“Pick it up like this. Otherwise, you’re going to hurt your back.” I showed her how to scoop it up with the least amount of work. Then we both carried our snow to the tree line to add it to the pile.
Her back was turned to the guards, so she started to break, her emotions bursting through her skin like water through cracked glass. She breathed hard, shut her lips tight to battle the sobs, and then her lips quivered. “I’m so sorry—”
“We’re going to get out of here, alright?” I whispered. “I promise.”
She shook her head, the tears dripping down her cheeks.
“Hey, look at me.”
She shook her head again.
“Melanie.”
She heaved, her chest rising and falling with the painful breaths she tried to suppress. She finally turned to look at me, her eyes wet but her skin dry.
“I promise.” I didn’t know how I was going to deliver on that promise, but I would, one way or another. “Keep your head down and do what they say in the meantime. But we will get out of here.”
She gave a hesitant nod.
“They can take our bodies, but they can’t take our minds. We will get out of here—and we’ll make them pay.”
I had never been more exhausted.
The second I got to the cabin, I went straight to bed. My fatigue overpowered my hunger, and I knocked out fully clothed, sleeping in the dark.
The door opened later and stirred me from sleep.
I sat up immediately, jolted awake because my mind was so deep asleep that the noise was startling.
A tray was placed on the chair before she darted out.
My guard came in afterward and looked at me.
I rubbed the sleep from my eyes as I sat on the edge of the bed. I didn’t look at him, still half asleep.
He moved to the nightstand next to my bed and placed a couple things there. A mug full of something warm and steamy, a plastic tube of lip moisturizer, a little bottle of body lotion, and a book. He stepped away but still looked down at me, as if he were expecting a reaction from me.
I stared at the book on the nightstand. The Count of Monte Cristo.
That was fucking ironic. “Why did you bring this?”
He grabbed the tray from the table and set it down beside me before he fell into the chair, getting comfortable as if he expected to be there for a while.
I hadn’t had a hot coffee or anything warm since I’d arrived here. The food was rarely hot because it took so long to reach me after it was finished in the kitchen. So, I grabbed the mug and looked down inside, seeing the marshmallows floating on top. “Oh my god…” It was so minor, something I would have taken for granted in my previous life, but looking into that mug made me think of a lost childhood when my mother was still alive, hot cocoa in front of the Christmas tree. It made me tear up for just a moment, to think that she was looking down at me right now, rolling in her grave because of what had happened to her girls. I brought the mug to my lips and took a drink, enjoying the first taste of sugar, the warmth as it thawed my throat and stomach, the way the hot mug heated both of my palms as I held it close.
Then I grabbed the book and held it tightly. It was a book I’d already read, but I’d read it a million times just to be connected to someone going through the exact same thing as I was. He escaped…and so would I. He got his revenge.
And I would get mine.
“You tell me escape is pointless, but then you bring me this?” I held up the book and looked at him before I returned it to the nightstand.
“Coincidence.” His deep voice brought warmth to my cabin, like he was the fire in an invisible hearth. He seemed to possess power I didn’t understand, because he lingered when he shouldn’t, because he always walked away as if he could dismiss himself whenever he wished.
“Why don’t I believe you?” I grabbed the lip moisturizer next, squeezing the plastic tube to feel all the ointment inside. It was unopened—brand-new. I set it down and took another drink of the cocoa.
He stayed quiet.
I wanted to pretend these gifts meant nothing to me, but now that I had them, the cabin felt livelier, more bearable. They say the little things in life matter most…and I realized that was true. “Why did you bring these to me?”
“Why don’t you thank me instead?”
I looked down into the marshmallows before I took a drink, purposely catching one in my mouth so I could chew it and let it dissolve on my tongue. “Thank you…”
He rested his head against the back wall, the only skin visible from his ungloved hands.
“But why? You know I’m trying to find a way to get out of here.”
He didn’t speak.
He never tattled on me; he never reported me. Come to think of it, he was the only somewhat kind guard in this camp. “You’re a lot different now than you were when I arrived here.” He’d shoved my face into the snow and tried to suffocate me into submission. He’d threatened to break my face.
Still, nothing.
I was hungry, but I wanted to enjoy every single sip of that hot cocoa before it went cold. I sat there and enjoyed it. He was probably staring at the side of my face, but since his eyes were hidden, I had no idea. But I could feel it…feel that piercing stare.
“Magnus.”
I stilled at the way his deep voice cut through the silence, the way it commanded my attention so effortlessly. He had a powerful presence, so it made me
