Page 64 of The Girl Who Should Be Dead

“Magic fire,” she reminds him. “But yeah, that pathway leads to a crack in the surface.” She points across the cavern,over to where the hall tapers off, tilts upwards. Where they stopped digging. “It drips in the summer.”

His breath puffs around his face, a wispy trace of the air showing where he is. Absolute truth that he’s there with her, that the very environment is changed by him standing there, in too many sweaters and his hair flopped on his forehead.

Ambra exhales, and the air clouds around her, too.

It never used to do that.

“Okay,” Gurlien says, and his voice echoes. “Yes, alright, this is impressive.” He drops her hand to rub his together, warming them. “It must be, I don’t know, eight degrees?”

“It’s warmer in here than on the surface,” she says, then bounces on her toes, the movement helping something, some unrest inside her, and grins at him.

Startled, his brows flash up.

“This existed before mankind, and it’ll exist after them,” Ambra says. “They hollowed it out, they smoothed out the walls and widened it until it creaks with the snow, and still couldn’t find anything of worth. It’s perfect.”

His eyes crinkle around the edges.

“Sure, there’s no gold or silver or whatever the fuck they were mining, but this—” She spreads her arms wide, as if she could take up the entire cavern, “—is worth more than any gold they could have mined.”

“And you have this entire place protected?” he asks, mouth sloping upwards.

“Both this floor,” she scuffs her shoe against the smoothed rock, “and the forest moss above.”

Slow, the smile spreads across his face, like even he doesn’t believe that he’s making that expression. That after the morning they’ve had, after the discussion and the sudden realization that he understands her, understandswhat frightens her and how everything is different than it once was, that this, this is what amazes him.

“Okay, alright,” he says, “and you just can casually come here. No problem.”

“No problem,” she echoes, then, impulsively, teleports across the giant room, between one blink and the next.

Over here, the roof slopes closer to the floor, and frost from the damp glitters in the light of her fire.

Even across the cavern, she can see him startle.

“Try to pull me,” she calls out to him, her own voice dwarfed by the room. The firelight casts steep shadows across the floor, against the hewn walls, catching in the natural quartz ingrained in the stone. Rusted metal tools, grating and pipes and rebar, lay bundled against one side, a rat’s nest of old industry.

And in the middle stands Gurlien, the air puffed around him.

Again, the straightening of his shoulders and the exaggeration of the motion in the shadows, and her heart jumps a beat.

At the anticipation of the compelling, at how painful that can be.

And at the competency of the man in front of her, at the care he takes in the soft touch to the leash around his wrist.

Even at this distance, the pads of his fingertips send a shiver of sensation around her neck.

This time, however, he doesn’t just yank. He lets his fingertips run across the leash, as if trying to memorize by touch what he cannot see.

Even at a distance, even though she can’t see his eyes, she can almost feel the calculations in his mind.

He mutters something, too quiet for anything but thesoftest of sounds to reach her, before he twists it between his fingers.

Immediately, all the hair on her arms raise, her scalp prickling, and her chin jerks up.

“Does that hurt you?” he calls out.

The answer is no, but it’s also incredibly strange.

“No,” she answers, and he hasn’t restricted her airflow, hasn’t done anything that could stop her from breathing.

---