“—I'm haunting your ass forever.”
I pull her against me once we reach the access point, her back to my chest. Below us, the mountain drops away into nothing. No lights. No markers. Just virgin powder and the promise of pain if we fuck this up.
“On three,” I murmur against her ear.
She tenses. “Asher—”
I don't give her three. I give her one, then we're falling.
The impact rattles through my bones, but I keep us upright, carving hard left before she can process what just happened. Her scream cuts through the pre-dawn silence, half terror, half exhilaration.
“You fucking—”
“Focus!” I shout over the wind.
She does. Because that's what Ivy does—adapts, survives, conquers. Her body finds its rhythm, matching mine as we tear down the untouched face. No trails here. No safety nets. Just gravity and instinct and the kind of trust that shouldn't exist between two people this fucked up.
The snow sprays up around us like shattered diamonds. I catch glimpses of her in my peripheral—the determined set of her jaw, the way her hair whips behind her like a war banner. She's magnificent. Lethal. Everything I shouldn't want and can't stop craving.
I bank hard right, leading us through a cluster of pines so tight most people would call it suicide. She follows without hesitation, threading the needle like she was born for this. Maybe she was. Maybe we both were—born for the edge, for the almost-but-not-quite-dying.
“Left!” I call out, barely giving her time to adjust before we hit a natural kicker.
We're airborne.
Time stretches like pulled taffy. I twist, catching sight of her mid-rotation, and fuck—the expression on her face. Pure, unfiltered joy. The kind you can't fake, can't manufacture, can't buy. The kind that only comes from cheating death and winning.
We land hard, powder exploding around us. My knees scream in protest but I push through, carving toward the tree line where I know the maintenance road cuts through.
“Where are we—” Ivy starts, but then she sees it.
The road leads straight into town. Into Veilarath proper, where the streets are still dark, still empty, still coated in last night's snowfall that the plows haven't touched yet.
“You're joking,” she breathes.
I flash her a grin that's all teeth. “Scared?”
Wrong thing to say. Her eyes narrow, and she shoots past me, hitting the road at full speed. The transition from powder to packed snow nearly throws her, but she recovers, leaning into it like she's done this a hundred times before.
We rocket through the sleeping town, our edges carving through the pristine streets. Shop windows reflect our shadows—two figures moving too fast to be anything but ghosts or criminals. Maybe both.
Ivy cuts left at the fountain, sending a wave of snow cascading over the frozen cherubs. I follow, close enough to taste the ice crystals in her wake. We're destroying evidence of the town's perfect morning, leaving scars in the untouched canvas, and something about that feels right. Feels like us.
A light flicks on in one of the apartments above. Then another. We're waking the dead, or at least the nearly dead rich fucks who think they own this place.
“What's the matter, Jameson?” Ivy shouts, but she's laughing. “Scared I'm gonna win?”
I grab her jacket, yanking her into an alley so narrow our boards scrape both walls. We're hidden here, pressed between brick and mortar and bad decisions. Her chest heaves against mine, eyes bright with adrenaline and something else. Something hungrier.
“This was insane,” she says, but her hands are already in my jacket, fisting the leather.
“You loved it.” I crowd her space, backing her against the brick.
“That's not—”
Her board clatters to the ground, followed by mine. We're gonna have to walk back to the house anyway, if we decide not to wake Daniel.
“Then what is?” I ask, caging her in with palms flat against the wall on either side of her head.
