Winter, White and Wicked - Shannon Dittemore Page 0,76

as tired as I’d ever seen her.

I’ve replayed that moment more times than I can count. Shifting it, changing what really happened. In the happier versions, Mistress Quine grabs the kitchen broom and beats Bristol Mapes off me and out into the cold. I’d seen her do it before, with the men who got too rough with her.

But that’s not what happened.

Not that day.

Instead, she set to work on her buttons. Slowly doing them up, her lips set in a hard line.

Bristol was still half on top of me. My teeth marks were red on his face and when he spoke, a harsh laugh edged the words.

“Your girl’s got some pluck in her,” he said.

With her eyes staring into nothing at all, Mistress agreed. “That she does. And it’ll cost you double. Leave your coin on the table when you go.”

She retreated into her room, her eyes never once finding mine. The bedroom door slammed and a vase of withered snowblooms tumbled off the hutch and smashed against the floor.

Bristol’s face slid into a ghoulish smile and he pressed closer, said things I’ll never recall. Things I never could hear.

I was flailing hard by then, trying to get off my back. I screamed words into his face. Words with meanings I couldn’t fathom, sounds I’d only ever heard when my ears were plugged and I’d shut out everything but Winter.

Mistress Quine’s door opened again. I remember that—her mouth moving, the ferocious set of her chin.

And then Winter.

Swooping down the chimney, snuffing out the fire and slamming Mistress’s door. The cabin’s four windows shattered. Glass flew like snow spray as Winter exploded through the cabin. Kitchen chairs toppled and the table skid across the room. It barreled over me and pinned Bristol to the wall.

He was bleeding. Not just from the bite I gave him, but from the window shards and stoneware from the open cabinets. From the hail cutting in from outside. All of it finding its way to his pinioned form up against the timbers.

The wind was deafening, so I curled into a ball, my hands over my ears. Winter took the roof next, rusted nails pulling free of the weather-warped boards. The front door swung madly on its hinges and then, like the hand-stitched curtains, she pulled it clean away.

Winter was violent but brief and when she was done with Bristol Mapes, when she was done with the cabin that had held my first five Rymes, the world was quieter than I’d ever known it.

YOU’RE SAFE, Winter cooed. EVERYTHING WILL BE DIFFERENT NOW.

She climbed into the hollow between my ribs, and, like the stove that had always been my comfort, she warmed me through.

It was an eternity before Mistress Quine stumbled out of her room, her face streaked with tears and grime. She wobbled through her fractured doorway, blood trickling from her temple, eyes roving around her destroyed home. For a long time she stared at the spot against the wall where I’d seen Bristol wedged and bleeding. I couldn’t imagine him being anything other than dead, but I didn’t want to look. I’d seen enough of him already.

When she spoke, her voice was low and dangerous. “Get. Out.”

A chill raced down my arms, my spine, but I didn’t move. I couldn’t. I had no idea what she wanted. Where would I go?

She found her legs then, faster than I found mine. She grabbed my hair and yanked me to my feet, but before she could give me another command, she paused and tipped my face to hers.

“Stupid girl. You’ve ruined your lips,” she said. “Now there’ll be no hiding what you are.”

It wasn’t until much later that I understood what she meant. Not until days had passed and Lenore found me in the woods. Not until she’d cleaned me up and placed Drypp’s looking glass in front of me so she could braid my hair.

I saw then what Mistress Quine had seen. It explained the crusty feel of my mouth, the stinging bite whenever the air touched my face.

It was frostbite.

And it was bad.

I’m not entirely sure when Winter swooped in and finished off Mistress Quine. I heard about it much like the rest of Whistletop. A freak storm. A destroyed cabin just outside of Hex Landing. A missing child.

Bristol’s name was never mentioned, but it wasn’t until my twelfth Ryme that I realized he’d survived. Lenore and I were shoveling the walkway outside the tavern when his yellow rig pulled into the lot. He’d been hired