CHAPTER THIRTEEN – ESCAPE AND AFTERMATH
Kat
The woods are an animal with a thousand glass eyes, all staring, all waiting for me to stop running.
I trip over a frozen rut, go down on both knees, and the pain is white-hot, clean, like a needle.
The trees shudder in the wind, branches spidering overhead, scraping the gray sky for answers.
I want to scream, but my throat is clogged with snot and my own useless pride.
All I can manage is a whimper as I scramble to my feet, hands and jeans already caked with mud.
I don’t know where I’m going. I just know I need to get as far from the cabin as possible, from the dark-lit rooms that smell like Talon’s sweat and the ghost of last night’s betrayal.
I can feel his eyes on me, even though I left him standing in the embers, beer in hand, mouth set in a line so thin you could slice bread with it.
My vision is a mess—tears, wind, the sharp sting of cold air.
Everything blurs into a smudge of motion, bare branches and the flash of my own white hands as I crash through the brush.
I slam my thigh into a sapling so hard I see stars, but I don’t stop.
My lungs are burning, my hair is a halo of snags and debris, and my boots leave clumsy tracks in the rotten snow.
I’m nobody, I think. I’m a fuck-up, a cliché, the girl who thought she mattered when she never did. The pain in my chest is worse than the ache between my legs, worse than the raw skin on my knees. I want to find a cliff and jump off it, but all I find is more trees, more air, more cold.
At some point, I lose track of time. The world narrows to the sound of my breathing and the slap of twigs against my cheeks. My pulse is so loud it drowns out everything else, and I don’t notice the smell of woodsmoke until I’m practically on top of the hermit’s hut.
Erasmus’s place is even smaller than I remember. The porch sags, and the roof is a patchwork of tin and tar paper, but the chimney is pumping out fat blue ribbons of smoke. I stagger up the steps, legs wobbling, and collapse against the door.
For a long time, nothing happens. I think I might actually die here, freeze solid, and they’ll find my corpse in the spring, one of those “tragic local news stories” that never makes it out of the region.
I start to laugh at that, a mad, broken giggle, when the door jerks open and I nearly tumble inside.
Erasmus doesn’t say a word. He just looks at me, one gray eyebrow raised, face set in lines so deep they look like dried riverbeds.
He’s wearing the same checked shirt as last time, the sleeves rolled, a scarf twisted tight around his neck.
His eyes scan me from head to toe, taking in the state of my face, my clothes, the scrapes on my hands.
“Inside,” he says, and it’s not a question.
I trip over the threshold, knees giving out again, and he half-catches me, steering me toward the battered armchair by the stove.
The cabin resembles a hobbit hole: tiny, cluttered, every surface covered with books or tin mugs or little carved animals.
The heat from the woodstove is so intense it makes me dizzy, and I bury my hands in the wool blanket thrown over the chair, trying not to shiver.
Erasmus moves around the room like a man used to caring for stray creatures. He stirs the fire, pours water from a kettle into a chipped mug, then adds a big spoonful of honey and a sprig of something green. He hands it to me, and the mug is so hot it nearly burns my fingers.
I stare into the steam, eyes burning, until I realize Erasmus is crouched beside the chair, close enough that I can smell the smoke trapped in his beard.
“You found out the truth, then,” he says, and his voice is as flat and cold as the forest outside.
I don’t answer, but my face must tell the whole story. He nods, as if he’s seen this scene a hundred times before.
“I told you,” he says. “Some come here to lose what’s chasing them. Some come to get lost on purpose.”
I sip the tea. It tastes like pine needles and heartbreak.
Erasmus stands, stretching with a groan, and grabs a tin of antiseptic from a shelf. He pulls up a little wooden stool and takes my right hand in his, flipping it over to examine the cut across my palm.
“You’re not the first, you know,” he says, voice low. “Talon McKnight invites a girl up here every year, like clockwork. Some last a week. Some last longer. But they all leave, sooner or later, never to come back. A lot of them leave with tears in their eyes.”
The words sting, but they also make sense in a way nothing else has. I nod, staring at the floor, trying not to cry again.
“He never hits them,” Erasmus says, as if that’s something. “He never hurts them, not physically. But he uses ‘em up, just the same. Then they vanish, and he moves on.”
He smears ointment on my hand, wraps it in a strip of old bandana, and ties it off with a neat square knot.
“You’re a smart girl,” he says, meeting my eyes. “You know what you have to do now.”
