Rapidly pulling a longer length of rope from his pack, Easton tied it off to the fixed line. Then, because he didn’t only have one life he was in charge of up here, Easton did one of the absolute hardest things he’d ever done in his life.

He did nothing.

If Ben and Bree were still moving at the same pace, they were all still on this stretch of the line. Easton didn’t know what he’d find if he found River. But he knew any additional weight would be too much. So he waited, counting slowly in his head, mentally pacing his teammates as they moved through the Veil. As he waited, Easton felt himself grow calm. The gusts beating into his body didn’t matter. The windchill didn’t matter. The knowledge that all around him was a poorly mapped system of crevasses that would be covered in a thin layer of snow, ready to give beneath their feet. It didn’t matter.

All that mattered was River. And somewhere beyond him, River was out there.

The instant Easton’s brain told him Bree and Ben were off the line, he started a sweep downhill, plying out the rope behind him as he made increasingly wider arcing passes. Easton knew what was—and wasn’t—beneath him, and more than once, his muscles locked down on him when the snow beneath his boot crunched down too far. One wrong step could punch him through into emptiness.

One day, this would make a great story. In hindsight, maybe this whole ascent was one long first date.

Midthought, Easton’s blood went cold. There she was, on the ground, not moving.

“River.”

With a low snarl of her name, Easton dropped to his knees next to her. She was so still, at first he thought she was hurt. Sharp relief coursed through his veins when she turned and looked at him.

Then he understood what was happening, why her hands were pushing at him. The angle of her body was wrong, as if a sheet of snowpack beneath her had cracked. Her ax had dug in, but it was dug into the snow.

“Go back,” she mouthed, but it was too late.

The snowpack beneath them dropped away.

Chapter 13

When Easton felt the snow give out beneath them both, instinct had him reaching for River as they both fell.

There was a moment when his stomach lurched, unready for the sudden drop. Then a painful jerk as the tie-off line did exactly what it was supposed to do: it caught him in midair. The breath was knocked from his lungs as their momentum slammed them into the side of the crevasse, his shoulder cracking painfully into a wall of ice.