Because I believe in you.
I open my hand, letting the stone drop back to my chest. I must be truly mad.
The cold returns with a vengeful gust of wind that has no idea which way it wants to go. Neither do I. But I can’t stay here and wait to die. Even if that means trudging through snow for hours until my limbs are immovable. It’s better than giving up and waiting for help that won’t come.
And I have to get to Kelter, though I can’t justify the necessity of it. He’s a grown man capable of taking care of himself, but being apart from him tears my soul down the middle. And every step I take in his direction stitches it back together.
But even while my heart runs toward him as though I don’t have a choice, I question my own motive. What am I runningfrom? The possibility of something good? That maybe Eli cares about me?
That’s a reason to run.
I breathe into my hands, trying to defrost them before climbing down. Clothes seem useless in this weather, only a layer of fabric to soak up the snow.
I drop from the lowest branch and sink into the bed of white. It reaches my chest. But it’s light. I plod through one step at a time, the cold burning my skin, the air frigid, my nose about to fall the fuck off. Snow has always been something in books, not a force of nature I ever thought I’d experience.
But I walk on. And on. Without direction, and as always, without hope—not as some sad attempt at being tragic, but simply because hope is only an illusion that leads to loss.Even a map couldn’t show me the way through the infinite whiteness. My heart slows to the same low drum of my thoughts.
I’m only half aware when voices drone in the distance. Men. Then shouting.
And I pull myself out of my inner spiral with the straightening of my spine and the sudden locking of my knees. I reach for Eli’s knife. I have no idea how to fight with it, but I’ve seen enough death to try to fend off an attack if I have to.
Or maybe not.
Two men run toward me, their long legs tackling the snow with ease compared to mine. The cold must be no more than a nuisance to them. They bare their chests as if they were poolside under the Calderan sun. I’m within their reach in less than a minute. In their grasp seconds later. A hand picks me up by my neck, surely bruising my ice-cold skin.
And a scream slices through the air. I’m thrown to the snowy ground. “Don’t touch her! She’s cursed or something,” the man says, huffing violently.
“Get away!” I kneel and slash the knife about, still sheathed and harmless, only cutting air.
His companion tosses him a rope. “Drag her. He said to bring back anyone we find.”
No thanks.I glide the blade from its sheath and stab it into the first man’s boot. He groans and grabs my hair, immediately regretting it and wailing again. So I twist the knife.
But the other man kicks me in the head with a brutal bash of his boot, and the ringing in my ears makes it hard to fight back as he wrapsa rope around me with loop after loop. Then pulls it tight. Then drags me through the snow. The first man limps along behind us, Eli’s knife in his hand.
And instead of worrying for my life, I want more of that warmth, the heat in the strong fingers that held my neck. That’s how cold I am.
Chapter 22
EVER
Iwake up in a dim room, the only light coming from a pile of stones in the center. And by the packed dirt of the walls, floor and low ceiling, I’m sure I’m underground. The space expands left and right, on and on into dark corners, too far to see, but the opposite wall opens into a wide archway with a passage outside.
I passed out after a half hour of dragging. But he didn’t taunt me like the last time a Vaile had me at their mercy, didn’t mention who he’d be handing me off to or what he planned to do with me. Instead, he whistled and walked with a skip in his step as though he’d won a prize.
But only women surround me now. Scant clothes cover hardly more than their bottoms and breasts, some topless. The fabric is closer to potato skin than anything else and looks as if it holds the sweat and grime of years of continuous use. Their exposed skin is filthy, coated in dirt and streaked with blood and other dried fluids that I’d rather not identify. I look down at my own body, still tied tight. Gratitude collects in my chest at the sight of my clothes, but it’s no shocker that my socks and boots are missing—all of their feet are bare.
Each woman is hopelessly tall. I sit up and push my back against the cool dirt of the wall, catching the attention of a thin woman sitting an arm’s length away. Her uneven hair bestows a savage look. One edge sits at her chin, the other side by her ear, all of it matted and filthy. But her face is striking, cheek bones that curve just right and a natural blush over her otherwise pale skin, bowed lips with built-in coyness. She’s not much older than me.
“The new arrival is awake.” She shakes two others, and they all turn to me. Another few dozen crowd around, untangling from passionate embraces, from kisses and fist fights. Just as many ignore the gathering and continue undisturbed, filling the room with moans and groans, the smack of skin and occasional crunch of bone.
Silence appears to be my chosen response. I’m still thawing and trying to decipher where things went so wrong.
“She doesn’t belong here,” another woman says. Her oversized breasts hang free, revealing a tattoo of fire over a bed of stones on her chest, and a long, diagonal scar divides her fair stomach in two. The potato skin fabric covers her crotch, which proves itself pointless when she crouches in front of me.
“Of course she doesn’t. She’s not a Half Link,” the young one says.
A slightly older woman with crinkles next to her eyes and weathered brown skin pushes her way through the others, maybe the oldest one here. “Obviously not. She’s not tall enough to have matured. There’s no way she ever linked. And why restrain her hands? It’s not like she already has a gift they can prevent her from using.” Like the woman in front of me, her chest is also bare except for a tattoo from sternum to ribs, horizontal lines stacked upon one another, shorter and shorter until only a black dot marks her belly at the bottom. “But I’ll take a tiny thing like that.”
