Free Saved by the Monarch by Dana Marton Page B

happened to you?”
    She badly needed to hear that an avalanche was survivable. She lived in D.C. What did she know about avalanches? An image of a big, hairy dog with a small barrel of brandy tied around his neck, sniffing snow, came to mind from some old TV show. She didn’t think any of those would be coming around. Nobody knew that they were up here.
    “Can’t say that it has,” he said.
    She felt like crying—it wasn’t as if he would have seen her in the dark—but she didn’t want any tears to freeze to her cheeks. She kept on digging.
    The kidnapping had been a shock to her system and utterly surreal, but a quick bullet seemed preferable now to the slow suffocation that she faced here. She could hear Miklos breathing heavily next to her. Hewas clearing enormous amounts of snow. She knew this because she could feel more and more room ahead that she could keep moving into. Her efforts seemed pitiful compared to his.
    They were out of the cave now, in a snow tunnel, going up. He moved in front of her, pushed snow back, and she did her best to shove it down next to her toward the cave, kick it along with her feet. But after a while, the snow behind her piled up, closing them in from that end.
    Leaving them with even less breathing space.
    Don’t stop moving.
    Breathe slow and even. She’d read someplace that breathing rapidly used up more oxygen.
    She suspected that if it weren’t for the air trapped in the snow around them, they would have already suffocated. Air that wasn’t going to last long anyway.
    They weren’t going to make it. The avalanche was too deep. The realization was becoming harder and harder to ignore, her dark premonitions impossible to shake. This was it.
    “How are you holding up?” he asked without stopping when she went still from fear and exhaustion for a second.
    “Starting to feel claustrophobic.” She set to work again, as much as she could. Too slow. Her fingers no longer moved, so she just pushed her hands around from the wrist like small shovels.
    Snow surrounded them.
    For a moment she couldn’t tell which way was up. She felt a flash of panic again. Then drew a deep breath and calmed herself, listened to the sound of the prince’s digging.
    Miklos. Right. He was supposed to be above her.
    As her mind clicked back on, she realized that she was entering hypothermia. First the brain slows, then the body, then comes death.
    “I think we’re nearing the surface,” he said after another minute.
    Her ears were buzzing. “How do you know?” Pushing the words out was an effort.
    She could no longer do anything with the snow that he pushed back, just roll against it awkwardly and compact it to the sides of their tunnel, which made the space even tighter. She felt like she was trapped in a coffin made of ice. She spaced out for a moment.
    “The snow doesn’t feel as packed here.” His voice brought her back.
    Too late, she thought as a wave of dizziness washed over her a hundred times stronger than before. She was going to pass out. She didn’t have the strength to tell him. She didn’t think she’d be telling anyone anything ever again. In hindsight, she should have let him kiss her one last time.
    She fully expected to die. She was too cold to stay alive.
    But after another minute she could see a faint light somewhere up ahead, filtering through snow and ice. She blinked, pretty much the only movement she was capable of at this stage. Her lungs burned. She held her head still to combat the dizziness.
    Then his hands broke through, and fresh air rushed into their small tunnel. She coughed and watched as he climbed forward, careful enough not to kick snow intoher face. She registered that he’d made it out, but didn’t have the strength to go after him. Then he was back, head first, digging madly again, and her hands were enfolded in his strong grip at last as he pulled her to the surface.
    Air.
    Her lungs hurt and made squeaky noises as she breathed in. Her body was one