Chapter 8
Ember
The cold bites through my borrowed jacket as I stumble forward through the packed snow. Luke’s moving briskly, his silhouette dark in the early morning light. I’m pretty sure we’ve left no sign that we’ve been here. No ash. No footprints. Nothing to give us away.
I reach inward out of habit, searching for the heat that’s always been there, the fire waiting beneath my ribs.
Silence.
The absence punches through me again, fresh as the first time. I curl my fingers into fists, fighting the vertigo that comes with feeling hollow. My magic isn’t gone. It can’t be. But right now, there’s nothing but empty space where power should live.
“All good?” Luke’s voice cuts through the mist.
I nod, brushing pine needles from my pants. Despite the sleep, the weight of exhaustion settles into my bones, the kind that comes from running on adrenaline for far too long.
“You sure?” he presses, clearly not convinced.
“I… um…” I gnaw on my lip. “I need to um… pee.”
I’m going to die.
“Fine,” he says, turning his back. “Make it quick.”
I realize this is as much privacy as I’m going to get, and look around for a likely spot, spying a cluster of shrubs nearby.
Great. Al fresco potty break.
Barely two minutes later, I’m pulling my zipper up and stumbling back over the uneven footing to where he’s still standing facing away.
“All done?” he says over his shoulder.
“Yes,” I answer, my voice small.
Dead. I’m dead.
Without a word, he sets off again, walking as if nothing happened. Probably a non-event for him. Then again, he’s a soldier; they deal with this stuff all the time, don’t they?
Grow up, Ember. It could be worse.
Yeah. I could be on fire.
Or in Syndicate hands.
I have bigger things to worry about.
Keeping my thoughts to myself, I follow him as we move downhill through wet pine needles that muffle our footsteps.
My breath fogs white in the cold air. Above us, the sky bleeds pale gray through the canopy, but true dawn still feels hours away.
The forest presses close: dripping branches, moss-slick stones, the sharp scent of rotting wood.
My boot catches on a root hidden beneath the snow. I stumble, catching myself against a tree trunk before I go down completely.
Luke glances back. “Careful.”
“I’m fine,” I snap, then feel guilty almost immediately. Luke’s been nothing but supportive and resourceful since we got stuck out here. Still, it burns to feel like he’s treating me like a child.
Because you practically are one, Ember.
We push deeper into the trees, the silence between us stretching taut. I keep my eyes on the ground, watching for roots and rocks, trying not to think about how vulnerable I am without flame. How human I feel.
The sound of engines drifts up from below.
Luke goes rigid. His hand shoots out, catching my wrist and jerking me to a halt. I freeze, heart hammering, and scan the slope ahead.
The engines cut out.
Movement between the pines; figures in gray fatigues spread in a wide grid pattern. Six of them. Maybe more beyond my line of sight. They move with precision, each one carrying equipment that hums with a frequency I feel in my teeth.
“Syndicate,” Luke mouths, though he doesn’t need to tell me.
One agent raises a device that pulses with sickly pale light. The glow sweeps across tree trunks, painting everything in washed-out brilliance. When it passes over a patch of disturbed earth, the light flares brighter.
Tracking tech. I wouldn’t be surprised if they had technology to identify dragon presence.
My stomach sinks. How much trace energy did I leave behind at the campsite? How much am I leaving now with every step?
Luke tugs me sideways toward a massive fallen trunk, its bark black with rot. We drop behind it, pressing ourselves flat against the damp wood. Pine needles dig into my palms. My breath comes too fast, too loud in the sudden stillness.
Below us, boots crunch through underbrush. The hum of their equipment grows sharper, higher-pitched.
A radio crackles. “Sector seven. Expanding sweep pattern to grid eight.”
“Copy that. Still no contact since the mountain incident.”
“Command wants confirmation. If there were survivors, they’d be running on fumes by now.”
My blood turns to ice. Survivors. They’re looking for survivors.
One operative breaks from the pattern, angling uphill. Straight toward us.
My pulse roars in my ears. The agent moves with unhurried certainty, his scanner raised like a weapon. Twenty meters. Fifteen.
A gasp escapes me—sharp, involuntary.
Luke’s hand clamps over my mouth.
The contact shocks through me, his palm warm and rough against my lips, his other arm wrapping around my shoulders to pull me back against his chest. Not gently. Not asking permission. Pure survival instinct overriding everything else.
I should hate this. Should resent being silenced, controlled.
But his heartbeat thuds against my spine—steady, controlled—and something in me steadies with it. His body shields mine, solid and unmovable, and for the first time since my fire went silent, I don’t feel like I’m floating away into nothing.
I focus on that rhythm, letting it drown out the screaming in my head that says run, move, fight. But fighting won’t work. Not without fire. Not against six armed agents with tech designed to hunt what I am.
So I stay frozen in Luke’s arms, breathing through my nose in shallow sips as the agent stops three meters away.
He turns his head, scanning the forest. The pale light from his device washes over the trunk we’re hiding behind, painting the rotted wood in sterile white.
One second. Two. Three.
Static crackles from his earpiece. “Sector seven clear. Moving to eight.”
“Any thermal hits?”
