Fractures spread outward from the hole, little white veins, crisscrossing and separating. I lift one foot and place it behind me, careful and slow. The ice bends away, water bubbling up through the cracks. It’s too thin, my head screams. It’s too late.

I suck in a deep breath, then let it slip out through my nose. My eyes feel huge, unblinking, and I glance at Oliver, a word resting beneath my tongue: Help. But I never get a chance to say it.

In one violent crack, the ice breaks beneath me.

Shatters into a hundred tiny fragments.

And I plummet into the lake.

Black black water. A million knives stabbing my skin, slicing me open. My lungs shrink in on themselves, my hands claw for the surface, already going numb, and I feel my grandmother’s ring—the moonstone she gave me—drift to the end of my finger. I reach for it, almost catch it, but it slips off—sinking, sinking, sinking. No, I want to yell. My eyes shiver open, staring through the dark water, the shock of cold.

I watch the tiny gold band flit down beneath me, into the deep.

My ribs crush my heart, my whole body caving in on itself. I’m in the lake. The cold too cold. My mind slowing…

Above me, the surface of the lake and the moonless sky split open, revealing a palette of stars. So beautiful, I think. A stupid thought—my body, my mind, already going into shock. Heart rate battering against my chest.

I need air, my body screams. Air.

OLIVER

Nora is gone.

Daisy-printed sheets tossed back from her bed, pillow crinkled where her head lay, bits of yellow pollen scattered across the cotton—fallen from the dried flowers hanging over the headboard.

They say she’s a witch, and maybe they’re right.

She thinks I’m a murderer, and maybe she’s not wrong.

I fell asleep when I promised I’d stay awake. And now, the wolf follows me down the stairs, my mind skipping back to earlier—to Nora’s rose-shaped lips pressed to mine, the smell of her hair on my neck, like jasmine and vanilla. I don’t think she knows how much she upends me. How for the briefest moment, the dark of the forest felt very far away. How her fingertips blotted out the cold of the trees that’s always writhing along my joints, twisting around my kneecaps and shoulder blades and down my spine. When she’s close, my memory of that place falls away.

She keeps it at bay.

She’s the only thing that makes me believe maybe I’m not the villain after all. But the hero. Or the one to be saved, rescued from the dark wood.

My part in this tale may not be what I think. A character whose role has not yet been determined.