The snow was high, higher than it had been going in, higher than it had been that winter. It was growing higher by the minute; snow poured down from the sky in angry, hard bullets, scraping the soft skin of her face.

She was in the woods. When had she come to the woods? The only light came from the half-moon above her, the weak, silvery light outlining barren trees with ever shifting branches, walling her off from the house she knew must be somewhere behind her.

It was the kind of cold that pulls at the blood, stealing its heat and setting ice crystals in the veins.

And there was someone behind her, someone who was terribly, terribly angry.

She ran, stumbling forward as the snow dragged at her ankles and numbed her feet. Branches stabbed her, drawing blood from her face, cutting through her thin coat. If he caught her, it was over.

This was what it meant to be prey.

If she could just find her way out of the woods, she thought, desperately. Someone at the big house would help her. All she needed was to find another person; he couldn’t murder her in front of witnesses—

She could hear him behind her, calling out threats and promises. There’d never been a difference, with him. The only sounds in the woods were their footsteps, mingling with the strange, empty shrill of the snow-choked wind. There wasn’t much time left. Her body was already giving up—in one final humiliation, her corset made it impossible to draw breath. She clawed at it as she ran, but its iron grip refused to loosen.

She fell once and kept running. She stumbled again and used the trunk of a tree to scramble back up. But when she fell a third time, her legs stopped and wouldn’t support her anymore.

She’d been running for too long.

Instead she crawled, searching for handholds in the snow, her bloody palms leaving streaks of red in the white.

Suddenly he was in front of her, pulling her up by the neck, slamming her back against a tree. The dark shrouded him, the gold of his hair and the silver of the knife the only colors visible to her failing vision as he choked her. Her feet kicked desperately for some foothold in the snow, seeking solid ground they’d never feel again.

“I warned you,” he said. “I told you not to try me. This is your fault.”

When he brought the knife down, she didn’t feel pain. There was only darkness.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

He was walking back from the forest at the edge of the property when he saw her fall.

For the rest of his life, he’d remember how small she looked when she crumpled, how far away he’d been. How long it took him to reach her—days.