Chapter 14
The blaze ahead turns Vein Two into a furnace. Heat rolls toward me in suffocating waves, shimmering against the stone as though the whole tunnel is breathing fire.
Yet I run toward it, anyway.
I hear the shouts before I see the men. The pulley shaft hangs crooked, wedged between two warped beams. Sparks spit from the frayed ropes. Through the slats of the half-suspended lift, faces press forward, streaked with soot, wide with panic.
“The pulley’s jammed!” They scream.
The air tastes like ash. My eyes water instantly.
“I’m here!” I call as I stagger toward the mechanism, coughing into the crook of my arm. “Hold on!”
The pulley is a mangled mess. The release lever is bent inward, nearly fused to the gears beneath it.
Heat radiates from every surface. When I first grab the metal it sears through my gloves, biting deep enough to make me flinch.
But I don’t let go. I brace my boot against the stone wall, wrap both hands around the lever, and haul my weight backward.
It doesn’t move.
Snarling at myself, I reposition, lean in with every shred of strength left. Muscles burn along my arms, my shoulders shaking, smoke stinging my eyes. The mine trembles again, dust falls from the ceiling in a thin, shivering rain, and the men scream inside the shaft.
“I am trying,” I growl, heaving so hard I feel something in my wrist give with a small, agonizing pop. Then, at last, something shifts. Metal groans before tearing free with a shriek. The gears shudder, the ropes snap taut, and the lift slides the rest of the way up the track.
The moment it clatters into place, the men burst through the gate, coughing, stumbling, clinging to the walls as they fight for clean air.
“Go,” I tell them. “Get out.”
They run. All of them. Limping, dragging one another along, shouting warnings as the fire snakes up Vein Two. I take one step after them.
Neve…
My chest tightens. The voice, impossibly gentle through the roar of the flames, so achingly familiar, makes me freeze in my tracks.
Neve… come…
My heartbeat thunders in my ears.
I turn.
The smoke parts just enough to reveal a figure standing at the mouth of Vein Three. Shoulders I know. The tilt of a head I have memorized over a lifetime.
“Father?” My voice cracks around the word.
Come to me, Neve…
Before I even realize I am moving, my foot carries me toward him. I step into the tunnel, but he retreats with every advance, drawing me deeper into the shaft until I am so far inside that I can barely see my own hand before my face.
The mine chooses that moment to shudder violently. A deep, groaning rumble breaks through the tunnel as the arch above Vein Three splinters, fractures racing across its surface. The sound is enormous, like the mountain itself is snarling.
I gasp and stumble back towards the entrance just as the entire archway collapses, stone crashing down in a thunderous cascade, sealing me in Vein Three.
I throw my arms over my head, the impact rattling through my bones as debris rains around me. When the dust settles, I find myself wedged inside a narrow pocket of space, a shallow hollow formed by a slab of stone leaning against the collapsed shaft.
Barely enough room to stand.No room to climb.No way out.
“Help!” I slam my palms against the nearest rock, pain ricocheting up my arms. “Pax! Anyone. Please!”
Only a low echo answers me.
I try again, harder, breath ripping from my throat. Dust falls in thin clouds each time I hit the stone, but nothing shifts.
“Please…” My voice thins, the strength draining out of me. “I’m here… I’m right here…”
A draft curls through the cracks in the rocks. Smoke. It drifts softly upward, swirling around my feet, creeping higher with every breath I take.
I press a trembling hand to my mouth.
The darkness seems to tighten around me, slow and hungry, and the smoke keeps rising.
I think I can hear the miners on the other side, axes striking rock, desperate, determined. Trying to save me. But I know how thick this collapse is. How much stone is between us. I know I’m buried beneath a weight no human strength could possibly break through.
I let myself slump against the rock.
This isn’t how I imagined things would end or… maybe it is.
Some part of me has always known that my reckless choices would catch up, eventually.
That, the way I leap before I look, the way I hurl myself into danger without a second thought, would land me somewhere like this.
That bargaining myself away to a Fae lord, without understanding what that would mean, would change everything, and now here I am, dying in a cave-in of all things.
A dark, incredulous laugh breaks out of me, followed by a harsh cough as smoke scrapes down my throat.
At least the men are safe.I suppose that makes me a hero, like the stories I devoured. I wonder if anyone will write a tale about me. I would have preferred a happier ending.
