She touched his hand, and he met her gaze. Her eyes looked even darker with ash coating her lashes.
“You don’t have to stay,” she said. “I free you from your oath, Yassen Knight. If you decide to leave, I’ll honor that decision. If you stay—it’ll be your choice.”
Yassen looked down at her hand on his. Not long ago, she had vowed to kill him. But when he had revealed his betrayal, she had spared him.
He knew he was never destined for a quiet life. He had cursed himself ever since he had shot the poor prisoner. Time and time again, fate had given him crossroads; time and time again, he had allowed it to push him down a path of its choosing. All his life, Yassen had believed that his life was caught between edges because fate had demanded it be so. He believed that he had no freedom, no home. That one more job, one more kill, would finally bring him closer to those things.
But as Yassen looked at Elena and saw the burning conviction in her eyes, he realized thathehad kept himself from peace by switching loyalties, countries, people. That if he left now, if he ran, he would never find it. His home was not a place. It was her.
And she was worth fighting for.
“Leave me, or”—Elena kissed her three fingers and placed them on his forehead—“fight with me.”
He closed his eyes and leaned into her hand.
“So we the blessed few,” he said. The words fell like stones that sealed his decision.
“So we the blessed few,” she whispered back.
They pored over the map, memorizing the network of tunnels that snaked beneath the mountain. The two remaining mines lay fifteen miles north, high up on the ridgeline, separated by only two miles of forest.
“Why would they be so close?” Elena asked as she peered at the holo. She had washed the soot from her face with an old bar of jasmine soap but there was still a smudge beneath her ear. Yassen reached to wipe it off, and she turned, surprised.
“You missed a spot,” he said.
She smiled and leaned into his hand.
It was the fragile calm before the storm, but Yassen wanted to stretch it like the twin moons had stretched the long night for Alabore. To remember the way she looked at him now, her eyes dark and liquid, and lock it forever in his heart.
“What is it, Knight?” she whispered, holding him in her gaze. “Are you getting cold feet?”
No, he wanted to say.I just want this.
Yassen withdrew his hand, turning back to the holo. “The deposit must be heavy up there, and that’s why they need two mines.” He pointed at the silver dots indicating the locations of the rigs, and the red tunnel farther down the ridgeline, about five miles south. “This is what we’ll need to take. Once we blow up the first mine, the fire should spread to the second. We can escape before then.”
Elena traced the tunnel, the shadows curving around her face, her lips. “And it won’t collapse.”
“It won’t collapse,” he repeated, hoping that saying so would make it true.
They departed as night fell. The trees and the smoke began to thin as they pushed farther north. Moonlight filtered through the forest, coating the pines in an eerie hush. Yassen slowed his brenni to a stop at a dry ravine filled with dead leaves. The old magazine bullets dug into his waist. He had found them in the hallway closet, underneath his father’s hunting clothes.
“We’re close,” Yassen said as Elena drew up beside him. He could see the ridgeline peeking between the trees. It skirted around the mines and would lead them to their western border.
“If the soldiers start shooting, we run,” he said, turning to her. Her face was hidden behind her scarf, but her eyes met his. “Understood?”
“Yes,” she said.
Yassen took the lead as Elena followed. He held his gun against his thigh, his finger curling around the trigger. So far, they had encountered no soldiers nor assassins lying in wait. The forest was quiet save for the occasional scuttle of a rodent or the whispering of the wind.
His brenni grunted as it hopped over a fallen tree. Yassen stood up in his saddle and peered down through the heavy foliage. The cliff now rose above the trees, but he still couldn’t spot the telltale glimmer of metal. Suddenly, Elena whistled. He turned to see that she had stopped and was pointing to a crop of pines.
There, partly hidden by the trees, lay a stone path. It snaked down the bluff, weaving between the pines for the forest beyond. As he joined her, he saw it.
A thin trail of smoke, glimmering from the north.
Elena stilled, her eyes alert, fingertips glowing.
“I can feel it,” she said slowly, “a small inferno.”
