Even the storm and Warden’s incessant snoring can’t keep her awake forever.

Eventually, Dawn drifts off.

It’s a deep, dreamless sleep.

And when she wakes up, it’s daylight, and Warden is gone.

Chapter 60

WARDEN HASN’T GONE FAR.

Dawn can hear his voice outside the tent, and she can smell and hear a fire burning, and hear Brandon and Evan laughing, and Kyla saying something sharp and probably hilarious.

(She doesn’t hear Lucas, and she thinks about their little tiff last night, keeps running her mind over it like you run your tongue over a sore tooth, and she thinks about what happened between her and Warden last night, too, and tries to figure out how she should feel about it all, and then she unzips the tent flap and looks out at the tarn and she forgets about Lucas and Kyla and Warden and even Amber.)

Because there’s snow.

Everywhere.

Two things happen when Dawn pokes her head out of Warden’s tent:

1. A big pile of snow collapses from the top of the tent onto her head and down the back of her shirt, and
2. A fluffy white snowball creams her in the face.

Dawn shrieks at the snow down her back, but the sound comes out muffled because her mouth is full of snow from the snowball, and she hears Warden laughing as she ducks back into the tent.

“Wakey-wakey, sleeping beauty,” he calls, but not unkindly. “Your breakfast is getting cold.”

It’s at that moment Dawn realizes she’s ravenously hungry and that whatever Warden and the others are cooking over the fire smells delicious.

She pulls on her jacket and her boots and steps out into winter, where the storm has abated but the snow is still falling, peaceful but steady, and everything, tents and boulders and mountain, is covered in a fresh blanket of snow.

“Holy crap,” she says, looking around, dazed.

(The top of the Raven’s Claw is obscured by clouds. The ridge opposite is visible, though, and it’s a pristine layer of white, rendered dull and muted under low-lying gray cloud and the snow.)

It’s a strange, quiet world.

“Crazy, right?” Warden says, and he hands her a mug of something hot and steaming that smells just like coffee. “You would have died under that tarp last night.”

Dawn takes a sip, and it is coffee, and she wants to kiss him again or at least ask him where the hell he found it; she hasn’t had coffee since she left Sacramento.

Warden winks at her. “Christian’s secret stash,” he says. “I figured he’s not going to miss it.”