Chapter 14
Ember
I wake to the scrape of stone on stone. I shake my head, blinking. I must have dozed off yet again. I can’t remember when in my life I’ve ever felt this tired.
The sound drags me up through layers of exhaustion, pulling me from dreams I can’t remember… only that they were dark and full of smoke. For one disorienting second, I don’t know where I am. Then the ache in my ankle kicks in, sharp and insistent, and memory crashes back like a second collapse.
The tunnel. The cave-in. Luke.
I blink again, force my eyes open. The darkness is like a wall, except for a thin beam of light cutting through the dust-thick air.
Luke’s flashlight, propped against a chunk of rubble, catches every particle that swirls and drifts in its narrow path.
The air tastes like earth and dust, coating my tongue, settling in my lungs with every breath.
Luke is wedged into the gap where the ceiling came down, his back to me, working at the rubble with relentless determination.
He’s using his knife and a twisted length of rebar to pry chunks of stone free, his movements steady despite the raw state of his hands.
Even in the dim light, I can see the blood; knuckles split, palms torn. But he doesn’t stop. Doesn’t even slow.
The muscles in his back shift and flex under his torn shirt with each strike, each pull. Sweat gleams on his skin despite the cold that’s seeped into my bones. His breathing fills the space; harsh, labored, but controlled. Like he’s been at this for hours.
Because he has.
Guilt twists in my chest, sharp enough to steal what little breath I have left. This is the third time I’ve drifted off while he’s taken care of us. Third time I’ve collapsed while he watched over me. And now he’s digging. For hours, maybe. Time feels wrong down here, elastic and unreliable.
He keeps saving me without hesitation. And I’ve repaid him by passing out while he tears his hands apart trying to get us out.
I should be helping. Should have been helping all along.
“Why did you let me fall asleep?” My voice comes out hoarse, scraped raw by dust and exhaustion.
Luke pauses mid-strike. His shoulders tense, just for a second, then he drives the rebar into a crack between stones.
“And do what? Watch me dig?” Another chunk breaks free with a grinding crack. He tosses it aside without looking back. “Rest while you can.”
His voice is rough, flat with exhaustion, but edged with something else.
Is he thinking about that kiss?
“I can help.” I push myself upright, ignoring the way every joint protests. The cold has settled deep, making everything stiff and slow. My fingers are numb. My legs don’t want to hold me.
“You can rest.” He still doesn’t turn. “You need it.”
“So do you.” I scan the rubble until I find another piece of rebar, shorter than his, bent at an angle that might give me leverage. “Move.”
“Ember—”
“Move, Luke.”
For a long moment, he doesn’t. Just stays there, hunched in that narrow gap, hands bloody around the metal bar. Then he shifts to the side, making room.
I wedge myself in beside him.
The space is too small. Too tight. His shoulder brushes mine as I position the rebar, and I feel the heat of him even through our clothes, a sharp contrast to the cold air pressing in from all sides. The tunnel is barely wide enough for one person to work, let alone two, but I’m not backing down.
I drive my makeshift lever into the same crack he was working. The metal scrapes against stone, the sound echoing back at us from the darkness. My arms shake with the effort, muscles burning, but the stone doesn’t budge.
Luke reaches past me, his hand covering mine on the rebar. “Here. Angle it like this.”
His fingers are warm, callused, and sticky with blood. The touch sends a jolt up my arm; electric, visceral. I suck in a breath, and his hand tightens fractionally before he pulls away.
“Try now,” he says, voice carefully neutral.
I do. This time, the stone shifts; just barely, but it moves. We work in tandem, him prying from one side while I lever from the other. The rhythm comes naturally: push, pull, shift. Our breathing falls into a rhythm, harsh and loud in the confined space.
Every few minutes, our hands brush. His arm against mine as we reach for the same rock. His hip bumping mine when we both shift weight. Each time, I feel it—that spark, that pull. The awareness that thrums beneath my skin like a second heartbeat.
This isn’t the time. We’re buried alive, possibly bleeding out slowly, and I’m watching the way his muscles flex when he strains against a stubborn piece of debris. The way his breath catches. The heat that radiates off him like he’s burning from the inside out.
Maybe he is. Even without his dragon, he’s still more than human. I can feel it in the way he moves stone I couldn’t budge alone, in the barely leashed strength that makes him careful around me, like he’s afraid he’ll break something if he forgets to hold back.
