The glowing schematic hovered on the snow, a delicate ghost of light against the harsh white. It was a language Lena understood better than any spoken tongue: a filigree of conduits, chambers, and power relays all converging on a single, intricate core. The heart of Aethelgard. It was a truth so profound it made her shiver, a sensation that had nothing to do with the arctic air biting at her cheeks.

“If Croft comes back…” Lena began, her voice trailing off as she looked at the wounded port side of the *Albatross*. Metal was buckled, the rudder assembly twisted into a grimace of defeat.

“When he comes back,” Eva corrected, her tone devoid of its usual swagger. It was flat, pragmatic. Deadly. “He knows we survived the crash that wasn’t. He knows you’re still here. He’s not leaving the prize on the table.” She kicked a chunk of ice, her frustration a kinetic burst of energy. “Rudder’s shot. I can bypass the hydraulics and rig a manual pulley system, but it’ll handle like a drugged whale. The heating coil is a bigger problem. Without it, the ballast vents will freeze solid again the second we gain altitude. We’ll be a stone.”

A cold dread, more piercing than the wind, settled in Lena’s stomach. “How long for the repairs?”

Eva’s gaze met hers. The unspoken answer hung between them: too long. Longer than Croft would grant them. “Days. Maybe. If nothing else is broken.”

The silence stretched, filled only by the whisper of the wind over the glacier. In that silence, a terrible, necessary plan took shape in Lena’s mind. It was illogical, risky, and went against every instinct for self-preservation she possessed. It felt, terrifyingly, like something Eva would suggest.

“You have to stay,” Lena stated, the words tasting like rust. “You and the crew. You’re the only one who can make this ship fly. I’m the only one who can read this.” She gestured to the glowing map, which was already beginning to fade in the strengthening sun.

Eva’s face hardened, her dark eyes flashing. “Absolutely not. We stick together. That’s the rule.”

“There are no rules here, remember?” Lena countered, throwing Eva’s own words back at her. “It’s the only logical division of labor. You fix the ride out. I secure what we came for before Croft can. It’s a race, Eva. He can’t be in two places at once. We need to give him two targets.”

“And what if he chooses you?” Eva shot back, stepping closer, her voice a low growl. “You, alone, down there? He’ll crush you, Lena. He won’t even see you as a speed bump.”

“He’ll underestimate me,” Lena said, her own resolve hardening into a diamond point. “He always has. He sees an academic. He doesn’t see the person who found this place.” She took a breath, holding the captain’s furious gaze. “Trust me to handle the history. You handle the hardware. It’s the only way.”

Eva stared at her for a long moment, a war playing out behind her eyes. The pilot, the pragmatist, was battling the protector. Finally, she let out a harsh breath, the fight seeming to drain out of her. “Damn you. Damn your logic.” She reached out, her grease-stained fingers hesitating before gently touching Lena’s cheek. “You get one hour. Sixty minutes. Then I don’t care if this ship has wings or not, I’m coming for you.”

“Just be ready to fly,” Lena whispered, her hand covering Eva’s. She leaned into the touch, a silent promise passing between them. A moment later, she turned and headed back toward the entrance to the lost city, the bronze spyglass clutched in her hand like a talisman.

Descending back into Aethelgard alone was a profoundly different experience. The silence was heavier, the crystalline structures seeming to watch her with ancient indifference. Every crunch of her boots echoed in the vast, still chambers. She held the spyglass up, and its projected light painted the way forward, a glowing thread leading her through passages she hadn’t seen before, deeper into the glacier’s core.

The path led to a massive, sealed door carved with constellations that were subtly wrong, shifted by millennia of celestial drift. There was no handle, no lock. But to the side, a panel showed a series of glyphs, a sequence. It wasn’t a password; it was a problem in orbital mechanics. A puzzle only someone who understood the sky as the Aethelgardians had could solve. Her fingers, clumsy in their thermal gloves, traced the patterns, inputting the correct alignment. With a deep groan that vibrated through the soles of her feet, the great door slid open.

