Page 75 of Third

Steam greeted them first. Then the familiar sulfur burn in her nose. Then the sound—the eerie, churning rumble of pressure building beneathrock.

It was worse than before.

The geysers screamed like ruptured engines—piercing, deafening, primal. Columns of steam shot skyward with bone-shaking violence, and the air split with every eruption. It was less sound than shockwave, rattling Anya’s teeth and clawing at her ears like a living thing.

The terrain beneath their feet vibrated as if the planet were trying to shake themoff.

Tor’Vek didn’t hesitate. He gripped her arm, then his hand slid down to the stabilizer strapped against her chest.

A pang of resentment rose up sharp in Anya’s throat—irrational, immediate. It felt like surrender, like handing over the one burden she’d managed to carry all this way. But under it, another feeling coiled tighter. Relief. Bone-deep, unwanted, undeniable.

She hated that she felt it. Hated how heavy her limbs had become, how much her body craved the reprieve.

“I’ll take it,” hesaid.

“No,” Anya shot back, breath ragged. “I’ve got it.”

“It is heavy. You are already exhausted. We need speed.”

“I said I can carry it.”

But his hands were already working the strap, fast and firm. His knuckles grazed the side of her chest, and the contact was fleeting but electric. Her breath caught.

He met her eyes. Too long. Too steady. Something passed between them—hot, magnetic, edged with everything they hadn’t said. The bond flickered, not sharp this time, but slow and coiling. She felt it in her stomach. In her throat. In the low ache between her legs she refused to acknowledge.

The air between them tightened like a held breath—charged, intimate, inappropriate. And yet neither of them moved.

“If you slow down because of the stabilizer, we both die,” he said, voice roughernow.

The words should have broken the moment—should have snapped her back into the urgency of survival—but they didn’t. They deepened it. His voice, low and raw, slid under her skin, clinging somewhere hot and irrational. She felt it in her chest, her pulse, her breath. In that suspended beat between motion and instinct, she wanted to pull him closer. To close the space. To stop pretending the craving wasn’t mutual.

But she didn’t.

She hesitated—just for a second—then gave a tight nod, the moment splintering but not breaking.

He slung the stabilizer onto his back in a single motion, gripped her arm again, and launched forward.

“Move.”

They sprinted.

They sprinted ten meters—clean, fast, no steam, no shifts in the earth. Then a geyser exploded just behind them, launching a plume of ash and stone high into thesky.

Anya ducked instinctively, the heat scalding her cheek.

They kept moving—dodging fissures, timing their steps to the rhythm of the explosions. The ground cracked again, and a boulder shattered against the cliff wall, spraying shrapnel across theirpath.

Anya stumbled. Tor’Vek caughther.

They paused in the shadow of a jagged ridge as two more geysers erupted simultaneously, one left, one right. Her back pressed to his chest, his arm braced in front of her, holding her steady. For one suspended breath, the planet howled around them—and neither of them moved. She could feel the hard rhythm of his pulse at her spine, the tremble of restraint in the way his hand curled and didn’t grab her waist. It wasn’t the fear that undid her in that moment. It was how badly she wanted to turn and kisshim.

She was panting now. Legs shaking. Skin damp with sweat andfear.

“I can do it,” she snapped, before he could offer to carryher.

“I know.”

He helped her up anyway.

---