“Negative. Nothing more than deer.”
He pivots and stalks back downhill.
I don’t move. Neither does Luke. We stay locked together, his chest rising and falling against my back, his breath warm against my hair. The operatives’ voices fade into the distance, but still we don’t separate.
My awareness narrows to points of contact: his arm across my ribs. His palm still resting over my mouth, even though I’m not making a sound. The solid heat of him pressed along every inch of my spine.
Heat that has nothing to do with fire and everything to do with the way his thumb has started tracing absent circles against my jaw.
Does he even realize he’s doing it?
My breath hitches. His hand stills.
Then he pulls back abruptly, releasing me and putting space between us in one swift movement. His expression is guarded in the dim light, but tension radiates off him.
“We need to move,” he says, voice rough. “Now.”
We navigate the slope in tense silence, Luke staying a few steps ahead. My shoulder still burns where it pressed against his chest. My mouth still tingles from the ghost pressure of his palm.
I shake it off. Focus on the terrain. On staying alive.
The voices below have faded, but they’re still out there. Hunting. Looking for survivors who should be dead by now.
The terrain steepens as we climb. My thighs burn with the effort of hauling myself over rocks and exposed roots. Sweat sticks my shirt to my back despite the cold. Luke moves ahead of me with the confidence of someone who’s walked terrain like this before.
“You know where we’re going,” I say. Not a question.
“I was here with Aurora and the Cravens when they launched their attack.” His voice is low, clipped. “These tunnels… the Syndicate tried to use them to wake the Sleeping King. The Circle stopped them.”
I give a nod. “When Iris found her brother. Was this the actual location?”
“Pretty much.” He doesn’t look back. “This general region. I remember the rock formations.”
I drag myself up another boulder, fingers numb against stone, and pause at the top to catch my breath. The forest opens slightly here, revealing a wall of jagged cliffs rising ahead of us. Dark cracks split the rock face, entrances to caves that have seen recent battle.
But something in me recognizes them.
I press my palm against the stone beneath me. Cold granite bites into my skin, but beneath the chill, there’s a pulse. Faint. Distant. Like a heartbeat buried deep in the earth.
I’ve felt this before.
“I remember this,” I whisper.
Luke glances back, frowning. “From the battle? You weren’t here.”
“From my dreams.” I still feel awkward saying it. “Before I even knew about the Sleeping King. I saw these caverns.”
His expression shutters. “Ancestral memory. Dragons inherit knowledge through bloodlines.”
“Whose memory?” I push to my feet, unsettled. “Why would I remember this place?”
He doesn’t answer. Maybe because he doesn’t know. Or maybe because the answer is something neither of us wants to face yet.
A mechanical whine cuts through the air.
We both freeze.
The sound builds, high-pitched and metallic, growing louder with every second. I scan the sky through the tree cover and spot it: a black shape cutting across the gray dawn, spotlight blazing beneath its belly.
Drone.
Shit!
“Run!” Luke’s hand locks around mine, yanking me forward.
We sprint.
His grip is iron-tight, his pace punishing. I stagger, barely keeping my feet under me as he drags me through the underbrush. Branches whip my face and snag in my hair. The light sweeps through the forest behind us, bright as a false sun, illuminating every trunk and shadow with brutal clarity.
But I don’t pull away from his hand.
Don’t want to.
The contact grounds me, his fingers threaded through mine, his strength pulling me forward when my legs want to give out. It’s not gentle. Not romantic. Just desperate momentum and shared terror.
And yet…
My palm burns where it meets his. My pulse hammers in my wrists, my throat, low in my stomach. Every time he glances back to check I’m still with him, something electric arcs between us.
The cliff wall looms ahead. Fifty meters. Forty.
My lungs scream. My legs feel like they’re made of lead. My ankle is on fire.
The light catches us, painting our backs in white brilliance.
“There!” Luke points toward a jagged crack splitting two massive boulders. Barely wide enough for a person to squeeze through.
We throw ourselves at it. I hit the opening first, his hand still locked in mine as we twist sideways and shove into darkness. The stone scrapes my shoulder raw. Luke crashes in behind me, our bodies colliding as we tumble into the narrow space beyond. Our grip finally breaks as we fall.
The spotlight flares over the rock face outside, so bright I can see it through closed eyelids. Then it passes, sweeping onward, leaving us in utter blackness.
I’m panting. Gasping. Pressed so close to Luke that I can feel every heaving breath he takes. My mouth tastes like copper; I must have bitten my lip during the scramble. His breath is rough against my hair, his hands braced on either side of my shoulders to keep from crushing me entirely.
Neither of us moves.
The darkness is absolute. No light bleeds in from outside. Just the sound of our breathing and the frantic hammering of my heart.
My hand throbs where he held it. Where I didn’t want him to let go.
Then—voices. Faint. Mechanical. Filtered through comms equipment.
“Thermal traces confirmed. They’re alive.”
“Copy. Continuing grid sweep. They won’t last long in this cold.”
Luke goes rigid.
I press my hand over my mouth to muffle the sound of my breathing, but it doesn’t help. The drone saw us. The Syndicate knows exactly where we went.
“They know we’re here,” Luke mutters against the dark.