“Radcliffe!”
The knob stills, and my breath stutters in my lungs. My heartbeat pounds in my ears, nearly deafening, but the knob doesn’t turn again. I launch myself at the door and turn the lock, though I know it’ll do little good against Rad’s magic. I try to drag my dresser in front of the door, but my heat has made me impossibly weak, and I barely budge the heavy wooden dresser an inch before letting out a helpless cry and falling against it once more. I slide down to the floor, the faceted glass drawer knobs digging into my back as I do, and curl my fingers tighter around my scribe.
“Juniper? Junibear?”
Hawthorn’s voice is scarcely more than a whisper, but it’s enough. I dash to my door, unlock it and open it just a crack.
“Hawth?”
He shoves my coat and boots into my hands, slipping my scribe into my coat pocket. “You’ve got to go, Junebug.”
“Go? Go where?”
“Out the back, just like you did last Yule. Quickly and quietly. Your men are waiting for you.”
A thrill ripples through me, and I pull on my coat. But to trudge all the way to the stone wall around Rose Manor, all that way through the bitter winds and heavy, knee-deep snow? I won’t make it. Not when my limbs are shaking with fatigue.
Hawthorn wipes my sweaty hair away from my forehead. “Be brave for me, Juniper. You have to promise. I’ll distract Rad. You’ve got to go.”
I murmur my promise, and my brother tugs me out of my room, guiding me down the hallway.
“Quickly and quietly,” he mouths, and I go.
I make my way down the hallway and back to the manor’s service entrance, creeping as fast as I can through the dim corridors.
Hawthorn slips into the game room ahead of me and I hear his voice—and Rad’s—through the door. I tiptoe, my bare toes sinking into the carpet, and the moment I reach the back of the manor, I step into my boots, unlatch the door and slip out into the storm beyond.
Frigid wind whips against my bare, fevered skin. The snow deepens with each step I take away from the manor, and I can barely see more than a few feet in front of me as the snowstorm rages. The biting cold stings my calves above the fur trim of my boots and I shiver, my fever raging inside me.
I clench my jaw, but my teeth still chatter.
Each step is a tremendous effort, and I shake with exhaustion. Saints, how easy it would be to sink into the snow and let it cool my fevered body. How simple it would be to let the inevitable oblivion pull me under.
Snowflakes melt against my cheeks and cling to my eyelashes, making my vision blurry. But no… those are my tears, freezing on my skin.
I stagger forward, dragging my feet through the snow.
I have to keep going.
I promised Hawthorn.
My men are waiting for me.
But it’s such a long way, and I’m so tired.
Pain tears through my womb, sending me to my knees and I shake when snow hits my bare thighs. Heat envelopes me until sweat drips down my spine. I look back at the house, at the warm, inviting lights of the manor.
It’s a facade.
Within its walls lurk monsters.
I force my way to my feet as sweat freezes against my skin. My teeth chatter even harder, and I wrap my arms around my middle, trying to warm myself, trying to soothe the pain rippling from my abdomen.
My fever breaks, if only for a moment, and all I feel is the frigid chill of mid-Atlantic winter. Snow drifts around me, stinging against my skin. It’s quiet, the faint crunch of my steps and the hammering of my heart the only sounds I hear. Saints, it’s bitterly cold. The cold is an oblivion in its own way, calling me to give in, to curl up in the snow.
To give up.
I sway, my legs shaking beneath me.
