Heartless

❆ Seventeen ❆

Seventeen

The vigorous rattles and jerks of the carriage only infuriated my strung nerves more. We'd been jolting along a hidden road for a little over three hours and my back was tighter than iron. Mrs. Potter had long given up trying to get some rest and resigned herself to chattering on and on about what the city would be like. "Lights everywhere, people dancing, music pouring from every crack and crevice." The images she spoke of slowly pushed out the visions of Hendric drowning in his own blood— just like Mama had.
She had been one of the very few people in our village to survive for nearly a month. She'd contracted the blood rose in the early warm months after Kenji came to live with us and managed to live just long enough to make it to the day after Hendric's ninth birthday. She fought it off as best she could, but even the toughest people in the world eventually die.

The carriage came to a slow stop and snapped me out of my reverie. I pushed myself over to the window and popped the latch to peer outside. Snow spewed into the open car and dusted us both in flakes of ice. My skin prickled upon contact with the frigid winds.

The door opened. Beast held out his hand for me to use as I stumbled to climb down. Cold seeped into my bones the second my feet fell into the white sea. I could barely see them buried so deep into the earth; the wind slashed with more anger at our faces and made it nearly impossible for me to see the others. I hugged my coat tighter around myself. "W-why are we stopping?" I asked through shivering convulsions.

Somehow I was able to catch his lips slipping into a grim frown. He helped Mrs. Potter down and shut the car door. "We aren't going to make it much farther in this storm. There's no sense in freezing to death. We'll wait it out."

"But we have to go now. Hendric is dying, we don't know how much longer he has! It could be minutes or hours. I have to be there!"

"And we will be, Adaira. But I won't risk your life just so you can watch his come to an end. I'm sorry." He moved closer, gently lacing his fingers around my elbow to guide me away from the cart. He tucked me into his side and turned us around. Tearing my gaze from his face for the first time, I was stunned to find a small house hidden in the trees. Warm light streamed from the frosted windows of the home, smoke curling from a wooden chimney on the roof. My heartbeat stuttered at the sight of it.

We'd always lived in a small hut, but there had been people— richer people, of course— in the northern end of the village that had owned real homes. To draw a name from their side of the town had been rare and we all knew why. How else would Bromm be able to keep up his bar and the rest of us the afford the spirits inside it? In exchange for withholding their names from the draw, they gave us the one thing we didn't have: money.
But right to the very end, our papa was an honest man. He had the chance to bribe Bromm to retract the nomination and call another name. Even before Mama died we had started to save money to get us over the mountain, but he refused to touch it. "It was always meant for the children," he said just as Moma and Posha took him away. "Never for me, but for you."

The silhouette of a man stood in the doorway to the home and waved us down. "Hello there," he said kindly, although a bit suspicious of the four mysterious characters approaching his door. I didn't blame him— we looked as ragged as we felt and had every intention of waiting out the storm here whether he allowed it or not. As I'd come to learn, Beast didn't take no for an answer.

Beast thrust out his hand to the man and shook it in a firm grip. "Good evening, sir. We're on our way to the city, but I'm afraid we can't brave the storm for much longer. Our horses are nearly frozen and the nearest inn isn't for another mile. Is there any chance we can wait out the storm here, or at least until the snow lets up a bit?"