Page 49 of Winter's Echo
The moment my heel hit the threshold, I stepped back into the street, and only then did I allow myself to breathe properly. Cold air rushed into my lungs, fast and sharp.
Behind me, the soldiers seemed to be gulping in as much air as I was.
The door swung slightly in the stillness and then settled closed. Nothing moved in the window above. Nor in the streets behind us.
“We need to find Baxley and Larana,” Nicco said tightly, a low murmur that I think only I heard, “and get the fuck out of this town.”
I agreed with him.
“What in the shades was that?” someone demanded behind us, voice shaking despite their effort to steady it.
I didn’t answer. I’d told them, and they didn’t need to be told again. Nothing I said right now would make them feel better.
Captain Marson stepped closer to me. “Amarya.”
I dragged my gaze from the door and looked at him. “It’s not just one,” I said, drawing all their attention and wishing I hadn’t. “There’s more.”
I turned to face them all, but I felt their focus on me sharpen as I went to speak.
“You don’t know that.” Sergeant Gralen frowned as he spoke over what I was going to say next.
I shook my head slowly. “I don’t need to.” I pointed down the street. “Look around.”
They followed my gesture. At first, they saw nothing until they realized what they were looking at.
A doorway farther down. Half open and inside, only darkness. Too dark, even for this light. And the snow just beyond it was smooth.
No tracks in and no tracks out. A ripple under the snow.
“Another one?” someone whispered.
“Or the same one,” Baxley said quietly, appearing at the edge of the group. “Doesn’t matter if it’s one or two, or twenty. This place is nothing but death.”
Larana stepped out behind him, her blade already drawn.
“I checked three buildings,” she said, her attention on Nicco. “All the same.”
I struggled to swallow past my dry throat. Relieved to see they were okay, not at ease with what they said.
“How many people live here?” Nicco asked me.
“Too many,” I answered without hesitation. My words carried the weight of truth.
Another sound echoed through the town, not from behind us, but from deeper within the streets. A sound like before, a soft creak, the feeling that something shifted. Then everything went still again.
“They’re not hunting us,” I said slowly with realization. I wanted nothing more than to send my magic out, to test my belief that what I said was true, but in the middle of this group, I couldn’t risk it.
The captain’s jaw clenched. “What do you mean?”
I glanced around at the empty street, at the closed doors, at the places where life had simply... stopped.
“There’s still enough to feed on.” The truth was as horrifying as it was sobering.
Nicco exhaled softly beside me. “Then we don’t linger,” he said. “We find what we need and get out.”
I turned to him, accusation and doubt in my voice. “You think this is just something to pass through?”
His gaze met mine, steady, unreadable. “I think,” he said, “standing still in a place like this is how we end up like the man inside that house.”
