“You throw. I land on the far shelf. I secure the line from my pack. You cross after.”
“You have one good arm.”
“I have one excellent arm.”
“Sera.”
“The alternative is you carry me and we both fall when the shelf breaks under your weight.”
She is right. I hate her for it.
No. I love—no.
Not here. Not now. Not with stone dying around us.
The word is a tunnel I cannot enter. The rhythm pulses. The ground answers. No more time.
I wrap one arm around her waist. Her body goes rigid for half a breath. Then she nods once. Permission. Choice.
I lift her. She is too light. Still too light. Anger burns through fear. Later. If we live, later.
I turn and measure the far shelf, the angle, the broken lip where she might land, the cracks under it, the movement of the wall. My body knows force. Hers knows route.
“Feet first,” she says.
“I know.”
“Not too high.”
“I know.”
“If I hit the upper rib, I’ll bounce wrong.”
“I know.”
“Do not look like that.”
“I do not know what that means.”
“Yes, you do.”
The shelf beneath us drops another finger-width. I throw. Releasing her tears through me.
For one terrible breath, she touches neither earth nor me, held by nothing but momentum and trust. Then she lands on the far shelf, rolls hard, and slams shoulder-first into the wall.
Not on her wounded side. Good.
She gasps, but her hand is already moving.
She reaches for the line from her pack. The pack that hangs from my shoulder. No. Her pack is still on my back. The line is with me.
Her eyes meet mine from across the gap.
For one impossible beat, both of us realize it. Then she smiles. Not soft. Savage.
“I hate when plans improve themselves,” she says. She wedges her quiet knife into a crack beside her and braces her boot under a stone lip. “Throw me the line.”
I tear the coiled line from the side of her pack and throw it. She catches it one-handed. The shelf under me splits.
