“Damn.”
Lyssa winced at the frustration she heard in the lieutenant’s voice. “Once you free Captain Cross, what will happen to all of you? Won’t the Elders be mad?”
All the men looked grim. It was Connor who answered her. “We know the risks.”
“Will they kill me?” she asked, trying to steel herself for the confrontation ahead. Everything was a possibility. She wasn’t ruling anything out.
“I seriously doubt Cross will let anything happen to you,” he answered dryly.
“And you?” she asked. “And the lieutenant? None of you have any reason to trust me. Hell, I don’t even trust myself. I have no idea what it is I’m supposed to do. What if I sneeze and everything blows up?”
His arm tightened around her, which she appreciated immensely because they were really high up in the air. “Do you love him?”
“Desperately.”
“And if your existence jeopardizes his?”
“I expect you to take care of it.”
His chest rose and fell against her back. “You would die for him?”
“If that’s what it takes,” she said fervently, the rushing wind making her tears flow across her temple and into her hair. “He risked everything to come to me, Connor, knowing that even if he made it alive I wouldn’t remember him. We spent so little time together, but it was enough for him. He wanted me badly enough.”
“You want him the same way?”
“Oh yes.” She smiled, turning her head to face him, causing her hair to blow into both of their faces. She brushed it back impatiently, and suddenly found it contained by a rubber band. “Did you do that?”
He shook his head.
“Oh man.”
“Yeah,” he muttered. “Oh man.”
They were silent for a few moments, and then he said, “When we get to the lake, we’re going to dive straight in. The cavern is quite a ways down, and we need the velocity to get there. I’ll warn you when the time comes. Hold your breath and don’t struggle. Try to keep your body straight and your limbs tucked in to minimize the resistance in the water.”
“Got it.”
“I have no idea what we’ll find down there. They’ll have the area well guarded, and they know we’re coming.”
“I understand. I’ll stay out of the way.”
“Good. I would have preferred to leave you behind, but you’re presently with the only people in the Twilight who have any desire to keep you alive.”
Lyssa’s lower lip quivered, and she bit on it. Everyone in this world wanted her dead.
They whizzed over a low mountain and bore down with stunning force toward the lake revealed on the other side. “Follow me,” he yelled to the others, then much lower, “Get ready.”
She took a deep breath, and instantly found it seized in her lungs as they plunged headfirst into the icy water. Trying not to struggle, Lyssa quickly grew dizzy, her lungs spasming from the unbelievable chill. It felt as if it should be slushy with ice. Just before she passed out, they lunged upward into warm, humid air.
Sputtering and gasping, she was hauled out of the water and thrust roughly aside. Lyssa wiped the water from her eyes and saw the melee their arrival had instigated. Her Elite guards fought with swords against a legion of gray-robed figures who also wielded deadly blades. The space was small and cramped, dominated by a circular computer console and a clear screen of rapidly flickering images. Depending on her angle, she could see right through to the room beyond, a space filled with wide beams of light like the one she had jumped out of earlier. Slipstreams.
The sight of the hallway on the other side of the cavern galvanized her into action. She leaped out of the way of an Elder who was retreating from an Elite sword. Dodging falling bodies and wicked blades, Lyssa crossed the space and made her escape, desperate to find Aidan.
Entering a hallway carved out of the rock, she took off at a run, pausing at each doorless archway to look inside. She heard footsteps behind her and turned, relieved to see that it was Philip sprinting after her. Before her was a seemingly endless row of doorways. Her feet squelched inside her wet shoes, and the loose pants, so light when they were dry, were now a heavy weight against her legs. She wished they were dry, but seemed unable to effect the change.
“Keep going,” Philip urged, taking over the task of looking in the rooms on the left. He, too, was still soaked.
The next threshold she paused at revealed a man in a cylindrical glass chamber. She gasped, hope rising, then she realized the dark-haired man inside wasn’t big enough to be Aidan. Moving on, she found more men in more glass tubes. They all looked to be asleep. Or dead. “What is this place?”