I huff out a laugh, my breath swirling up in ribbons of steam. “Of course you wouldn’t have the Nabbers in the Bonded City. Of course.”
As I tell the two of them about the disappearances in Eastern and all around Sturmfrost, about the horror of finding my sister gone in the night, snatched right under my nose, their faces grow grave.
“That’s horrible, Meryn,” Izabel says. “I’m sorry it’s happening. And that we didn’t know about it. I can’t imagine what I’d do if my sister was taken. We do everything together. Always have, ever since the day we came out of the womb, and?—”
Izabel is cut off by a punch in the shoulder from Venna, and she rolls her eyes.
“Sorry. Everyone says I over share.”
“Everyone is right,” Venna says, laughing quietly.
Movement catches my eye to the right of us, and I spot another group cresting the ridge, heading away from us—lookslike they plan to dip down into the valley between us and the peak and then climb straight up.
I recognize one of them. Henrey, the commoner who was determined to forge a bond. He pauses to help someone from his group get down a tricky drop.
It’s nice to see he’s made it this far. I find myself rooting for him to get to the end.
Venna stands to stretch, and then clearly sees something she doesn’t like in the sky. She turns to us, face troubled. “Storm’s coming,” she says flatly. “Coming fast. We need to get moving. Now.”
Instead of following Henrey’s group down into the valley, we move along the ridgeline, which eventually curves back toward the climb to the peak ahead of us. A less direct route, but for at least a little while we’re on our feet instead of hanging off a sheet of ice, so I’m not complaining.
We go faster than caution would dictate, but there’s panic underlying Venna’s swift movements, and I’ve already grown to respect her instincts enough that I know whatever is coming is an even worse danger.
Snow and ice and gravel crunch underfoot, our crampons still helping us not to slip but also kicking up clods of dirty ice as we half-walk, half-run through the rocks and trees.
Inevitably, the trail turns upward again, at first just a rocky barren slope that we scramble up using our hands, and then the patches of sheer ice become more and more frequent, until we once more take out our ropes and fumble to tie ourselves together.
On this next climb, the storm hits us.
It’s brutal in its speed, the air turning thick and white with snow in mere moments. Izabel taught me signals that she and her sister use when climbing in adverse conditions—tugs on thesafety rope, different numbers to signify different messages, for when the snow is too thick for us to hear each other.
We advance slowly, our pace at a crawl.
Several times I wonder if I should speed up, try to catch Izabel, who’s leading once more, and convince her to move more quickly—this slow pace is hell on my body, and I’m honestly not sure how much longer I can keep it up.
Each time I get close to attempting it, though, another scream of a falling climber filters through the storm, coming from nowhere and everywhere, the sounds scattered and distorted by the swirl of the blizzard.
I don’t know if it’s Izabel’s knowledge of the route to take or just sheer luck that saves us the same fate. And I don’t want to push it.
Time crawls.
Ice crystals blur my eyes, and I blink over and over to clear them, and to keep my eyelashes from freezing together.
Every so often—three tugs on the rope from above. Izabel is still okay. I give three to confirm that I’m here, I’m alive, I’m still climbing. Venna does the same.
We climb.
My whole body is pain. Every single muscle aches. I ignore it.
I know it’s dangerous to lose focus, but my mind keeps slipping out of this place and into memory.
Training with Igor. Reading to Saela. Cooking dinner for my mother, mixing her medicine in with her food on the days she refuses to take it straight. Kissing Lee. Lee’s strong, bare body pressed against mine. Warmth. Anything but icy pain.
Then, finally, four tugs: Izabel can see the top.
The line goes slack from above a few minutes later—Izabel has reached a summit and tied off her part of the rope, which now gathers more slack as I continue my climb. I heave myselfup, scramble back from the edge, and Venna follows close behind me.
I can’t tell if we’re at the top—the fall of the snow is too thick to see much at all. So when a shape comes toward me through the snow, at first I think it’s one of the twins.
