We’re not just surviving.
We’re heading straight for the fight.
CHAPTER 29
JOLIE
The tunnel narrows again as we move deeper, the air thickening with that same mineral weight that clings to the back of my throat, but there’s something else layered under it now—faint, mechanical, a distant sound that doesn’t belong to stone or wind. It vibrates just enough through the ground to register in my boots, a low, constant reminder that we’re getting close to something structured, something controlled.
“You feel that?” I ask, keeping my voice low as I adjust my step over a jagged break in the floor.
Hrask doesn’t look back, but his head tilts slightly.
“Yeah,” he says. “That’s system bleed. We’re under the outer grid now.”
“Which means?” I press.
“Which means we’re running out of space to mess this up,” he replies.
“Good,” I mutter. “I was getting bored.”
He huffs a quiet breath, something almost like a laugh, but it fades fast.
The tunnel opens just enough ahead to create a shallow pocket in the rock, a place where the walls pull back and theceiling lifts slightly, and he slows as we reach it, his pace shifting from forward motion to something more deliberate.
“Hold up,” he says.
I stop immediately, my body already keyed into the change in his tone, the way it drops just slightly when he’s about to pivot from movement to decision.
“What is it?” I ask, scanning the space automatically.
“Nothing yet,” he replies, stepping into the center of the pocket and turning to face me fully.
That’s new.
My brow furrows slightly as I watch him, the shift in posture registering before the reason does.
“Why are you stopping?” I ask.
He doesn’t answer right away.
Instead, he looks at me—really looks, not the quick assessments we’ve been trading since the basin, but something slower, more deliberate, his gaze moving over the way I’m standing, the way I’m holding myself together.
“Don’t,” I say immediately, narrowing my eyes. “Whatever that is, don’t do it.”
“Jolie,” he starts.
“No,” I cut him off, taking a step forward. “You don’t get to start a sentence like that unless you’re about to say something I’m not going to like.”
And there it is—that shift, that subtle pull inward like he’s already made the decision and now he’s just figuring out how to deliver it.
“You’re staying here,” he says.
The words land flat.
Heavy.
Wrong.
