Chapter 35

Chapter Thirty-Five

PIPER

She couldn’t breathe.

It was the first thought to penetrate her hazy consciousness. Her lungs burned and her head spun. She was suffocating.

Her eyes flew open in a rush of panic, and she saw nothing but black. Something heavy was pinning her down, compressing her lungs. Dragging in a breath, she wrenched one arm free, and her flailing hand found the source of the weight crushing her.

Ash was lying across her. She patted his arm tentatively, then ran her hand up to his shoulder. Instead of his skin, her fingers bumped across smooth, leatherlike scales, and she vividly recalled her only glimpse of his daemon form. He wasn’t in glamour.

“Ash?” she whispered.

He didn’t respond, a dead weight on top of her. New terror joined her rising panic, and she blindly moved her hand to his face. His jaw was smooth—no scales—and she pressed her fingers to his nose and mouth. His shallow breaths warmed her skin.

Alive but unconscious.

Blinking rapidly in the darkness, she squirmed and wiggled in an attempt to shift his weight off her chest so she could breathe. Her heels scraped across the dirt floor in search of traction. She pushed on his shoulders, causing bits of rock and splinters of wood to roll off his back.

Her fingers found wetness on his neck and in his hair. Was he bleeding? She stretched one arm across him, disturbing more debris as she searched for wounds. Her hand met the base of one wing where it connected with his upper back, then bumped against a weapon strapped to his torso—a huge sword. She was momentarily bewildered. Where had that come from? Had it always been hidden under his glamour?

“Shit,” she gasped, her head spinning. “Ash?”

She clearly wasn’t getting him off her by herself. Plus, she needed his help to figure out what the hell had happened. She remembered an explosion but nothing else.

“Ash?” She patted his cheek. “Wake up, Ash. Please.”

His breath hitched. She felt all his muscles engage as he came awake—muscles that were pinning her to the floor, hard and heavy. His head moved under her hand, lifting as he looked around at the pitch darkness.

“Ash,” she panted, panic flaring through her with greater intensity. “I can’t breathe.”

He didn’t take any weight off her. Air hissed through his clenched teeth.

“Ash—”

He pulled his arms under him and shoved up. A thud sounded as he collided with something above him. Sharp bits of rock peppered her face and clattered around her. His wings rasped against unseen surfaces on either side of them. More debris scattered across Piper.

“Ash—” she tried again.

He lunged forward. His knee grazed her hip, thumping hard into the ground. Somewhere above her head were scuffing noises—clattering rocks—scraping?—

“ Ash! ” she yelled.

He snarled, a bestial sound no human could make. His breaths rushed in and out, fast and ragged. Wild. Panicked.

He was panicking. He was trying to get out.

And that’s when she realized his back had hit something above them. His wings were scraping against hard surfaces on both sides. And his claws were raking across what sounded like concrete in front of him.

The terror in her chest erupted like an arctic wave, splashing through every inch of her body.

They were buried .

The explosion had collapsed the house on top of them, and they were under the rubble in whatever was left of the hole beneath the trapdoor. She couldn’t see anything in the utter darkness, but somehow, Ash could tell they were trapped.

He raked at one wall, then twisted to the right, his knee shoving Piper sideways. She grabbed his thigh to keep him from crushing her under his legs as he threw himself at the debris like he was a battering ram instead of a flesh-and-bone daemon. What were either bits of stone or broken concrete clattered around them.

“Ash, stop!”

He didn’t seem to hear her. He bashed himself into the wall again—frantically, incoherently fighting to escape.

She half sat up, grabbing for his shoulders to intercept his movement. “Ash, please?—”

He slammed her down onto her back. She struck the ground hard enough to knock the wind from her lungs and barely managed not to hit her head. His fingers spanned her collarbones, digging in with bruising force, his claws pricking her skin like needles.

If he shifted his hand one inch higher, his grip would be around her throat.

Slowly, she lifted her shaking hands. He snarled, his fingers flexing and his claws piercing her skin. Her arms stuttered. She took a deep, calming breath, then gently put her hands against his cheeks, holding his face in the darkness.

“Ash,” she whispered. “You have to stop. Just concentrate on breathing, okay? Don’t think about anything else.”

She let out a long, only slightly trembling exhalation to demonstrate. He didn’t move, his ragged breathing unchanged—but he wasn’t ripping out her throat. That was a good sign.

She rubbed her thumbs lightly across his cheekbones, finding a line of delicate scales beneath his eyes. “Slow it down. You can’t think if you’re hyperventilating. In and out, nice and even.”

He inhaled with a low growl, but when he let out the breath, it was slower. She repeated soothing variations of the same instructions, and gradually, his breathing quieted.

His hand relaxed against her so he was no longer crushing her into the ground. His fingertips slid along the base of her neck, stopping against the racing pulse in the dip between her collarbones.

“Piper.”

She shivered at his daemon voice—deep and resonant, with that unnerving feeling of silk sliding across her bones.

“Hi,” she whispered, her flicker of relief that he was coherent again instantly lost in the unstoppable waves of dread rolling over her. “We’re in a bit of trouble.”

He sucked in a sharp, harsh breath, a quiver running through his muscles. “We’re trapped.”

“We’ll find a way out.”

“There’s no way out.”

“We can try to?—”

“I can sense open spaces. There’s no way out.”

Her eyebrows scrunched together. “I don’t understand.”

