Eventually, a small detail broke through his fog—one of the leather laces on his snowshoe had snapped. Just cleanly broken, like it had given up.
He flexed his fingers, stiff and red. His lips were numb. His ears throbbed with cold. He couldn’t go on like this. Not today.
With a long, shaking breath, he forced himself upright. The snow whispered as he moved, but offered no resistance.
He turned back the way he’d come, retracing his own lonely trail.
It was time to go home.
He was about halfway home when a figure emerged through the thickening snow. As he drew closer, the shape sharpened—broad shoulders, steady gait. Aries. Great. A lecture was coming.
“I was worried about you!” Aries called, his voice rough with cold—and something else. Relief, maybe. Or anger trying to pass for it.
Despite the exhaustion weighing down every step, Collin lengthened his stride. Aries had come out into this brutal cold just to find him. That said more than any lecture would’ve.
Aries didn’t ask where Collin had been, or why. He just fell into step beside him, silent as they trudged through the snow. Collin stole a glance. Aries’s coat was half-frozen at the hem, his jaw clenched against the wind, but it was the flicker of worry in his eyes that caught Collin off guard. He looked like he’d been out there too long—like he hadn’t planned to go home without him.
They walked like that until the faint shape of the cabin emerged through the strengthening snow.
The moment the door flung open, a gust of cold swept in with them. Hadria stood in the entryway, arms already crossed, her breath rising. She didn’t speak right away—but the set of her mouth said she hadplentyto say.
Before she could open her mouth, Aries turned to her and delivered a single, sharp look—so direct, so loaded, it stopped her cold.
Aries helped Collin peel off his frozen cloak and boots. His hands moved briskly, but not unkindly—like someone tending a wounded animal. Collin didn’t resist. He had no strength left for that.
Aries guided him to the hearth and eased him into the chair closest to the fire. Hadria appeared a moment later with every blanket she could find, piling them onto him one by one. A cup of steaming tea was pressed into his hands, its heat a distant sensation he could barely register.
He was too cold, too hollow.
The flames leapt and danced in front of him, but he stared through them, numb. Only the slow return of pain—tingling fingertips, stinging toes—reminded him he was still alive.
And then, behind the bedroom door, the arguing began again.
“Please, Hadria, just leave him alone. You’re not helping him by picking him apart.”
“How long are you going to keep ignoring this? He’s going to get himself killed!”
“He knows these mountains.”
“He’s reckless, Aries! Can’t you see that? He’s not thinking straight—he could get you killed too!”
“He’s my friend. My brother. I’m not going to turn my back on him. So please, stop pushing.”
A silence followed—brief, but weighted. Then Hadria’s voice, sharp as glass, “He needs to knowshehas a new life. He needs to get over her.”
Collin closed his eyes as if he could shut the world out, but the words lodged in his chest. He drew the patchwork quilt over his head and curled in on himself.
Moonlight poured through her window, so bright that for a moment, Dragonfly thought it was already morning. She pulled the curtains wide and looked out into the stillness. The sky was impossibly clear. Stars burned above her like a million quiet souls, and the moon’s glow wrapped around her shoulders like a lullaby. She let it carry her—to that place in her heart where Collin waited.
Collin sat by the window, watching the stars. He tried to count them, but there were too many—each one blinking in and out like heartbeats, scattered across the endless canvas.
The moon hung low, pale and calm, her quiet face watching over the night. He stared at her for a long time, drawn in by that still, distant beauty.
When sleep finally took him, it came soft and slow. And in its light, he saw Dragonfly—dancing beneath the glow of winter’s moon, as if she’d always belonged there.
