The world continues to turn white and unforgiving. My footprints vanish almost as quickly as I make them, swallowed by fresh accumulation, and the forest begins to look identical in every direction—trunks and drifts and shadows layered over one another until orientation feels like a guess instead of knowledge.
I turn slightly left, or at least I think I do. The ground slopes unevenly and I try to remember the direction of the road relative to the estate, but the storm distorts everything. The wind picks up, threading through the trees in low, mournful notes that rise and fall like something grieving. Snow finds the gap at my collar and melts down my spine. My thighs ache. My lungs feel raw.
I keep going anyway.
There is something stubborn in me that refuses to turn back, that refuses to let the image of Lucian’s face—controlled, unreadable, offering apologies with blood still on his hands—be the last thing I see before surrendering. I told myself I wanted space, wanted air, wanted to stand somewhere that did not echo with his decisions. The forest gives me that, but it also gives me something else: scale. I am very small out here. The estate may have felt like a cage, but at least it was built to withstand weather.
The storm intensifies until it becomes a force rather than a backdrop. Wind shoves against me in heavy bursts, forcing me to lean into it like a climber on a steep ascent. Branches creakand crack overhead, some shedding clumps of snow that fall in sudden, suffocating curtains. My fingers are numb despite being shoved deep into my coat pockets. I lose all sense of time.
And then, slowly, I realize I have no idea where the fuck I am.
There is no sudden revelation, no cinematic spin in place as I gasp at my mistake. It is quieter than that. I simply stop recognizing the terrain. The cluster of crooked pines I thought I’d use as a landmark is nowhere in sight. The slope of the land feels wrong. The wind has shifted. When I turn in a full circle, every direction looks the same: white, gray, skeletal trees stretching endlessly into storm.
Panic does not explode; it seeps.
I swallow it down and move again, choosing a direction at random because standing still feels worse. My boots sink deeper with every step as the snow accumulates, and I begin to understand how easy it would be to vanish out here. Not dramatically. Just quietly. A body found in spring, if at all.
The thought chills me more effectively than the air.
I stumble over something buried—a rock or fallen branch—and go down hard on one knee. Snow fills my glove. The cold bites instantly. I curse under my breath and push myself upright, scanning the trees through stinging eyes. That’s when I see it.
At first it is only an interruption in the pattern of trunks, a darker block against the white haze. I blink, thinking it is a trick of shadow, but as I move a few steps closer the shape resolves into angles and lines that do not belong to nature.
A structure.
My heart lurches.
I veer toward it, half-sliding down a small incline I hadn’t noticed before. The storm does not relent, but the outline becomes clearer with each step: a small cabin crouched between trees, its roof heavy with snow, one shutter hanging crooked likea broken limb. The chimney leans slightly, and the wood siding is weathered to a dull gray that nearly blends with the sky.
It looks abandoned. It looks like the only mercy the forest is willing to offer.
I push through the drifted snow piled against the door. The handle resists at first, stiff from cold and neglect, but it gives under pressure. The door opens with a long, aching groan that sounds almost human in its protest.
Inside, darkness and stale air greet me. I step across the threshold quickly and force the door shut behind me, leaning my back against it as if the storm might try to follow. The sudden relative quiet is disorienting. The wind still roars outside, slamming against the cabin walls, but it is muted now—distant and contained.
The interior smells of old wood and cold ash. Dust clings to corners. There is a small stone fireplace along one wall and a narrow cot shoved beneath a cracked window whose glass has long since clouded over. A rickety table sits in the center of the room, one leg propped up by a folded scrap of wood to keep it from collapsing.
No electricity. No supplies. No sign that anyone has been here recently. But it is shelter.
I stand there longer than necessary, chest rising and falling as sensation slowly returns to my fingers. My boots leave wet impressions on the warped floorboards. Snow melts from my coat and drips quietly at my feet. The cabin is not warm, but it is out of the wind, and that small difference feels monumental.
My legs finally give in to exhaustion and I sink onto the cot. The mattress is thin and unforgiving, but it is elevated off the freezing ground, and right now that feels like luxury. I press my hands to my face and let the cold seep into my palms, grounding me in the fact that I am still here, still breathing, still stubbornenough to run into a storm rather than stay in a house where love and danger coexist too comfortably.
Outside, the storm intensifies, the wind rising to a feral pitch that makes the entire cabin shudder. Snow pelts the roof in relentless waves, a steady percussion that fills the small space with sound. The walls creak in protest, beams adjusting under pressure.
I move around the room slowly, testing the window to make sure it is latched, pressing my shoulder briefly against the door to feel how firmly it holds. The fireplace is empty save for a thin layer of ash; there is no dry wood in sight, and even if there were I doubt I could coax flame from damp air and numb hands. This will be a night of endurance, not comfort.
I return to the cot and curl onto my side, pulling my coat tighter around me. My body trembles—not only from cold, but from the crash of adrenaline and emotion now that motion has stopped. The forest outside is merciless and indifferent. It does not care who I love or who I am angry with. It does not care that I ran because I felt betrayed. It would swallow me just as easily whether I am furious or heartbroken.
Lucian’s face rises unbidden in my mind: the way he stood outside the cell with blood still on his hands, the way he said he chose me as if choice were both shield and confession. I want to hold onto anger because anger is clean and sharp, but longing slips in beneath it, complicated and persistent.
The storm rages, the cabin creaks, and I lie there suspended between two truths: that I ran because I needed air, and that no amount of distance can untangle him from me. The forest has given me isolation, but it has not given me clarity.
Eventually exhaustion overtakes analysis. My eyes close not because my heart is quiet, but because my body can no longer argue with fatigue. The wind continues its relentless assault on the cabin, snow piling against the door, sealing me in as surelyas any locked cell ever did. I curl into myself and let the storm have the world outside, trusting that the old wood will hold until morning, and that when I wake, I will still be here—lost, perhaps, but alive enough to choose what comes next.
15
Lucian
