by Presley Hall
I almost can’t believe the words as they come out of my mouth. I’ve never been one of those there’s a reason for everything types. In fact, back on Earth, those sorts of platitudes annoyed the shit out of me. It just seemed like an excuse, and god knows I was an expert in excuses back then.
But saying it to Ren now feels different.
It feels right.
Maybe it’s because I’m on another planet, in another part of the universe, living an adventure so insane that I can still sometimes hardly believe it’s real. But I’m not just bullshitting him when I say that. I really believe it.
Ren looks surprised at my words, his eyes widening a little.
“Thank you,” he murmurs, firelight flickering on his strong features and the rough texture of his scar. “I’ve… never looked at it in that way.”
I shrug, pursing my lips. “Well, sometimes a different perspective helps us see things in a way we never considered before. And sometimes it’s hard to see those things for ourselves.”
“You’re right about that.” He nods, his expression turning thoughtful. “I hated being left behind. The past five years have been… difficult. Disheartening. But perhaps you’re right. Perhaps this was always my role to play. It makes those lonely years feel worth it.”
And then, as I watch, his face transforms, softening as he looks at me. His cat-like green eyes glint with gold as they reflect the firelight, and a small smile curves his lips.
He’s so handsome.
The thought surfaces in my mind, unbidden. The firelight flickering over his strong features only accentuates them, the silver at his temples making him look regal and strong.
What I said that day was so wrong.
His scars aren’t ugly. They only make him look more gorgeous, brave, and dangerous, the kind of man who would fight off a wild beast hand-to-hand, staring it in the eyes as he killed it. In the firelight, he looks like the commander of a barbarian army, wild and fierce. And I suppose, in a way, that’s exactly what he is.
I can’t resist the urge to touch him. He’s so close, close enough for me to almost feel the heat of his body, smell the rich, earthy scent of his skin.
Before I can stop myself, I reach out, my fingers tracing the side of his face, starting where the scars begin just below his temple. I drag them down over his cheekbone, across the twisted hollow of his cheek and down to his jaw. The tissue is thick and ridged and bumpy, but it doesn’t gross me out or make me want to pull away.
It makes me want to press my hand against his cheek, to feel his face lean into my palm, to kiss him again.
To kiss away the hurt.
To apologize for what I said.
To take it all back.
As my fingers brush over his skin, I feel it again—the same thing I felt in the woods when I touched him. That sharp, electric jolt of sensation sparks over my skin and seems to awaken every one of my nerve endings, making me want him more than ever.
Fuck. What am I doing?
I yank back my hand at the same moment Ren pulls away from my touch, his eyes meeting mine with a guarded expression.
I can see that old distrust in his face again, see him shutting down, pulling away from me. And I can feel myself doing it too, withdrawing into myself as I stand up quickly. Suddenly, I’m very glad that the only light is from the fire, so that he can’t see how flushed I am.
How does this keep happening? I was so certain when I first met him that I didn’t like him. I had good reasons not to like him. But the almost magnetic pull dragging me toward him doesn’t seem to care about any of that.
The night is chilly and only growing colder, but I don’t care. I walk away from the fire quickly, wrapping my arms around my bare midriff as I try to shake off the lingering feeling. I need to get my head on straight, to remind myself to be smart, cautious, careful. Not to get caught up in things that aren’t real, that can’t last. Not to be seduced by the rush, the temporary thrill.
My years of gambling addiction taught me one thing—and I’d do well to remember it now, when it comes to Ren.
I can’t trust the rush.
Because no matter what, there’s always a crash that follows.
12
Felicity
Our trek up the mountain continues early in the morning. I’m even quieter than usual, lost in thought as we navigate the increasingly difficult terrain.
I keep running over the moment with Ren last night, turning it over and over in my head, trying to figure it out. He doesn’t like me, and I’m not sure that I like him either—he’s arrogant, stubborn, and focused to a fault. He saved my life, sure, but that doesn’t change who he is as a person. And like he said, he would have done it for anyone on the mission. It just so happened to be me who almost got eaten two days into our trek.
But I keep coming back to that feeling, the connection that seems to flare up between us when we touch.
I’ve never felt anything like it. It’s like being shocked with electricity in the best way, pulled toward the other person like a magnet. An ache like nothing I’ve ever experienced fills me every time, making me want. It’s the want that scares me, because it reminds me of the sort of bone-deep, undeniable need I’ve felt in the past.
The need to gamble. The need to risk it all. To take just one more chance so that I can have everything. The drive to have something that feels just out of reach.
That’s what this is, I tell myself, chewing my lip as I clamber over a low pile of rocks that block our path.
Ren feels like a challenge, someone stubborn and unattainable, so of course I want to rise to that challenge. I want to play the game and come out victorious.
That’s what I’m feeling. It must be.
Not real desire, or real affection. It’s just the heady rush of wanting to beat the odds.
The rest of the group is silent too. Their focus is more on getting to our next campsite safely and keeping an eye out for more wildlife that might attack rather than talking, and for once, I’m glad of it. I’m not in any mood to make conversation or jokes.
