaps he couldn’t follow, when I could force myself.
It wasn’t enough. Eventually, I’d hit a dead end I couldn’t escape.
Then I rounded a corner and stopped. Another area that had collapsed. But this time, a gap existed where the rock had shifted, leaving a narrow opening.
And through it—impossible, miraculous—the vaguest patch of sunlight. An exit. Open air.
