He turned away, scanning the ravine’s lip as if it held secret escape routes. Sweat beaded at his hairline, his chest rising and falling beneath his sweat-darkened shirt.
Every muscle in his arms and shoulders stood out, taut like coiled ropes. My gaze flicked over the rigid planes of his back, the sinew of his neck.
My pulse skipped. Heat flushed my cheeks. Why was I evennoticing this?
Did I just check out Caiden Baxter? Hell. I needed to snap out of it.
I pushed myself upright. The gravel crunched underfoot. Caiden glanced back. “Princess done marinating?”
I leveled him with a mock-courtly bow. “Madam is refreshed and ready for duty.”
He rolled his eyes, impassive. I swept my gaze across the broken trail, peering for any narrow ledge or fallen boulder we could use as a makeshift bridge.
My stomach growled, probably from hunger, or the adrenaline, or both.
“Maybe we can skirt the edge,” I suggested, voice steadier than I felt. “Ravines don’t go on forever.”
He crossed his arms. “I’m not wasting time on some fairy-tale detour.”
“Since when did you get to call all the shots?” I shot back, chest tightening.
“I did,” he said sharply. “Because I know how to navigate the wilderness better than you.”
I feigned an epileptic swoon, clutching my chest. “Oh dear, my intelligence and abilities insulted, what shall I do?”
“Knock it off, Amelia.” He threatened.
“Am I annoying you? Did I hit a nerve? So sorry, your highness,” I paused and scowled. “Not sorry.”
He ignored me, then abruptly barked, “Found something.”
My heart lifted. “Really?”
“Yeah,” he said, voice wary, “but you might hate it.”
We edged a few steps down a narrow berm, the air growing cooler as shadows gathered in the ravine’s crevasse. Before us lay a massive fallen fir, its roots ripped up like the skeletal hands of some buried giant. The trunk spanned the abyss, though it stopped short of the far side. Its limbs curled down into the void, gnarled fingers brushing the rocky wall.
“This?” I echoed.
He nodded. “We’ll shimmy along the log, then climb the last stretch of the cliff face.”
I stared at that moss-speckled wood suspended above a drop that made my knees go weak. My heart hammered. Every instinctscreamed no. No heights, no risk, no trial by tree trunk that might snap underfoot.
But there was no other choice. My pulse thudded in my ears as I swallowed hard. The journey wasn’t over, not by a long shot.
“You’re insane,” I said, the words spilling out in disbelief. The thought of navigating that treacherous path exhausted me further.
“Now is not the time to be stubborn,” Caiden said, his voice low against the roar of the wind slicing through the ravine.
I pressed my arms across my chest, feeling the coarse weave of my jacket dig into my elbows. “I’m not being stubborn,” I shot back, jaw tight. “I’d rather conserve what little energy I have, and keep my life, than risk it all trying something I’m not capable of.”
His brow lifted, a single dark hair arching in silent disbelief. “You really don’t have much faith in yourself.”
A bitter laugh escaped me as I glared at him. “Yeah. I don’t. Sorry to burst your bubble. Must be from all those years of abuse and degradation.” I tasted blood in my mouth, an old wound reopening.
“Don’t play the pity card,” he snapped, his voice rough with memory. “I’ve endured plenty of abuse too, from my father. But I’m not going to stand here whining about it. If you can’t believe in yourself, believe in me. We’re getting across.”
I turned to stare down into the maw of the ravine: sheer rock walls, twisted roots clinging to shale, and a narrow strip of light at the bottom where the forest floor lay bathed in shadow.
