Chapter 21 · Grip in the Ashes

"Get your head down, you idiot!" Vesper screamed, her voice barely cutting through the roar of a collapsing ceiling.

She didn't wait for him to answer. She lunged, her boots skidding on shattered glass and hot plaster, and slammed her shoulder into Lucian’s chest. The force sent his wheelchair spinning, sliding him across the grit just as a second rocket shrieked overhead. The explosion turned the air into a wall of white heat.

Dust choked everything. Vesper rolled, coming up in a crouch with her twin pistols already screaming. *Crack-crack-crack.* She poured lead into the smoke, suppressing the breach team that was already pouring through the jagged hole in the wall.

"Still playing the victim, Lucian?" she spat, her voice ragged. She grabbed the handles of his chair and yanked him backward into the shadow of a fallen support beam. "Because this looks a lot like a death trap!"

Lucian didn't flinch. He sat there, his pale face smeared with soot, looking like a ghost in a ruined cathedral. But his hand—the one that had grabbed her wrist seconds ago—wasn't shaking. It was clamped tight.