I shake my head, a slow, shuddering motion. “I don’t know anything,” I say, and my voice cracks. “I don’t know who I am anymore.”
Erasmus watches me for a long moment, the lines in his face softening just a little.
“Sometimes,” he says, “you have to get lost before you find your way out.”
He stands, walks to the mantle, and picks up a small wooden fox, ears alert, tail curled around its haunches. The eyes are painted black, two pinpricks of knowing. He presses it into my palm, closing my fingers around it.
“I carved that for you when you first showed up,” he says. “Thought you’d need it.”
I run my thumb over the grain, feeling the notches and ridges, the hidden patience in every cut.
“The fox knows when to trust its instincts,” Erasmus says. “So should you. Take him with you and keep him close.”
He tosses another log on the fire, the flames roaring up, as I clutch the fox tight, the tea cooling in my lap, and stare into the bright orange light.
I don’t know what happens next.
But for the first time since I left the cabin, I want to find out.
Erasmus’s old pickup sounds like it’s chewing gravel for breakfast. Every pothole jars my spine, every lurch and grind feels like a warning shot from the universe.
The old man sits behind the wheel, both hands gripping it so tight his knuckles look like pale river stones.
His scarf is wrapped three times around his throat, his face as blank as the snowdrifted woods blurring by outside.
I clutch the wooden fox in my lap, rubbing its ears like a worry stone.
The heater works, but only barely; my breath ghosts out of my mouth, and I can feel the tremor in my hands as I try to hold them still.
My knees are streaked with dried blood, jeans crusted and stiff, but I can’t bring myself to care.
Every cell in my body is too busy replaying the last twenty-four hours on a loop, like some fucked-up highlight reel from a reality show nobody asked to watch.
We drive for a while without talking. The road curves, the sky leaks a watery gold, and somewhere far off a crow barks out a complaint. Erasmus doesn’t look at me, not even once, but I can feel him thinking, the way a wolf can smell blood through a mile of forest.
I break first. “How many?”
He doesn’t pretend to misunderstand.
He takes a breath, then lets it out slow, the sound like a tire going flat.
“You sure you want to know?” he asks.
I don’t, but the question is already out there, and I can’t take it back. “I do.”
He shrugs, shoulders hunching under the weight of the world. “More than a few. Less than twenty, I’d guess. Sometimes they show up together. Sometimes one at a time. Always pretty, always smart, always a little lost.”
I stare out the window, watching the trees flick by in a silent, endless parade.
“He ever… keep one?” I ask, voice a splinter in my throat.
Erasmus smiles, but it’s not kind. “All the girls are gone by the spring thaw, one way or another.”
There’s a pit in my stomach that just keeps growing, filling up with every ugly thing I’ve ever feared about myself. I grip the fox tighter, sharp wood biting into my palm. I try to remember a time when I thought I was special, when I thought any of this could be different.
I can’t.
The rest of the ride is nothing but the whine of the engine and the echo of my own humiliation. By the time we reach the familiar turnoff for Talon’s cabin, my teeth are chattering so hard I’m afraid they’ll shatter.
Erasmus slows the truck to a crawl, tires crunching over the packed snow. He puts it in park, lets the engine idle, and finally turns to look at me.
His gaze isn’t cruel. It’s just old, and tired, and a little bit sorry.
“Don’t let him ruin you,” he says, voice soft as moss. “Not when there’s so much out there that’s better.”
I nod, unable to speak. I open the door, the cold slicing through me, and step out onto the hard, frozen earth.
I don’t look back.
The fox fits perfectly in my pocket, right over my heart.
And for the first time in days, I believe I might survive this after all.
Talon’s waiting for me when I walk up the steps.
The porch boards creak under my boots, and there he is—Mr. McKnight, King of the Mountain, arms folded across his chest, jaw working like he’s chewing on broken glass.
The sky behind him is a dirty blue, fading fast, and he’s lit up on all sides by the golden glow leaking out from the windows.
He doesn’t say anything when I get close. He doesn’t even move. Just stands there, blocking the door, those blue eyes fixed on my face like he’s daring me to run away again.
I want to flinch, want to shrink, but I don’t.
I meet his gaze head-on, then shoulder past him, letting my coat brush his arm.
His body is solid, hot, and for a stupid split second I want to lean into it.
But I don’t. I just keep going, moving through the entryway, down the hall, to the bedroom where all my shit is still scattered over the floor.