Chapter 6 – Blood in the Snow
The morning came grey and heavy, pressing the cold into my skin until it felt carved there.
The creatures from last night lay where I'd left them, stiff now, their blood black against the frost. Flies already gathered, wings humming in a lazy swarm.
I rose slow, muscles aching, my shoulder a raw throb where claws had raked me. Every movement tugged at the wound, but I didn't care. Pain was something I could use.
It reminded me I was still alive.
Still hunting.
The trees here thinned, revealing stretches of snow-patched ground. I could see tracks — some small, some too large to belong to anything I wanted to meet.
I followed the smaller ones.
Hours passed. My breath fogged before me. I kept low, kept quiet. Twice, I saw movement in the distance — lean shapes, fur flashing between trees — but they kept their distance.
Maybe they smelled what I'd done.
Maybe they knew I wasn't prey anymore.
I found water at a frozen creek, breaking the thin ice with a rock. The taste was sharp, biting, but it cleared the dryness from my throat.
And in the reflection, I saw myself.
My face was sharper than I remembered. Hollowed. Eyes darker.
I didn't look like the boy who'd run from Eryndor that night.
I looked like something else.
That night, I slept in a hollow under an uprooted tree. The cold crept in from every side, and the only warmth I had was the faint throb of the Sovereign's blood inside me — a heat that never faded, no matter the weather.