Chapter 11 Cold Enough To Burn
COLD ENOUGH TO BURN
Raise Hell - Dorothy
Kookaburra
The forest breathes like an animal around me, damp air clinging to my skin as I run.
Every shadow looks alive, every flicker of moonlight a trick of movement at the corner of my eye.
The ground is slick with moss, roots twisting underfoot like veins beneath thin skin.
Behind me, I can hear him – steady, unhurried, almost amused.
He doesn’t have to rush. He knows I’ll stumble.
He always knows. The sound of his boots on the forest floor is rhythmic, patient, a heartbeat chasing my own.
Branches catch my arms, thorns scrape at my legs, but I don’t stop. The cold air burns my throat and I can taste metal in the back of my mouth, copper and panic. He calls out, voice low and coaxing, the same tone he used to use when telling me not to be afraid.
“You can’t hide, little bird.” The words curl through the dark like smoke. I can’t tell if it’s a threat or a promise. I tell myself to keep running, to not listen, but part of me is listening, part of me always has been.
The trees thin. Moonlight breaks through, turning the world silver for a moment – long enough for me to see the rise of earth ahead, the gash of a fallen trunk, the glint of water pooling between roots. I take another step and my foot catches.
The world tilts.
I hit the ground hard, the breath slamming out of me. Dirt fills my mouth, cold and wet. Before I can push up, hands close around my wrists, firm but not cruel. The weight above me is solid, heavy with heat, and I twist, expecting the voice, the knife, the laugh.
It isn’t him.
Hatchet’s face looms above mine instead, eyes dark and unreadable in the half-light.
For a heartbeat I freeze, confused, my body still caught between terror and instinct.
He doesn’t speak – he never does – but his breath ghosts over my cheek and his hold steadies me rather than traps. The air changes.
The pounding in my chest slows, shifting from flight to something else entirely. The moment stretches thin as wire. His weight pins me to the earth, and the cold seeping through my clothes meets the heat between us until I can’t tell where one ends and the other begins.
My body ignites.
I move first, a wordless permission, a reaching. His mouth finds mine, hungry and searching, as my fingers dig into the soil beneath us. The fear dissolves into heat that pools low in my belly, replaced by something heavier, more primal.
My clothes fall away. His skin against mine is rough bark and velvet moss. The smell of pine sap mingles with our sweat. The taste of rain and salt on his neck is euphoric. His hands map my body, calloused palms catching on soft flesh as I arch against him.
The forest quiets around our breathing, our movements creating a rhythm as ancient as the trees. He fills me completely, and I’m trembling, climbing toward something that feels like falling, like flying, like—
I think of all the times I’ve been touched without care, all the ways pain has been mistaken for affection, and realise this – this weight, this silence – is the closest I’ve ever come to peace.
But dreams never let me keep it.
The air shifts again. Hatchet’s body blurs at the edges; the warmth bleeds out of him as if someone’s pulled a plug. In the same motion that had steadied me, another shape rises, darker, sharper, a shadow with a knife’s glint where his face should be. I smell blood before I see it.
“Told you I’d find you, little bird,” the voice says.
I try to move but the earth holds me fast. The blade touches my throat and it feels cold enough to burn. There’s no hesitation, no ceremony – just a single, perfect slice of sound as metal meets flesh. The forest fills with the rush of my heartbeat, and then nothing at all.
I wake choking on air that isn’t there, my hand clamped to my neck. No blood. Only the slick of sweat, the echo of his words, and the memory of Hatchet’s warmth fading from my skin.