My eyes flutter. My chest rises a little less each time. There’s a strange tingling in my toes. Cold, freezing cold. Is this what the end feels like?
But the cold doesn’t stop. It spreads.
Frost races over the rock around me, webbing outward in glittering veins, crackling as it consumes the tiny pocket of space I have left. Then, with one thunderous crack, an entire frozen wall of stone shatters.
A hand reaches into the dark.Pale. Threaded with lightning-bright veins. Etched in flaring cobalt runes.
It clamps around my arm and pulls hard, lifting me free of the rubble and sweeping me into a pair of strong, impossibly solid arms.
My eyes flutter open as someone brushes hair from my face, and then I see those mismatched eyes.
“It’s you,” I breathe, drifting in and out of consciousness.
“It’s me.” His voice is low, rougher than usual. “Are you… can you… are you alright, Neve Devlin?”
I don’t know if I’m alive or dead or dreaming, but my filthy fingers lift and curl into that snow-white hair, streaking it with ash.
“Now I am,” I mutter.
And even with stone falling, smoke crawling along the ceiling and my soot-stained hand ruining his perfect hair, something tugs at the corner of his mouth.
A smile.
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!”
They listen. Fleeing toward the exit in a frantic stream.
I stay.
My mind races. But there is no pulley to unjam, no shaft for him to climb, no easy path back. The hole is deep and pitch-black. I can’t see the bottom. Fifty feet? A hundred? A thousand?
Is he alive, or was he gone the instant the rock gave way?
I take a step back, bow my head as the cavern rumbles.
Then a sound. A scratch. Pebbles cascading. A long, deep howl vibrating up through the stone.
I whirl back to the edge, lean close, and stare hard into the dark, listening.
A massive white paw bursts from the shadows, claws screeching as they bite into the rock. Another follows, raking through stone as if it were paper, muscles bunching beneath ivory fur. Then, rising from the black, the wolf’s head emerges.
Luceran.
He claws his way up the wall of the chasm, dragging himself closer with sheer, feral strength. His breath steams in the smoky air, each exhale a cloud of frost, and I notice his runes pulse faintly under the thick winter pelt.
When he’s close enough, I reach out without thinking, pressing my hand to his enormous paw, trembling with effort. My fingers barely wrap around a single claw, but still I hold on, pulling with everything I have.
“Come on,” I whisper, breath shaking. “Come on.”
With a final, thunderous heave of his powerful body, he surges upward, hauls himself over the edge, and collapses beside me, panting and shuddering.
But even after the effort, something is wrong.
He lies too still. His breathing is shallow, barely there, ragged gasps tearing free in broken yelps that twist something deep in my chest.
I run a hand through his fur, then cup his trembling muzzle as his whiskers twitch beneath my fingers.
“Lord Luceran,” I whisper.
Slowly his body begins to change.
The fur recedes, shedding away to reveal pale skin beneath. Claws twist and shorten into hands and feet. The massive frame shrinks, folds inward, until at last his face is revealed, contorted with agony.
I gather him into my arms as he reaches for his chest, clawing at the place where his heart beats beneath his ribs, and suddenly I understand.
“Breathe,” I say, forcing calm into my voice even as panic surges through me, sharp and suffocating. “Deep breaths. Just breathe.”
I have no herbs. No tonics.
All I can do is stay with him. Beg him to steady himself.
He tries. I can see it in the way his body strains, in the effort etched into every line of him, but then his muscles seize, his body convulsing violently in my arms.
“What’s happening to him?” Pax asks, fear cutting through his voice.
“We need to get him back to the castle,” I say, already wrenching off my coat. The fabric tears as I drag it free, but I don’t care as I drape it over his bare body. “Help me. We have to get him to the carriage.”
It takes everything Pax and I have to move him. He’s dead weight between us, each step a brutal effort. When we near the entrance, miners who’ve made it to safety rush in to help.
We load him into the carriage as sprites flurry frantically around us.
I climb in after him. Pax shuts the door, his face pale as he watches through the window while the horses lurch forward and break into a run.
Inside the carriage, I sink to the floor with Luceran in my arms, my coat wrapped tight around him. I brush the hair from his eyes, my fingers shaking.
I press my hand hard against his chest, as if I can force the muscle beneath to remember its duty. To beat. To keep him here.
His eyes flicker open as he struggles for breath. Slowly his hand lifts and settles over mine, his fingers curl. Then his eyes close again.