Page 87 of Kingdom of Rot & Ruin
I grinned. It was satisfying when someone could follow your train of thought.
“An escape tunnel then?” she asked.
“Or something else,” I murmured.
We continued our journey in silence. Eventually, the tunnel narrowed until we were forced on our hands and knees. I tried in vain to quell the burgeoning panic as all the memories of nearly dying in a cave surrounded me.
“Hey. It’s ok. We don’t have to press forward. Or I can, and you stay here.”
Shava’s tone was surprisingly gentle. That only made it worse. I didn’t need to be coddled. I didn’t need to be pitied.
But the thought of the walls closing in around me anymore made it hard to breathe.
“Z. Z? Zephyr?”
I tried to focus on Shava’s face, but the glow of the torch off her cheeks was distracting. She had nice cheekbones. And lips. I wished I could breathe. Why was it getting darker?
Her arms came around me, and though she constricted my chest further, something about the contact yanked my mind out of its panic. What was she doing?
I blushed as I came back to myself.
She was …huggingme.
“Don’t … don’t do that,” I wheezed, prying her off me and putting distance between us.
Her head tilted to the side, confused. I didn’t blame her. We’d fucked and kissed and done far more than simply put our arms around each other, but there was something intimate about the act and the circumstances that had me more anxious than my claustrophobia.
I didn’t like it.
“The tunnel has to end soon. Let’s push on,” I suggested, clearing my throat and looking stubbornly ahead into the darkness, and not at her.
I thought I heard a scoff from her as she pushed her way ahead of me with the torch. But I could have been wrong.
“Right. Always forward,” she remarked. We crawled forward.
Just breathe. You can always go back.
Immediately, the path forked ahead of us. One path narrowed and went off to the left, and another to the right. Though it narrowed, the ceiling went higher, so at least I wouldn’t have to crawl. I didn’t want to go down either, though. I longed for sun and the open air of the desert.
You didn’t always get what you wanted.
“I can take one, and you take the other.”
I knew Shava would suggest it the moment we saw both paths.
She handed me the torch (since we’d used my materials to make it) and made her own.
“What’s the plan? Meet back here?”
Seemed reasonable. Too reasonable to object.
“Fine,” I grit out. I turned down the path on the left and didn’t look back. Her footsteps retreated as she took the one on the right.
It took hours. Sometimes I had to crawl on my hands and knees, other times I had to set the torch down and force my body between cracks and crevices. I didn’t give myself time to think or panic, only to push forward.
Only forward.
The more I pushed, the better developed the tunnels were. After the third hour, I could comfortably walk again in a corridor-sized path, and noticed other tunnels branching off from the one I was in. I resisted the urge to take any, lest I became lost for good.