Meanwhile, on the surface, Eva worked with a furious, focused energy. Her two crewmen, a hulking man named Gregor and a wiry youth named Pip, moved with the grim efficiency of people who knew their lives depended on it. The air was filled with the shriek of metal being forced, the grunt of effort, and Eva’s clipped commands.

“Pip, keep your eyes on the horizon. Don’t look at me, don’t look at the ship. Look out there. You see so much as a puff of smoke that isn’t ours, you scream,” she ordered. “Gregor, I need leverage on this rudder shaft. Put your back into it.”

The cold was their enemy, stiffening their fingers and threatening to freeze the very lubricants they were applying. But Eva was a maestro of mechanical triage. She cannibalized wiring from the galley to bypass the fried heating coil circuits, a dangerous fix that could overload at any moment but would work—once. It was all they needed.

“Captain!” Pip’s voice was a knife of sound. “Smoke. To the west!”

Eva scrambled from under the ship. It was there. A black smudge against the pale blue sky, growing larger with horrifying speed. Croft. And he was coming fast. A glance at her chronometer told her Lena had been gone for forty-seven minutes.

“He’s not supposed to be back this soon,” Gregor grunted, his face pale.

“He must have left a garrison ship nearby,” Eva snarled. “He’s faster than I thought.” Her mind raced, a whirlwind of desperate calculations. They couldn’t outrun him. Not yet. But they could misdirect him. “Pip, get the emergency flares. All of them. Gregor, secure those lines. We’re lifting off in five.”

“Captain, the rudder’s not…”

“I know,” Eva cut him off, her eyes blazing with a wild, terrifying light. “We’re not running. We’re hiding in plain sight.”

Deep below, Lena stepped into the heart of Aethelgard. The sight stole her breath. It was a vast, spherical cavern, and at its center floated a colossal, crystalline orb that pulsed with a soft, internal blue light. The air hummed with contained power. Geothermal energy, Lena realized with a gasp, harnessed with impossible technology to keep the city intact and warm against the crushing weight of the ice. Around the orb was a circular walkway and a single control pedestal, its surface dark.

“Magnificent, isn’t it?”

The voice, slick with smug satisfaction, made Lena’s blood run cold. Silas Croft stepped from behind a pillar of ice, dressed in a pristine, heated arctic suit. He held a heavy, industrial-looking device. A seismic drill. He hadn’t needed a key; he’d simply blasted his way in, the evidence a gaping, unstable-looking hole in the far wall of the cavern.

“All this power,” Croft said, his gaze sweeping the chamber with avaricious hunger. “Enough to run a continent. And the fool who built it just let it sit here. A furnace to warm a ghost town.”

“You’ve destabilized the entire cavern,” Lena said, her voice shaking with rage, not fear. “This place is a delicate balance. You can’t just smash your way in!”

“I can and I did,” he sneered, approaching the central pedestal. “Thank you for finding it for me, Doctor. Your research will be posthumously invaluable. Now, let’s see about turning up the heat.”

As his hand reached for the console, the entire chamber shuddered violently. Dust and shards of ice rained from the ceiling. Croft’s crude entrance had fractured the integrity of the cavern.

Above, the *Albatross* was airborne. Eva pushed the abused engines, not climbing high, but skimming the treacherous, broken surface of the glacier. She fired a flare far to the north, a brilliant red flower that bloomed against the ice. Then she banked hard, the ship groaning in protest, and fired another to the east.

“He’ll be scanning for our heat signature,” she yelled over the engine’s roar. “Let’s give him a few to choose from.” She was playing a shell game with a billion-ton airship, a desperate, brilliant piece of improvisation.

