Rise of the Phoenix novel · Chapter 11 of 24

Chapter 11: Snow Circle

Garth didn't answer her.

He stood on the cracked ice with frost still ghosting off his fingers, and he looked at me, and the whole lake went quiet.

"Emmi," he said. "I'll tell you."

"Now?"

"Not here." His eyes slid to Quill. "Not with her listening, and not while she's smiling."

Quill was smiling.

She stood frozen to the ice up to her knees, wet to the shoulders, with her braid plastered to her neck.

It was a small, smug, satisfied smile, and it told me everything about how she'd planned this.

She wanted me to turn on him.

She wanted us in pieces by morning.

"She's trying to split us," I said.

"She is."

"Then she doesn't get to do it."

I looked at Quill and folded my wings away.

The light went out of the lake in a single breath.

"Hedda," I called.

A very large bear lumbered across the shore, huffed once, and picked Quill up by the back of her collar.

"Cellar," I said. "With a blanket and a bucket. And somebody give the hunters a ride out of here before they freeze."

The hunters crawled out of the shallows and limped back to the trucks that still ran.

Not one of them looked back.

By midnight, I couldn't sleep.

The wings had left something behind in me, a pressure, and every part of my skin felt too hot.

I lay on the tack room mattress with the lantern out.

The coal rolled and rolled under my ribs, and when I put my hand on the wall, the paint blistered.

Garth sat up beside me.

"Come outside," he said.

"It's ten below."

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