For one thing, I’m still too caught up in last night. For another, I’m exhausted. The climb is starting to wear on me. I’ve done more physical activity than ever before since landing on Nuthora, and I was hardly a gym rat on Earth. In fact, I actively tried not to work out whenever possible. If I did want to get in some cardio, I usually hiked, ironically enough. But those were casual hikes. Nothing with these kinds of stakes or the types of deadly pitfalls this mountain comes equipped with.
It’s getting colder, too. Each of us has a heavy animal-hide cloak edged with fur, but even those can’t totally cut the wind or protect from the chill, especially not for me. The Voxerans don’t seem quite as bothered by it, but my bare stomach and legs are protesting the cold violently. I can almost feel my knees shuddering when we stop, so I’m actually glad for the punishing pace that Ren sets. At least it helps keep me warm.
As we keep climbing, the ground changes from hard and rocky to hard, rocky… and snowy. I wince but keep trudging along, ignoring the cold bite of the snow when it touches the bare skin on my calves. It’s not too deep yet, but I can see the drifts getting thicker higher up, and I can feel the change in altitude, too. The air feels thinner, and I’m out of breath. It makes me pause for a second, and as I do, I catch a glint of something in the snow-spotted ground up ahead.
The sunlight glints off the object again, and I realize something is hidden there—something that could spell danger for us if one of us trips over it.
My heart lurches in my chest. I’m not sure what exactly it might be, but we’re getting close to the surveillance towers now, and it stands to reason there might be safeguards in place, things meant to prevent exactly what we’re trying to do now.
Shit. Shit!
“Wait! Don’t—”
I start to call out a warning, trying to tell Ren to stop before he can step on whatever is beneath the snow.
But I’m too late.
Strome steps forward, catching up to Ren, and his foot hits the spot, scattering the snow just long enough for me to see that it’s some kind of lever buried in the ground.
And then he steps down.
The ground rumbles beneath us with a groaning roar, and all five of the men tense, reacting immediately. Rocks tumble toward our feet as the shaking increases.
“A booby trap!” I scream. “The mountain is rigged!”
I have no idea if the translator chip in my brain can accurately translate the phrase “booby trap,” but it doesn’t matter. I’m sure the Voxeran warriors have all connected the dots and figured out what’s going on.
This is no act of nature.
The solar council has laid traps for anyone foolish enough to try climbing the mountain to disable the tower.
We’re on a steep incline, far up the mountain at this point, and I almost lose my footing as a large boulder ahead of us cracks into pieces. Large chunks of heavy rock begin to slide down the mountainside, and I dive out of the way to avoid one.
Almost as soon as my feet hit the ground, another loud boom fills the air. A crack opens up in the mountain just behind me. Before I can so much as shift my weight, it starts to widen. The trembling increases as if the entire mountain is starting to shiver, and I can see more rocks coming our way, the start of an actual avalanche of them.
“Felicity!”
Ren bellows my name, and a second later, his strong arm goes around my waist, yanking me back as the ground splits open, yawning in a wide, terrifying dark crevasse.
He drags me backward, pulling me to safety. In my periphery, I catch sight of Strome for a split second, but then he slips out of my view.
I struggle to keep my balance as Ren holds me tight against his body, the two of us bracing ourselves as the mountain opens up, trying its best to swallow us before we can go any farther.
I hear a shout rising up from somewhere, then a pained groan, but I can’t see who it is.
The wind has kicked up too, and snow is everywhere, dislodged by the tumbling rocks and flurrying through the air, kicked up by the avalanche so that it almost looks as if it’s snowing. I can faintly see Ren, his free arm wrapped around a tree to brace us as he holds me with his other, and Strome’s voice cuts through the air as he shouts for Xevar and Rhesk.
I can’t see if they’ve fallen.
Fuck? Did we lose them? Did they plummet into the fissure?
My heart pounds in my chest, the snow cold against my skin, and I feel like I can’t breathe. I haven’t been this terrified since the moment I woke up after the crash. My stomach is turning over on itself, agitated from the rocking of the ground beneath us, and I feel like I might throw up. All I want is for the dirt under my feet to feel solid again.
It feels as if the shaking and rumbling goes on forever. I lose track of time, clinging to Ren without caring what he might think about it.
He can make fun of me later, I think dizzily. I just don’t want to die.
I’m sure there are worse ways to go, but right now, sliding into that yawning cavern sounds more horrifying than anything I could ever imagine.
Finally, slowly, the shaking starts to let up, fading back into a light tremble and then stopping altogether. The snow drifts back down to the ground, settling again. Ren and I look around warily, straightening as we carefully find our footing again.
My heart is still racing, and especially at this altitude, I struggle to get a full lungful of air. It’s the worst feeling, as if I’m drowning out in the open, and I press my hand to my chest, trying not to panic and make it even harder to breathe.
And then, as we take stock of the situation, my heart sinks.
The fissure that opened up in the ground has divided our group. It was impossible to tell where the others were in the chaos and swirling snow, but now we can see clearly.
