I force a breath into my lungs. The air is so cold it burns on the way down, scraping against my windpipe. I swallow the pain.
“Pam,” I whisper. My voice cuts through the absolute silence of the tunnel. It’s so sharp, and devoid of the fear that’s turning my guts to ice. I don’t know where I found that voice, but I don’t stop to question it. “Mira. Go. Now.”
“I don’t know the way in the dark,” Pam whimpers from the shadows behind me. “I’m going to fall.”
“You are going to put your left hand on the rock wall,” I steady my tone. “And you are going to follow it down the incline until you hit the flat chamber where Alex is waiting. Give Mira your right hand. Do not let go.”
They don’t argue with my tone. Two dark shapes detach from the shadows, their hands blindly gripping each other. They scramble frantically away, their shoes slipping on the uneven stone, heading down the steep, twisting shaft toward the deep chambers.
I turn back toward the cavern floor.
“Amelia,” I hiss, trying to find her in the dark. “Fall back. They’re here.”
“No.” The word is flat.
I squint through the suffocating gloom. There is just enough illumination for me to make out her silhouette.
She is standing, back pressed against the cave wall, a heavy bone spear gripped so tightly in both hands that I can actually hear the subtle, straining creak of the hide against bone.
“Trecia is still hiding in the offshoot to the bathing chamber,” she whispers. “We should get her and head deeper.”
“What? Why didn’t she head to the lower tunnels with the others earlier?”
“All of us hiding in the same spot isn’t a smart plan,” she says.
“Fuck.” She’s right. But one or two of us alone is worse odds.
“Here.” Amelia shoves something hard and bound in rough leather against my chest. A bone knife. She shifts her grip on her own spear, her posture rigid and radiating a stark, aggressive readiness. She has zero intention of dying quietly in the dark. “Go get her.”
I wrap my fist around the hilt, push off the rock wall and sprint down the incline. Ten yards down, tucked into a narrow tunnel leading to the bathing chamber, Trecia is frozen, staring blankly toward the main cavern entrance.
“Trecia.” I snap my fingers. A sharp, stinging sound in the cold air. “Move. Deep chambers?—”
She jumps, the paralysis breaking. “I-”
Another sharpclick-clickechoes distantly from the cavern floor directly below us. I freeze.
My heart drops into my stomach. They are breachingright now. The incline leading back up to the safety of the high tunnel is exposed. If I try to drag a panicked, uncoordinated Trecia back up the steep rock in the open, we are too slow. We will be spotted the second the warriors step into the cavern.
“Change of plan,” I hiss, grabbing her arm and shoving her toward the narrow, twisting side tunnel that loops behind the bathing chamber. “Take the back passage. Go down to the deep chambers the very first chance you get.”
She stumbles, lip trembling, before she bolts into the dark offshoot, scrambling out of sight.
I don’t wait. The second she is gone, I turn and scramble frantically back up the steep incline, my boots slipping on the stone, my heart hammering in my throat with the sheer terror that a towering shadow is going to step out into the cavern below and catch me entirely exposed.
I retreat to my spot near Mikaela, my lungs screaming from the freezing air. Amelia is a rigid shadow to my left, her spear braced against the stone. I look toward the cavern floor.
Below me, directly in the center of the main tunnel entrance, Kol is a towering, terrifying silhouette. His broad chest and dense, roped arms are burning with a blinding, erratic gold. The starfield is pulsing just beneath the surface of his skin in chaotic bursts, like lightning caught in a bottle.
“Okay,” I say to the empty air. I tighten my grip on the rough, leather-wrapped hilt of the bone knife Amelia gave me. It feels exactly like what it is. A piece of a dead animal, unbalanced in my small hand. “Mikaela.”
“Here.” Her voice is hard, steady. She leans in to my right.
“What are they saying?”
The silence drags out.
The click-click has stopped.
