“Your bravery is admirable,” he grinds out, “but if you go down there, youwilldie.”
I look at him the same way I looked at Luceran on the frozen lake. With the quiet, immovable certainty of someone who has already stepped past the point of reason.
Someone who refuses to run while others burn.
My voice is hoarse but steady when I say, “I’m going.”
And before he can grab me again, before he can drag me kicking and screaming toward safety, I turn and sprint straight for the tunnel, toward the fire, toward the collapsing stone, toward the screams that I will not ignore.
Behind me, Pax slams his fist into the wall and lets out a furious curse.
But I don’t look back.
I run.
14
The blaze ahead turns Vein Two into a furnace. Heat rolls toward me in suffocating waves, shimmering against the stone as though the whole tunnel is breathing fire.
Yet I run toward it, anyway.
I hear the shouts before I see the men. The pulley shaft hangs crooked, wedged between two warped beams. Sparks spit from the frayed ropes. Through the slats of the half-suspended lift, faces press forward, streaked with soot, wide with panic.
“The pulley’s jammed!” They scream.
The air tastes like ash. My eyes water instantly.
“I’m here!” I call as I stagger toward the mechanism, coughing into the crook of my arm. “Hold on!”
The pulley is a mangled mess. The release lever is bent inward, nearly fused to the gears beneath it. Heat radiates from every surface. When I first grab the metal it sears through my gloves, biting deep enough to make me flinch. But I don’t let go. I brace my boot against the stone wall, wrap both hands around the lever, and haul my weight backward.
It doesn’t move.
Snarling at myself, I reposition, lean in with every shred of strength left. Muscles burn along my arms, my shoulders shaking, smoke stinging my eyes. The mine trembles again, dust falls from the ceiling in a thin, shivering rain, and the men scream inside the shaft.
“I am trying,” I growl, heaving so hard I feel something in my wrist give with a small, agonizing pop. Then, at last, something shifts. Metal groans before tearing free with a shriek. The gears shudder, the ropes snap taut, and the lift slides the rest of the way up the track.
The moment it clatters into place, the men burst through the gate, coughing, stumbling, clinging to the walls as they fight for clean air.
“Go,” I tell them. “Get out.”
They run. All of them. Limping, dragging one another along, shouting warnings as the fire snakes up Vein Two. I take one step after them.
Neve…
My chest tightens. The voice, impossibly gentle through the roar of the flames, so achingly familiar, makes me freeze in my tracks.
Neve… come…
My heartbeat thunders in my ears.
I turn.
The smoke parts just enough to reveal a figure standing at the mouth of Vein Three. Shoulders I know. The tilt of a head I have memorized over a lifetime.
“Father?” My voice cracks around the word.
Come to me, Neve…
