Chapter 204: Whispers Beneath the Frost

After the intense training session, Orion suggested the trainees rest. He had very little time to spend with Sophia until night.

Even when he got home, he realized she wasn’t in his house, so he sneaked into hers, where he found her sound asleep. Without a word, he removed his shoes and took his place right beside her, his hand draped over her waist.

The moon skinned the snow in thin silver; the stars were pinpricks in a cold sky. Inside, the small hearth had died to gray. Silence pooled between them like water.

Sleep had taken Sophia the moment her body touched the bed. But what was once peaceful wasn’t peaceful anymore.

It started softly—everywhere painted in white. Snow swallowed sound, muffled motion.

Sophia stood barefoot amidst the snow, the cold biting through her skin until it woke both pain and heat.

Everywhere was calm...until it wasn’t anymore. Suddenly, she saw the Trihydra: its three necks rising in graceful, obscene arcs, scaled like night and shining like polished black glass.

"No," she said as she shook her head.

She knew this scene. She had seen this before. It couldn’t be.

She shook her head and started running, repeating to herself that it was all a dream—that it wasn’t real. But no matter how much she tried to convince herself, it felt painfully real.

"No," she said. "Please, no. Please, please..."

She had no idea who she was begging. It wasn’t like the Trihydra could hear her, after all.

The Trihydra pursued as she ran, but then she noticed her hands weren’t empty.

A knife lay in one of them—the kind used for skinning, narrow and keen. The blade flashed, and the metal traced drops into the snow.

Sophia frowned. She was sure she hadn’t been holding anything before. There had been nothing in her hands, so how...? She panicked, glancing around her surroundings—and that was when she saw him.

Orion.

He knelt a few paces away, his broad chest bowed, his cloak streaked dark where it clung to him. The bruise-color around his eyes made his face look carved from winter stone. His hand pressed at the gaping hole in his middle, a hole from which blood poured freely.

"Orion!" she screamed as she ran to him, kneeling beside him, trying to stop the blood from pouring out.

"Why?" he asked her in a soft, broken voice.

He looked shattered, but not by the wound—it was as though he was broken because of her... because of her betrayal. It was the same look he’d had on his face last time.

She dropped the knife as if the act could sever the thing that made it real. It hit the snow; the sound was a thin, metallic kiss. Blood spattered her bare feet.

"No... no... no, I didn’t..." she started.

Her hands found the wound, pressing, fingers slick, but the blood would not stop. Warmth seeped into the snow and soaked cold through her skin. The edge of the world narrowed to the ragged sound of his breath and the ridiculous, wet pulse beneath her palms.

"Why did you do this? What... what did we do to you?" he struggled to ask as blood sputtered from his mouth.

Sophia shook her head. "Nothing. You did nothing. You guys did nothing. I did nothing," she said to him.

"Why?" he asked again.

"Shut up! Shut up so I can help you... just stop talking, please," she begged him.

"It’s just a dream. It’s a dream. He’s not dying. I didn’t do anything. I didn’t stab him," she whispered to herself as she focused on her task.

Behind him, the air folded. The white field went jagged and dark. The Trihydra shifted its three heads, and for a moment, Sophia thought it would strike her down.

The beast’s eyes glittered with the same terrible intelligence that had frozen her where she stood the day at the gates. Only this time, it tilted not toward her, but away.

Sophia frowned, wondering where it was going—and then she saw Joren.

He stood in front of the beast, twin shortswords in hand. He looked so small and brave—and very much out of his depth. His stance wavered, but he was determined.

For a moment, she saw him as a boy who still had time left to be a man; for another, she saw his face drenched in the desperate hope of someone who thought he could hold off terror. She shouted—a raw, animal sound—and ran for him.

"Joren! Get out of there! Go away!" she screamed.

Joren turned to her, and in that moment, the Trihydra took the opportunity to strike. The middle head whipped forward like a crushing hammer; its jaws closed around Joren as though he were a twig. He fell with a sound that ruptured the snow into a hush that was nearly worse than noise. Blood pooled in the hollow of the field and sucked color from the world.

She reached him too late. Her hands closed on cold air. He lay still. If not for the fact that she had seen him, she would never have recognized him—for the Trihydra left Joren without a head.

It focused its gaze on her, and she fell, tears pouring from her eyes.

She couldn’t speak. She tried to, but she couldn’t. Suddenly, the horizon changed. She was at the pack compound—but where the houses had once been filled with warmth, it was now filled with the smell of fire, burning bodies, and blood.

Bodies lay on the ground as if they had been waiting for her: Brynhild, Ronan, Tobias, Dren, Caspian, Lysander—everyone she knew. People she had formed bonds with.

Smoke billowed, and the sky grew fat and angry above it. The compound burned as though someone had poured oil over it and set it ablaze intentionally.

Other pack members turned to her with accusing stares.

"You brought this."

"You are the weak one."

"If not for you..."

"It’s all because of you."

"You are weak."

The noise was everywhere, a tide that forced the floor from beneath her. The pack’s words became a drumbeat: weak, weak, weak. Orion’s voice folded with everyone’s, a harsh, unanimous verdict.

"You’re weak," he said again.

This was not the wounded man asking for help, but a judge passing sentence.

Soon the world began to shake. Everything trembled, and she fell just as something in her throat cracked. She lurched back, stumbling into snow that hissed beneath her like both wound and warning. The pack’s faces became a forest of spears. She could not breathe.

"Sophia!" Orion screamed as he shook her hard, and she woke up with a gasp.

Cold air flooded her lungs. Her heart beat erratically. The room turned and steadied beneath her heavy lids. For a second, all she could hear was the echo of the Trihydra’s roar in the hollows of her ribs.