Chapter 12
Ember
I follow him out of the alcove, fighting not to remember how his arms felt wrapped around me. How his heart beat beneath my palm. How much I wanted to stay exactly where I was.
The embarrassment is still there, settling cold in my stomach. But underneath it runs something sharper.
Disappointment.
Stop thinking about it, you idiot!
Gritting my teeth to focus on what we’re doing, I turn my full attention to where he’s walking ahead. Within minutes, we’ve picked up the steady pace we’d set previously, making our way past dripping walls and rock that gleams in the dim light.
The tunnel narrows as we descend.
Luke moves ahead with that same fluid grace, reading the stone and shadows like a language I don’t speak. His torch beam sweeps across walls slick with moisture, and I watch the way his shoulders shift beneath his gear. Try not to notice how the vest fits him snugly. Fail.
My hands still remember the feel of his skin. Warm and solid and so completely different from the man he shows the world.
I curl them into fists.
Stop it.
But I can’t. The memory follows me with every step. The weight of his arms around my body. The way his breathing matched mine. The hard evidence that his body responded to me, even if he won’t.
Heat floods my face again as I recall the pressure of his cock against my hip. I could have slid my hand down and curled my fingers around it. And of course, he would have stopped me.
God, this is humiliating.
I’m twenty-one years old, and I’ve never felt so completely out of my depth. Every other part of my life, I’ve managed to fake competence. Magic. Politics. Survival. But this? Whatever this is between us that he keeps shutting down?
I have no idea what I’m doing.
And he knows it. That’s the worst part. He sees right through every attempt I make to seem older, more experienced, more in control. Sees the girl underneath who doesn’t have the first clue how to navigate whatever this tension is.
The tunnel floor slopes downward. My boot catches on loose rock, and I stumble.
Luke’s hand shoots out immediately, steadying me without even looking back.
“Careful.”
His touch burns through fabric. Then he’s released me and kept moving like it meant nothing.
Maybe it did. Mean nothing.
Of course it meant nothing, Ember.
I’m reading significance into moments that are just practical necessity. Body heat for survival. Steadying hands to prevent falls. Physical reactions that don’t mean anything beyond biology.
Morning wood, right? Isn’t that what they call it?
No big deal.
The thought should be reassuring.
It’s not.
I force myself to focus. We’re in Syndicate territory with agents hunting us, and no magic to defend myself. Now is not the time to obsess over a man who’s made it perfectly clear nothing is going to happen between us.
Except he was hard against me in the dark, and his voice was rough when he said “Don’t,” and I can’t stop replaying the way his hand wrapped around my wrist.
The vest shifts as he moves, and I tear my gaze away from his impossibly broad shoulders with something close to desperation.
Think about something else. Anything else.
But there’s nothing else. Just the darkness and the cold and the awareness that won’t fade, no matter how hard I try to ignore it.
Maybe it’s the stress. The circumstances. Fear and adrenaline and proximity creating false intimacy where none exists.
That has to be it.
Because the alternative—that this is real, that I actually want him despite all the reasons I shouldn’t—is too much to handle right now.
Luke glances back. “Keep up.”
Not “Are you okay?” or “How are you holding up?” Just a command wrapped in concern he won’t voice.
“I’m right behind you,” I say.
His eyes narrow slightly. Reading something in my expression that I don’t want him to see. Then he turns away again without comment.
We keep walking.
The tunnel widens briefly before splitting into two passages.
Luke stops at the junction, sweeping his torch across both options.
The left passage continues downward at a steep angle, walls close enough to touch on both sides.
The right curves away into darkness, broader but with an uneven floor that looks treacherous.
He stands there for a long moment. Calculating. Weighing variables I can’t see.
“What is it?” I ask.
“The map showed one passage here. Not two.”
Ice slides down my spine. “Meaning?”
“Meaning either the map is outdated, or we’re not where I think we are.” He moves to the left passage, running his hand along the wall. His fingers come away damp. “This route goes deeper. Toward the old excavation sites.”
“And the other one?”
“No idea.” He turns to study the right passage. “Could loop back to the main system. Could dead-end in a collapse.”