I’ve lost my power. He’s lost his dragon. But the difference is stark. He’s still powerful. Still dangerous.
Still capable of protecting me when I can’t protect myself.
I hate that I needed protecting. Hate more that I’m grateful for it.
“You should have left me,” I say between breaths, shoving against a rock that refuses to move. “When the helicopter went down. Mara would have been more useful. You should have—”
“Stop.” His voice is sharp enough to make me flinch. “Don’t finish that sentence.”
I glance over at him and find him staring back. The flashlight beam catches his eyes, turning them molten. There’s something raw in his expression, something that makes my throat tight.
“I’m not leaving you.” He says it almost fiercely. Like physics and stone and certain death are irrelevant details. “Ever. So stop talking that way.”
The weight of those words settles over me, heavy and warm. I should argue. Should point out all the practical reasons why sacrificing himself for me is idiotic. But the words stick in my throat, tangled up with feelings I don’t know how to examine.
Instead, I turn back to the rubble. “Then help me move this damn rock.”
His mouth quirks; another of those almost-smiles, gone before I’m sure I saw it.
“Yes, ma’am.”
We work in silence after that. Minutes blur together, marked only by the grind of stone on stone and the steady drip of water somewhere in the darkness.
My arms start to shake, muscles screaming, but I don’t stop.
Can’t stop. If I stop, I’ll have to think about how small this space is.
How little air we might have left. How the Syndicate could be finding a way to track us down, ready to finish what the helicopter crash started.
Luke’s shoulder brushes mine again as we both reach for a loose chunk. This time, neither of us pulls away. The contact grounds me, cuts through the spiral of panic trying to claw up my throat.
“How long have we been down here?” I ask, just to break the silence.
“Four hours. Maybe five.” He grunts as he levers a particularly stubborn rock free. “Hard to tell.”
Five hours. Five hours of him digging while I slept. My stomach turns.
“Your hands—”
“Are fine.”
They’re not fine. They’re torn to pieces. But I don’t push it. Luke’s pride is a tangible thing, prickly and defensive, and right now we need to work together.
Another rock shifts. Then another. We’re making progress. Slow, painful progress, but progress, nonetheless. The gap widens incrementally, letting in drafts of air that taste different. Less stale. Less dead.
Hope flares in my chest, dangerous and fragile.
“Almost there,” Luke murmurs. He’s wedged himself deeper into the gap, using his whole body as leverage. The muscles in his back strain, cords of tension standing out beneath his shirt. “One more—”
The last slab shifts with a groan that reverberates through the tunnel, through the ground beneath my feet, through my bones. Luke throws his weight against it, and suddenly it’s moving, sliding aside with a grinding shriek that makes my teeth ache.
A rush of air spills through the opening; cooler than the still air around us, carrying the scent of earth and something else. Something that makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up.
We both freeze.
Luke’s hand finds my wrist, his grip careful despite the strength I can feel thrumming beneath his skin. A warning. Wait.
I hold my breath, straining to hear past the hammering of my heart. At first, there’s nothing. Just the echo of falling stone settling, the drip of water, our too-loud breathing.
Then—a sound that makes the tiny hairs on the back of my neck prickle up.
What the hell is that?
Part of me wants to freeze where I am, but a bigger part wants to get out of here.
Luke eases the stone aside slowly, muscles flexing as he shifts the weight with supernatural care. The gap widens just enough to climb through into the space beyond. Darkness, deeper than the tunnel behind us. Shadows that move wrong, that don’t quite resolve into shapes.
What—?
My pulse kicks up. I reach for my fire instinctively, desperately… and, of course, find nothing. The emptiness where my magic should be yawns wide, a void that makes me feel stripped, vulnerable in ways that have nothing to do with the darkness or the confined space.
Before Luke can signal caution, before either of us can process what we’re seeing, a beam of light flashes straight through the opening.
Blinding white.
I throw up an arm, spots exploding across my vision. Luke’s hand leaves my wrist and finds my shoulder instead, pulling me back hard against the tunnel wall. His body shifts in front of mine—blocking, protecting—as footsteps echo from the other side.
Right in front of us. Multiple sets, moving fast.
“Look what just crawled out of the hole!” A voice cuts through the darkness. Male, triumphant, edged with something cruel.
My blood turns to ice.
The Syndicate.