Page 2

With a heavy sigh, I stepped outside the barn and back toward the house, pausing only to tighten the tattered green shawl around my neck when the wind displaced it.

Dried leaves crunched beneath my feet as I moved.

In early winter, the branches formed a dry, cross-hatched landscape fading into the endless distance.

The dense thicket of dead debris created a bed on the forest floor, a haven for any small creatures seeking shelter from the cold.

Despite my loneliness—how I sometimes craved anything but painful quiet—I felt there was a strange, silent beauty in such a desolate place.

Twigs crunched to my left. I turned and watched a white-tailed deer dash into the woods, startled by its own sound. I wondered what it was to have the bravery to truly run free. Wondered if I would ever find that. If I would even know where to begin.

A nasty wind swelled out of the trees and into the clearing. Uninterested in being bit by any more glassy shards of air, I picked up my pace.

Our home had been built by my parents before I was born. Though the knots in the wood had kept their mahogany spirals within the logs of pine, the exterior had worn throughout the years.

I sighed in relief upon reaching the front door and pushing it open. Once indoors, I slid my stockinged feet from my leather boots and lit our wood-burning stove to heat some broth.

The cabin was insignificant on the inside.

It was the only home I’d ever known, consisting of one large living area.

Space was limited to a sitting area crowded with a sofa and chairs next to a kitchenette with a small two-person table, a wood-burning stove, a small sink, and an insulated chest for preserving goods.

Just off the main room was a bathroom and two small bedrooms. It wasn’t much, but it had been enough for us.

I stood near the hearth and stared at the worn leather sofa. Some nights, I had woken to find my mother asleep there, hair cascading behind her head. Her own chestnut pillow.

Groaning, I rubbed my eyes with the heels of my hands. Perhaps out of some guilt-driven desire to punish myself—and ruin one of the only fond memories I had of her—I recalled the last thing she’d said to me before leaving three months ago.

“I would give you up to have my boy back. I am done being your safe haven.”

That made two of us. I would have switched places with him in a heartbeat.

A heavy pull in my pocket drug a sullen scene through my memory.

I wasn’t sure why I kept it with me, that damned note.

Perhaps not to forget the day I’d found it, as I’d forgotten so many other things.

I remembered the grim luster of the overcast sky, the dread I’d felt when descending the moldy, rickety stairway into the small cellar beneath the house.

Knees protesting against the gravel as I knelt behind three boxes of my little brother’s things.

Six months after my father and Ollie were murdered, I went into the cellar to grab a jar of jam.

When I turned to go, I noticed the corner of a small note with tattered edges peeking out between two of Ollie’s old children’s books.

I saw his name scribbled in my mother’s script and couldn’t not read it.

Now, three months later, the same note was crumpled and torn in the corners, having lived in my pockets since the day I found it. Swallowing down my nerves, I unfolded it. My punishment for being the Gold child still living was forcing myself to read that note each day .

S,

Oliver has pneumonia. Ary has the same cold that caused it. Please send for help or come with provisions yourself. I need you.

- Elowen

Supplies had mysteriously arrived on our doorstep the week we’d both been sick. At the time, I hadn’t thought much of it, but now I wondered if someone else—this S, perhaps—had sent those supplies.

I’d confronted my mother about the note. Her response had been short and cold.

“You know what you need to know, and nothing more.”

I scowled at the memory. Those hazel eyes had never been a maternal refuge, not for me. A protective, loving fire had burned in them for Oliver, but a chilly indifference took precedence when trained in my direction.

I blinked as if to shed tears that never fell for Elowen Gold.

Outside the old, clouded window, the dreary sky relinquished its wrath with a blizzard. I shivered, seeking solace from the cold in a warm bath.

I entered the bathroom and stopped before the broken mirror hanging askew on the wall.

From what I could remember, my pallid skin had once held color, but had gradually faded from lack of sanity and sunlight.

All that was left was the bright pink in my near-frostbitten cheeks from the nine—no, ten?

