Nicholas woke with a start, his eyes fluttering open to the faint glow of candlelight dancing across an unfamiliar ceiling. For a moment, his mind was blank—suspended between dream and reality.
He remembered snow, so much snow, endless white swallowing the world around him. The freezing ground beneath his body, the cruel bite of winter on his skin, and the ache that had torn through his bones. He remembered thinking he wouldn't wake again, that the snow would be his coffin.
But this—this wasn't snow.
He shifted slightly, expecting the brittle crunch of ice or the hard sting of frost, but instead he felt softness. A mattress. Sheets. A blanket—warm, heavy, suffocating. For one fragile moment, a flicker of relief ran through him. He was alive. Someone had saved him.
His relief shattered in the next breath.
Something felt wrong. Deeply, horribly wrong.
