Read Chapter 40: The Darkness Closes

The avalanche roared above them, a freight train hammering the world to pieces. Élise pressed herself against Luc’s chest in the dark, her palms flat over his ears, her own teeth rattling in her skull. The snow cave they’d carved groaned and compressed, the ceiling bowing inward, and for one terrible moment she thought it would simply crush them—a final, indifferent punctuation.

Then silence. A silence so deep it seemed to have weight, pressing down on her eardrums, on her lungs, on the fragile bubble of air they still held.

Luc stirred beneath her. A low, pained sound. She pushed up onto her elbows, blind in the absolute dark, and found his face with her fingers. Wet. Warm. Sticky.

“Luc.” Her voice came out cracked, too loud in the hollow black. “You’re bleeding.”

“Head wound,” he muttered. His hand found her wrist, squeezed. “It’s fine. Head wounds bleed like bastards.”

“Don’t move.” She fumbled for her pack, still strapped to her back where she’d landed. The diary was in there, thick and solid against her spine. She pulled out her headlamp, clicked it on.

Light. A pale cone that felt like a gift, like an impossible mercy. It swept over Luc’s face—white, blood streaking down his temple, his eyebrow split open. His eyes were glassy, pupils slow to contract in the beam.

“Look at me,” she said. She held up two fingers. “How many?”

“Three.”

“Try again.”

He blinked, squinted. “Two. Sorry. Two.”

Her stomach dropped. She tore a strip from her thermal layer and pressed it to the gash, hard. He hissed, but didn’t pull away.

“We need to dig out,” she said. “Fast. If you go under from that concussion, I can’t move you alone.”

He laughed, a dry rasp. “You’ve got that backwards. I’m the one who weighs more.”

“Then stay awake. Talk to me.” She scanned the walls of their tomb. The snow cave was small—barely enough room for both of them curled up—but the roof above them was a solid, compressed mass. The avalanche had buried them deep. She couldn’t see how deep.

She reached up and pushed at the ceiling. It barely shifted.

“Luc. Do you have the shovel?”

His hand fumbled at his side. He pulled the compact avalanche shovel free, blade folded. “We share.”

“Okay.” She took it, unfolded it, and drove the blade into the snow above her head. It sank with a soft hiss. She scraped a handful of loose snow down onto her face, coughed it out, kept digging. “Okay.”

She dug for what felt like forever. The shovel was a toy against the weight of the mountain, but she kept at it, one scoop after another, passing the tool back to Luc when her arms burned. He dug from a sitting position, one hand holding the bloody cloth to his head, the other driving the blade with weakening strokes.

“Your hands,” he said once. She looked down. Her fingers were white at the tips, the skin puckered and numb. She couldn’t feel them anymore.

“They’re fine.” She took the shovel back.

The air was getting thin. She didn’t want to say it, but she could taste it in the back of her throat—stale, recycled, laced with the ghosts of their own breath. Carbon dioxide. She was digging a hole that got darker, not lighter. She was digging into a black that had no end.

“Elise.” Luc’s voice, quiet. She stopped.

“What?”

“If we don’t get out—” He paused. Swallowed. “There’s things I never said.”

“Don’t.” She drove the shovel again. A thunk. Solid. “We said them. In the dark. Remember?”

“I remember.” His hand found her ankle in the cramped space. “But I want to say them in the light. So I’m saying them now, in case. Just in case.”

She turned to look at him. The headlamp made shadows in the hollows of his face. He looked ancient and young at the same time, a man who’d spent his life carrying people down from mountains and never once letting himself be carried.

“I should have never let you walk away,” he said. “Five years ago, in Chamonix. I let you go because I was afraid I’d hold you back. And I’ve regretted it every single day since.”

“Luc, stop talking like this is a goodbye.”

“It’s not a goodbye. It’s a promise.” He squeezed her ankle. “If we get out of here—when we get out of here—I’m not letting you go again.”

She stared at him for a long moment. Then she laughed, a broken sound, and wiped her face with the back of her frozen hand.

“You’re bleeding on my floor,” she said. “You’re a terrible houseguest.”

“I’m a terrible everything. But I’m yours.”

She turned back to the ceiling and dug with a fury she didn’t know she had left. The shovel bit into the snow, again and again, her shoulders screaming, her arms dead weights, her lungs burning on thin air. Luc crawled up beside her and they alternated, two broken soldiers trading a single rifle.

And then—the shovel broke through. A shaft of gray light, thin as a knife, stabbed down into their cave.

Élise froze. She stared at it like it was the face of God.

“Luc.” Her voice was barely a whisper. “Luc, light.”

He was beside her in an instant, his hand on her shoulder, his breath warm against her ear. “Keep going. Don’t stop.”

She drove the shovel upward, widening the hole, snow cascading down around them. The shaft grew, and with it came air—cold, sharp, beautiful air that made her gasp. She clawed at the edges with her bare hands, the numbness making her clumsy, the light growing brighter with every scoop.

Luc joined her, digging with one arm, blood still dripping down his face. They worked together, a rhythm of desperation and hope, two bodies moving as one.

The hole widened. She shoved her head through it.

Gray sky. Snow. Wind. And beyond—the white expanse of the valley below, and the glint of morning sun breaking through the storm’s last teeth.

She looked back down at Luc. His face was a wreck of blood and exhaustion, but he was smiling.

“Told you,” he said. “We’re getting out.”