Heist Royale (Thieves’ Gambit #2)

Chapter Sixteen

Sixteen

There was cold, and then there was this.

Ice. Pinpricks all over my skin. It was like the water, personification of cold itself, had reached up, wrapped its fingers around me, and squeezed. Everything was ice. Was I ice?

And black. The only light was a small hole above me now. And I was sinking farther from it by the second.

My lungs constricted—I’d already been out of breath, but now I really couldn’t breathe.

I kicked frantically. Each movement felt like dragging my legs through sand. No, slush.

My skin was numbing.

And the surface was still getting farther away.

I looked down, darkness stretched beneath me, and I wanted to scream. Dark was okay. Deep was okay. Dark and deep and cold was terrifying.

My legs were still moving. If some monster from the deep did grab them, how long until I couldn’t feel it at all?

My lungs burned. Ironic.

Why was I still drifting down?

My arms and hands were a frantic flash of movement above me. Just swim, Ross, damn it.

The package on my back fought every upward movement, its weight tugging the straps so carefully tethered around me. They might as well have been ropes tied to the bottom of the ocean, reeling me down.

I moved my hands down to the straps around my waist. Where was the clip? It was just a button, like a car seat strap. I just had to press it. Where was it?

Where was my waist? Where were my hands? Where were my fingers? My sense of everything was slipping away, erased by the vortex of cold.

I pressed a hand, I think, over my nose and mouth to keep from taking an instinctual breath in. My chest was the only thing on fire. One breath in, and I could quench that.

One breath in, and I was never getting out of this water.

I might already be dead.

That thought sparked a burst of adrenaline. I kicked and strained and stretched for the surface with the last of everything in me. The gaping ice wasn’t that far. I only had to kick. What was one yard, two yards, ten yards? Forget the burn, forget the cold, forget the numb. I wanted to see my mom again, and Auntie. My friends. Even…

I could see my arm reaching for the surface. I was almost there.

With one last burst of adrenaline, my hand punched the surface. Yes. I had one hand out, I could do this.

My hand slapped down on the ground. Only it wasn’t the solid rock I’d been hoping for. I grabbed a piece of ice, breaking it away from a larger chunk. My weight pulled it down into the water with me. Without getting a lick of air, I slipped back away from the surface.

My legs quit on me. My hands were done moving too. That was my last shot, and I wasted it.

Nothing would move. And I stopped trying.

I think my eyes were freezing too. Water was seeping past my snow goggles. I closed them. I guessed this was how Ross Quest died. I couldn’t help it—I took a breath, and water flooded my lungs. It honestly didn’t even hurt…that much.

Until…it did.

A rush of cold returned. Brisk and unforgiving, like a blast of freezing air had just hit me all over. I forced my eyes open. The all-consuming darkness was gone—

I tried to breathe, but nothing would go in. Panic. There was ice water in my lungs…

Oh god—

I coughed, hard. Water spat out of my mouth. Someone was hitting my back, aiding the process.

They stopped hitting my back, and through my blurred vision, I could see that someone was rubbing my arms. The echo of warmth fought through the cold, and I could feel the heat starting to return as they pushed their bare hands up my sleeves to heat my arms.

The only thing making it through my numb ears at first was a steady beat of static. But as those heated up too, the static morphed into a warbled jumble of words. And within seconds, the volume slowly increased until I could hear a clear voice and feel a cloud of heat on my ear.

“You’re okay, you’re okay, you’re okay.” He repeated it again and again, like he was talking to himself more than me.

“Devroe?” I tried to ask, but I could only mouth the words.

I blinked a couple of times, and my vision cleared enough to make out the shattered ice.

Devroe…saved me.

I wanted to smile. I wanted to cry. I wanted to thank him. I couldn’t speak, so I just focused on the little bit of warmth I could feel coming off of him. That huff of air on my ear. The way he tucked my head into his neck, the friction of his hands on my arms. It didn’t even bother me to admit that it all felt really, really nice right now.

“You’re going to be fine, love.” If I had been capable of it, I might have shuddered. Love—did he mean to say that? He hadn’t called me that in his months of teasing. If he was trying to melt me with words too, it was certainly working. He said it like a desperate promise, and even though I still couldn’t feel my toes, I believed him.

