The voice cutting through the dark was so unexpected that tears sprang into my eyes. “Felicia, are you all right?” Auby asked, his sweet, childlike voice echoing down the shaft like a ray of sunshine. He was alive! I didn’t know how he’d managed to avoid those wild Naga up there and then survive that massive quake, but he had.
“Alive!” I shouted at him. I didn’t know how to put into words my fear that Levant wasn’t. I didn’t hear him, still couldn’t see a thing in the utter blackness after the light. There should havebeen daylight coming from above, at the very least, but there was nothing, just dark. Levant should have made a sound. Was he buried under ice, suffocating, crushed? My throat closed up, and pain so intense it took my breath away crashed through me. I loved him like I’d never loved another. This was the man I had decided to give up everything for, because he was worth it. I couldn’t lose him, not now.
A light flared above me, and through my tears, I saw Auby’s eyes beam down at me like a pair of headlights. “Stay where you are,” he announced, and I choked on a watery laugh. Like I could go anywhere, dangling from a rope somewhere above broken ice and layers of snow. If I cut the rope now, I’d risk impaling myself on something I couldn’t see below me. Levant was there, lying in that mess, maybe bleeding to death from a wound. Frantic with terror, I searched around me in the meager light coming from my Revenant companion. I needed options, and fast, find the core of my training and figure this out.
A swish and then a whirring noise reached my ears. I looked back up and discovered that Auby and his lights were descending. He was right above me, somehow sliding down the rope I was hanging from. I didn’t know how he did it, but he was coming down fast. In the moment I’d looked up and spotted him, he’d traveled nearly all the way down. I blinked, and suddenly I had my arms full of baby Vakarsa.
He squealed. “You are unharmed. Thank the stars, Felicia.” His snout pressed once against my cheek, where my tears had frozen on my skin. He exhaled warmth, and my body trembled, as if that point of heat reminded my flesh how cold it was. There was still light beaming from his eyes, a bright blue very different from the cold white that had emitted from my ship allnight. I could see that he’d hooked his paws around the rope—all six of them—and the metal hooves had locked together. “Magnetically,” he said smugly. “Now, let me see if I can’t get you down. Where is Levant?”
I shuddered, and my expression must have said it all. He peered out from my arms at the churned-up ice and snow below. In the pale light of his eyes, I could finally see it. Either the floor had risen, or I’d dropped down further during the quake. It was only a twenty-foot drop into the snow. The tunnel leveled off and opened into a horizontal passage that led toward my ship on my left. The wall of the shaft down on my right had split and broken, and chunks of it had fallen like sheets and pillars across the bottom. There was no sign of Levant or the savage Naga that had fallen into the pit with us.
“Oh, crap,” Auby said. But on the heels of that very concise but accurate remark came the faint sound of a moan. We both leaned forward, searching for the source, hoping to hear it again. “I’m going down,” Auby announced when it remained dreadfully silent for long seconds. He unhooked his hooves with a click and tumbled from my arms before I could register the change. I screamed, but he plunged into a thick drift of snow like he’d planned it and lifted his head, and thus his lights, back out to show me he was fine.
“I’ll find him,” he said, and he vanished into the snow. It plunged me back into darkness, but I could see a hint of light coming through the snow below me. I’d also seen enough of how the ice had fallen before Auby had jumped. Even in the dark, I decided it was worth the risk to jump myself. I pulled the knife from its sheath and began cutting at the rope. It frayed slowly because it was thick and strong, but then it abruptly snapped, and I fell.
Gasping for air, I dragged myself out of the snow and quickly ran my hands over my body to check that I was in one piece. Sore, mostly from falling over the ledge and getting caught by the winch’s harness, nothing life-threatening. Nothing that would stop me from doing what needed to be done. When I slipped the knife back into the sheath on my belt, I discovered the light source Levant had given me had been hanging there all along. I’d forgotten I had it in my panic, and I swore in fury that I hadn’t managed to keep my cool. I was trained to do well under stress, damn it. You couldn’t train for dealing with the fear of losing a loved one, though, could you?
“Found him!” Auby announced. I flicked my light in the direction of his voice. I discovered that he’d surfaced from the snow beside a particularly large piece of ice. It was over a dozen feet long and at least three wide. The size of a felled tree, and probably just as heavy and impossible to move.
I waded my way through the snow and helped Auby clear as much of it as I could from around Levant’s upper body. He was breathing, but out cold, and definitely pinned beneath that massive chunk. “Wake up!” I begged him. “You’ve got to wake up, Levant.” I didn’t think it would help, but when I touched his face, I saw the faintest glimmer of his sigils light up beneath his chin. His mating marks still responded to my presence, and that gave me a spark of hope that he’d make it.
He blinked, a golden glimmer in the dark. “Felicia?” he asked. The rage from before was gone, and I saw my Shaman again, my sweetheart, with all the kindness he carried. The male I’d fallen in love with because he was just too sweet not to, who needed me to make sure he got whatheneeded before he gave too much of himself away.
“I’m here! You’re pinned, love. Auby and I will get you out.” Auby chirped and helpfully continued digging at the snow packed all around him. Then the ground shook, an aftershock, or the precursor to the next massive tremble. It wouldn’t stop until I’d put an end to theFuture’s failing FTL drive once and for all. Now that I knew Levant was alive, I didn’t want either of us to die, but I was pretty sure self-destruct was my only option.
