Page 48 of Royal Icing

“Cooper, you idiot,”she called into the thick blanket of snow. She hadn’t even thought to pocket a treat to tempt him with.

He must have seen a squirrel or something. She had been stupid not to wrap the leash around her wrist like she usually did.

Really, it was all Leo’s fault. Or maybe Ruby’s.

God, it was cold. She couldn’t feel her hands or feet at all as she dashed through the snow, barely able to spot Cooper’s gigantic tracks. That damn dog.

She called his name repeatedly through numb lips, but he didn’t come bounding back. He could be halfway to Spain right now.

Anxiety settled in. Cooper wasn’t just a dog. He was a soulmate. He had been there for her during her mom’s diagnosis and hospital stay, when Dylan left. He had alerted her more than once when her mom had fallen getting out of bed. She couldn’t lose him. She wouldn’t. Snow be damned.

She screwed up her eyes against the blustery wind. Was that an inner tube dangling from that wooden structure? Shit, she had walked all the way to the lake. She quickened her pace, heartbeat thudding in her ears.

Cooper wouldn’t have gone out onto the lake. He was smarter than that. Right?

But the tracks ran alongside what seemed to be a dock and out beyond. Anxiety rose like a wave. She struggled against the snow that pelted against her exposed skin. Her entire body shook like a cat on a dryer.

The sound of splashing came from ahead. Oh, no. She struggled, slipping over the snow-covered ice.

There was Cooper, frantically paddling in a small circle of dark water.

Emma froze. Seconds crawled by as she calculated. There wasn’t time to run back to the castle for help. Should she jump in? But how would she boost him up?

The life preserver.

“Hold on, Coop,” she said. Her heart hammered in her ears as she scrambled back to the icy dock. She pulled the flotation device off and ran back to Cooper. As she approached, she dropped to her knees and crawled toward him, trying to spread her weight out on the ice.

“It’s going to be okay, honey. Use this?—”

She muscled the inner tube underneath him, hands dipping into the glacial water. His butt floated to the surface, and he thrashed his way out of the water and onto the ice.

“You’re okay. You’re o— Shit.”

The ice spider-webbed under her palm, and in an instant, she plunged into the frigid lake.

The cold hit her like a fist to the gut. Knives pierced every inch of her flesh. Panic flared, and her muscles froze.

She was going to die. What would happen to her mom?

Cooper barked at her, snapping her out of her trance.

“No, Cooper. Stay,” she ordered. If he came too close, he would just fall through the ice again.

Thankfully the inner tube was still within reach. She flung a numb arm onto it and used every last bit of her strength to hoist herself up and out of the ice.

She lay there for a moment, drawing shallow, painful breaths as the snow and ice pelted her. Her teeth chattered, but the shaking in her limbs was slowing down. In fact, she could barely feel anything anymore. This wasn’t so bad. Maybe it was an unseasonably warm lake.

Cooper barked at her again, and she struggled to her hands and knees.

Was that a voice out there in the distance?

“Help,” she called, as loud as she could.

There wasn’t a response.

“Help,” she called, a little louder.

Cooper’s fur had frozen into spiky icicles. She needed to get him somewhere warm. But she was so tired. The ice was hard and impossibly slippery. The castle might as well have been on a different planet. Maybe she should just rest first.