Total pages in book: 129
Estimated words: 127722 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 639(@200wpm)___ 511(@250wpm)___ 426(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 127722 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 639(@200wpm)___ 511(@250wpm)___ 426(@300wpm)
I could see my father’s face now.
He was whiter than the snow.
Once Laurie could actually see, her screams stopped. She clutched my mother, with tears that shone like diamonds on her cheeks.
I took one look at all of them and knew they were in shock.
I didn’t have the luxury of being in shock. If I didn’t get us in motion, we would die out there. “Come on, let’s grab our things and get moving.”
“Get moving?” Mother asked. “Where? We can’t see a damn thing.”
“We’ll freeze if we don’t find shelter.” I spoke calmly, but I had no idea how, considering the situation. There was an ache in my chest that they didn’t carry, a betrayal marked by a man who’d made me smile more times than I could count. When I reflected on our last conversation through the window, I realized he knew.
He knew.
He didn’t stop it. He didn’t save me. He just let it happen.
The Duke of Delacroix was evil—and so was his son.
“Come on.” I grabbed one of the sacks and threw it over my arm.
Laurie climbed out of Mother’s arms and grabbed the other sack.
Dad just sat there, his breath coming out as smoke.
“Dear.” Mom took her time getting to her feet, her joints probably stiff from the cold. Her hand reached for his shoulder and gave him a gentle shake. “She’s right. We’ve got to get moving.”
He stared straight ahead, eyes devoid of emotion, defeated.
It was too hard to look at him—so I dropped my gaze.
“Dear.” She tried again. “Come on, I’m sure there’s a place around here.”
My dad’s face tightened before he covered it with his hand.
Then he started to sob.
We moved through the dark, tripping over piles of snow, and I held out the torch to light our way. Sometimes we took turns carrying it, because the warmth of the fire was worth the weight. The sun finally started to rise, and when I looked behind us, I realized we hadn’t made it far from where we’d started.
The light grew brighter, and I saw nothing but snow and trees.
Endlessly.
They wouldn’t have given us supplies if there wasn’t a chance we would survive, so I swallowed the panic and kept going. I kept close to the wall of the cliff, hoping to come across a cave or shelter. It was solid wall the whole way.
If we didn’t find something by nightfall, we’d probably freeze. My mother couldn’t handle this trek, and my father was still too devastated to participate.
Laurie came to my side. “Why did they do this?”
“I don’t know, Laurie.”
“Are we supposed to do something down here?”
I repeated my answer. “I don’t know, Laurie.” I didn’t know why a man who made me weak in the knees could approve of this horrendous torture. I didn’t know why someone could smile like that but be full of such hate. I didn’t have any answers.
“Look!” Laurie spotted it before I did. “A cave!” She ran ahead, bopping up and down on the uneven snow.
It was a saving grace, because we only had an hour of daylight left.
But my high was quickly dampened when I realized the danger. “Laurie, stop!”
She kept running.
“Goddammit, I said stop!”
This time, she froze in place and looked at me over her shoulder.
“Let me check it out first, alright?” I pulled the sword from my hip and crept toward the entrance to the cave.
Dad was in the rear with Mom, her arm over his shoulder as he helped her move forward. “Be careful, Effie.”
I glanced into the cavern and didn’t see anyone.
But I did see the crates stacked against the wall and the bedrolls in the corner. “It’s clear.” I stepped inside and saw the cold fire pit with soot and ash along the bottom. The place wasn’t in disarray, so it was used regularly.
Laurie opened one of the crates and munched on the food she found. “They have nuts and fruit in here.”
Dad helped Mom inside and helped her sit on one of the crates. “We can’t stay here.”
We all looked to him.
“It’s occupied. They’ll come back and kill us all.”
I looked outside the cave entrance and saw the light fade even further. “We’ll die out there.”
“We’ll die in here,” Dad said.
“And we’ll die out there,” I said. “We won’t survive another night. We need to make a fire and have someone stand watch.”
“Effie, no,” he said. “We’ll be fish in a barrel—”
Roooooooaaaaaarrrrrr.
The sound shook the walls of the cave, made our hearts drop into the pits of our stomachs.
No one spoke. No one addressed the terror we’d just heard.
What the hell was this place?
“I’ll take first watch.” I grabbed the firewood and set it on top of the cold stones before I lit it with the torch. It came to life in a few minutes, the smoke sucked out of the entrance and to the bare sky. “I’ll take the first watch…”