Page 135 of Cruel Abandon (Fallen Royals 5)

Unfortunately, she doesn’t head for the stairs. She goes outside.

“Is she wearing shoes?” Margo asks.

I stand. “I think she was.”

The snow outside is light and powdery, but the day is bitterly cold.

“No jacket,” Caleb observes. “What the fuck are you waiting for?”

What, indeed?

I snatch my coat and one of the other’s, shoving my feet into my boots. By the time I step out onto the porch, she’s gone.

It takes me a moment to separate her footprints from the rest of ours. She ran down the shoveled path to the driveway, then cut across. I follow as fast as I can, managing not to fall on my ass down the slope between our houses, then around the back. Toward the woods, of course.

It draws her like a magnet every time.

She must be aware of it. Must know that the forest is where I found her, where she was brought out of the darkness. Back into the light.

Half dead.

I close my eyes, pressing my fingers to the bridge of my nose. That day was traumatic for me, too. The whole world seemed to hover on an axis, and when I realized it was her? I had been dreaming about her for weeks, and then suddenly she was there. Staggering toward me in the forest.

Bloody.

Broken.

Bound hands, wild eyes.

She fell and wouldn’t move.

“Sky!” I shout, startling birds from a tree.

I know where she’s going, the idea shooting through me like ice.

Back to the clearing, where our story began.

Because before that, we were nothing. Neighbors. Strangers.

That moment tied us together.

I wonder if this one will cut us free.

I sprint down the trail, barely registering that, yes, her footprints in the snow are here, too. As spread apart as mine. She couldn’t be thinking straight. If she was, she’d realize that this alone is a breakthrough in her memory.

And then I see her.

My broken girl, on her knees in the center of the clearing.

“That isn’t where it happened,” I say.

She doesn’t lift her head.

The icy wind whips through me, and I force myself to move, to ignore the creaking in my joints. I haven’t truly run like that in a while—like my life depended on it.

Carefully, I squat next to her and pick up one arm. Her skin is impossibly cold. I slide her arm into the extra jacket, then the other. She doesn’t move as I reach around her and zip it up, lifting the hood up over her head.

“Where, then?” she whispers.