Before I even realize I am moving, my foot carries me toward him. I step into the tunnel, but he retreats with every advance, drawing me deeper into the shaft until I am so far inside that I can barely see my own hand before my face.
The mine chooses that moment to shudder violently. A deep, groaning rumble breaks through the tunnel as the arch above Vein Three splinters, fractures racing across its surface. The sound is enormous, like the mountain itself is snarling.
I gasp and stumble back towards the entrance just as the entire archway collapses, stone crashing down in a thunderous cascade, sealing me in Vein Three.
I throw my arms over my head, the impact rattling through my bones as debris rains around me. When the dust settles, I find myself wedged inside a narrow pocket of space, a shallow hollow formed by a slab of stone leaning against the collapsed shaft.
Barely enough room to stand.No room to climb.No way out.
“Help!” I slam my palms against the nearest rock, pain ricocheting up my arms. “Pax! Anyone. Please!”
Only a low echo answers me.
I try again, harder, breath ripping from my throat. Dust falls in thin clouds each time I hit the stone, but nothing shifts.
“Please…” My voice thins, the strength draining out of me. “I’m here… I’m right here…”
A draft curls through the cracks in the rocks. Smoke. It drifts softly upward, swirling around my feet, creeping higher with every breath I take.
I press a trembling hand to my mouth.
The darkness seems to tighten around me, slow and hungry, and the smoke keeps rising.
I think I can hear the miners on the other side, axes striking rock, desperate, determined. Trying to save me. But I know how thick this collapse is. How much stone is between us. I know I’m buried beneath a weight no human strength could possibly break through.
I let myself slump against the rock.
This isn’t how I imagined things would end or… maybe it is.
Some part of me has always known that my reckless choices would catch up, eventually. That, the way I leap before I look, the way I hurl myself into danger without a second thought, would land me somewhere like this. That bargaining myself away to a Fae lord, without understanding what that would mean, would change everything, and now here I am, dying in a cave-in of all things.
A dark, incredulous laugh breaks out of me, followed by a harsh cough as smoke scrapes down my throat.
At least the men are safe.I suppose that makes me a hero, like the stories I devoured. I wonder if anyone will write a tale about me. I would have preferred a happier ending.
My eyes flutter. My chest rises a little less each time. There’s a strange tingling in my toes. Cold, freezing cold. Is this what the end feels like?
But the cold doesn’t stop. It spreads.
Frost races over the rock around me, webbing outward in glittering veins, crackling as it consumes the tiny pocket of space I have left. Then, with one thunderous crack, an entire frozen wall of stone shatters.
A hand reaches into the dark.Pale. Threaded with lightning-bright veins. Etched in flaring cobalt runes.
It clamps around my arm and pulls hard, lifting me free of the rubble and sweeping me into a pair of strong, impossibly solid arms.
My eyes flutter open as someone brushes hair from my face, and then I see those mismatched eyes.
“It’s you,” I breathe, drifting in and out of consciousness.
“It’s me.” His voice is low, rougher than usual. “Are you… can you… are you alright, Neve Devlin?”
I don’t know if I’m alive or dead or dreaming, but my filthy fingers lift and curl into that snow-white hair, streaking it with ash.
“Now I am,” I mutter.
And even with stone falling, smoke crawling along the ceiling and my soot-stained hand ruining his perfect hair, something tugs at the corner of his mouth.
A smile.
