then the blade.
Kyn and Hyla cry out, “Go, go, go!”
But I’m frozen where I sit. Twelve Rymes have passed since that terrible day, but the things I never told my best friend slam hard into my chest.
Lenore, who never liked the cold, who did everything she could to avoid it, will die, clutched in the freezing arms of Winter.
Sitting next to Bristol Mapes.
CHAPTER 18
I was under the stove when he arrived. It was my favorite place to hide when Mistress Quine kept me indoors. And that day, she’d insisted. There was a hole in the wall behind the cooker where critters had gotten after it, and if I pressed my face to the floor of the cabin and tilted it just so, I could see past the tree line to the general store in Hex Landing.
It was a busy place, Hex Landing. Especially in the nighttime hours. Each evening, when the cloud cover turned dark, a bell would echo through the small town signaling the end of the work day. For the next few hours, kol-streaked miners would drift across the main stretch, mingling with the rig drivers who’d pulled in for the night. Tucked in my hidey hole, I sucked on pine needles and watched their boots stomp up and down the wooden walkways, leaving prints in the soft white snow.
It was the snow I liked most of all. It bit at my cheeks and stung my eyes, but the stove kept me warm and I passed hours like that. When the noises in Mistress Quine’s bedroom grew too loud, I jammed my fingers into my ears, shutting out everything but the beating of my own heart.
That’s how I first heard Winter. Her words fell lightly into my head as I lay there, soft and enchanting like the snow gathering just outside on the ground. The names she gave each flake, the songs hidden in the storms she spun across the isle.
My thumbs were in my ears, and it’s why I didn’t hear him knock. Why I didn’t hear him enter the cabin. Two hands wrapped around my stockinged ankles and I was tugged from beneath the stove, a threadbare quilt saving my belly from splinters. I flipped onto my back and looked up at him. His dirty boots, his large hands.
I still think about those hands.
“You’re a pretty thing, aren’t you?” His suspenders drooped like heavy branches from his waistband, snow dripping from his clothes and hair, pinging off my knees. “No wonder she keeps you hidden.”
I remember thinking he had it backward. I mostly kept myself hidden.
“I don’t blame her in the slightest,” he said.
Candlelight caught his face, scruffy and pink from the cold. I knew him; he was the driver of the yellow plow. The rig that kept the roads clear when the snow piled high during Ryme. I’d seen him in town but never here. He wasn’t one of Mistress Quine’s regulars.
I didn’t know to be afraid.
“Where is she? Your ma?”
My eyes drifted to the only other room in the small cabin. The room where Mistress Quine made her bed and took her men.
“Ah,” he said, his gaze following mine. “I see.” He crouched down then, his face just inches from mine, his breath like the stink that Mistress kept bottled in her cupboard. The stink was my first warning. Mistress was wicked mean when she took to carrying her liquid stench around the house.
He took my chin in his hand, but his grip was rough and I inched backward. My shoulder touched the stove and the heat blistered through my shirt. I cried out.
He moved fast then, covering my mouth with his hand and pressing me to the floor.
“Let’s not disturb your ma,” he said.
His whiskers brushed my face, and then his hands replaced them. They were everywhere—that’s what I remember most. Grease caked beneath his fingernails, calloused palms scraping my skin. One roamed my face, and the other hand wandered my body. Pushing aside the quilt and sliding beneath my shirt. When he grabbed my wrist and pressed my fingers to his belt buckle, I kicked out and he howled.
His hand loosened on my face and I bit him. First the fat part of his palm and then his cheek. The taste of copper filled my mouth and when he reached for me again, I spit blood in his face.
“You little wretch.”
And then Mistress Quine was there, standing in the doorway of her room, her blouse open, her skirt askew. She was tired,