Beside me walked Samuel — the rescuer who had come down out of that storm on a cable six months earlier, and who had, in the quiet months since, become something I had not expected to find on the far side of all this: a friend, steady and kind, a person who had seen me at the very worst moment of my life and had only ever treated me as someone worth saving.

We stood at the overlook and looked out over the deep valley, and I waited to feel the old cold terror, and it did not come.

What came instead was something I can only call gratitude, though that is not quite a large enough word.

Liam reached up with one small, determined hand and caught the collar of my coat and pulled, and let out a bright, delighted, entirely unbothered laugh, and I wrapped my fingers around his tiny fist and felt, against my own chest, the strong and steady drumming of his heart.

This mountain had tried to take our lives.

It had very nearly succeeded.