After a minute, the terror bled away, leaving only the awareness of him—his arms, his chest, his leg slotted to hers. If the universe was going to erase them, she thought, this was as good a way as any.
She let her forehead rest against his and closed her eyes. “If we die here, I want you to know?—”
“Don’t,” he said. “We’re not dying here. And whatever you were going to say, I already know.”
“Showoff,” she muttered, but her voice broke, just a little.
He pressed his lips to her brow, then her nose, then—careful not to fog her goggles—her mouth, warm and desperate even through the layers.
Rue clung to him, the fear inside her finally giving way. Antarctica could keep her ghosts, her buried nightmares, her thousand miles of lethal ice. All Rue needed right now was the man who wouldn’t let go, not even at the end of the world.
Above them, the storm howled, relentless, erasing everything.
But in the pit, there was warmth. Breath. A single, stubborn heartbeat, pulsing with life and refusing to be frozen out.
The storm pressed harder, each gust packing more snow into the narrow pit until Rue felt the walls closing in. She tried to shift her weight, but the drift above them cracked with a hollow groan.
Elliot stiffened. “Rue…”
The snow under them buckled.
There was no time to grab for an anchor, no chance to brace. The world simply gave way. The drift collapsed, and suddenly they were sliding, tumbling, falling through the ice itself?—
Right into the abyss.
The world blurred—ice, darkness, the ragged sound of her own breath. Rue’s scream ripped away into the storm, cut shortwhen the rope snapped taut across her harness. Her body jerked, whiplashed against the wall of the crevasse.
Above, someone shouted her name.
Elliot.
She looked up. He’d caught himself on the edge of the hole overhead, arms braced as he took her swinging weight on his harness.
“Can you get any purchase down there?”
Her answer tore out in a string of curses her dad would’ve been proud of—creative, graphic, and anatomically improbable.
“I’m working on it!” she shouted up, breath fogging inside her mask. “The walls are slick as hell!”
Her boot finally found a nub of ice, then slid uselessly off again. Every attempt jolted the rope, making Elliot grunt above her. She couldfeelthe strain in the line, the way his strength alone kept gravity from winning.
“Keep trying!” he bellowed. “Find anything—a ledge, an outcropping, anything!”
She tried. God, she tried. But the walls were polished smooth, the snow driving sideways so thick she could barely see her own hands.
Then she heard it—the shift in his tone. Panic edged his voice. “Rue! I’m going to try to pull you up. When I say so, you climb. Whatever happens, don’t stop climbing.”
Her gut clenched. “Whatever happens?” she shot back. “Elliot, what aren’t you telling me?”
“Just trust me.”
That never boded well.
The rope twitched. “One… two…”
The ground above her cracked like a gunshot.
“Three!”
