Winter, White and Wicked by Shannon Dittemore

Author:Shannon Dittemore
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Abrams
Published: 2020-10-13T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 15

Voices push their way through the sleeper’s velvet curtain and another knot of something unwinds inside me. Kyn’s awake.

Why his injuries bother me more than the outright murder of Jymy Leff, I can’t say, but it’s not a feeling I enjoy. Kyn’s a hired gun, a smuggler, and going by the company he keeps, a rebel sympathizer. Are his crimes less than Jymy’s? I don’t know. Neither concerned me much before recent events. I just wish I knew what it was about Kyn that makes me . . . worry. I’ve only ever worried about Lenore.

A grain ball drops into my lap. “You’re not sleeping are you, Miss Quine?”

“I’m tempted,” I say through my teeth as I use them to untie the twine.

“Well, don’t. Kyndel’s doing much better, but I doubt we could depend on him to negotiate these cages.”

“How is he?” I ask, fighting to keep my voice even.

“Awake. Testing your store of rations. It seems the foxes were more interested in the twyl chewing gum.” Behind me, Mars is unwrapping something himself.

“Did the kol help?” I ask.

“I wouldn’t use kol on Kyn,” Mars says. “The Shiv are especially sensitive. It’s why the Desolation Shiv don’t like their twyl stores threatened, why they burn it day and night in their caves.”

“But Kyn’s wounds? How—”

“Do you believe in anything, Miss Quine? Anything at all?” My heart is thundering and I can’t understand why. I’m considering the question but he doesn’t seem to need an answer. “A brief stop would do us all good, I think.”

I raise my brows at him in the rearview.

“You want me to stop?”

“Even smugglers need to relieve themselves, Miss Quine. And if we won’t make it through before nightfall, we might as well be comfortable.”

A quick respite wouldn’t be the worst thing, I realize, shifting in my seat. “It’ll have to wait until we clear this cage.”

“Fair enough.”

We’re hardly climbing now, the engine growling with the effort of dragging us up and over. The last quarter of a mile is painful, my calf cramping as I fight to keep the pedal to the floor. It’s a strange thing, climbing and climbing and never feeling any closer to the clouds overhead. They’re more gray than purple now, the night brutish in its constancy.

“I see now what you meant about momentum,” Mars says.

“We’ll make it. If your haul was any heavier, though . . .”

I try to find his eyes in the rearview, but his gaze is on the dried meat in his hands. He takes a bite, his face betraying nothing.

The rig shudders and spits a plume of exhaust out the smoke stack and we finally crest the top of the hill. The air is still and clear, the fog far below us now. The clouds are still in the darkening sky and I pull to the side of the road, more out of habit than necessity. There’s no one out here.

“We should wake Hyla and Kyn,” I say. “It’ll be hours before we reach North Bend.

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