“I can’t believe I actually did it,” I confessed as if he could hear me. “I’ve never done that before.”
If the Order ever found out that I’d used my magic in the open—on a stranger—I could be executed, and I’d never felt more alive than in this moment.
I’d done something extraordinary, and I couldn’t tell anyone.
Not even my sisters.
The man lay unconscious with a staggering pulse.
I looked around. “I’ll be right back.”
It only took a few minutes to return to the cottage, and once inside, I slipped a blanket from the closet and clothes from Dad’s drawer. I grabbed water, medicine, and matches. The house remained quiet, with everyone still asleep, and I quickly shoved all the essentials into a basket before slipping back into the morning.
The horizon was a blanket of soothing sapphire and ivory next to my racing mind. My feet plodded through the sand back to the cave as I thought about how crazy this was. I’d spent over ten years plotting the death of a man I’d known my whole life, only to save a stranger, someone I didn’t know at all.
Once I reached him, my knees hit the sand at his side.
I tried to keep my thoughts at bay while pouring alcohol.What are you doing, Adora?my mind repeated as I layered the wound with medicine. But something kept me anchored here, caring for him, unable to stop.
Mine,my heart proclaimed as I wrapped a bandage tightly around his torso.The sea gave him to me.
I couldn’t help my eyes from flicking back and forth at the sharp edges of his face and the wound. His lips were still pale blue, and his skin was still cold to the touch. He was frozen as if winter had wrapped him in its arms. He needed warmth, so I struck a match to start a fire.
It was strange that I didn’t spare a second to think about it, and how I stripped off my clothes and pulled the heavy fur blanket around us to trap our body heat inside. His eyes were still closed when I rolled him onto his strong side and pressed our bodies together for warmth. I was tall, five feet eight, but he was much taller yet still curled into my body in a way that told me he needed me. He was harmless and hurting and needed me.
He trembled in my arms, so I curved his head into my neck and rubbed his back, trying to bring color to his muted skin.
And there we were, two bodies clinging to each other before a fire.
An hour passed as we lay like this, wrapped in the cocoon I’d built for us.
Strange cold lips hit my neck, and the icy tips of his hair scratched my cheek. We stayed like that until his chilling breath came out in long, even strokes.
Outside, snow pitter-pattered against the white shore.
A hesitant fall, like the sky wasn’t ready to let go.
“It’s okay,” I whispered in a comforting way. The sound was odd coming from me. Motherly for someone who had killed a woman less than twenty-four hours earlier. I pushed the thought away. “You’re going to be okay,” I said again, my hands sliding across his ridges as I admired his face.
For now, he was alive.
He, whatever his name was, would live.
And after a while, the fire heated the small cave.
I swiped his defrosting white hair from his forehead, imagining his name and where he’d come from. William or Foster, possibly a painter from the other side of the Atlantic who jumped ship to come to America for a new beginning. From Paris, perhaps—if the stories were true. A traveler in search ofsomething more.
The ocean dripped from the tips of his hair and down the sides of his face and neck. My eyes followed its pathways.
He was an unread story of tragic-black lashes, wolfish-white hair, and delicate blue lips. He was the horizon in winter.
The fire’s blaze was a hot breath on us as I admired how his chest expanded and caved with every strong breath he took with mine. As if my every breath encouraged his. His body hadn’t stopped trembling, though, and his fingers clutched on to me like one would a pillow.
It was painful. In a way, for both of us.
After some time had passed, he thawed into a cold sweat.
Droplets beaded his tight pale skin and slid down my naked breasts that were pressed against his chest. He had lips too sensitive for a man, and I wanted to feel them beneath my fingertips. Of course, I didn’t. Lying naked with a strange man had only been to save him, I’d convinced myself. But the need to touch him was for different reasons entirely, and that somehow felt like a breach of integrity, like taking something that didn’t belong to me.