“There are no open spaces near us,” he rasped. “I can sense small gaps fifteen feet up—what’s left of the house. There’s another space eight feet away at our depth. A tunnel, I think. But it’s solid earth between here and there.”

The terror Piper had been fighting to control broke free. Her head swam, and her heart pounded so hard it hurt. She desperately tried to control it before she caused Ash to panic again too.

She didn’t realize she’d pulled him down toward her until he bent forward, bracing on one elbow. She wrapped her arms around the back of his neck, holding him tight as though that would make this less petrifying.

A mad urge to laugh tickled her throat. She was hugging a shaded, un-glamoured daemon for comfort. She’d lost her mind.

“What…” Her voice cracked. She swallowed. “What about the Sahar Stone? Could you use it to blast our way out of here?”

He sank a little lower over her, and his forehead pressed against her shoulder. “It doesn’t work for me.”

“What about your own magic?”

“Anything I try will cause the house to collapse on us.”

She squeezed her eyes shut, struggling not to start kicking and clawing at the earth like he had. How long until they suffocated?

Somewhere above them, a thudding noise sounded. The ground vibrated, and dust rained down on Piper’s face. Ash tensed, his muscles as hard as the ground under her back.

A creak, then a grinding sound. Something shifted in the debris piled above them. Ash ducked away from the sound, all but lying on top of her.

“We can’t just wait to die.” Piper wrapped her hand around his leather baldric, gripping it hard to steady herself. “We have to try something.”

Ash didn’t answer. His breathing was getting worse again.

“What about the tunnel?” she asked. “It might have been a bunker or a secret escape route that was originally connected to the cellar. We could try to dig to it.”

He lifted his head from her shoulder. His nose brushed her cheek. “Disturbing anything will?—”

Another creak, followed by cracking wood, finished his sentence for him. Ash flinched at the sounds.

“Then use magic,” she said. “Blast a hole.”

“The house will?—”

“It’s going to collapse on us anyway!”

He dropped his head, turning his face into the side of her neck. She could guess what he was thinking, the fear he was fighting: the mere idea of being crushed beneath the wreckage above. What if it didn’t kill them? What if they had to wait hours to die, pinned under the rubble, unable to move, slowly suffocating?

“Ash, we have to try.”

His shoulders rose and fell. Then he shifted, his weight squashing her as he braced himself on his elbows. She followed his wrists up to his hands, which were curled around the magic-dampening collar the Gaians had put on him.

She fit her hands over his, aligning their fingers. He slowed his breathing. His hands flexed, squeezing the collar. Heat radiated from the metal band. The air sizzled, and he pulled his hands away from his neck. She touched his throat, finding only hot, sand-like grit—the remains of the collar—and heaved a sigh of relief. They were one step closer to getting out of here.

Ash turned his face into her neck again, and for a moment, he gripped her upper arms, holding her as though her closeness was calming—as though it actually helped him. Then he lifted his head and pushed back up on his elbows, and she wondered if she’d read too much into it.

“I can try to break through the ruins of the house above us,” he said in a hoarse whisper, “or break through to the tunnel.”

“The house will collapse on us. The tunnel is our best chance.”

“All right.”

He pulled her under him and folded his arm around the top of her head. Piper bit the inside of her cheek. He was shielding her from whatever happened next.

“Ready?” he whispered.

Her heart pounded in her throat. “Do it.”

“Cover your ears.”

She clapped her hands over her ears. His breath stirred her hair as he released a slow exhalation. The air around them grew heavy and electric with magic. Piper tucked her face against his shoulder, eyes squeezed shut.

He unleashed his magic.

The concussion of power was as terrible as the explosion that had ripped apart the building above them. The deafening boom hit like an earthquake, shaking the ground under her—then Ash grabbed her by the waist.

With an arm clamped around her middle, he launched forward. Magic sizzled again, then a loud crack like a gunshot. A cacophony of crashing, groaning, crunching, and snapping grew louder and louder behind them.

Ash skidded down a sudden drop, pulling her with him. He regained his footing, swept her up into his arms, and ran, his footsteps splashing in shallow water. They were in the tunnel, and behind them was the sound of falling stone. The underground room had caved in.

Piper held on to Ash’s neck as he fled the collapse, traversing the pitch black without hesitation. Magic buzzed over him once again, and she felt him make a motion with his hand.

Stone shattered, and faint light spilled through the darkness. A jagged opening yawned in front of them, rocks and dirt still tumbling down.

Ash jumped through the gap, and a fresh, cool breeze swept over Piper. Trees and dense brush surrounded them. He slid to a stop. The racket of grinding stone and settling earth died away until all was quiet except for the rustle of leaves in the trees.

For a long moment, Ash just stood there, his chest heaving. Then he folded his legs to sit heavily on the ground. Landing half on his lap, Piper fixed her light-starved eyes on the crescent moon peeking through the foliage overhead.

They’d made it. They’d escaped.

Ash flopped backward, lying in the leaf litter as he caught his breath. Dragging her gaze off the moon, she turned to find him in glamour, his face ghostly pale and sheened with perspiration, his eyes closed.

As her terror waned, shivers engulfed her. Fighting back hysterical tears, she reclined weakly onto her back beside him. Her trembling fingers crept sideways until she reached his hand.

His warm, strong grip closed around her fingers.

They lay there in the moonlight, hands held tight, not speaking. Just breathing. Just feeling their lungs work and their hearts beat, knowing they had survived.