I glance back toward the road leading home, disappearing into darkness behind the thicket of trees.Home.Yet, far from it.
The men are gone. The dogs are gone. The cottage will still be there tomorrow, and so will everything waiting inside it. But Death might not be.
My fingers curl tight around the edge of my cloak before I look back up at him.
“Okay.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
WINTER
Warmth. I’d forgotten what it felt like. Not the kind stolen from the afternoon sun or borrowed from a blanket draped over aching shoulders. This warmth is different. It seeps into the room, wrapping itself around my frozen limbs until every inch of me tingles with the unfamiliar sensation of being… comfortable.
I stand awkwardly beside the fireplace, unsure what to do with myself while Death disappears somewhere deeper inside the house. The crackling of burning logs fills the room, a silence that feels nothing like the one I’d lived with for the last four years. I stare into the dancing flames, mesmerized by the way they devour the wood without mercy. At least fire has the decency to finish what it starts. The heat kisses my face until my skin begins to sting, but I can’t quite make myself step back. I do not know if I can trust warmth anymore. Every kind thing I’ve ever been given came with strings wrapped so tightly around it they cut into flesh. A blanket before winter turned into anotherfavorI owed. An excuse to keep me alive.A bowl of soup that I made myself became payment collected later with bruises and scars. Kindness was never free. It was an investment.
The fire crackles, a log collapsing inward with a burst of bright orange sparks. I flinch anyway. My body moves before my mind can remind it that no one is shouting at me. No one reached for me. No one laughed because I’d simply startled.
I should leave.
I should find the nearest door and run back to the cottage like I did the last time I was here, because the punishment of being here always costs me. Last time it was two years being chained to the cottage, the option of leaving again slipping through my broken fingers and bloodied frame because I had been foolish. Selfish. Idiotic. Except, where would I go? The forest? Back to the cottage to wait for them once they find their Doc. Cameron? The thought turns my stomach. My fingers drift toward the fireplace without thinking. I stop only inches from the stone hearth, spreading my palms toward the flames. Warm air wraps around my cracked skin, slipping beneath my sleeves, thawing fingers that haven’t truly been warm in years. It hurts. Tiny needles stab every fingertip as feeling returns, and I grit my teeth though the ache.
The room smells of cedar and smoke. Clean smoke. Not the damp, choking kind that seeped from the rusted barrel stone back at the cottage wheneverthe chimney clogged. This smells… like home. Like old books. Like rain drying from timber. Like a life I’d only ever seen in my dreams. My eyes drift across the room, taking in everything piece by piece, committing it to memory. If this is the last time I’ll ever be here, I want to salvage this image. The safety that lines these walls. There’s a poker beside the fireplace, a ceramic vase that would shatter if thrown hard enough. A narrow hallway behind me. This house is old, but beautiful. Perfectly clean. Nothing about this room has changed since I was here two years ago. Everything has its place. My gaze snaps toward the front windows, expecting headlights. Voices. Barking dogs. Gunshots. Instead there’s only darkness pressing against the glass.
There’s a gold intricate mirror that leans against the wall I hadn’t noticed before now. It’s beautiful. The carvings and filigree are from another time, and the faint reflection of a woman I barely recognize stares back at me. I haven’t seen what I looked like in years, and I don’t think I want to, not really. Because the girl I left behind, was forced to leave behind, isn’t the same as the woman I am now. The woman staring back at me through the glass is a stranger. Her hair hangs in tangled knots that fall to her waist, dull where it should shine. Hollow cheeks sharpen the bones beneath skin in desperate need for sunlight, and shadows sit beneath eyes that have seen far too much,and nothing at all. My dress hangs from my body instead of fitting it, the lace fabric stained with dirt, dried dish soap, and years of toil.
I look…haunted.
Like something that clawed its way out of the earth instead of being born into it. I raise a hand, watching the reflection mimic me a heartbeat later. Even from here, I can see the pale lines crossing my fingers and wrists. Scars I remember earning. Others I don’t. Somewhere along the way they stopped being individual memories and became part of me, blending together until I couldn't tell one punishment from another.
I had to braid my hair every morning. I remember sitting on the edge of my bed before school, fumbling with the uneven plaits while my father laughed and fixed them for me. He always made them tighter than I liked, telling me they would stay neat longer that way. I used to complain. I’d give anything to complain about something so ordinary again.
I wonder if he’d recognize me now. If he’d look into my eyes and know who I was beneath everything the last four years have carved away. Whatthey’vecarved away. Or maybe he’d walk straight past me, mistaking me for another broken woman trying to survive another winter. Maybe he’s looking for the eighteen-year-old who disappeared. Not the twenty-two year old woman standing before this mirror.Seeking comfort in the house of death. Because the other version of me, the one they knew, doesn’t exist anymore.
She didn’t survive.
For several long seconds, I simply stand there, staring until the sight becomes almost unbearable. Mirrors are supposed to tell the truth. This one doesn’t. Or maybe it does. No one tells me to get back to work. That idle hands deserve punishment. The woman trapped beneath the gilded frame watches me in perfect silence, waiting for me to decide if she’s a stranger, or simply the truest version of myself.
Snow.
That was the name they gave me.
The name they used in place of my own until it became easier to answer to it than to remember the one my father whispered whenever he’d tuck me into bed at night. The one my mother chose before I was ever born. Maybe that’s what happened to me. Maybe Snow was the girl they stole after all. Or maybe Winter was always waiting beneath the surface, buried deep enough that she really did survive. I just don’t know which one I am.
The one looking back at me.
The one I was.
The one they made.
Or the one I’m still fighting to become.
Footsteps pull me from my thoughts, and I turnmy head to see my dark angel leaning against the arch that frames the living room. His arms are full, and I look down to see a folded bundle of dark fabric resting against one forearm while the other hand grips a neatly folded towel. Neither of us speaks. Then, without ceremony, he holds everything out to me.
“They’re going to be big on you.”
For a second, I just stare. Not because of the clothes, but because he’s offering them to me. I can’t remember the last time I wore anything that I hadn’t pieced together from scraps of faded fabric the men occasionally tossed into my room after rummaging through second-hand stores. Clothes weren’t something I was given. They were something I salvaged. Mended. Made. Patched and worn until the seams surrendered beneath years of labor, weather… or torn from my body by violence.
“You don’t need to give these to me,” I murmur, looking up to meet his eyes, almost glowing in the firelight.
