Page 58 of The Catacomb King
The sheet of rock slammed on top of Hades. He made a huffing exhale. My blood spiked. Where had he been hit? His spine? His skull? Had his vertebrae shattered?
The sheet had covered our divot like the lid to a coffin, like a wooden board falling on top of a bathtub. I felt the roaring vibrations of the rock smashing down on it.
But the rock sheet protected us. We were safe.
Almost not daring to believe it, I reached up and inched my hand around the back of Hades’s head. Into his hair. He was flat on top of me, his ear crushed against my ear, his chin nestled atop my shoulder, his breath hot on my own neck. My fingers laced into his hair.
There was a half-inch of space between his head and the rock.
The rock sheet had not struck him at all when it fell. He had only been startled.
He was safe. And so was I.
I moved my hand down his shoulders, then his back, almost not daring to believe it. There was a scant inch of space, all the way down.
“What do you think you’re doing?” he whispered. His hard chest pressed into my chest, almost snatching the breath from my lungs. His heartbeat pulsed, rabbit-fast, in the blood ofhis stomach against my own soft stomach. His heavy thighs trembled against mine.
I became miserably aware that my clothes had been shredded sometime during my two climbs. The skin of my abdomen was bare against his smooth, silky tunic. Our arms were pressed together, bicep to bicep, wrist to wrist.
I whispered back, “Saving your life, asshole.” And then: “You could say thank you.”
Hades huffed out a laugh.
Above us, the rockslide roared.
And then it was quiet.
My plan had worked.
Neither of us moved, though. He was breathing in tandem with me, or perhaps I was breathing in tandem with him. Our hearts were beating simultaneously; I could tell by the throb of my jugular against his.
The darkness was perfect. His skin was perfect. Nobody knew we were here.
But soon they would be coming. Looking for us.
Hades must have realized that too, because after a moment, very slowly and creakily, and with an exhale of what might have been regret or might only have been a response to his exhausted muscles, he pushed himself off me and lifted the sheet of rock on his back. He groaned.
I scrambled out from under him, shaking like a leaf.
The shaft beneath us was clear. The rockslide had washed all the roughage and debris clean out of it. Like… like water. It would be easy to lay the pipe.
I turned my head. The path in the other direction, too — up to the cliff face — was more open than it had been before, the rock having cleaved itself apart. There would still be digging, but… less.
We might actually be able to get this thing done today.
I looked at Hades. He let the rock sheet fall back down on our little hidey-hole, covering it completely. No one would ever know it was there. That we had been in it together. That for just a minute or two, he and I had been equal, only inches from death. That, in fact, I had been the stronger of the two of us. That it had been I who saved our lives.
He looked at me. He was shaking, too, much as he tried to hide it. “Your ankle,” he said.
It was swollen and scarlet. “Oh,” I said, “it was like that the whole time.”
“Monarch’s balls.” He picked me up in his arms like he had the first day, when he’d kidnapped me. He carried me almost all the way back down to the reservoir. This time, I didn’t argue. I was too stunned by the whole thing. Too braced and jumpy for another rockslide. It didn’t come.
Just before we exited the shaft, he put me down. “Walk,” he said.
“Come on.Nowyour arms get tired?”
“Trust me. You want to be walking when they see you.”
