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“Zealous,” Georgie offered, settling next to her.

“Overzealous.”

They didn’t disagree.

She flexed her hands. They ached. What if she couldn’t dig through the mud? What if neither of them could?

“You’re shaking.” Georgie’s shoulder touched hers.

“It’s cold.” She hesitated. “And ever so slightly horrifying.”

“Being buried alive?”

“Don’t call it that.”

“Being below ground with no egress, probably forever?”

She laughed unwillingly. “Much better.”

“At least we’re together. I’d rather I was with you than anyone else. Except Charles Peach.”

“The farmer?” She drew up her legs. Every inch of her felt grimy and raw.

“From a practical standpoint. He could punch through the mud.”

“I don’t think he’d have fit into the tunnel.”

“You’re probably right. Did I tell you that he carried a horse on his back?”

A tired smile curved her lips. “I don’t believe you.”

“It’s true. Phipps watched him do it. A full-grown horse.”

“Why?”

“I think anyone would watch something like that.”

She bumped their shoulder. “Why carry a horse?”

“Unclear.” There was a pause. “Why not? If you can?”

She exhaled on another laugh. Her heart was beating more steadily. “This helps.”

“I’ve taken your mind off our being buried alive?”

She bumped them harder.

They laughed, and their laughter warmed the darkness.

A little more, and she’d stop shaking. She’d summon the last of her strength, and she’d do what had to be done.

“Tell me something else,” she said.

“I told you a man carried a horse. What else is there?”

She giggled. It was utterly bizarre, how much this helped. How blithely she could confront the fact that she was trapped in a horrible, dank hole, thanks to Georgie attempting so transparently to bolster her. Usually, she did the bolstering. Soothed and cuddled. Dried the eyes.

“A secret.” She leaned into them. “Tell me a secret.”

She’d said the wrong thing. She was pressed to their side, and she felt their resistance, their limbs still but suddenly unyielding. She might have been leaning on stone.

“Not your deepest, darkest secret.” She pulled away clumsily, embarrassed to have overstepped. But she hadn’t known that Georgie harbored a deep, dark secret.

And they did, didn’t they? What else could their reaction signify?

“A small secret.” She swallowed. “Something comical.”

“Comical?” They shifted closer, restoring contact. The odd moment had passed. “Give me an example.”

She hadn’t prepared one of her own. But there it was—blaring in her brain. Her embarrassment increased. She tried to think of anything else, failed, and proceeded.

“Well, then.” She hesitated. “It’s about that riddle, with the hungry sparks.”

“Good Lord. The answer was kiss?”

“No, but I wanted you to.” Now that she’d confessed, she prickled all over. “I wanted you to kiss me. I’d no idea you would, in that exact moment. It was more of a general condition.”

“You had a general condition.” There was a new note in their voice. “Of wanting me to kiss you.”

“Comical.” She gave a weak laugh. “Your turn.”

“How is it comical?”

“Because. Because you . And me . We were enemies. Enemies don’t kiss. Now we’re friends, and friends don’t kiss either.”

“Who kisses, then? People with purely neutral feelings?”

She felt cornered and tried to hide it with a dismissive snort. “We’re not debating this.”

“The condition.” They said it delicately. “Does it afflict you still?”

“Not in the present circumstances. Obviously.” Was it obvious? Maybe the present circumstances called for kissing. Their surroundings felt like a tomb, but she was alive, and Georgie was alive, and she wanted more aliveness, wanted to touch it and taste it.

She touched the floor. “We need an implement, for digging. Do you feel any loose rocks?”

She began to crawl, feeling her way.

“It still afflicts you, though.” They’d begun to crawl too. “Generally?”

She stopped. “There’s no generally if we don’t unbury ourselves.”

“My God.” They barked a laugh. “That’s a bracing thought.”

The cave floor was covered with smooth clay in some places, rough grit in others. None of the loose rocks were sized or shaped remotely like chisels.

She crawled straight into Georgie.

“Was that your head again?” She sat up, gripping her shoulder.

“It was my nose that time.” Georgie’s voice was right by her ear. “Elf, I was thinking. The last time we saw each other, before I went to London—”

“Mrs. Pattinson’s?” Surprise and displeasure sharpened her voice. “You’re bringing up Mrs. Pattinson’s? Now? ”

“I didn’t follow you to the library.”

“Honesty. Please.” She hunched, instinctively guarding her middle. “We’re friends. You don’t have to lie about how things were back then.”

“I’m not lying.”

Why did they persist? Why return at all to that night?

The ball had been a torment from beginning to end.

Aunt Susan had dragged her in front of every bachelor in the neighborhood.

She could still feel the crisp ringlets twinging her scalp, and the flood of relief when she’d managed to sneak up the stairs.

She’d stolen into the quiet library, tucked herself behind the curtain in the window seat, opened a book on her lap, and escaped into the pages—an escape that proved temporary.

“I went to the library to hide.” Wallflowers did such things during dances. Georgie didn’t. “You and your friends followed, to entertain yourselves at my expense. Otherwise, how do you explain your presence? Did you come to read?” Her tone jeered at the very possibility.

“Erm. Yes, in fact.”

A scoffing laugh burst from her. “Conduct manuals? Religious tracts?”

“Bawdy pamphlets. With pictures, we hoped.” Georgie muttered it, sheepishly. “Supposedly, Mr. Pattinson kept a secret shelf of them.”

