Chapter 3

"What?" She grabbed onto my coat and pulled me closer like she wanted me to climb inside to safety. "I just thought it was your baba hunting. Is he okay? Who was it?"

I shook out of her grip. "I have to deliver the package."

Silence for several heartbeats. She knew about the packages and that they helped feed her and her brother.

"What do you need me to do?" she asked, her voice going hard with confidence. A slight thing at fifteen, she was much tougher than I was, and I had four years on her.

"Get your gun. Pretend you're not home. Don't answer the door. Keep an eye out for when that man leaves, and then go help Baba." If he was still alive.

"But...but..." Lee's voice sounded from somewhere inside, agitated from the gunshot, most likely. He didn't deal with loud noises or changes of any kind, so he was going to hate this.

"Are you sure about this?" Jade asked.

I knew she was talking about me going into the Crimson Forest by myself, and her question came from both doubt and worry. My blindness often wedged us apart, mostly because she thought I needed her help, and I resented her for it. But she didn't know the way through the forest to Old Man's Den. Otherwise, I was sure she would've offered to go.

"Yes. I'm sure," I said.

"Aika, where? I love you. You're so pretty," Lee called from somewhere close inside.

Startled, I stepped back and ducked to the side so my bloodied appearance wouldn't scare him. "I don't want to upset Lee," I said, but I wasn't sure Jade heard me. The wind had picked up with a symphony of howls that sounded eerily similar to the wolves I sometimes heard in the forest.

I waved goodbye, hoping that Jade could still see me, my trust in her to do what I'd said solidified with our years of friendship, despite how much I resented her sometimes. She'd take care of Baba.

At the corner of the Crawfords', I stopped to get my bearings. If I headed in a diagonal, I would be at the front of my house where Hellbreath was, where the man might see me if he hadn't already given up. Would he give up? He'd shot a man in cold blood to get his hands on the package. So what would he do if he found it?

I stepped out into the void again, the wind even angrier than before, yanking on my coat and pushing me sideways. It sucked the air from my lungs and whipped it around in a cold frenzy so I couldn't draw it back in again. I gasped for breath, feeling like I was drowning in this endless nothingness. Panic seized my muscles and rang alarms in my head, but I counted my way through it. About thirty steps to the front of our cabin. I could do this. I had to do this.

Thirty-one, thirty-two... The wind must've blown me way off course. Suddenly, the beams on the front porch caught my midsection. I reeled back and stumbled backward behind the cover of the cabin, listening over my frantic heartbeat. Nothing from Hellbreath or inside. Had the man left? 

No. No, he hadn't left. Two horses snorted over the howling wind, two horses that were surely tied to his carriage. So where was the man?

Shivering deeper into my coat, I plotted out my next move and the steps that would get me there. To Hellbreath, because I didn't want that man anywhere near her since he'd made her cry like that. If he'd hurt her... I ground my teeth together. If this didn't work, I would steal his carriage.

Time to go. I skirted around the porch and flung myself past the front door, which stood wide open. The smell of spiced jerky and the heat from the fire stirred with the winter air, soothing on good days but now filled with a foreign presence that scraped icicles down my back.

"Hellbreath," I said, just a whisper.

She answered with a grumble from the direction of her post, the sweetest sound I'd ever heard.

I flew toward her and then rubbed my face against her muzzle while running my hands through her sleek coat to check for wounds, to soothe her, to soothe me. Not long, though, and not long enough to whisper to her how much I loved her for being so brave. She was already saddled, so once I unwound her reins from the post and pulled myself up, we were off, hurling straight into the Crimson Forest.