Snow hit me with teeth, wind slamming flakes into my face until they cut, each gust trying to take me off my feet and failing because I shoved forward anyway, boots punching into drifts that wanted to swallow tracks, the world reduced to the same merciless white and the sky meeting ground with no border between them, visibility shrank to three useless feet and I kept going, because none of that mattered if she was out there alone in this. Her name hammered through my skull like a prayer I didn’t deserve to say—Edwina—Edwina—Edwina—and I chased traces the others left even though the storm had already scrubbed most of them away, the path folding under branches bowed by snow until it became a narrow, hidden throat through which I forced myself, faster, harder, meaner than sense allowed.
Every howl carried her voice in a cruel echo. I moved through it without mercy for myself, snow stinging my lashes, my scarf soaked through, breath tearing at my lungs, because the image of her curled beneath a drift with blue lips and iced lashes shoved oxygen right out of me and would not be tolerated again, not after what I had already lost. My sister’s face flashed in the black of my mind, pale and still, and the old guilt opened raw places that never healed, so I shoved that guilt forward and turned it into teeth and ran on it until it became fuel instead of dead weight.
“Goddamn it, come the fuck back,” I snarled into the wind. “Edwina!” I shouted until my voice shredded, the wind ate the call but I kept screaming anyway, because silence was worsethan sound and silence would mean I’d failed. I clawed up a ridge, boots slipping on ice, hands shredding through branches, nails catching on bark until my fingers burned, and I swore, loud and filthy and full of promise, because if I found her broken I would rip this whole mountain apart with my hands and teeth before leaving her there to die.
And then a movement, small, half-hidden under a swell of white, and for a second my brain tried to rationalize it into drift or rock, but when that shape shuddered with breath something inside me dropped animal and I lunged, throwing myself through the storm straight into whatever it took to pull her out.
My heart froze, then slammed back into rhythm hard enough to make me dizzy.
“Edwina.”
I hit the ground beside her before I even knew I’d moved, knees cracking into the snow. Her coat was drenched, hair tangled over her face, lips pale, body curled in on itself. She looked almost peaceful, if peace meant being half-dead and slipping away right in front of me.
“Edwina,” I rasped, brushing the snow off her skin, cupping her face with bare hands that burned against the cold. Her skin was fucking ice. She didn’t move. Panic clawed up my throat so fast it nearly choked me.
“No. No, no, no!”
I pressed my palm against her chest. Nothing. The silence between heartbeats lasted a lifetime. Then, there. The faintest thud, fragile as breath.
“Edwina,” I shouted, voice raw, ripped apart by the wind. “Edwina, goddammit, open your eyes!”
Nothing.
“Don’t you fucking do this to me,” I hissed, shaking her once, twice, harder when she didn’t react. “Don’t you fucking dare!”
Her lashes stayed still. The kind of still that makes the world tilt.
“Wake up,” I snarled, voice breaking under the weight of it. “You don’t get to vanish on me. Not this way. Not now.”
I pressed harder against her chest, as if I could will her heart to remember mine. “I can’t lose you,” I whispered, too low, too broken. “I can’t lose you again, not after her.”
Her face blurred under falling snow, and something in me cracked wide open. I bent closer until our foreheads almost met, breath shaking, my lips brushing the frozen curve of her cheek.
“You hear me?” I said, half-command, half-prayer. “You don’t get to die. You don’t fucking get to die on me.”
My breath came out in bursts, fogging the air between us. “You don’t walk out into some goddamn storm and leave me behind, you don’t fucking do that.” I shook her again, harder this time, voice raw and wrecked. “Open your eyes!”
A sound, soft, small, but real, tore through the wind. A whimper. The weakest fucking sound I’d ever heard, and it brought me to my knees all over again. Her lashes fluttered. Eyes opened—barely—and found me.
“Professor…” she breathed, the word catching on a whisper.
“Shhh,” I said, voice scraped hollow. I pulled her into me, cradling her against my chest. “Don’t talk. Don’t move. I’ve got you.”
But I didn’t. Not yet. Not until I got her the hell off this godforsaken mountain, not until she was warm again, not until color replaced the ghost in her skin. Her head dropped against my shoulder and I leaned forward, pressing my forehead to hers.
“You’re okay,” I murmured. “You’re fucking okay. I’ve got you now.”
I covered her cheeks with my hands, trying to force heat into her skin, into her bones, cursing every useless second that ticked by. Her pulse was faint, her breath barely there, and I feltsomething inside me tear under the thought that she might fade out of my arms.
“Fuck,” I breathed, voice shaking. “Stay with me. Stay with me, Edwina. Don’t you fucking dare stop.”
I lifted her. She was weightless in the worst fucking way, soft, limp, fragile in my arms, her fingers clutching weakly at my coat. Maybe reaching for warmth. Maybe for me. I didn’t give a damn which. I held her tighter until my own muscles screamed.
The wind tore across my face, sharp enough to draw blood, but I kept going. The storm raged, white swallowing everything, but none of that mattered. I would find the way. I’d crawl if I had to, on bleeding hands and wrecked knees, until there was nothing left of me but what carried her.
Because whatever the hell this thing was between us—obsession, guilt, love, sin—it had already rooted itself too deep to pull free. She was mine to protect. Mine to save. And if death wanted her, that bastard would have to rip her from my hands piece by piece.
I lowered my mouth to her temple, pressed a kiss to her frozen skin, tasting snow, salt, and something rawer, heavier, a promise I’d never take back.
