The horse hesitated, ears flicking, sensing wrongness under the snow. Eli murmured to him, a low sound meant to steady them both, and Jupiter went on.
The shape grew clearer.
Not an animal.
A woman.
Young, or at least young enough that the world shouldn’t have already tried to kill her.
She lay face-down in the snow like she’d been dropped there and forgotten. Her hair was tangled with frost. Her dress—heavy and soaked through—clung to her small frame like a shroud. Snow had started to gather along her shoulders, building up as if the storm was already trying to claim her.
Eli slid off the saddle and landed hard, boots crunching through crusted snow. The cold hit him in the face, sharp and immediate, and he tasted metal in his breath.
He knelt beside her and reached out, expecting the stiffness of death.
The kind of cold that doesn’t forgive.
His fingers touched her shoulder.
