Page 5

My mouth hangs open. I’m warm, flushed with anger, pacing, stomping and flailing about, heat pulsing through me. No shivers. No cold bones. No achy muscles or goosebumps.

I march back to the opposite wall and drop to the floor, hugging my knees so tight that my chin rests on them. The cold ices over me.

I look up at his set jaw and mismatched hazel eyes—one with a little extra green, and one that glitters with gold—and because I’m a liar, and I really do want him to take care of me, I say, “It might be our last night alive. I’m scared shitless, and I’m bleeding and bruised, and all I have in the whole fucked-up world is you, and you’re way over there, pissing me off. On purpose. And you’re still the only one I want here with me.”

Kelter pushes himself off the wall, aiming his gaze anywhere but mine as he approaches, a tower that crumples at my side. He wraps his arms around me and nestles his head against my shoulder, radiating warmth. His thumb brushes over the open cuts on my arm, and the smattering of freckles on his nose wrinkles into a yawn. I can’t make sense of the last few hours, but this fleeting moment asks for nothing—no logic, no explanation, no words.

My anger melts away, and the throbbing in my arm returns with all the other pains, inside and out. I cradle my arm to my chest and rest my cheek on Kelter’s head, his soft, golden hair tickling me.

I fight to keep my eyes open, scanning the shadows and expecting them to peel from the walls and rise over me with a knife. My mind churns. The thoughts clash together, accelerating into spirals, but as the minutes pass, as time becomes as indiscernible as the threats in the night, I lose the battle. My eyes drift shut, taking the whirling thoughts of death and doom into my dreams, creating nightmares.

Daylight intrudes on my sleep, slipping through the ceiling grate.

Not a dream then. And not the awful, sunny kind of daylight in Caldera. It’s beautiful—dark and gray with only enough clarity to know the night has ended.

I pull away from Kelter, shivering, my breath fogging.

Baskets, tunnel, wheels…It’s all the same as last night. A madman really did put a sack over our heads, take us from my forest and dump us in a stone prison. I try to deny reality and slip back into sleep, but something nags at me—something I thought I saw but couldn’t have. I force my eyes open, and across the room, where Kelter plastered himself against the wall and stoked my hot temper, is a tiny door.

“Kelter.” I shake him and point.

He sits up straight and pries his eyes open, lids fighting the weak light. “That wasn’t there last night.”

“Doors don’t appear out of nowhere,” I remind him. And myself.

“Well…it was dark.” He relaxes back against the wall, letting darkness take the blame.

I don’t know which part of finding a door to escape death makes him settle in for a morning snooze, but I scurry across the room on my grubby hands and black-and-blue knees. “Get over here.”

Kelt lets loose a spiteful sigh and follows. We kneel in front of the square door, just wide enough to crawl through. Made of wood, with a golden handle in the center, it looks entirely out of place in this stone room.

“Wait.” Kelter thrusts his arm out in front of me as I reach for the handle. “It could be a trap.” He inspects the door, feeling along the edges and flattening his stuck-out ear against the wood.

Waiting is a noxious concept. He knows how I feel about it. I’d avoid it if I could.

“Or…it’s our only way out of here.” I grab the handle.

He presses his hand against the door, eyes flaring with fear. “We can’t trust this.”

“Are you insane? Are we supposed to sit around and wait for that man to come back to…” My voice fails at the possibilities.

Kelter shakes his head softly, his forehead wrinkling. “I’m not worried about him.”

“We have a way out of this nightmare, Kelt. I don’t know why or how, but I’m taking it. You can stay here and think about your last fucking meal until he guts you, spilling it on the floor with your intestines.”

“You know I don’t like when you get like this.”

“Then let me out of here.”

His hand stays steady on the wood. “We need answers first. We can’t go through a suspicious door. What if something dangerous is waiting for us on the other side?” His eyes are pleading, but they’re locked on the door, not me, as if he were asking it to disappear once more.

“Answers?” I slam my knees into the ground, inviting bruises on top of bruises. “How do you expect to get answers inside this room?” I wrap my fingers under my knees, my anger tempered by the pain as it gives way to fear. Even though I face death every day, I still want to run from it. My voice is small. “He said he would see us tomorrow…and that’s today.”

Kelt’s hands engulf my shoulders, heavy and firm. “I know you’re scared, but I need you to trust me.”

“I am so damn beyond scared. I can’t trust anyone.”Not even you.

“I need some time to figure things out,” he says with the softest squeeze.