Lex remembered Jas vividly, but her mother was only clear in her dreams, or more specifically, her nightmares. This morning’s dream was entirely unusual in that she and her mother were together and happy.
“I remember my mother dying in an avalanche. But Jas says I wasn’t there. I must have made up images of what I think her death was like. I don’t know.”
She covered her face. No matter how hard she’d tried, she couldn’t get the images of her mother buried in snow out of her head.
Gentle hands tugged at Lex’s wrists until she looked up.
“If someone didn’t want you to remember,” Garrin said, “you wouldn’t recall the past. Not clearly.”
“You think someone did this to me?”
Garrin glanced at Amund knowingly. “We believe so.”
Something had brought these men into her life. According to Garrin, they’d been traveling for weeks in this freezing wasteland with little food. Granted, she felt like crap, but shouldn’t she be dead? And then there was Jas. He’d fought them as though he were Fae, and not her young uncle all the college coeds wanted to date.
Frustration simmered beneath her skin. How could Jas have lied to her all these years? Or had he? He never told her he was human. It’s what she’d assumed.
“Maybe I’m not full Fae. Maybe I’m extra Halven.” That sounded entirely dumb even to her ears, but she needed to hold on to something normal, and being half human was better than full Fae.
Garrin stood and paced the large igloo. “If you were noble Fae, that would make you ‘extra Halven,’ as you call it. But it would only explain a Halven with higher energy levels. Not someone presenting as Fae.”
“I don’t feel Fae.”
He raised his brow. “How would you know?”
“Shouldn’t I feel something?”
His shoulders sank noticeably. “You should possess a power. But the magic that hid your energy level when we found you must be suppressing your abilities as well.” He rubbed his beard and looked down as though contemplating.
After a moment, he looked around. “We’ve stayed too long. The sun has risen. We must leave.”
Lex got to her feet. “What sun? Everything is white and gray.”
“Be that as it may,” Garrin said, “it is warmer during the day than at night. We cannot stay inside a snow dome forever. We will run out of food unless we keep moving.”
Food? He called those leaves food? And even if it was warmer during the day, it wasn’t comfortable. She was covered from head to toe in more layers than she’d worn in her life, and the cold ate right through them. “I’ll walk. Maybe the exercise will help me stay warm.”
Lex clapped her hands together and stomped her feet to get feeling back in them. She had a pounding headache and felt like she could sleep for a day or two, but being carried was humiliating.
Garrin and the other men looked at each other.
“This is not a good idea,” Zirel said. “The terrain is steep.”
“What if you panic?” Garrin asked her. “You’ve grown used to the dome. But once we step outside…?”
He had a point. “I might freak out, but I can control it better now.” She hoped.
Garrin looked at her as though he didn’t believe her, and she glared back.
“I’m tired of being knocked out by Zirel,” she said. “I can do this.”
Lex made it about a mile and was darn proud of how well she’d managed to ignore the snow sinking under her feet. She still felt anxious, but she continued her deep-breathing exercises and kept her gaze low and not on the monstrous white mountains.
Until she slid on a narrow section, her feet flying over the edge.
Her arms flailed, hands grasping at nothing but snow that slipped through her gloved fingers. She screamed.
Garrin caught her hand before she rolled off the mountain.
