At last.
A real smile.
Then the ground beneath us heaves.
The quake jolts through his arms, through my whole body, as a jagged crack splits the rock beneath us. I look down, watch the earth tear itself apart, then turn back to those clashing eyes.
We stare at each other in a silence that feels like it stretches for oceans, an eternity suspended between heartbeats. Even though I know it lasts only a single breath.
Luceran’s jaw clenches. His eyes lock onto mine with something fierce and final in them.
Then he throws me.
His hands leave my body in a violent rush, and I’m airborne, soaring backward through smoke and broken air. I don’t care where I land. I don’t care if I hit rock or flame or empty space. I only care that he is suddenly far from me.
But I don’t hit the ground. Instead I crash into Pax’s arms, Pax and the few miners who’d tried to dig me out before Luceran arrived.
“Neve! Are you alright?” Pax asks, gripping my shoulders, but his words barely register. They might as well be echoes from another world.
I turn.
I search for Luceran.
Fear trembles through me, not for myself, but for him. For what waits below. For what the Aurevault seems eager to claim.
He looks at me one last time. Then, without a word, he closes his eyes as the stone beneath him gives way, and he falls into the dark.
“No!” The scream rips from me.
I tear free from Pax, scrambling to my feet. I sprint toward the widening tear in the rock, boots slipping on broken stone. I skid to a halt just before I pitch over the edge myself.
I look down.
Into nothing.
A vast, devouring dark opens below.
He came when I needed him. He pulled me from the dark and now he’s gone. I had only just drawn a smile from him. One single, fleeting smile. There are a thousand more I need to see. This cannot be the end. Not yet. Not when I’d glimpsed the male behind the wall of ice.
“Luceran!” I scream into the chasm.
Only my own voice returns, warped by the hollow space below.
The Aurevault is still shaking. Stones rain down like falling stars as miners turn in panic and sprint for the entrance. My head snaps toward Vein Two, the memory of fire flooding that shaft burning sharp in my mind. But there is no sign of it. Instead, the entire cavern has been frozen solid.
Luceran may have contained the fire, but even he cannot stop the mine itself from coming down.
Pax and a few others linger, torn between fear and duty.
“What do we do?” one asks. “Do we try to get him out?”
“Yes,” another says immediately. “He is a Fae lord. We must.”
“Of course not!” someone else shouts. “This is our chance for freedom! Leave him to rot!”
My head snaps over my shoulder, fury blazing hot through the haze of smoke. Before I can unleash it, Pax steps between the men, steady even with the cavern crumbling around us.
“Enough! Get to safety. All of you. Now!”