There’s silence. Different from before; this one pragmatic rather than loaded with unspoken things.
“Your call,” I say finally.
He looks at me then. Really looks. Like he’s weighing more than just navigation.
“What does your gut say?”
The question surprises me. “My gut?”
“You’ve had dreams about these caves. Ancestral memory or whatever it is.” His voice is neutral, but there’s something underneath. Trust, maybe. Would he trust me? “So what does it tell you?”
I close my eyes. Try to reach for fragments of the dream that brought us here. Fire and stone and—
There.
A flash of memory that isn’t mine. Torchlight on wet walls. The smell of earth and old magic. A sense of down rather than across.
“Left,” I say, opening my eyes. “We need to go left.”
“You sure?”
No. I’m not sure of anything except that standing here much longer means getting caught.
“As sure as I can be.”
Luke studies me for another beat. Then nods once, decisive. “Left it is.”
For a moment, I feel a flare of satisfaction that he’d take my advice. Like it’s some sort of validation. It occurs to me that I’ve spent my life surrounded by people who’ve told me what to do. It’s odd to have the tables turned. I like it.
For God’s sake, it’s just a tunnel, Ember.
A tunnel that could lead to our death.
But he moves into the narrow passage without hesitation. I follow, ducking under an outcrop of rock that juts from the ceiling like a broken tooth.
The walls press close immediately. Too close. I have to turn sideways in places to fit through gaps that Luke navigates easily. The floor slopes sharply downward, slick with moisture that makes every step precarious.
My ankle—the one I twisted yesterday or the day before, time has lost meaning down here—protests with each jarring step. I bite down on the pain and keep moving.
The passage narrows further.
“Luke—”
“I see it.” His voice comes from somewhere ahead, tight with tension. “There’s a squeeze point about ten feet in. We’ll need to crawl.”
Crawl. Through wet rock in the dark with Syndicate agents potentially above us, and no idea what’s on the other side.
Perfect.
Luke’s already ducked low when I reach the restriction. He sinks to all fours. The gap is maybe eighteen inches high. Just enough to slide through if you don’t mind the rock scraping your back and stomach simultaneously.
He disappears into it without a word.
I drop to my knees. The stone is freezing through my pants, instantly soaking through to my skin. I flatten myself and start to crawl.
The ceiling presses down immediately. Rock against my spine. Against my skull when I don’t keep my head low enough. The walls so close on either side that I can’t expand my ribs fully to breathe.
My heart starts to hammer.
Don’t think about it. Just move.
I pull myself forward with my elbows. Inch by inch through the dark. Luke’s torch beam somewhere ahead is the only thing keeping full panic at bay.
Then the rock above me shifts.
Not much. Just a faint grinding sound followed by a rain of small stones against my back.
I freeze.
“Luke?”
“Keep moving.” His voice is closer than I expected. “Structure’s unstable. We need to get through.”
Another grinding sound. Louder this time.
The ceiling drops.
Just an inch, but I feel it against my spine like a hand pressing down. Trapping me.
I fight down panic, the urge to scream bubbling up my throat.
“Ember. Move.”
I force my body forward. Raking skin against rock, tearing fabric, not caring about anything except getting out of this space before it crushes me.
Luke’s hand locks around my wrist. Pulls… hard. So hard that he yanks me from the tiny space in one fluid move.
I slide forward into a wider chamber, sprawling on slick stone as rocks continue to rain down behind me. The grinding sound builds to a roar. Then—
Crash.
The passage collapses completely. A wall of rubble where we just crawled through, sealing us in.
I lie there gasping. Shaking. Trying to process what just happened.
“You hurt?” Luke asks.
I take inventory. Scraped elbows. Torn pants. That damned ankle screaming. But alive.
“No.”
He crouches beside me, torch beam sweeping the new chamber. It’s larger than the alcove we slept in—maybe twenty feet across—but that’s not what freezes the air in my lungs.
It’s a dead end.
Solid rock on three sides. The fourth now blocked by tons of collapsed stone.
He doesn’t say anything more. Just keeps sweeping his light across the walls. Looking for cracks. Passages. Anything.
There’s nothing.
We’re trapped.