Chapter 141 The Clock Is Ticking

Chapter 141 The Clock Is Ticking
Grace was warm.

How was she warm, when the last thing she remembered before sleep was the cold of the cave floor and the stone under her hip and the fire that had really been trying to do its best but it was really a small fire in a large cold space? She had fallen asleep cold and she was waking up warm. The two things did not make immediate sense. But she was comfortable regardless.

She kept her eyes closed.

Whatever she was lying on was warm and solid, just like a teddy bear. It was really comfortable, she pressed into it slightly and felt it press back. She didn’t register that and just decided that if this was a dream she was going to stay in it for a while longer because she had earned it.

She felt the heartbeat under her cheek.

It wasn’t hers. Of course, it wasn’t hers, how would her heartbeat be under her cheek?

Then she felt muscles, under her hand. And a chest that rose and fell with steady breathing. A teddy bear doesn’t breathe.

Her eyes flew open.

She was lying across Enzo’s chest.

Her head was on him and her arm was across him; somehow, her legs had tangled with his.

Grace raised her head and looked at his face.

He was already awake. Had a hand behind his head and was staring at the ceiling, his other hand, she now noticed was caressing her waist. He looked very comfortable. Grace didn’t like that.

He felt her look and the corner of his mouth lifted in a smile.

“Don’t let me wake you, princess,” he said, not bothering to look at her. “You looked comfortable.”

Grace grunted and was off his chest before the sentence finished. He didn’t stop her.

She moved sideways and put a foot of space between them, she quickly sat up and looked at him lying there, the hand that was on her waist, he had adjusted and put it behind his head, still staring at the ceiling. 

“What the hell was that?!” Grace shrieked, her cheeks were red.

He did not move from his position. “It’s too early for screaming, woman. Or, is it?” He grinned.

She scuttled back away from him, “What. Was. That?”

“That was you sleeping.”

“Why was I on you?”

“Because you crawled onto me in your sleep.” He said it with ease, and he was smirking because he had found her whole reaction entertaining. “Approximately two hours after the fire went out. You moved yourself over, got comfortable, and went back to sleep.”

“I don’t sleepwalk.”

“I didn’t say you were walking.”

“I don’t sleep-crawl either. I don’t move in my sleep.”

“And yet.”

“You moved me,” Grace balled her fists. “You dragged me over there while I was asleep, which is genuinely disturbing behaviour and I want that acknowledged.”

He turned his head and looked at her, he was trying so hard not to laugh and Grace was getting more ticked off at that behavior, it would have been better if he’d laughed.

“Look at where you were sleeping,” he gestured with his head. “And look at where I am.”

She looked.

Her jacket was still on the far side of the fire pit, where she had laid it down before she slept. She had been against the far wall. He was on the near side, where he had been when he put the fire out, which she remembered because she had been facing the wall and had heard him lie down.

He had not moved.

She was the one who had crossed the fire pit. In her sleep.

She looked at the jacket on the far side and looked at the ground between them, her lips pressing in a thin line.

“That doesn’t prove anything,”

“It proves everything.”

“It proves that the cold made me move without knowing it. That’s not the same as—” She stopped because it was beginning to sound like she was explaining herself and she needed to stop. “Get up. We need to walk.”

He got up.

He stretched first, she walked over and picked up her jacket, put it on, and did not look at him stretching, though she could hear his bones cracking.

“The air is going to get worse as we go,” he bent, picking up the torch and relighting it from the embers. “No circulation down here. The further we stay from the entrances the thinner it gets. We need to move toward fresh air which means moving upward when the passages allow it.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because I’m claustrophobic and I spent a significant portion of my childhood learning everything there was to know about enclosed spaces so I could manage the thought of being in them.” He said it in the same tone he used for everything, giving away nothing about how much the admission had cost. “Upward means toward the surface. Toward the surface means toward the air. We follow the walls that have moisture on them, cold moisture not warm, because cold moisture means the stone is close to outside temperature.”

She looked at him.

“You could have mentioned this before we wandered in circles for hours,” she glared at him.

“You could have not run off.”

She started walking.

He fell in behind her with the torch, they began moving through the junction and into the passage that angled slightly upward, which he had identified by looking at the floor angle, they both walked in silence, except for the sound of their footsteps.

Grace was thinking about what Enzo had said by the fire.

‘I went to him to protect you.’

She turned his words over in her mind, she had been analyzing them since he had said them. The part that was easy to dismiss and the part that was not. She had spent a considerable amount of time and energy building a clear picture of Enzo Torres in which the cruelties were the character and the other things were the exceptions, because that picture was easier to steer than the alternative. The alternative was a person who was genuinely complicated, and genuinely complicated people were harder to be angry at and she had needed to be angry at him.

‘He tried to kill me first.’

She did not know if it was true. She also did not know that it wasn’t.

She walked on autopilot, her mind on her thoughts, she wasn’t paying attention to where she moved.

The passage widened slightly and she stepped over a crack in the floor and Enzo’s torch threw their shadows long and sideways on the walls, Grace looked at the shadow versions of them walking beside each other and looked forward again.

Something moved in her peripheral vision.

On the ground to her left, about two feet ahead, she had no time to react before Enzo’s foot came down.

Not on the thing. Behind it. His boot heel came down on the tail end of it and Grace heard a wild hiss. She yelled.

“It’s a fucking snake!” The snake coiled and raised its head. Grace saw it fully now, her face pale.

It was long and patterned. Its head was triangular, it was directly in front of her and would have bitten her the moment she got really close.

“Oh God, that’s a Cobra, Enzo!” 

The snake turned toward the pressure on its tail.

Toward Enzo.

“Enzo move—” Grace didn’t even finish shouting. The creature struck. The strike was fast. Its head drove forward and the fangs found the side of Enzo’s calf above the boot, he made a sharp sound and stepped back. The creature quickly moved towards a crack in the wall

Grace didn’t believe it could fit into it but the crack swallowed it and it was gone.

Enzo stood with the torch in one hand and looked down at his leg.

Grace was beside him before she had decided to move, she crouched, raised his pants, and looked at the two small marks on his calf. She took off her jacket and tore the bottom of her shirt.

“What are you—” Enzo started asking as he moved his leg away from her, but Grace quickly grabbed his leg back, cutting him off mid-sentence as she raised his pants’ leg higher and instantly tied her ripped shirt below his knee, she made sure to bind it tightly.

“That’ll make it harder to walk.” She ignored him and added another tight knot again before pulling his pant’s leg down.

“How bad,” she winced.

He looked at the marks and then at her, his expression was grim.

“Depends on what it was.”

“It was a cobra, I said so.” She looked up at him with wild eyes.

He was quiet for a moment.

“Then it depends on how much venom and how fast we move,” he said. “There would be other creatures down here, these tunnels haven’t been used in a long time.” He looked at the passage ahead. “For the bite, we have a few hours. Maybe less. We need to find the exit.”

She stood up and looked at him with wide eyes, feeling the weight of his words settle on her shoulder.

They were lost in a cave with one torch and nothing else and now Enzo had been bitten by a venomous snake and had a few hours, and the exit was somewhere in a direction neither of them was certain of.

“Be happy, darling, in a few hours you may finally get rid of me for good.” He grinned.

She looked at the passage ahead, unsure if she wanted that anymore.

“Shut up Enzo, we keep moving.”