Smuggler’s Cut was not a sanctuary. It was a stone coffin.

  The darkness inside the shallow cave was absolute, broken only by the agonizing, wet sound of five people struggling to draw breath. Outside the narrow fissure, the wind howled through the Whitewater Ridge, carrying the sub-zero temperature of the encroaching night.

  "She’s not shivering anymore."

  Frederick’s voice trembled in the pitch black. It was the most terrifying sentence he could have spoken. When a body stops shivering in the cold, it means the nervous system has abandoned the fight.

  "Greta, we need a fire," Elena pleaded, her voice tight with panic. "I can’t feel my hands. We have to light a fire."

  "If we spark a flint, the Crawlers see the flash," Greta ordered, her teeth clattering violently. "If we burn wet wood, the Vanguard smells the smoke. There is no fire."

  "Then she dies!" Elena shouted.

  "Friction and mass," a dead, mechanical voice rasped from the dark.

  Arjun was leaning against the jagged cave wall. He couldn't feel his legs. The rusted iron cuffs locked around his wrists were frozen to his raw skin, burning like dry ice. But his mind bypassed the pain, falling back into the cold, ruthless triage doctrine of the Vanguard.

  "The only heat source in this cave is thermal radiation," Arjun stated, his breath pluming in the dark. "Armor off. Wet layers off. Core to core."

  "I am not stripping down in the dark with a Vanguard Bloodhound," Elena snarled.

  "You aren't doing it for him, you're doing it for her," Greta commanded, her voice slicing through the panic. The rebel leader was already tearing at the frozen leather buckles of her own chest plate. "Do it. Now. Frederick, take the back wall. Block the wind."

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  For a terrible, agonizing minute, the only sounds in the cave were the heavy clanks of frozen armor hitting the stone floor and the tearing of wet linen.

  Arjun dragged his soaked Vanguard tunic over his head, leaving him in only his damp under-trousers. The freezing air immediately sank its teeth into his exposed chest. His muscles locked in violent, uncontrollable spasms.

  "Bring her to the center," Arjun ordered.

  "Don't give me orders," Elena hissed, but she was already dragging Isabella’s limp, freezing body toward the middle of the cave floor.

  Frederick, stripped to his massive waist, sat against the cave opening, forming a literal wall of flesh against the draft. Greta curled around Isabella’s left side, pressing her bare shoulders against the kinetic mage.

  Arjun dropped to his knees in the dark. He shifted toward Isabella's right side, but paused. He looked down at his bound hands. The heavy iron chain connecting his cuffs was an icebox. If he pressed it against Isabella, the metal would sap what little core heat she had left.

  With a brutal grimace, Arjun pulled his arms back, wedging the freezing iron chain tightly between his own bare thighs to muffle the cold, taking the agonizing temperature spike entirely onto himself. He leaned forward, pressing his bare chest and shoulder tightly against Isabella’s back.

  A second later, a freezing, shaking body pressed firmly against his own spine.

  It was Elena. She was bracketing the formation, sealing the heat in. Her bare back was pressed directly against Arjun's bare back. He could feel her heart hammering against his ribs. He could feel her violently shivering.

  "Keep her core bracketed," Arjun whispered through chattering teeth, staring blindly into the dark. "Do not rub her extremities. It pushes cold blood back to the heart. Just hold the mass."

  "If you move your hands..." Elena whispered behind him, her voice dripping with venom and terror. "If you try anything in the dark..."

  "I can't feel my hands, rebel," Arjun replied, his voice hollowing out. "Save your breath. You're losing heat."

  They collapsed into silence. A tangled knot of freezing, desperate bodies in the dark. Enemies and allies, crushed together in the mud, fighting a microscopic war against the ice in their veins.

  For hours, Arjun did not close his eyes. He focused on the agonizing bite of the iron between his legs, and the steady, returning pulse of the kinetic mage pressed against his chest. He was the Mad Queen’s greatest weapon, reduced to a human blanket in a lightless hole.

  But as the first pale, gray light of dawn finally began to bleed through the cave entrance, illuminating the exhausted, sleeping faces of the squad, Arjun realized something else.

  His mind was finally clear. The panic was gone. And he knew exactly how to hurt the Queen.