She shut her eyes. The memory was crystal clear: Georgie yanking back the curtain and staring down at her, exultant. Their brows had tilted with wicked amusement, and a moment later, the Janes appeared behind them, and two or three others, everyone rosy from dancing and equally hilarious.

“All of you laughed,” she whispered.

“I wish we hadn’t.”

She could hear the sincerity in their voice.

“The laughing was a kind of fit that came over us. It had less to do with you than our surprise at discovering a witness to our foolery. You ran off before I could say anything. I couldn’t chase you down the stairs without giving us all away. So, I let you go.”

She opened her eyes and had the strange sensation that she was meeting theirs through the darkness. “That’s your comical secret? I wasn’t your quarry, but rather bawdy pamphlets ?”

She could tell they were shaking their head.

“No,” they said. “I mean, yes, but that’s not why I brought it up. I thought of Mrs. Pattinson’s for another reason. A more general reason. That is—” They hesitated. “The reason of my own general condition.”

“Your own…” Her voice trailed away as her throat constricted.

“I wanted to kiss you,” they said, “then, there, in the window seat. I wanted to make you forget your book, and remember me, when I was away in London. As I remembered you.”

The cave was silent.

“For I did remember you,” they said. “Always.”

She felt shaky and sank down slowly, sitting on her heels.

Georgie Redmayne, remembering her , in London, remembering her , as they cavorted in the parks, spun around the ballrooms, spouted on the stage, every movement followed by eager eyes.

Remembering that night at Mrs. Pattinson’s, with longing.

Her restless hand brushed something hard, and she started. It was only the lantern.

Only the lantern.

She snatched it up with a cry.

Georgie was the one who snapped the door from its hinges and broke the rest apart, smashing and flattening, until Elf had something like enough to the blade of a shovel.

Even so, the digging was miserable. Slow. Laborious. There was no way to get leverage. She had to rely on her wrists, which burned like fire.

When she finally broke through, she couldn’t force herself forward. Her joints had locked, and her hands and feet felt like foreign objects. They didn’t obey her commands. Georgie ended up propelling her from behind.

She emerged from the cave coughing, on her belly. She came up on her knees, swaying, too stunned, for those first few ragged breaths, to think. The world was almost as dark above as below. Rain lashed, and thunder shook the trees. The pit was a pond, surface boiling.

Georgie tried to tug her to standing, but she slipped and brought them down on top of her.

Their weight knocked the air from her lungs.

She was on her back in sucking mud, liquid seeping up around her, face burrowed into their neck.

Their body was solid and hot, covering hers completely.

Their body was absorbing the rain. It was absorbing the thunder.

She could hear the low rumble in their chest. A long moment passed before she realized they were laughing.

“Move.” She wiggled beneath them, parting their legs with her thigh, bucking her hips. Their laughter hitched, and they pushed up, hands plunged in the mud. They gazed at her, rain dripping from their hair.

The leaden sky flashed.

Their eyes were the only color. Storm-lit blue against all the streaming dark. Dancing with mirth and mayhem.

“Elf,” they began, and wobbled. Suddenly, they were on top of her again.

“Sorry.” Their smile burned into her cheek. “Moving is more difficult than I remember.”

Her heart thumped in her ears. “You’re heavy as a horse.”

“Maybe that’s why. I definitely can’t carry a horse.”

“I can assist you.”

She couldn’t. She was pinned. Georgie touched her along every inch. Her brief struggle pressed her even more snugly against them, creating delicious licks of friction, speeding her pulse.

“Do you want me to kiss you?” Their head raised a fraction.

“Generally?” she asked, but the thunder rolled, and she had to slide her mouth toward their ear. “In general?”

They laughed, shaking their head, flinging more droplets. Lightning arced across the sky, and she gasped. It drew their eyes to her lips.

“I was thinking right now,” they said.

“I’m not sure,” she breathed. “I’m not sure if my feelings are neutral enough for kissing.”

They lowered their face until there was just a whisper of separation. “Are you teasing me?”

“Yes,” she said, and tilted up her chin.

Their mouth was wet with rain and carried the warmth of a thousand suns.

It made sense when the velvety black behind her eyes went wine dark and then berry red.

Georgie kissed her and kissed her, and everything made sense, every mad thing ever done for love, or lust, or whatever this was that braided hot ribbons inside her, that pulled the silk tight, so that a stroke of their tongue shivered all the way down to her belly.

Red was glowing there, in her belly, and between her legs, and behind her eyes, especially behind her eyes. Smears of red, changing shape.

Her lids flew open. Georgie’s mouth dragged over her jaw, her throat, and she was blinking against the rain at a flaming treetop.

Hungry sparks.

“My God.”

Smoke twisted as it rose, far blacker than the clouds, and the flames bathed Georgie in demonic light as they turned.

“Is that branch…?”

They didn’t complete the thought. The branch crashed down, trailing streamers of light. Sparks burst into the air as it hit the ground with a boom and a crackle. Elfreda felt the shudder of the impact and the rush of heat. Fiery leaves writhed less than a yard from her face.

Georgie was on their feet. She shot up, slammed into them, and clung.

Their arm came around her waist. Another bolt forked from the clouds.

She saw jagged gold reflected in their eyes, and sparks whirling overhead, and she could see them seeing her, every dark region of her body and soul lit with ecstatic terror.

She pushed up, and electricity seemed to snap between her mouth and theirs.

Both of them gasped into the kiss. The next thunderclap might have been an earthquake.

Everything shook. She staggered, and then she was running, blinded by rain, slapped by brambles, holding tight to Georgie’s hand.