Flight Through the Frost

They ran.

Julian kicked out a side panel of the stained-glass window adjoining the balcony, dragging Elara through the jagged opening into the service corridors of the Aetherium Spire.

The velvet dress, once a symbol of a fairy-tale evening, was now a deadly hindrance. Elara ripped the fabric at the thigh, freeing her legs to run, abandoning her heels on the steel grate floor.

Behind them, the heavy, mechanical thud of Enforcer boots echoed down the narrow, steam-filled hallway. Red alarm lights strobed, casting long, nightmarish shadows across the brass piping on the walls.

"This way!" Julian shouted, firing two deafening rounds blindly down the corridor to suppress their pursuers. The thunder of the revolver in the confined space was agonizing.

They burst out of a service hatch onto the icy, windswept scaffolding of the Upper Docks.

This was the edge of Aetheria. Beyond the narrow metal walkways lay nothing but the open sky and a sheer, miles-long drop into the icy clouds below. The wind here was a physical force, tearing at Elara’s hair and biting into her bare skin.

A sleek, black interceptor airship was moored at the end of the primary pier—Julian's ship, *The Wraith*.

"We just have to make the ship!" Julian yelled over the wind, pulling her along.

But as they sprinted down the frost-slicked metal pier, a massive Syndicate Dreadnought rose from the cloud layer below, its spotlight cutting through the blizzard and pinning them to the metal walkway like insects under glass.

Three Enforcers dropped from the Dreadnought’s boarding ramp, landing heavily between them and *The Wraith*.

"Drop the weapon, Thorne!" the lead Enforcer bellowed over the wind. "And step away from the girl. She is an accessory to high treason."

"Treason carries the death penalty," Julian muttered to himself. He looked at Elara, his pale eyes entirely hollowed out.

"Julian, what do we do?" she asked, her teeth chattering uncontrollably from the cold and fear.

"I protect you," he said simply. "Like I always should have."

Before Elara could react, Julian shoved her violently to the left. She stumbled, falling hard into an open, reinforced maintenance pod built into the side of the dock structure—a blast-chamber used for testing aether-engines.

Julian slammed the heavy, four-inch-thick plasteel door shut.

Elara scrambled up, throwing her weight against the door, but the locking mechanism engaged with a heavy *clunk*. Through the reinforced, frosted window of the pod, she could see Julian standing on the pier. He wasn't looking at the Enforcers. He was looking at her.

He keyed the external comms on the pod. His voice crackled through the speaker inside her cell.

"Stay down, Elara," his voice was steady. Too steady. "When the Enforcers find you in there, tell them I took you hostage. Tell them I forced you to come to the gala. They’ll check your record. They’ll let you go."

"Julian, no! Open this door!" Elara screamed, pounding her fists against the unyielding plasteel. "Don't do this!"