Cover

Title Page

Dedication

For Bianca.

There’s an intersection between grace and fierce:

only a dancer can teach you that.

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Epigraph

I can say I hope it will be worth what I give up.

—Santigold, “L.E.S. Artistes”

Prologue: Day 7

Prologue: Day 7

The door flies open against the wind and then Maeve is flying too, her body hurtling out into the cold, the palm of her hand ripped open and bleeding hard. It’s still night. Snow swirls up and sprays at her eyes as she stumbles into the dark.

Now what? If there’s a moon, it’s a thin sliver or hidden away. There’s no light and no color, just shadow and snow and more snow, crusted and rising up into drifts that collapse, Maeve knows, like a trap under too much weight.

The hand stings something fierce. There’s the howl of the wind and then another sound, the high whine of the door opening again. She can hear him screaming after her, calling her name.

He can’t see her here. He can’t find her in the dark.

She repeats it like a mantra but only until she sees the sweep of his flashlight skimming across the snow. Searching. There’s a flicker from the woods: the fluorescent trailhead marker picking up the beam as it floats past, a guiding light. She gets low and takes off across the field toward it, sinking and stumbling in her boots, trying to guess where the deep snow is packed hard and stable. If she can get to the cabins ahead of him, just get inside her own studio, at least there she’ll be safe. She can lock the door. There’s no other way in.

He can’t stay outside in this weather forever.

Inside the tree line she slips, almost falling, her feet sliding where new ice coats the old. The roots and branches force her to slow down. An injury now is unthinkable. She can feel her heart pounding in her ears: You can’t run on a broken ankle. You can’t run on a sprain.

She knows when he hits the woods behind her, the sheer noise of it propelling her forward again. The sharp crack of falling ice, frozen branches splintering, his voice coming throaty and harsh. He’s still calling after her, but she can’t make out the words anymore. It all sounds like heavy breath, like the grunt of strenuous labor. Physical. Forcing his way through. It’s hard to resist spinning back, just in case, to make sure it’s really him and not some animal charging after her. But the stream of light is still there: she can tell he’s running, moving fast. The beam jumping around, making surging, flickering shadows ahead.