Ren and I are on one side, and Xevar, Rhesk, and Strome are on the other. For a heart-stopping second, I think that Talix is gone, but then I see him limping forward to join the three men on the other side of the chasm. Rhesk is on the ground, his face twisted with pain.
The chasm between us is jagged and deep, stretching in both directions as if some vindictive giant reached down from the sky and cut a rough slice right across the side of the mountain.
Creeping a little closer with cautious steps, I peer down into the fissure. I can’t see the bottom of it, just a forbidding darkness that seems to stretch on forever.
Fuck.
“The gap is too wide for us to get across,” Ren says, his voice tight with frustration. He raises his voice, speaking loudly enough that it carries across the space to the others without the wind whipping his words away, and I see the same frustration mirrored on the faces of the others. “What the slanch happened?”
“We tripped a security measure,” Strome says, rubbing a hand across his mouth. “Slanching devious. It’s so cold up here that the snow probably hardly ever melts, so anyone trying to get up the mountain would have a hard time avoiding it.” He hangs his head, his expression turning ashamed. “It’s my fault, Ren. I set it off. I’m sorry—”
“It could have been any one of us,” the man beside me says brusquely. “It’s not your fault. We couldn’t anticipate every danger we might come across. It’s just a shame this one has set us back so badly.” He frowns, peering at Rhesk from our side of the crevasse. “How is he?”
“A rock clipped him pretty hard,” Xevar says, baring his teeth in a grimace as he kneels to inspect the wounded man. “Opened up a gash in his leg, maybe cracked the bone a little, although I can’t be sure. He’s going to have a hard time climbing, up or down, but I can splint it, and we can take turns helping him walk. If I can cut down a sturdy branch or find one fallen, that will help, too. We’ll make it.”
“Not up the mountain, he won’t,” Ren says sharply. “The three of you, help him get back down to base camp. He can’t continue on in this state, and neither can you, with this cutting you off.”
He gestures at the yawning gap between us. The booby trap we set off was clearly rigged up by the council who guards this planet as a way to either kill or cut off anyone attempting to hike to the summit, stopping them from reaching the tower. I suppose we should consider ourselves lucky that Ren and I are still on the upper side of the gap, although it’s hard to feel grateful for much at all right now.
But at least we still have access to the path up the mountain. We can continue onward.
“He’s right.” I speak up, and Ren glances over at me as if he’s startled to hear me add to the conversation. “There’s no way for us all to keep going. So Ren and I will continue on alone. We’re stuck on this side of the fissure anyway, and we can’t give up on this mission.”
I look at Ren with a challenge on my face, my chin lifted stubbornly. I know he’s probably cursing the fact that he’s stuck with me on this mountain right now, convinced that I’m not the warrior the others are, that he’s had to save me twice now. That the two of us continuing on our own is just going to end in disaster.
But I’m determined not to fail. I want to prove to him—and to myself—that I can do this. That I can succeed at something I’ve put my mind to, instead of bailing or giving up when the going gets hard.
I want to prove that I can be an asset, someone to be counted on and trusted.
It matters to me, and I’m not willing to turn back now.
My shoulders square, and I open my mouth to argue my case, but to my surprise, he agrees—in a characteristically Ren way.
“Fine,” he grunts, and I can see the hesitation in his eyes. I know he wants to say no, probably because of all the reasons I just considered. But the mission is too important for him to abandon.
Even if it means being stuck with me and finishing this quest with just the two of us.
I don’t care.
We’re continuing on, and that’s all that matters.
13
Ren
I can
see the same hesitation I feel burning in the other warriors’ eyes, but they agree to Felicity’s suggestion as well.
Xevar and Strome will help get Rhesk and Talix back down the mountain to the base camp, while Felicity and I keep going up toward the tower. Fortunately, she and I both have well-stocked packs, so we have enough supplies to make it up the mountain, as well as weapons for us both.
I’m not certain this is a wise idea, but I can’t think of any alternative.
And I know she’s tough and determined. Akhi, she’s downright stubborn—and as irritating as it can be, it’s also becoming a quality I admire in her.
We stay put as Xevar and Strome work out how to get Rhesk back down the mountain, finally fashioning a makeshift stretcher out of his cloak and a few branches. Talix’s leg is injured, but he’s in better shape than Rhesk, able to walk on his own. He rests a hand on Strome’s shoulder as they start to carefully pick a path down the steep decline.
Felicity and I remain where we are as they set off, watching until they’ve gotten far enough that I feel certain they’re going to make it without too much difficulty.
When the others are out of sight, I turn to the woman beside me.
Fierce determination is etched in every line of her face as she looks at me, that delicately pointed chin lifted as she meets my eyes. It stirs something in me, a glimmer of what I felt when I kissed her and when she touched me last night, but I ignore it.
“We should keep going,” I say brusquely. “In case another rift opens up. And we need to keep a closer eye out. I shouldn’t have missed that tripwire. I’ve been leading us, and I should have been paying closer attention. I was alert for almost anything else, but I didn’t stop to think that the mountain itself might be rigged with traps. That’s an oversight that could have killed one or more of us.”
