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“Lead the way, Captain,” he said.

I took his weight again, and we stumbled back out into the corridor, moving deeper into the dark, leaving the world of the Academy above us. We were ghosts now, glitches in the system, and if we survived the night, we were going to make them pay for every drop of blood they had spilled.

CHAPTER 33

LEANDER

We descended into the bowels of the Academy, leaving the polished corridors behind for a world of rusted catwalks and steam pipes wrapped in decaying insulation. The temperature rose with every step, pressing a wet heat against my skin until the sweat ran freely down my back. The silence of the detention block was gone, replaced by the groaning of heavy machinery, the deep mechanical heartbeat of the facility.

Felix was struggling under the weight. Tremors ran through his frame where his shoulder was wedged under my arm, betraying the exhaustion he refused to voice. He was deceptively strong, built with that wired efficient power that usually made him look weightless on the field, but carrying my dead weight for twenty minutes had drained him. His breath came in ragged gasps, and his tuxedo shirt clung to his chest like a second skin, translucent with sweat.

“Almost there,” he wheezed, dragging me forward.

“You’re going to pass out,” I said, trying to shift more of my weight onto the medical boot, though the heavy plastic clunked uselessly against the metal grating. The boot could take half a second of load at a time, and every half second went up the shin and into the break. “Drop me, Felix. I can crawl.”

“Shut up,” he snapped, though the words lacked heat, carrying only the weight of his exhaustion. “Just keep moving, because if we stop now, I won’t be able to start again.”

The catwalk ended at a massive blast door where the manual wheel had rusted in place. Felix kicked it, sending a metal-on-metal shriek through the vast hollow space, and the door swung open just enough for us to squeeze through.

We stumbled inside the Boiler Room, a cavern of noise and heat. Towering turbines hummed with a bone-shaking vibration that fed the thermal grid of the entire complex, punctuated every few seconds by the hiss-clank of a steam vent releasing pressure. An orange warning light on the central furnace strobed rhythmically, casting a slow beat across the metal grating. It was loud and dirty. A place for machines, not people, where no one would look for us.

Felix took three more steps before dragging me to a pile of canvas tarps near the control console, his legs finally giving out.

We hit the floor together. I managed to keep the bad leg straight, gritting my teeth against the jolt that shot up my shin, while Felix sprawled next to me. He rolled onto his back, threw an arm over his eyes, mouth open as he fought for enough oxygen to keep consciousness.

The Ice Prince was gone, melted down into a puddle of sweat and exhaustion. His platinum hair was gray with dust, and his knuckles were scraped raw, like he had gone ten rounds in a boxing match. I had never wanted him more than I did in that moment, seeing the wreckage of his perfection laid out on a dirty tarp.

I dragged myself into a sitting position against the metal console and reached out to grab his wrist, pulling his arm away from his face.

“Look at me,” I said.

Felix blinked, his blue eyes hazy and unfocused as he looked from the ceiling to me. A delirious smile spread across his face. “We made it.”

“Yeah, we did,” I said, shifting to take the pressure off the ligaments. “But you look like shit, Princess.”

He laughed, a dry, cracking sound. “You don’t look much better.”

He tried to sit up, but a wince cut the movement short, his hand flying to his shoulder. He made a small, pained noise that he tried to swallow and failed.

“Turn around,” I said.

“I’m fine. I just need to check your leg.”

“Do it now, Felix.”

He hesitated, but the fight had drained out of him. He rotated slowly, presenting his back to me. The white dress shirt was ruined, stained with grease and sweat, but it was the shape of his back that stopped me cold. The fabric pulled tight across his shoulders, showing the unnatural hunch where the muscles had locked up from carrying two hundred pounds of dead weight down six flights of stairs.

“Take the shirt off,” I commanded.

He fumbled with the buttons, fingers clumsy, and shrugged the shirt off his shoulders so it pooled at his waist.

His skin was pale, glowing in the orange light of the indicators, but his left shoulder was a mess. A deep, angry bruise was already forming where my arm had dug into the muscle, turning the skin a violent shade of purple. His traps had locked in a spasm, hard as rock under the skin.

“Shit, Felix,” I muttered.

I moved closer, dragging the boot across the tarp in stages, and placed my hands on his shoulders, feeling the heat radiating off him. His skin was burning hot, slick with sweat. He flinched at the contact, muscles bunching defensively, but I didn’t pull away.

“Relax,” I said. “I’m not going to break you.”