In the heart chamber, Lena saw her chance. While Croft was momentarily distracted by the tremor, she lunged for the pedestal. Her fingers flew across the dormant surface, which lit up at her touch. The Aethelgardian glyphs glowed, and she saw it—not just an on/off switch, but a complex regulatory system. And a failsafe. A symbol of total energy containment. It would plunge the core into a dormant state, but it would stabilize the chamber, encasing it in a shell of super-dense ice to protect it from collapse.

“Get away from there!” Croft roared, lunging for her.

He grabbed her arm, his grip like iron. They struggled, a frantic, clumsy fight on the edge of oblivion. Lena knew she was no match for his strength, but she had knowledge. With her free hand, she slammed a sequence into the console. Not the failsafe. A diagnostic. A full-power pulse.

The central orb blazed with blinding blue light. A wave of pure energy, harmless but immense, blasted outwards. It threw them both back. Lena landed hard against the walkway railing, her head ringing. Croft was thrown against the cavern wall, momentarily stunned.

It was then that a new sound broke the chaos. A percussive crunching from above. A shadow fell over the chamber. Eva had seen the energy pulse on her thermal scanners, a beacon leading her directly to Lena. Using the ship’s reinforced cargo grapple, she had smashed through the already-weakened ice roof Croft had created.

Daylight and swirling snow streamed in. Framed in the opening was the underbelly of the *Albatross*, and the silhouette of Eva leaning out of the cargo bay.

“Taxi’s here, Doc!” Eva’s voice echoed, strained but triumphant. “Last call for the flight to anywhere else!”

A cable snaked down, the grapple hook swinging near Lena. She didn’t hesitate. As Croft staggered to his feet, roaring in fury, Lena scrambled onto the railing. She activated the failsafe. A low, harmonic chime filled the cavern, a sound of finality. Then she leaped, her fingers closing around the cold metal of the cable.

“No!” Croft screamed, reaching for her, but he was too late. The winch on the *Albatross* engaged, pulling her up and away. Below, the blue light of the core folded in on itself. The walls of the cavern began to contract with the shriek of grinding, freezing ice. Croft stared up, his face a mask of disbelief and rage, as his prize sealed itself around him, entombing him forever in the silent, protected heart of the city he had tried to plunder.

Eva’s strong hands hauled Lena into the hold. For a second, they just held on to each other, the roar of the engines and the groaning of the glacier below them the only sounds in the world. Eva’s jacket smelled of ozone and victory. Lena buried her face in it, her body shaking with the comedown from a fear so absolute it had become fuel.

“I told you one hour,” Eva murmured into her hair, her voice husky.

“You were late,” Lena replied, her voice muffled.

A laugh rumbled in Eva’s chest. She pulled back, her hands framing Lena’s face, her thumbs wiping away tears Lena hadn’t even realized she was crying. “Let’s go home.”

Later, they stood together in the cockpit. The *Albatross*, battered but unbowed, flew steadily south. Behind them, the endless white of the arctic wilderness receded. The silence was comfortable, charged not with tension but with a deep and abiding peace.

“So,” Eva said, her eyes on the horizon. “The lost city is… lost again.”

Lena looked at the vast, open sky before them. She had lost the discovery of a lifetime. She had saved it. The paradox was a perfect, beautiful thing. “Some things aren’t meant to be owned,” she said softly. “Just protected.” Her gaze shifted, settling on the woman beside her, on the steady hands guiding the ship, on the small, real smile playing on her lips. “Where to now, Captain?”

Eva’s grin was pure, undiluted joy. She let go of the wheel with one hand and took Lena’s, her calloused fingers lacing through her own. The fit was perfect.

“I have no idea,” she said, her voice full of wonder. “The maps are all blank from here on out.”

She leaned over and kissed her, not with the bruising desperation of their first kiss in the ice, but with the slow, sweet certainty of a new beginning. It was a promise of sunrises, of uncharted skies, and of a thousand adventures waiting to be written together. The *Albatross* flew on, a tiny, resilient speck heading for the warmth, leaving the secrets of the north to their long, quiet sleep.