“Your ship, Felicia,” he moaned. “You must go to it now. Leave me.” I shook my head, even though I feared that he was right. We couldn’t possibly survive another quake; it would collapse the tunnel to the ship, and then I’d never be able to stop this. “This is your only chance to go home,” he murmured. “You must take it.”
I blinked, stared at his handsome face, certain I’d heard him wrong. “Wait, you want me to leave?” I said, so confused, with a stirring of hurt in my chest. It wasn’t fully blooming, because I was certain I was misunderstanding him somehow.
Levant shook his head, a moan escaping his chest. “I don’twantyou to leave, but I am pinned, and you want to go home. I would never stand in the way of your dreams, sweet mate.” Holly Hannah, this guy… I was crying, and the tears froze on my lashes. I didn’t care. How could he say that? He’d dreamed of a human mate, gotten himself exiled because of that fervent desire. Did he not take anything for himself, demand his own needs be met? He was too selfless, too sweet. No, I could never leave. I had to be here to protect that massive heart of his.
“I’m not leaving you,” I said to him. “You have a home too, Levant, and it matters just as much as mine. More. Because yours still exists; mine is just a memory. We’re staying, you big lunk. I love you, and your dreams are as important as mine. Gotthat?” He nodded slowly, a smile curling at his mouth. I pressed a kiss to it, and then another, because I hadn’t told him yet that these were probably our last moments together anyway.
Chapter 23
Levant
I was hurt badly, but that didn’t matter because Felicia was okay, and she didn’t want to leave. Then why did her eyes remain so sad? All we had to do was turn off her ship’s engine, and everything would be fine. Wouldn’t it? I just needed to get my body out from under this massive piece of ice so we could get moving. Perhaps I’d take a quick break to catch my breath. I needed healing, but the healing device didn’t work on you. A very annoying quirk, especially now.
“Auby, can you cut through the ice with your laser cutter?” I asked. My hands reached for the edge of the slab and pushed experimentally. It didn’t move, didn’t so much as wobble. I’d have to gather my tail as much as I could beneath me to push off with. My ribs ached, and I knew I had to be bleeding internally. How long did I have before I needed medical help? Could my body recover on its own if I put myself into a healing sleep?
“Negative, Levant. My laser cutter has been malfunctioning since the Duskha attack. It must be fixed first.” He said it formally, but then sighed and mewled sadly. “I’m very sorry. I wish I could help more.” I felt his hooves next to my tail, digging furiously even though they were not really shaped right for digging. He was trying very hard indeed, even if his news was a crushing disappointment. I found his soft head with one hand and stroked his tufted ears to reassure him.
Felicia swore furiously, much more upset than I could muster. “We don’t have long. There was another rumble. We might notsurvive another quake down here. I have to get to the ship.” She gazed at me as if she was saying goodbye, but I didn’t understand. Hadn’t she just told me she was staying, that she wanted my home to be hers? My dreams to be hers? Perhaps it was the injuries making my brain sluggish; perhaps it was whatever was in the air that was making my body tremble with a fury I did not recognize.
“Can you make it?” I asked. “Can you shut it down?” She bit her lip, then leaned in to kiss me again. I liked the kisses, but I didn’t like the icy tears I tasted on her skin. “I’ll make it,” I said to her, but that only seemed to make her sadder.
“I love you,” she said, and then she rose and walked away. Her shoulders were up around her ears, her head down, and her tread heavy. I watched her go, drinking in every last minute of her that I could. It felt like that mattered, but I couldn’t quite figure out why it felt so urgent to watch her until I couldn’t anymore. Like I was saying goodbye to her too. Then she disappeared into the massive tunnel the Digmaster had created, the one that had once led me to the joyous discovery of her ship and stasis pod.
Auby nosed my hand a little longer, but then went back to digging around the slab of ice for me. He chattered as he did it, as if he couldn’t stand the laden silence anymore than I could. “I might be able to cut this part off with my hooves if I work on it long enough. It is a key point that might break the entire slab into multiple pieces. What do you think?”
I didn’t answer because I spotted Felicia coming back through the tunnel. This time she was running, and her pretty round face was white as the snow we were surrounded by. Her shockedexpression was so terrible that it made my gut twist. Something was wrong, very wrong. There was no way she could have made it to her ship and back already.
“The tunnel is blocked. The quake broke pieces off like the one on top of you, and I can’t get through.” She thudded to her knees in the snow at my side and grabbed my hand, squeezing it so tightly I feared she’d hurt her fingers on my scales. “Levant… I can’t reach the ship. I think the drive has powered up almost completely, and it’s not cutting off from overheating anymore. It’s going to tear Serant apart when it engages.”
So we’d failed. That truth settled into me, sinking beneath my scales like an oily slickness, a bad taste. No, I didn’t want to give up. We couldn’t let it end this way. “Help me get to my communicator,” I groaned, my hand scrabbling across the snow and ice to burrow beneath the slab. “We must warn everyone.” I didn’t know if that would help, but the Shaman Council could try to evacuate people with their ships. The people at Haven might be able to seal themselves into the mountain and survive the quakes and the volcanic ash.
She helped me, and Auby did too, groaning, the torn hide on his flank trembling as he pushed against the slab to give me the wriggle room I needed to free the device. My fingers felt clumsy against my belt when I freed it, and then I dislodged something else first. My body jolted with a lance of hope as I realized what it was, a knife. But not just any knife. It was a laser scalpel. The very one I’d used to cut a hole through the ice to get to Felicia’s ship.
