The house taunts me. Warmth and light and Mama all locked away on the other side of that door.
I’m pounding—screaming—but no one cares.
No one comes.
My hand closes around some kind of warm entity. Too warm for this snowy nightmare.
The cold fractures as reality bleeds back in fragments.
Darkness. Moonlight. A gasp for air.
My fingers tighten on a soft object, with rippled rigidity underneath.
A throat.
Jordan kneels before me, her eyes wide with shock, my hand clamped around her windpipe.
I blink, disoriented.
After a few seconds, my surroundings solidify. The safe house guest room. The chair I’ve been sitting in for hours while watching her and waiting for her to break.
Not snow. Not that night. I’m not eleven anymore. I’m not freezing to death while my mother’s blood seeps into fresh powder on the other side of a locked door.
But the cold remains, lodged deep beneath my ribs like a block of ice that never thaws.
My hand still encircles Jordan’s throat. She’s not fighting, not clawing at my fingers the way anyone else would. Her rabbit-quick pulse throbs against my palm. Her eyes, which see too much, hold mine without flinching.
“It’s okay.” The words vibrate against my fingers, her voice strained but gentle. “It’s over now.” Her hand comes up, not to pull mine away but to stroke my arm in a soothing, featherlight gesture.
Like I need comfort. And I’m worth saving.
I release her instantly, the contact burning worse than frostbite.
“Don’t touch me.” The raw, ragged command claws out, shredded by the nightmare still clutching at my chest.
I shove away from the chair, stumbling to my feet because I need space, need air that’s not thick with her scent. That damn blend of lavender and citrus soap and sleep-warmed skin is messing with my head.
Four days of circling her, picking apart her every word and breath, searching for useful intel. And she continues to give me nothing. Just more of those airy spiritual lines.
I drag my hand down my face, desperate to wipe away the last sticky threads of the dream. It’s been years since the nightmare hit like this. Years since I woke up choking on the old horror I’ve spent half my life shoving under the surface.
She rises from her knees with care, as if I’m some wounded thing ready to lash out.
Amusement trickles through me.
I’m not the prey here. I’m the monster.
“What doeskholodnomean?” The Russian term is awkward on her American tongue.
It means cold, but worse than that. Cold is the absence of warmth.
As a kid, I associatedkholodnowith a bitter, dying, endless freeze. The kind that burrows into bone and lives there, year after year, untouched by every fire you build.
Kholodnoleeches life, leaving only misery and death.
Jordan inches closer. A single step, then stillness.
I brace, coiled for the hit I sense coming. She still has that knife I gave her. Last I saw, she placed the weapon under her pillow. And I fell asleep.
