Chapter One

CHAPTER ONE

Sophie took ten breaths before her next step. She counted them because the sound of air rushing in and out of her lungs was the only thing tethering her to reality. Hurricane-force wind slammed into her body, cutting through her down suit and chilling her to the bone. And the wind brought snow—an endless sea of swirling white, beckoning her into disorientation. She lifted a boot-clad foot and planted her crampons in the snow. One step closer.

She had reached the summit already. Now she had to return to Camp Four alive. And she wasn’t alone. The rope attached to her climbing harness pulled tight, reminding her that for every step she took, Levi had to take one too.

Sophie turned to look at him, shielding her face from the snow as best she could, thankful for the wind at her back as she took a few short steps to reach him. Fewer breaths in between this time—it didn’t matter if her body had already reached its limit. She would push beyond to get Levi to safety.

He stood with his head down, shoulders slumped, swaying in the wind like a sapling. He looked like he would topple over if he took another step, but Sophie placed her hand on his shoulder and tried her best to shout above the wind.

“You have to keep going!”

Levi lifted his head slightly. An oxygen mask covered the lower half of his face, preventing him from responding but feeding precious air into his lungs. And his eyes were covered by clunky, dark sunglasses, which had been necessary that morning, when the sky was clear and bright. She wanted to shake him, slap him, anything to rouse him from his trance. But he had reached a state of exhaustion from which he could only return at a lower altitude. They had been climbing for close to nine hours after weeks of sleepless nights, low oxygen, and not enough food—Sophie knew that her body, like Levi’s, was deteriorating. But they had to keep moving. Their lives depended on it.

Sophie turned to face the wind again and saw her sister appear from the snow like an apparition. Yesterday she would have laughed at the idea of Evelyn guiding them down through the storm, but extreme conditions necessitated extraordinary solutions. Evelyn stomped up the short slope, moving much more strongly than Sophie felt capable of.

Evelyn yanked her mask down and moved close to Sophie, shouting to make herself heard above the wind. “The ridge. Can he make it down?”

Sophie stared back at her, unable to respond. She’d made it this far without thinking of the ridge, that knife-edge spine of the mountain, exposed on either side, difficult to traverse that morning even in perfect conditions with the thrill of the summit ahead.

“The ridge, Sophie,” Evelyn repeated.

Sophie blinked, forcing herself to register the information. “I don’t know,” she shouted back.

“Should we bivouac?” Evelyn’s expression told Sophie she didn’t think it was a good idea. Bivouacking meant spending the night in a glorified sleeping bag, insulated from the elements to some extent but still at the mercy of the death zone. The altitude above eight thousand meters could cause all kinds of problems—heart attacks, strokes, or impaired judgment from an oxygen-starved brain. It was not a place to camp out for long.

Her suggestion snapped Sophie out of her fog. “No way. He won’t survive. We have to keep going.”

“Okay. But once we’re on the ridge, we can’t stop.”

“I know.”

Evelyn nodded once and slipped the oxygen mask back over her face. She walked past Sophie, to Levi, and lifted his head. She took off his sunglasses and forced him to look at her. Sophie watched her sister in silence, willing her to do anything to make attempting the ridge possible. She waited for Evelyn to speak, but she said nothing, only slipped Levi’s sunglasses into her jacket pocket—a practical gesture, keeping them safe until he needed them again.

Sophie opened her mouth as Evelyn passed, hoping for reassurance that she thought Levi was up for it, but Evelyn only gestured for them to follow. Sophie took the deepest breath she could, glanced back at Levi, and followed Evelyn’s quickly fading form into the snow.

The ridge came up faster than Sophie anticipated. She thought of the ascent, when the skies were clear and she had seen the dizzying drop-off on either side, a free fall to certain death down the mountain. At least now the storm hid the exposure, though the gusting winds made every step more precarious. She stopped to check the short rope between her and Levi’s harnesses. Sophie knew it was beyond stupid to cross such a feature while roped together—if Levi fell, he would drag her down, too. But leaving him behind wasn’t an option.

She glanced up at him, wishing she could pull away his oxygen mask and see his easy smile again. Levi made eye contact with her now, the familiar soft blue of his eyes drawing her in. He nodded ever so slightly, indicating that he was ready. She squeezed his arm with her bulky gloved hand and turned away, ice axe in hand, ready to tackle the monster before them.

Sophie could just see Evelyn ahead. She must have waited, but soon she began to move, dipping down and then back up again at a snail’s pace, following the snaking path along the rocks. Sophie steeled herself and stepped forward, felt the line go tight and then slacken as Levi moved with her. They descended to the ridge this way, slowly, but moving better than Levi had for the past hour. Sophie felt a surge of hope. She dared to imagine that they might reach Camp Four, where warm tents and hot food awaited them. And beyond that—they would get off this nightmarish mountain and go back home, to Switzerland. The Yama Parvat summit would skyrocket her career; she’d have sponsors to rely on again. She could return to guiding, no more working in a coffee shop.

It happened so fast—one second Sophie was examining a potential foothold and the next she was yanked off her feet, a few moments of being airborne before she collided with the snow, hard, knocking the breath from her lungs. She was sliding on her back, pelted with falling snow, disoriented, no sense of up or down. And Levi—she couldn’t see him, couldn’t fathom anything beyond the snow and her speed and death looming, the inevitable drop-off of a cliff or plunging into a crevasse, never to be seen again.

She flipped over onto her stomach and drove her ice axe into the snow with as much force as possible. She struck once, twice, three times before it caught and she scrambled to dig into the snow with her crampons, her upper body screaming with effort to hold on, waiting for what came next—the incredible jolt when Levi’s body hit the end of the line, something close to two hundred pounds with all his gear. She braced and miraculously that little ice axe held their combined weight against the jolt, and Sophie screamed, a horrible, inhuman sound that surprised her—she didn’t know what caused it, equal parts relief and despair, surprise and sorrow, for she had caught them but there was no way back up to the ridge. The slope was too steep, almost sheer, and she couldn’t even make out the ridge above them. Everything was white, and the snow stung her exposed cheeks, and she wished desperately that she had an oxygen mask, because there wasn’t enough air to fuel her cries.

Then she remembered her sister. “Evelyn!” she screamed, again and again, feeling her throat turn raw. She knew, even as she yelled, that the odds of Evelyn spotting them were nonexistent. They had slid too far, and if Evelyn was smart, she wouldn’t even look back until she crossed the ridge, lest she lose her own balance and fall. Maybe she already had, and she was stranded on the other side, calling for Sophie.

Sophie resisted the urge to duck her head and look at Levi. She knew he had caused the fall, had collapsed, or maybe even fainted. The rope tension hadn’t released; he hung below her like a deadweight, sapping what little energy she had. But she wouldn’t let go. No matter what. She would hold on until the last possible second, until the muscles in her shoulders or arms or fingers gave out and they resumed their fall, to whatever cold and lonely fate awaited them below. She would die with him. She would not let him go alone. After everything they’d been through—the whirlwind last nine months—she couldn’t stand the thought of losing him when he hadn’t even wanted to come.

If she could take it all back, give up climbing forever and return to her quiet life in Switzerland, she would. But their survival depended on someone else, someone she hadn’t trusted in years.

With all her strength, Sophie closed her eyes and called Evelyn’s name one last time.