—hours I’d spent in the frigid air. I had never hated my reflection, but it pierced me with sadness to see the exhausted red rims around my green eyes and the skeletal lines of my body.

Where strong, healthy curves once arched and bowed through my chest, hips, and thighs, now I was frail and flat.

But my mother had assured me I would be wise to keep a thin stature.

“Delicate and light, Ary. Anything more is unbecoming. ”

My long, silvery-blonde hair—tangled at the ends—was long past needing a trim.

Loose strands escaped my braid and trailed down the sides of my face and onto my thin neck.

A string of light freckles painted my upper cheeks and cascaded up and over the bridge of my nose, and my green eyes looked dull.

I watched my reflection as I let my fingers linger over the roughly two-inch-long scar directly over my heart.

There was the faded, horizontally curved smile on my lower abdomen from some surgery I’d had when I was young—a growth that had to be removed, according to my mother.

But the scar on my chest was the most prominent.

I always called it my mystery scar, because neither my mother or I could remember where it came from.

Or she remembered and neglected to tell me.

It wasn’t the scars themselves that bothered me, but that I didn’t have the memories to show for them. I might have found power in my scars had I recalled living through the pain.

Our bathtub was molded with white stoneware.

Beneath the large stone basin, my father had placed a small, contained firepit that could be easily lit and extinguished as needed.

Most days, I let the fire burn longer than it should, but I looked forward to the burning heat.

Hot enough to hurt, but not hot enough to peel the skin off my body.

It made me feel . Anchored me to the present and made breathing just a little easier.

I climbed into the wide basin and let the steaming water of the bath engulf me. Sweat prickled my forehead and my limbs burned like fire. I suffered through the heat until my heart began to race. The thrill of it tired me out, so I laid my head on the edge of the tub and let myself rest.

By the time I woke from a slumber, the candles in the window were out and bathwater licked my naked body with a sinister chill.

I dried off, dressed in my nightgown, and laid down in my floor bed of blankets facing the hearth.

Oliver and I had once shared a bedroom after he turned four, but since his death, I found it difficult to sleep in a half-empty bed.

Every time I tried, my fingers grazed the spot where his little body once laid tucked up against me, safe and sound.

It was cold now. I tried to imagine him there, but my imagination would drift too far to find him, and instead of finding comfort, I found ghosts.

I stared as the fire danced over the fresh logs, then at the axe near the door. I was running out of firewood, too, and I wasn’t sure my tired limbs were strong enough to chop some more.

Hours later, the wailing wind of the morning’s dawn stirred me from another weak, pleading sleep. I felt the bags under my eyes sink deeper into my skull. Fighting my drudging pulse, I sat up on the floor and checked to see if my mother had returned. Unlikely, but… just in case.

As soon as I rose, a loud, abrasive knock on the front door startled my stiff, frozen limbs to life.

“Ary!”

My eyes shot wide and panic gripped my throat. I hadn’t heard that sharp, raspy, indignant voice in over a year.

“Ary, you know who this is!”

I threw the covers off of my legs, pinched my thigh, and waited to see if I was hallucinating.

“I know you’re in there! Don’t pretend you can’t hear me!”

“Impossible,” I whispered, clumsily slipping my feet into my well-worn slippers.

Toes were hard to move when numb and near-frozen.

I pressed my ear to the front door and waited for her to speak again, if only to prove I hadn’t fallen into fever dreams wilder than the one I sometimes felt I was already in.

“Open the damn door, Ary!”

I retreated from the door, startled.

“Let me in!” she shouted.

A tight ball of fury began to coil in the pit of my belly.

Did she think she could come back like she never left?

After… everything ? Did she even know they were dead?

I rested my hand on the knob and froze, shivering from the frigid air snaking up my bare legs from beneath the door.

The cold pricked my skin like a thousand daggers.

“Damn it, Ary! I deserve every ounce of your disgust and begrudging for leaving you, but it is cold as shit, I’m out of food and rum, and I am not afraid to break down this gods-damned door with a pickaxe—”

I yanked open the door and found myself staring into the angry, determined, beautiful face of Gemma Tremaine.