The numbness was slowly giving way to feeling again. He shifted behind me, and I felt my waterlogged coat being stripped off. Then he kicked off my drenched snow boots with his own. My limbs shivered. My teeth rattled. Devroe, still cradling me in front of him, slipped his fleece-lined boots onto my feet, and even with the extra space from the larger size, it was enough warmth that I almost swore I could maybe feel my big toes again.

He slipped a coat over my shoulders—his coat?—still toasty with his body warmth, and guided my shivering arms into the sleeves. It wasn’t a perfect fit. My undershirt was damp, but already I felt a little farther from death than I had been a minute ago. He wrapped a gray thermal scarf snugly around my neck, one that I was happy to find smelled just like his familiar cinnamon-and-spice scent.

“Absolutely fine,” he promised. And I let myself almost nod. Whatever he said, I believed it. I appreciated it. I liked it.

Why had I been so angry with him all this time? How could I have been?

His arm snaked around my waist, cocooning me in the coat still toasted with his body warmth. I was still shivering, my teeth still chattering, the sensation on my skin still far away from what it should have been, but this was better and he was here and I could work out how I felt about all that later but right now it was okay.

“You need to get to somewhere warm soon,” Devroe said. I felt him shift behind me. Was he going to carry me? Where?

Oh gosh, I thought I might die if he bridal-style picked me up and carried me through the snow.

A familiar sound cut through our quiet. The metallic click of a gun.

“Get away from her.”

Battling my shivering and my shaky breath, I followed the voice. Atop an ice-encrusted rock, backlit by the Monet-blue sky, Noelia was glaring at us.

No—at Devroe.

And she had her sedative gun with her, finger on the trigger with a certainty that made me wonder why she hadn’t shot yet if she was that determined to.

“Lia…” My voice came out small and weak and hoarse. I felt Devroe tug me tighter into him at the sound of it. I coughed once and tried to raise my hand to wave her off. It was like raising a quivering twig. “Stand…down.”

Yeah, okay, he was the enemy. Team Kenzie. But couldn’t she see Devroe was helping? For five minutes, couldn’t we cool it with the drama? Maybe…he was even going to switch teams.

“You’re not going to shoot me,” Devroe said, more taunting, meaner than I would have expected. “You don’t have the stomach.”

“Not with a real gun, no,” she admitted. “But I assure you I don’t have a single problem pumping every vial into you. I’m only going to tell you one more time.” She hopped down to a slightly lower rock, never so much as blinking. “Get away from her, and the target you’re trying to swipe.”

Target?

I turned around. My neck ached from the motion. Yes, one of Devroe’s arms was around me, but the other hand was busy detaching me from my heavy-duty backpack. The straps had been silently severed. A slender switchblade, not unlike the one Diane had been carrying, rested over the snow. I should have realized the backpack was off of me when he had no trouble replacing my coat with his own. Of course I hadn’t felt it. And if I did, the overwhelming relief of warmth was enough to easily forget about something like that.

Devroe hadn’t been saving me. He saved the target. And he wasn’t warming me up—he was distracting me.

I needed to get away from him.

My arms and legs barely worked, but I tried my best to scramble out of his embrace.

“Ross, wait—”

“Let…go…”

I heard Noelia making the final jump onto our level of rocks. She wasn’t messing around. She shot. The yellow-white vial landed in the snow just beside Devroe’s knife, but it was close enough. He let go of me, and I instantly tumbled over myself. I hadn’t realized how much he’d been supporting me.

That made me want to cry even more.

“Step back,” Noelia ordered. I focused on trying to get to my feet while he shuffled up, the rustle of snow telling me he was taking cautious, if not reluctant, steps away.

Noelia grabbed the target backpack by the only unsevered strap, then haphazardly swung the same arm around my waist. It was clumsy, but I could lean on her to walk.

Devroe was a few feet away, his hands up. His bottom lip trembled as he looked at me. It almost looked like he wasn’t faking it.

“Ross, I—”

“Shut up,” Noelia said for me. “Say something else, and I’ll shoot you for real.”

Devroe bit back a grimace, before sighing. I had to look away. Everything was too painful. My lungs, my legs, my heart.

Devroe didn’t try to speak again, but he didn’t leave either. I could sense him watching us as Noelia helped me up the rocks, until we were out of sight, headed toward Mylo and the Zodiac.