The world was narrowing to a tunnel: the next stone, the next footfall, the next gasp of air. She didn’t notice the change in grade until it was too late.
The boulder under her right foot was bigger than the others, a block of gray veined with white. Alina put her weight on it, expecting it to hold, only for it to shift under her like a loosetooth. The entire surface shivered, and for a terrifying moment she was weightless, skidding forward on her knees and elbows as the boulder lurched and rolled away from the slope.
Instinct took over. She flailed, grabbing at anything, her hands scrabbling against the ice-rimed rock. Her nails bent back, skin tearing, but she found a hold—a crack barely wide enough for her fingers. She clung to it and managed to stop the slide, lying on her belly, breathing heavily.
The wind, that bloody bastard, slammed into her back, threatening to peel her off the mountain entirely.
Alina hung there, every muscle screaming, the cut on her arm leaking warmth down to her wrist. She wanted to cry out, but the air was too thin for shouting. Instead, she focused on her breath, drawing it in slow, steady pulls until the panic eased just enough for her to think.
She searched for a foothold, found one, and forced the last little bit of strength from her body to lever herself upward. Her boots slipped, but her arms held, and with a final, desperate kick she managed to heave her chest onto the ledge above. For a second she just lay there, splayed like a broken doll, the wind flattening her hair against the rock. Then she crawled forward, inch by inch, until her body was fully clear of the drop.
She made it another five feet before her limbs betrayed her again. This time, her knees simply folded, and she crumpled sideways, sliding until her shoulder struck a large, sun-bleached boulder. The impact rattled her skull and knocked the breath from her lungs.
She stayed that way for a while, hunched against the stone, the wind howling over her back. She pressed her face to the coldsurface, letting the pain of the scrape and the chill of the rock remind her that she was still alive—barely, but still here.
The tears started as a trickle, barely enough to notice, but the longer she sat there, the more they came. Hot and salty, the tears cutting little burning tracks through the grime on her frozen cheeks. She didn’t try to stop them. There was no one to see, no one to judge.
She cried for the exhaustion, for the hunger, for the fact that every single person in her life seemed determined to hate her or use her or turn her into something she never wanted to be. She cried for Marta, for Finn, for Kael—even for Maven, who at least had been honest about his hatred for her from the beginning.
Mostly, she cried for herself. She cried for the girl who had once believed that being special was enough, that love and loyalty could win out against everything else. For the girl who was now nothing more than a shadow, beaten flat by wind and cold and the weight of too many mistakes.
She pressed her forehead harder against the boulder, the coolness numbing the ache. The wind whipped her braid around her neck, and she let it. She was so tired, so utterly emptied out, that she couldn’t even remember why she’d started up this cursed mountain in the first place.
So she stayed. She breathed, slow and shallow, letting the air scrape her raw on the inside as well as the out.
When the tears finally stopped, she wiped her face on her sleeve and looked out at the ridgeline. It was no closer than before. The horizon was a smear, the declining sun hidden behind a bank of angry-looking cloud. She didn’t want to move, didn’t want to think. But she had to.
With a groan, Alina dug her fingers into the stone for leverage, pushed herself upright, and straightened her bag on her shoulder. Her legs shook with the effort, but she found her footing.
She started walking again. This time, each step was not a statement of hope, but a refusal to give in. One foot, then the next, then the next, no matter how pointless it seemed.
The mountain didn’t care, but she did. At least, for now.
She walked until the world narrowed to the sound of her own breath and the crunch of her boots on the unforgiving stone. She had finally reached her goal: her mind was blissfully blank.
It was evening before Alina saw the first hint of the forest. From a distance, it looked more like the remnants of a fire—thin black stalks and splinters, all reaching skyward in twisted, unnatural poses. But as she descended the last crumbling slope, she realized the woods were alive, if only barely. The trees were gnarled oaks, their branches stunted and leafless, clutching at the dark gray sky with the desperation of the nearly drowned.
The transition was sudden. One minute she was ankle-deep in scree and battered by the wind; the next she was threading her way through a narrow tunnel of branches that whipped and snapped at her face. The temperature dropped another ten degrees in the shade, and the air was thick with the smell of rot and old snow, the light low. Each step made her boots sink into a carpet of half-frozen leaves and brittle twigs.
The forest floor was a snarl of deer paths, and as she had no idea whatsoever where she was going, she chose the one that looked theleast suicidal. She followed it, ducking beneath low boughs and sidestepping the occasional tangle of bramble. Her cloak snagged on the thorns; her hair caught in the fingers of the oak trees until she was forced to redo the braid. Because her fingers were so stiff, she needed triple the amount of the time the job normally afforded, and all her concentration to boot.
She made no effort at stealth. Every movement was loud—branches rattling, leaves crunching, boots scraping the lichen from fallen logs. The noise echoed in the hush, bouncing from trunk to trunk. She knew, with the certainty of someone who’d spent her whole life surrounded by predators, that she was being watched.
It didn’t take long to find out by what.
She’d just rounded a switchback in the path when she heard it—a low, rumbling growl, so close it vibrated in her teeth. She froze, heart seizing in her chest. The growl came again, joined by a second, higher and keener. Heart beating, Alina scanned the undergrowth, but her eyes weren’t adjusting fast enough. She backed up a step, then another.
The wolves emerged as one: three of them, lean and gray, eyes black and glassy in the dim. They didn’t bark. They just stared, silent and calculating, muscles bunched as if ready to spring.
Shit.
For a moment, neither side moved. Then the largest wolf, its muzzle scarred and fur patchy with age, lowered its head and padded forward.
Alina’s breath caught. She needed a weapon—something, anything. She glanced around for a stick, a rock, but all she had was the jagged weight of her own panic and the dim memory of every story she’d ever heard about how this ended.
The wolf’s lips peeled back. Its teeth were yellow and chipped. Adrenaline surged through her body, every nerve on alert.
She took a step backward, stumbled on a root, and fell hard onto her ass, the impact jarring her spine and sending her vision swimming. The other two wolves fanned out, one to each side. She was boxed in. They had the upper hand, and she knew it. And they knew it, too.
