Chapter 43
Harmony
The cold hit differently once I left the property; sharp, needling, as if the night itself sensed the fear crawling under my skin and decided to press harder.
Snow swallowed the world in thick, whirling sheets, blurring the ridge path ahead of me until it became nothing more than a smear of white and shadow.
My lungs burned from the sprint, my heartbeat stumbling unevenly, dragged between panic and the instinct to keep moving, no matter what.
I didn’t dare look back. The house still clung to me like a handprint on my spine—cold, familiar, unwanted.
Every step I took away from it felt like peeling off another layer of my childhood, the ones I’d buried so deep I thought they’d never resurface.
I should have felt relief. But all I felt was an ache, sharp and twisting, like an old wound ripped open.
My breath fogged in front of me as I reached the tree line. Branches sagged low beneath the weight of snow, creating a crooked tunnel I slipped into instinctively. It wasn’t the main ridge path, which was good because I needed cover. I needed distance.
I needed Eric to be safe.
The thought nearly brought me to a stop.
My boots stuttered in the snow. I braced a hand against a tree trunk, swallowing hard as nausea rolled through me.
Eric would come after me. Of course he would.
He loved me in a way I didn’t always know how to grasp.
His love was steady and fierce, with an intensity that sometimes made me forget the danger that followed my name.
I shouldn’t have left him. I should’ve woken him, should’ve told him what I planned to do, should’ve let him look at me one more time before I stepped into the night.
But I made my choices and I had to live with them.
Now someone was out here with me. Someone who knew the house.
Someone who’d been close enough to touch me if they wanted to.
I shoved off the tree and kept moving. The world narrowed to the rhythm of my breath, uneven and fast, as my boots slipped across hidden ice.
My fingers throbbed inside my one glove; I must have dropped the other one.
I forced them to work as I dug into my pocket and pulled out the relay fragment I’d found.
The scrap was small, damp now from snow melting against my palm.
The faded text wavered as my vision blurred for a second.
It wasn’t a device or a drive. It was a torn corner from one of Marcel’s old printed relay logs. A backup he used to hide with his encrypted drives, the kind he never meant anyone to see. The fragment was so small it must’ve ripped free when someone yanked the full sheet from the hiding spot.
relay: user—Ravenhill
timestamp: six months pre-arrest
I curled my hand around it like it was a lifeline. Or a trigger. Maybe both.
Ravenhill…if you didn’t die, where have you been all this time?
The feeling of being watched felt overwhelming, the sensation that every shadow had teeth.
I blinked hard, fighting the dissociation clawing at the edge of my senses.
Not now. Not here. Not when the dark behind me felt too close.
I had to check the relay in order to follow the thread before it vanished again.
I slipped my phone from my coat with shaking fingers.
The screen lit up, too bright in the dark night.
I flinched and shielded it with my body.
My fingertips were stiff, clumsy, barely responding as I opened one of the offline diagnostic tools Marcel forced me to learn when I was fourteen.
“Just in case,” he’d said.
Back then, “just in case” meant If he ever needed me to cover his tracks.
Now it was a matter of survival. A gust of wind slammed into me, as snow spiraled across the screen.
My fingers jerked, slipping across the screen.
The device nearly fell from my grip. I cursed under my breath and crouched low, shielding it against my knee.
The cold was too sharp. My hands were too numb.
Every tap was a fight, frustration rising thick behind my ribs.
My pulse hammered in my ears. I tried again, but my thumb missed its target twice.
Then three times. “Come on,” I whispered, voice cracking.
The screen glitched from the cold or maybe the wet snow. My breath stuttered, and for a terrifying second the edges of my vision darkened into snow and shadows merging, tilting, swaying. My heart raced too fast, too loud. I pressed a hand to my chest, willing myself not to spiral.
Not now. They were words I used to pull myself from the panic that threatened. From the darkness that wanted to pull me under. I couldn’t succumb, not when someone was behind me and Eric was somewhere on this ridge looking for me.
Eric.
A half sob, half breath tore from my throat as the pressure inside me broke. I dropped into a crouch in the snow, my glove pressed to my face as the memory of his voice wrapped around me.
“Harmony… where are you, Sunshine?”
I could hear it. Feel it. Almost believe he was near.
A single tear slipped down my cheek, freezing before it fully formed.
My breath came quick and shallow. Panic flared hot, overwhelming, a wave that threatened to drag me backward into the kind of fear that lived under my skin since childhood.
Marcel yelling. Olivier’s quiet apologies afterward.
My mother humming to drown it out while I stayed hidden in the pantry, knees pulled tight to my chest, wishing someone, anyone, would come find me.
The past pressed so close I could taste it.
I forced my hands down and squeezed my eyes shut.
No. Not now. Not again. I wasn’t going to drown now. I would fight my demons head-on.
Eric would come for me. I repeated the mantra over and over until the world steadied enough for me to breathe.
I shoved my phone back into my coat, gripping the relay scrap instead.
It was light, almost weightless. But it carried everything.
A name. A clue. A promise of answers. If I didn’t die before I got to them.
Behind me was a sound. A footstep crunching against the snow.
Soft.
Intentional.
I froze while I strained to hear what was happening in the background of my surroundings, my heart was pounding so hard it drowned everything else out.
Crunch.
I wasn’t hallucinating, I don’t think. Someone was following me.
Fear shot through me like electricity. I stumbled forward, nearly tripping as I pushed deeper into the trees.
Branches whipped at my arms. Snow stung my cheeks.
My breath hitched. I veered left, squeezing into a narrow cluster of spruce trunks.
The branches scraped my coat, snagging fabric.
Something tugged at my pocket. I yanked free without looking.
I had to hide. Just for a moment. Just until the footsteps passed and I could catch my breath.
A fallen log stretched across a shallow slope up ahead, its underside hollowed out by years of decay.
I dropped to my knees, crawled beneath it, and pressed myself against the frozen ground.
Snow drifted down through the gaps overhead, settling on my hair, my lashes.
I clamped my hand over my mouth. Silence stretched.
Footsteps approached.
Slow. Measured.
My heart thrashed. Every muscle locked. My lungs burned from holding my breath.
The steps grew louder.
Crunch.
Crunch.
Crunch.
They stopped just above me.
I could see the shadow of boots through the thin scatter of branches. Heavy, deliberate. The figure paused long enough that I felt the heat of their attention like a spotlight pinning me to the earth.
Don’t breathe. Don’t move. Don’t exist.
The world narrowed to that single moment: the person above me, the snow drifting between us, the terror thundering in my chest.
Then I heard a second set of footsteps. They sounded farther away and had a different rhythm.
Eric.
Something in my gut told me it was him, like I could feel his closeness in my bones.
My heart lurched toward the sound so painfully I almost crawled out of hiding.
But whoever was hovering close by shifted at the same moment.
He was too close now. Too aware of my existence.
I stayed frozen, pressing myself deeper into the shadows beneath the log.
The closer footsteps resumed moving past me now, slow and searching until finally, finally, the sound faded into the storm.
I didn’t move.
Not when the snow whispered across my face.
Not even when my lungs screamed for air.
Only when my body began to shake so violently I thought I’d break apart did I inch forward and slip out from beneath the log.
The night closed around me again, thick and cold and waiting.
I rose on trembling legs. Eric was out here but someone else was out here too.
And the storm was erasing everything between us.
I tightened my grip on where the relay scrap should have been in my pocket. The paper was gone. Swallowed by the woods. I’d almost lost it once already. Losing it again felt like the woods claiming it back. Or maybe it was the person hunting me. I didn’t look back. I ran.