Chapter 21
twenty-one
The first twenty feet weren’t bad. The handholds were solid, the anchors secure. But as he climbed higher, the ice became more brittle, forcing him to test each grip before committing his weight. His muscles burned with the effort, and his bare hand grew numb against the frozen surface.
Forty feet up, he paused to catch his breath. Sweat trickled down his spine despite the cold, immediately chilling against his skin. Below, Rue watched his progress, her headlamp beam tracking his movements.
“How’s it looking?” she called up.
“Doable,” he replied, though his shoulder screamed with every pull. The fall had done more damage than he’d admitted, but there was no point in complaining now. The only way out was up.
“I’m coming,” Rue called and clipped into the first anchor.
He watched her climb with his heart in his throat, noticing how she favored her right side.
The ankle was worse than she’d let on—of course it was.
Rue never admitted when she was hurt until she physically couldn’t stand anymore.
It was both infuriating and admirable, like everything else about her.
“Take it slow,” he called down, though he knew it was useless. Rue Bristow had never taken anything slow in her life.
She moved with surprising grace despite the injury, her body finding natural rhythms in the ice that he’d struggled to locate. Where he had muscled his way up, she flowed, conserving energy with each precise movement. Even injured and freezing, she made climbing look like a dance.
“How’s the ankle?” he asked when she reached the anchor point just below him.
“It’s attached,” she quipped, her breath forming small clouds in the frigid air. “Which is more than I can say for some of these handholds.”
A chunk of ice broke away from her grip, tumbling into the darkness below. The sound of it shattering echoed through the chamber, reminding him just how far they’d have to fall.
“Next anchor’s about six feet up,” he said, pointing. “The ice gets thinner. Test everything.”
She nodded and continued upward, following his path.
Elliot resumed his own climb, hyperaware of every sound she made beneath him.
The scrape of her boot against ice, the soft grunt of effort when she reached for a difficult hold, the creak of her harness as she adjusted her weight.
His own body protested each movement, his knee threatening to buckle every time he put weight on it, but he pushed through the pain. He had to keep going. For both of them.
They climbed like that for what felt like hours.
The muscles in his shoulders screamed, and blood from a cut on his forehead trickled down, stinging his left eye.
At some point, his boot slipped, and for one heart-stopping moment, he dangled by a single hand, the pain in his wrist white-hot.
Rue was beside him in an instant, one leg braced against the wall, the other hooking around his torso in a half-bear hug.
“Got you,” she said through gritted teeth, her voice strained with effort.
The warmth of her body pressed against his sent a shock of relief through his system, even as he scrambled to regain his footing. Her leg muscles trembled with the strain of supporting both their weights, and he could feel her breathing hard against his shoulder.
“Thanks,” he managed, finding purchase on the ice again. His wrist throbbed where he’d caught himself, already swelling inside his glove.
“Don’t mention it.” She released him slowly, making sure he was stable before letting go completely. “Though next time, maybe give me a heads up before you decide to take flying lessons.”
The casual joke didn’t hide the worry in her voice. He’d scared her—scared himself, too. One slip like that could end everything.
They continued upward, but the ice grew increasingly unstable. What had seemed solid from below revealed itself to be little more than a crystalline shell over empty space. Twice, handholds crumbled under his grip, sending cascades of razor-sharp fragments into the abyss below.
His headlamp beam caught something above—a different quality of darkness that made his pulse quicken with hope. “I think I see the surface,” he called down.
The final twenty feet were the worst. The shaft narrowed forcing them to press their backs against one wall and their feet against the other. Elliot’s muscles trembled with the effort of maintaining the awkward position.
“Chimney technique,” Rue called up, her voice strained but steady. “Just like Devil’s Tower, remember?”
He did remember. Three years ago, a rock climbing trip in Wyoming that had started as a training exercise and ended with them sharing a bottle of whiskey under the stars.
She’d been dating someone then—some photographer with a man bun and an attitude—but that night, it had just been the two of them, and for a brief moment, he’d let himself imagine what it would be like if it was always just the two of them.
“Yeah,” he grunted, pushing the memory away. “Except colder and with more chance of dying.”
Her laugh echoed up the shaft, a bright sound in the frozen darkness. “Where’s your sense of adventure, Wilde?”
