Page 47 of Winter's Echo
I didn’t want to, but I did it anyway. The room inside was untouched — table, chairs, and a hearth gone cold.
I stopped myself from going any further.
“Shades…” someone breathed behind me.
The man in the center of the room wasn’t torn apart. He wasn’t even bloody. He sat slumped in his chair, head tipped forward, as if he’d fallen asleep mid-meal. That could have been plausible, since a bowl still sat in front of him. But even from here, I could see it was frozen solid.
I stepped closer before I could stop myself. Something about it felt wrong. That word again, though I had no other way to describe this feeling. It was death, but not the death I knew.
I crouched slightly, ignoring the way my chest tightened further the closer I got.
“Don’t touch him,” Nicco said quietly from behind me.
I hadn’t realized I’d reached out. I paused before pulling my hand back to my side. Then leaned in just enough to see his face.
His skin, what’s wrong with it?
I swallowed hard. His skin was too pale. Not the pale of cold. Not the gray of death.
It was the pale of somethingtaken.
Drainedfrom him.
His lips were colorless. His eyes were half open, glassy, unfocused, and overwhelmingly empty.
“Is this what it does?” Marson asked behind me, his voice little more than a whisper.
“Yes,” I said quietly. “That’s what the stories say, anyway.” I scanned the man’s body. “Your only escape is death.”
I heard the uneasy shuffles of feet behind me at my words.
But something wasn’t right. I straightened slowly, my gaze moving across the room.
“No,” I corrected. “This isn’t what itdoes. This is what itleaves. They take your body's heat, its warmth, and only leave the frost behind.”
Silence followed my words. Heavy and pressing in the small room.
Nicco shifted slightly beside me. “There’s more.”
Of course there was. “There’s always more,” I muttered.
He didn’t say anything about my pessimism. “Upstairs,” he said.
I froze. The memory hit me — the dust, the wood splitting, and something forcing its way down through the ceiling.
It hadn’t been comingin. It had been comingdown.
“Amarya.” Nicco’s voice was quieter now, more focused. “You seeing it yet?”
I dragged my gaze to the ceiling, to the faint, uneven marks running across the beams. They weren’t scratches. Not quite. More like grooves, as if a heavysomethinghad dragged itself along the wood.
Slowly. Deliberately.
Waiting for its chance.
My stomach turned. “It wasn’t finished,” I said.
No one spoke.
