Page 112 of A Fate of Ice and Lies

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Chapter

Nineteen

TEDDY

Frigid windand snow whipped around my face as Victoria and I flew down a small hill on the sled Elias had given her. Hee-haw ran beside us, kicking up snow as he tried to keep up.

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Victoria’s thin frame shook with laughter, and I nestled my nose to the back of her neck and let the sound settle my rattled mind.

It’d been a couple of weeks since I last saw Elias the night of his barbecue. And in that time, everyone’s food rations had gotten smaller. The snowstorm had either gotten worse or the fae had stopped using their magic to help melt the snow outside of Colina Verde. It’d gotten so bad, many of the people from out of town had to move into our schools while I’d convinced Javier to move him and his sisters in with me.

It made my small house a bit cramped, with Javier sleeping on a futon in my tiny office while the girls shared my old bedroom. But it also felt more like a home with all the girls’ near constant giggles.

“Again,” Javier’s sister Juanita shouted when Victoria and I reached the bottom of the hill.

Hee-haw jumped in reply.

“Again?” I asked Victoria, a little out of breath.

Okay, a lot out of breath. But I was determined to give all the kids a day of fun, where they could just play. Elias had done that for the kids in our town when he’d brought a few sleds for Victoria and others to play with. He’d done that for the adults too, when he’d invited us all to his place for a barbecue. And for several wonderful hours, I’d felt joy.

Of course, of course, it’d all gone to shit.

And now, no one but Donnie had seen him. According to Donnie, Elias looked different. Feral, with his eyes a constant pit of black and his fangs out. But Donnie said it was more than that. It was as if Elias had lost himself.

I’d tried to reach out to ask Nalari if he was okay, but aside from asking me if Leanora had spoken to me again, she never replied. Maybe I should’veworried more about Leanora and her sudden silence, but I trusted Elias to figure it out.

Every night I saw Nalari in my yard. Sometimes she slept there. And after I’d tuck the girls into bed, I’d sneak outside to offer Nalari raw meat I’d put aside from whatever we were eating for dinner. I knew it wasn’t enough to keep her satisfied, and she insisted she’d rather hunt, but she looked thinner these days too. More tired. The angles of her face were sharper, the ridges of her backbone more pronounced. And the golden hue of her eyes was dimmer. Every night, she fell asleep quicker than the night before.

It was enough to make me worry. Was her sudden weight loss because of the emotional connection between herself and Elias, or was she going hungry like the rest of us?

Brenton spoke to me honestly,though, telling me how he worried about Elias. How withdrawn he seemed. How sometimes he wasn’t sure Elias would be able to return but seemed to clear his mind when they spoke about the journals they’d read.

Javier reached for the rope in front of Victoria’s sled. “I can pull her up too,” he offered, holding the rope for his sisters’ sled.

“One more time,” I huffed out. “Then Javier’s on sled duty.”

I was more tired than I probably should have been, but as promised, Everly didn’t take it easy on me when we trained. Neither did Brenton when he joined us most mornings. In fact, our sessions became more grueling every day. My legs shook as I climbed up the hill again while Hee-haw pushed his head against my butt. I swatted at him, and I swear he ran away laughing.