Hyran: Would it help to make a portal out and start over?

“The v-vampires are out r-right n-now,” Serena whispered against Dexmon’s neck, stuttering.

Dexmon: Negative. The vampires are out right now.

“Is there anything you remember about this tunnel?” Dexmon asked. His voice was gentle. Careful. The voice of a man who was asking a question he needed the answer to and whose needing was being delivered at a volume and a tone that would let her answer without cracking further.

“We h-have t-to t-take it to get to the n-next—” She sucked in a huge, broken breath, unable to finish.

Dexmon didn’t make her say the word. He mindlinked the others with stark clarity.

Dexmon: We have to take this tunnel either way. There is no alternate path.

He lowered his voice again, all soothing warmth.

“Baby, breathe with me. In… out… In… out…”

She tried. Gods, she tried, each inhale shaking, each exhale catching in her throat. Her breathing slowly began to match his, syncing to the rise and fall of his chest. The syncing took time. Thirty seconds. A minute.

Each breath was a negotiation between her panic and his calm, and his calm was winning by inches, and the inches were adding up, and the adding was producing a rhythm that was bringing her back from the edge one exhale at a time.

They moved into a calmer stretch of tunnel, quieter, no screams echoing, no illusions clawing at them. Dexmon didn’t trust it for a second. He kept running, shield up, one arm under her thighs, the other braced around her back.

Up ahead: light.

Natural light.

Thank fuck.

He sprinted towards it, boots skidding as the tunnel opened into a hidden cavern mouth overlooking the jungle far below.

They were carved into the cliffs of the mountain, an opening so concealed that nobody would find it unless they already knew it was there. The view was massive. Jungle canopy stretching towards the volcano’s base.

Sky above, grey and heavy with clouds. Open air for the first time in hours. The open was a drug. The drug was oxygen and sunlight and the absence of screaming stone infants.

He sat down with Serena still wrapped around him, her legs tight around his waist, her face buried against his shoulder. He rubbed slow circles down her back, kissing the side of her head.

“Breathe, Serena. We’re out,” he whispered, grounding her.

He understood her state perfectly. What they had just gone through was disturbing on a level he didn’t have words for, and Dexmon Drakenfell had words for everything. The corridor had weaponized her trauma.

It had pulled her memories apart and played them back through the mouths of monsters, and the playing had been designed to break her and the breaking had almost worked and the almost was the margin that was going to keep him awake for weeks.

He mindlinked the group.

Dexmon: We made it to the end point. What is your status?

Fin: We are being chased by dead, half-shifted wolves with their heads on backwards.

Dexmon: Make a right at the next tunnel. Have magic shields up.

Aeron: Mind giving us a clue before Hyran craps his pants again?

Hyran: Excuse me! I am a MASTER MAGE in this operation and I have NEVER—

Aeron: You screamed, Hyran. In the echo corridor. At a pitch that startled Maelor. Maelor was IMPRESSED.

Maelor: I was horrified. The pitch was impressive. Both things can be true.

Hyran: I was STARTLED. There is a DIFFERENCE between startled and—

Dexmon: You’re about to see disturbing deaths come alive out of the walls and try to reenact them. They’ll drag you into portals and kill you violently. Mindlink will fail when you’re dragged in.

Dead silence followed.

Gavriel: Those again. For fuck’s sake.

“What’s worse, Thor Crushturn or running through that?” Dexmon asked, voice dry as bone.

Serena let out a shaky laugh. “That. A h-hundred t-times that.”

“See, Thor has his uses. Baseline comparison for trauma. Very efficient.”

She breathed in his scent, letting it anchor her. Pine and smoke and warmth, the specific combination that her body had catalogued as “safe” and whose safe was doing more to steady her nervous system than any breathing exercise or gold shield could achieve.

Dexmon suddenly remembered something, and surged calm and love through their matebond all at once. Hard enough that her breath hitched and she froze for a second, overwhelmed. The emotions hit her like a wave of warm water. His calm. His love. His absolute, bedrock certainty that she was alive and he was holding her and the holding was permanent. The matebond carried it through the necklace’s dampening with enough force to bypass every barrier and land directly in her chest.

“I forgot I can do that,” Dexmon said, a crooked grin tugging at his mouth.

She leaned up and kissed his cheek, her silent thank you, because she didn’t trust her voice to hold. She was still hiccuping.

He wiped her tears gently and kissed her lips. Once. Twice. Three times. Soft, grounding, each one placed with the deliberate precision of a man who was memorizing the feel of her mouth because fifteen minutes ago he didn’t know if he’d ever feel it again.

He kissed her forehead, lingering there, breathing her in like he needed her more than air. In truth, he did. And the truth was terrifying. The terrifying was a problem he was going to carry for the rest of his life, the specific problem of loving someone so much that losing them would convert his body from functional to rubble, and the rubble would be permanent.

His own breathing got ragged at times. There was no question this was worse than everything combined from the day before. The lake had been dangerous. The temple had been brutal. This corridor had been psychological warfare designed by an ancient civilization whose understanding of fear was ten thousand years more sophisticated than anything modern warfare could produce.

Then he stood, helping her to her feet before his self-control incinerated completely.

“If we keep sitting like that,” he murmured, arms still wrapped tightly around her waist, “I will absolutely lose the ability to stop myself.”

She looked up at him. Red eyes. Tear-streaked face. White hair matted with dust and ash and corridor debris. Still gorgeous. Still the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.