Winter

Eighty-Seven

Reality disintegrated. The world was a thousand cumbersome pixels tearing apart, leaving black spaces in between, then smashing back together in blinding sparks.

Winter had made herself as small as she could, huddled in the shop’s doorway off the main thoroughfare of Artemisia. Her own shaking arms made for a protective shield around her body and her feet were pulled in tight. She’d lost a shoe. She didn’t know how or when.

Aimery was dead.

Scarlet-friend had stabbed him nine times.

Winter had stabbed him nine times.

Dear Scarlet. Vicious, stubborn, weak-minded Scarlet.

Once she had started, Winter couldn’t make it stop. Nine times. It had been years since she’d manipulated anyone and never with violent intentions. Aimery, in his determination to subdue them all with his gift, had not tried to get away until after the second stab. By that time Winter was already lost. She couldn’t make it stop. She thought only of erasing forever that awful, charming grin. Of destroying his mind so she would not be forced to wrap her hands around Jacin’s neck again and finish what she’d started.

Now Aimery was dead.

The streets were full of his blood. They reeked with the stench of it.

“What’s wrong with her?” some far-off voice shrieked. “Why is she acting this way?”

“Give her some space.” This command was followed by a grunt. Jacin? Could it be her guard, so near, always so near?

Jacin had been the one to tackle Scarlet and rip the knife away, snapping the hold Winter had taken over her. Otherwise she knew she would have kept stabbing and stabbing and stabbing and stabbing and stabbing until Aimery was nothing but chopped bits of flesh and smiles.

Winter’s head was full of distraction, too much to comprehend. The shop’s sign overhead swung on its hinges. There was a torn curtain behind broken glass. Bullet holes in the walls. Roofs caving in. Glass shattered beneath her feet.

“We have to find Cinder.” The voice was insistent, but terrified. “We have to make sure she’s okay, but I can’t … I don’t want to leave Winter…”

Winter arched her back and clawed her hands into her hair, gasping from an onslaught of sensation. Every inch of her skin was a hive of stinging bees.

Arms circled around her. Or maybe they had been there for a long time. She could hardly feel them outside of the cocoon she’d erected, even though it was covered in hairline fractures. “It’s all right. I’ve got Winter. Go.”

A cocoon.

An encasement of ice.

A spaceship harness strangling her, the belt cutting into her flesh.

“Go!”

Winter clawed at the straps, struggling to get out. Those same strong arms tried to hold her still. Tried to secure her thrashing. She snapped her teeth, and the body shifted out of her reach. She was pulled away from the door, their bodies repositioned, so the arms could restrain her without being in danger themselves. She struggled harder. Kicked and writhed.

And screamed.

stabbing and stabbing and stabbing and stabbing and stabbing and

Her throat was hoarse.

Maybe she’d been screaming for a long time.

Maybe the sound was imprisoned inside this cocoon, trapped like she was. Maybe no one would ever hear her. Maybe she would scream until her throat bled and no one would ever know.

Her heart split in two. She was an animal. A killer and a predator.

The screams turned to howls.

Sad and broken howls.

Haunting and furious howls.

“Winter? Winter!”

The arms around her were unrelenting. She thought there might be a voice, familiar and kind, somewhere far in the distance. She thought there might be good intentions in that voice. She thought that if she could follow the sound, it would lead her to somewhere safe and calm, where she was no longer a murderer.

But she was already suffocating beneath the weight of her crimes.

Animal. Killer. Predator. And the wolves all howl, aa-ooooooooooh …