Then I slip my pack from my shoulder and dig into it, retrieving the dried meat Izabel gave me, tearing at it with my teeth and chewing without tasting. After, I don’t bother picking my pack back up. It’s too heavy, and I can’t have anything weighing me down.
Because I need torun. I need to run like I’ve never run before, if I’m going to reach the castle in time.
Maybe it’s useless. Maybe I’ll die halfway down the mountain in an avalanche or perish the moment Anassa’s bond fractures and snaps to pieces. But I’ll never stop fighting.
Not when Saela’s waiting for me.
Taking one last deep breath, I fill my lungs with freezing air and then start the descent. The safe path winds around the side of the mountain in a zigzag to create a smoother slope, but I don’t have time for the comfortable route.
I bolt past the trail of unbonded recruits making their way slowly down the mountain. Some of them jump or shout at me as I sprint past them, but my heart is pounding too hard to care.
Slipping through a gap in the trail of soldiers, I take the plunge. My body slides over a snowdrift as I launch myself headlong over the edge of the path and down into the wildness between the path’s comfortable winding curves.
Here, it’s deep snow, sudden rocky drops, massive trees with jutting branches, and death.
My clothes are soaked through immediately as I wade and fall and sprint, feet pounding over stony flats. I whip pine needles out of my face and duck under branches. I leap over logs and slide on my side at truly dangerous speeds over long stretches of icy rock, knees and elbows and feet slamming against bits of stone that jut out.
My feet impact the path again, and I sprint right through it. There are hardly any unbonded recruits this far down the mountain, so the way is clear.
Someone shouts at me as I hurtle back into the terrifying descent again. My lungs are frozen over, excruciating pain coursing through me with each icy heave of breath. My legs are shaking as I run, barely keeping me upright.
It’s just a matter of time before they give out and I’m more falling than running down the mountain.
But it doesn’t matter. The world is narrowed down to my survival. To my purpose. To Saela, alone and afraid, her survival dependent upon me reaching the bottom of this stupid fucking mountain. To my mother waiting for me to bring her home.
To Lee, and the life we can build together when this is all over.
Soon, it’s like I’m flying. Trees and rocks rush past me. I stumble and fall, spinning through the snow until I right myself, new pain erupting in my shoulder that I don’t have time to address.
There’s a body on the next stretch of path I pass through. It’s a gory spread. A woman lies on her back, staring sightlessly up at the sky. Her blood is smeared across the snow in a long line, as if she impacted the ice and slid several feet before finding her final resting place.
I stand there only for a moment, catching my breath, entire body trembling as my eyes rest on the cavernous hole where her stomach should have been.
She’s been ripped open. Claws, I think. Shredded right through her coat. Through the sweater beneath it.Mysweater, I realize.
Alessandra.
She’s mutilated, eyes still as wide with fear as they were in life.
I wonder if a direwolf got her on the way down or if this was the work of that piece of shit Stark.
It’s a shame. She was a good person, I think. But it’s too cold out here. The frigid air has seeped right into my chest, ice coating my heart.
I can’t mourn her. I don’t have the time.
Turning away from her, I keep running. My lungs have never been this cold, never stung like this before even after hours and hours of training with Igor. The exposed parts of my skin burn like they’re on fire. My joints ache from the endless impact of my boots on rock and ice. I think I must be bleeding from falls and from the stinging whip of the tree branches.
My feet are beginning to crack and bleed in my boots.
And there’s no direwolf magic healing me this time—either I’m too far from Anassa or she’s choosing to withhold her help. I’m not quite sure how it works.
It hurts.Fuck, it hurts. But that’s another thing Anassa doesn’t know about me.
I’ve always used pain to fuel my anger, to keep myself going. It washes over me, burning and biting, and I swallow it down. It ignites something in me.
Something merciless. Determined. Unstoppable.
Saela, Saela, Saela. Her name is in the pounding of my heart. In the thudding of my boots. In the rush of wind and the haunting echo of howls along the mountainside.
