Page 149 of The Heart of Winter

Panicked, I dropped to my knees and started searching again, digging frantically in the sand, but I found nothing. The cold was getting unbearable. My muscles were shaking so badly I could barely move. Desperate to warm up, I stumbled back to the stream and waded into the slightly warmer water. It helped a little, but not enough. I would have needed to fully submerge myself to get warm, but if I did that, I wouldn’t be able to go back into the sea.

And then it started… snowing. White dust landed on my head, covering my turtleneck, which was tightly wrapped around it.

Shivering uncontrollably, I forced myself out of the stream, back to the shoreline, but by then, I was so frozen and frustrated I could hardly function.

I had to face it; I was going back to Sariel empty-handed.

Tears burned in my eyes as the realization sank in. I had eaten the whole damn thing, the only piece of meat I had found.

And now, Sariel would have to spend another night hungry.

The walk back was awful. I felt like absolute shit.

When I stepped into the cave and saw his face, those big light eyes, those soft lips, my stomach twisted into knots. I must've been the biggest piece of garbage alive.

"I didn’t find anything," I lied, and it almost physically hurt.

The words barely made it past my lips. They tasted foul, but I had to hide the disgusting thing I had done.

"I had to come back to warm up," I added.

"Of course. There’s no point in going back out tonight," he said. "It’s almost completely dark. You won’t find anything after the sunset."

There was no impatience in his voice. No judgment. Just quiet resignation.

"You’re exhausted," he added gently, watching me. "Come on, let’s sit in the warm water for a bit. You’ll get some strength back."

He handed me a bottle of water he had boiled earlier. I drank it down greedily, avoiding his gaze. What a scumbag. Me.

We slipped into the water, settling into silence.

I could see him swallowing, and I could feel it, how desperately hungry he was.

I was hungry too. But maybe not as much as he was—the clam’s meat was probably still somewhere in my guts.

"Let’s just go to sleep," I said, a little too quickly, a little too impatiently. I knew it was probably still early, but if I slept now, I’d wake up at dawn and go searching again.

"Alright," he whispered.

We climbed out, dried off, and lay down on the mattress. His arms wrapped around me again. Trusting. Warm. He rested his head on my chest, and I—disgusting, selfish, treacherous me—held him, silently vowing that no matter what I found tomorrow, it would go to Sariel first.

SARIEL

Winter left at dawn, just as the first traces of sunlight touched the horizon.

He was in a bad mood, barely looking at me, probably feeling guilty because he hadn’t found anything.

I glanced at the pile of branches he had brought back yesterday, still stacked beside the fire. My uncle Victor had told me that tree phloem, when ground down, could be used as flour.

So I sat by the fire and got to work.

I grabbed a few rough stones and used them to strip the bark from the branches, since the outer layer wasn’t worth much. Too bitter, not enough nutrients. Then, placing some of the inner bark between two rocks, I started grinding it down. It wasn’t easy work. After a long effort, I had only a tiny pile, maybe half a cup’s worth.

I tried soaking some of it and tossing it into a can, but the mush looked so pathetic that either Winter or I could have eaten it in just two bites.

I clenched my jaw and kept going, grinding down more bark despite the ache in my hands. Still, the results weren’t great, the pile grew only slightly.

Moving carefully on all fours, I crawled to the cave entrance. Yesterday, I had done the same thing to climb a little higher up the slope to collect snow. Up there, further from the warm stream, patches of grass still poked through, some of it reddish-brown, some still green.

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