Chapter 17 #2
My hand hovers over the handle. Heart hammering against damaged ribs hard enough to make stars burst across my vision.
“I owe you,” I whisper to whatever ancient thing is listening. “Twice now.”
I ease the door open. Slow, controlled, waiting for alarms that still don’t come.
The corridor stretches empty under industrial lighting. Steel catwalks overhead. Concrete floor worn smooth by decades of boots. Exposed rock walls where facility construction meets raw mountain stone.
Equipment scattered along the walls: geological survey tools, sample containers, field research gear masking what this place really is. A prison. A research facility. A black site where the Syndicate does things that would make the councils declare war if they knew.
I’m halfway down a hallway when I realize the shoulder wound has stopped pulsing blood. More help from my unseen ally?
Thank fuck.
I move fast and silent. Boots soundless on concrete. Every sense straining for threats I can’t fight.
I pass other holding cells; all empty. Doors closed, lights off. Just storage now for prisoners who’ve already been processed or executed or moved to deeper levels.
Then I spot one with dim light beneath the door.
My breath catches before conscious thought catches up.
I know who’s behind that door.
Know it the same way I knew the helicopter was going down before instruments confirmed it. The same way I’ve known for three days in these mountains that keeping her alive matters more than mission parameters or tactical advantage or countless years of creating barriers.
I risk a glance through the small observation window.
Ember.
She sits in a metal chair bolted to the floor.
Silvery cuffs glow blue around her wrists; brighter than the ones they used on me, more power required to suppress whatever hybrid magic burns inside her.
Her head’s bowed, pale hair falling forward to hide her face, but I know the set of those shoulders.
The way she holds herself, even caged: spine straight despite exhaustion, chin lifted just enough to show she hasn’t broken.
There’s a smudge of dirt across her left cheek. Blood dried at the corner of her mouth where someone must’ve hit her. Her jacket’s torn at the shoulder, showing pale skin and the edge of a bruise blooming dark across her collarbone.
My hand lifts toward the glass before I catch myself.
She doesn’t move. Doesn’t look up. Just sits there in that cold cell breathing and waiting for whatever comes next.
And I’m standing here free while she’s still caged.
Every instinct I have—every protective impulse that’s kept people alive for three centuries—screams at me to break through that door right now. Tear the cuffs off her wrists. Get her out of this mountain before dawn comes and the transport takes her somewhere I can’t follow.
My fingers find the door mechanism. Cold steel. Electronic lock that should be impossible without proper credentials.
But the mountain opened my cell. Maybe it’ll open hers too.
I start to push—
But then logic cuts through desperation.
What if that strange power doesn’t help this time?
She’s secured with suppression cuffs I can’t remove without tools I don’t have. Breaking her out triggers immediate facility-wide alert. Automated systems I can’t disable, guards I can’t fight, security protocols designed for exactly this scenario.
We’d have seconds. Maybe a minute, if we’re lucky.
Then guards flood the corridors. We’re cornered in passages I haven’t mapped, outnumbered by operatives with weapons and strength, while I’m running on empty and she’s suppressed.
We’d be recaptured within five minutes.
Both of us scheduled for execution instead of just me.
The math is brutal and simple.
Logical.
Sound.
But Ember’s face—the way she looked at me in the caves when I said I’d get her out, when she trusted me to keep her alive despite every reason not to—that’s not simple at all.
That’s three days of her following my lead without hesitation. Of her sleeping pressed against my chest because I told her she needed the warmth. Three days of fire in her eyes, even when her magic was gone and everything was falling apart.
Three days of me failing her anyway.
Mara trusted me too. Followed my orders. Believed I’d keep her safe.
She died on my watch.
Because I let go of her.
My hand’s still on the door mechanism. Still hovering. Still wanting to choose wrong because choosing right means walking away from the first person in decades who looked at me like I was more than a weapon that councils point at problems.
But once again, I can see exactly how it would go.
Break the lock—thirty seconds, maybe forty without proper tools.
The cuffs need to be disabled—another two minutes minimum, and that’s if I can figure out Syndicate suppression tech without a manual.
Then we run. Through unfamiliar corridors.
Past guards I haven’t counted. Toward exits I’m not sure exist.
We’d make it maybe three corridors before alarms scream through every level.
Maybe four if luck exists and decides to care.
Then it’s over. Both of us in restraints. Both of us dead by dawn. Just two corpses in an incinerator and Vanya getting notification that her daughter’s dead.
Because of me.
Alternative: I leave now. Find a safe place to wait until a better opportunity presents itself at a time when I’m prepared for it.
Give her a real chance instead of a desperate gamble.
Logic says wait.
But every part of me that isn’t logic says, “Save her. Take her with you now.”
My forehead drops against the cold glass. Breath fogging the surface.
She still hasn’t looked up. Still doesn’t know I’m here. Doesn’t know I’m free.
Doesn’t know I’m about to walk away and leave her here alone.
My dragon—if he were still here—would be roaring. Demanding I break through this door and damn the consequences. Fire doesn’t calculate odds. Fire just burns.
But I’m only human now.
And humans can’t fight through fortified facilities on willpower and broken ribs.
It makes perfect sense.
My chest is splitting open anyway.
One more second. One more look at her through reinforced glass.
I memorize everything: the exact angle of her shoulders, the way her hands are positioned in those cuffs, the number on the door, the corridor configuration. Every detail I’ll need to find her again when I come back.
When. Not if.
I pull back from the door.
Force my hand to drop. Force my feet to move.
Every step away from that cell feels like tearing muscle from bone.
A distant alarm blares suddenly through facility corridors. Harsh, mechanical. Not my door. Different sector. Maybe a shift change. Maybe something else.
Radio crackle from approaching guards echoes closer: “Shift rotation complete. All stations report.”
I have seconds.
One final glance at the cell. At the dim light beneath the door. At everything I’m leaving behind. Her. The curve of her cheek. The line of her neck. The silvery tendrils that have escaped to cling to her face.
Then I move.
Deeper into facility shadows as guard boots echo closer. Every instinct screaming at me to go back. Every rational thought screaming louder to survive.
I navigate by training. Emergency exits marked in faded paint, personnel flow patterns readable in worn concrete paths.
Eventually, I find what I’m looking for. A maintenance area away from the main body of the facility: steel shelving units loaded with equipment, ventilation ducts, electrical panels humming with power. The smell of oil and old metal.
I squeeze behind shelving into a narrow gap against raw rock wall. Settle into the shadows. Force my breathing to slow, my heart to quiet, my body to stop shaking from adrenaline and rage and the fresh wound of walking away from her.
I wait.
The facility continues its rhythms around me. Shift changes announced over intercoms, equipment checks marking time, transport preparations proceeding on schedule.
I count minutes by the pulse in my wrist. By the throb of damaged ribs. By how many breaths I have left before dawn comes and Ember disappears into Syndicate headquarters.
And beneath it all, that ancient dragon heartbeat continues. Slower now, fainter, but present.
The mountain breathing.
The Sleeping King watching.
And me, hiding in shadows, alive and free and alone.
While Ember sits in that cell three corridors away, waiting for a rescue that isn’t coming.
Yet.