“I left it in New York. Along with my common sense.”
He inched higher, his back braced against the ice wall. A sharp edge caught his coat, tearing the fabric further. Cold air sliced through the new opening.
Every so often, the world above would shift—a gust of wind, a rattle of falling snow, the ominous groan of the glacier settling.
Each time, he’d stop and listen, forcing his breathing down to something controlled and manageable.
Each time, she’d roll her eyes and call him a chicken, or some variation thereof, but she always waited for his nod before continuing.
Finally, blessedly,
He lay there for a moment, gasping, his body screaming with exhaustion. Snow floated down from the heavy gray clouds overhead, landing on his face. The storm had weakened, at least for now.
“Elliot?” Rue called from below, her voice echoing in the shaft. “You dead or what?”
He crawled back to the edge of the opening, peering down into the darkness. She was twenty feet below, her face illuminated by the glow of his headlamp. Strands of honey-gold hair had escaped her hat, plastered to her forehead with sweat and ice.
“Not dead yet,” he replied. “But the day’s still young.”
Watching her climb those final twenty feet was torture. Every time she shifted her weight, every pause to catch her breath, sent his pulse spiking. The rope went taut as she reached the narrowest part of the chimney, and he heard her sharp intake of breath.
“Talk to me,” he said.
“Ankle’s not happy,” she admitted, her voice tight with pain. “But it’s holding.”
When her hand finally appeared at the edge of the opening, he grabbed her wrist and hauled her up, probably too fast, too rough, but he couldn’t help himself. The relief of having her solid and safe under his hands was overwhelming.
She collapsed beside him, breathing hard, her face flushed with exertion despite the cold. Ice crystals had formed on her eyelashes, and her lips were definitely blue now, but she was alive. They were both alive.
For a long moment, they just lay there side by side, the snow gathering on their bodies like a thin blanket.
Elliot stared up at the gray sky, letting the flakes melt against his face.
Each breath sent pain lancing through his ribs, but it was real pain—living pain. The kind that meant they’d survived.
“We made it,” he murmured, more to himself than to Rue.
She turned her head toward him, her face inches from his. “Was there ever any doubt?”
The absolute certainty in her voice made him want to laugh and shake her at the same time. Of course there was doubt. There had been nothing but doubt from the moment they’d fallen into that crevasse. But that was Rue—fearless to the point of recklessness, confident to the edge of delusion.
It was going to get her killed someday. The thought hit him like a physical blow, stealing his breath more effectively than the fall had.
“Where are we?” he asked, pushing himself up to sitting position. His body protested every movement, muscles trembling with fatigue.
Rue sat up beside him, wincing as she put weight on her injured ankle. She scanned the horizon, squinting against the falling snow. “Hard to tell. But look—” She pointed to a dark shape in the distance, barely visible through the swirling white. “That could be the station.”
Elliot shaded his eyes, trying to make out the shape. It was too large to be one of the snow cats, and the wrong shape for a natural formation. “Could be,” he agreed. “Or it could be another research outpost. We don’t know how far the tunnel system took us.”
“Only one way to find out.” Rue started to push herself to her feet, but her leg buckled beneath her. She caught herself before she fell, but not before Elliot saw the flash of pain cross her face.
“Let me see,” he said, already reaching for her ankle.
“It’s fine,” she insisted, but didn’t pull away when his hands closed around her boot.
Carefully, he unlaced it and eased it off. The tape job he’d done in the cave had held, but her ankle had swollen further, straining against the wrapping. When he gently probed the joint, she sucked in a sharp breath.
“That’s not good,” he muttered.
“It’s just a sprain.”
“A bad one.” He looked up at her face, trying to gauge how much pain she was really in. “Can you walk?”
“Of course I can walk.” She said it like he’d asked if she could breathe. “Just help me get my boot back on.”
He did, though it took both of them working together to ease it over the swollen joint. When she tried to stand again, he slipped his arm around her waist, taking some of her weight.
“I don’t need?—”
He didn’t wait for her to finish the protest; instead, he tightened his arm around her. “We both know you’d crawl to that station on your hands and knees if you had to, but there’s no point in making it harder than necessary.”
She shot him a look that could have melted the glacier beneath them, but didn’t pull away.
That was something, at least.