Page 62

He doesn’t move.

“Bramble, please.”

I pull again, but he only shifts his weight and lets out a low, uneasy sound while the wind howls through the trees around us.

I stop fighting him and look ahead.

There is nothing.

No trail. No break in the trees. No slope I can clearly identify as leading up or down anymore because the entire mountain has vanished behind swirling white. When I turn around, even the few tracks Bramble and I managed to make are already filling with fresh snow.

My fingers slowly loosen around the reins.

We’re trapped.

25

Rhys

“Boone!”

The wind howls through the trees, swallowing my voice almost as soon as it leaves my mouth. I can barely hear myself over the storm. So I doubt Boone can hear me. I followed his tracks for as long as I could, but the fresh snow eventually covered them completely, leaving me with nothing except what I know about this mountain and the certainty that there’s only one direction he could have gone if he intended to reach the village.

The trees will box him in eventually, narrowing the trail as it descends, and unless he deliberately leaves it and enters the woods themselves, I should be able to find him. Boone doesn’t know this mountain well enough to realize how quickly the terrain changes beyond the trail. If he wandered into the forest in weather like this, finding him becomes considerably more difficult.

“Boone!”

Nothing answers except the wind.

When I find him—and I will find him—I’m going to lock him in his room and never let him out again. I’ll turn the key myself and keep it on me. He can scream, cry, throw his food at the walls, or tell me how much he hates me until he loses his voice. All of it is preferable to searching a mountain in a blizzard wondering whether I’m already too late.

I urge my horse forward, keeping her to the center of what remains of the trail while I search the snow for anything Boone might have left behind. A hoofprint, disturbed snow, a broken branch—anything that proves I’m still following him rather than riding farther away.

Then I see it.

A depression in the snow.

I dismount and crouch beside it, brushing away the fresh powder with my glove until the curved edge becomes unmistakable.

A hoofprint.

“Boone!”

I’m moving again before the mountain can erase it, leading my horse now because the snow has become too deep to risk riding quickly. Another print appears several yards ahead, then another. Between them are deeper, narrower impressions.

Boots.

He got off the horse.

Fear hits me hard enough that I stop feeling the cold.

“Boone!”

I follow the tracks as quickly as the snow allows, sinking nearly to my knees in places while dragging my horse behind me. The trail curves sharply around a cluster of trees, and something dark appears through the white ahead.

A horse.

“Bramble.”