the extra food I had, since Fender gave me everything I could possibly want. I had extra water, so I took that too. “Okay…let’s go.”
Raven wrapped her arms around me and hugged me for the first time since Paris, giving me that maternal warmth, giving me love that I didn’t deserve. She squeezed me tightly. “We’re gonna make it.”
I clutched her harder and felt my eyes water. All I could do was nod.
“Let’s go home.”
This was a mistake.
The snow slapped our faces in the wind. It was so dark we couldn’t see our noses. My lips instantly cracked because it was so cold and dry. We continued to move forward, but we had no idea where we were going. Raven pretended to know, but I knew it was a lie. She would fake it until she made it.
She’d always been that way.
The snow was different from the mounds that arrived in the camp after a storm. It was as tall as we were sometimes, and we had to push through it and hope we wouldn’t suffocate. Our flashlights were practically useless. Clouds covered the starlight because we were in the middle of a blizzard.
A fucking blizzard.
But Raven said it was our best chance because they wouldn’t be able to find our tracks.
They wouldn’t be able to find our bodies either.
“Raven, we have to go back—”
“We aren’t going to die.” She screamed into the wind so I could hear her. “And even if we do, we’d die if we went back anyway.”
“Not if they don’t know we’ve left—”
“I’d rather die out here than die there.” She kept going, pushing through the snow, trying to conquer the unconquerable.
It was impossible to gauge the passage of time.
We seemed to be out there for days, but the sun never came up. Minutes felt like hours. We were moving so slowly that I doubted we were gaining much ground. When they realized we were missing, they would catch up to us in an hour. “We shouldn’t have done this…” I faltered behind her because I didn’t have the strength or the grit to keep up.
“We’re going to make it, Melanie.”
“We’re going to die, and you know it!”
She turned back to look at me, her hair blowing everywhere in the wind, but she still wore that ruthless expression. She wouldn’t admit defeat, even as she experienced the final beat of her heart. Her eyes flicked past me, and her face changed.
I followed her look.
Torches.
“Fuck.” She grabbed my arm and tugged me. “Come on!”
We moved as quickly as we could across the field of endless snow, waist-deep. Our flashlights were turned off so they wouldn’t see us, so we blindly pushed through the snow, getting closer to the dark outline of the trees.
We finally breached the tree line, and the snowdrifts were a little lower here since most of it was caught up in the branches above.
“Run!” Raven led the way, leaving a trail of footprints that they would see when they arrived.
I kept up as long as I could before a stitch entered my side. “Wait…I can’t.” I stopped and bent over, heaving for air.
“Yes, you can.” Raven came back to me and tugged on my arm. “Come on, Melanie.”
I pushed her hand off and breathed through the pain in my waist. I’d never been athletic, never been one for a hike, barely went to the gym. I was a couch potato, and now I was out in the middle of nowhere, in a fucking blizzard, and she acted like I was weak.
I knew we would be captured. I knew we would be taken back to the camp. Fender would probably protect me, but she would be hanged. She would be stabbed until her guts spilled onto the ground and stained the snow. The image brought me to tears. “I’m so sorry—”
“We don’t have time for this.” She flashed me an angry look, immune to my tears.
“Raven.” I wiped them away and straightened. I couldn’t die without earning her forgiveness. Or worse, I couldn’t survive if she didn’t…and carry that for the rest of my life. “I just—”
“We need to keep moving.” She grabbed my wrist and yanked me, forcing me up and forward.
I yanked my hand away, heartbroken and angry. “You’re never going to forgive me, are you?” We were on death’s doorstep, and we both knew it. We had an hour, if we were lucky, before we were captured, and she was still so angry with me that she couldn’t forgive me, not even