Chapter 4
Aurelia
The silence of the Northeast Kingdom was heavy. It wasn’t the peaceful kind of silence you read about in Thoreau; it was a oppressive, predatory silence that pressed against your eardrums and made the blood rushing in your veins sound like a roaring river.
I stood in the driveway, my boots sinking into six inches of pristine, untouched snow.
The cabin—if you could call a sprawling, three-story timber-and-stone monstrosity a "cabin"—loomed over us like a dormant beast. It was dark.
Completely, utterly dark. No welcoming porch light.
No warm glow from the windows. Just black glass reflecting the moon and the jagged silhouette of the pines.
"It looks dead," I whispered, pulling my coat tighter around myself. The cashmere was useless against this kind of cold. This was a wet, biting cold that sought out every gap in your armor.
Atlas slammed the trunk of the SUV, the sound cracking through the air like a gunshot. He didn't seem to feel the temperature. He was wearing that denim jacket over a thermal, no hat, no gloves, carrying three of my bags like they were filled with feathers instead of my entire life.
"It's not dead," he grunted, marching past me toward the front door. "It's just been empty since Thanksgiving. Arthur said he had the caretaker prep it."
I followed in his wake, stepping into the massive footprints his boots left behind. It was ridiculous, really. I was physically following him already, trudging along like a lost duckling behind a very angry, very large mother hen.
He keyed the lock. The heavy oak door groaned open.
If I thought it was cold outside, the inside was worse. It was a damp, tomb-like chill that smelled of stagnant air, cedar dust, and money that hadn't been spent on maintenance.
Atlas flipped a switch. Nothing happened.
He flipped another. Nothing.
"Perfect," I breathed, my breath fogging in front of my face in a thick white cloud. "No power. So we freeze to death. That’s the plan? My father hired a hitman to make it look like an accident?"
"Relax, Princess," Atlas said, his voice echoing in the cavernous foyer. "The main breaker is probably tripped. Stay here."
"Stay here? In the dark?"
"Unless you have a flashlight in that Birkin bag, you're useless to me right now. Stay."
He dropped the bags and disappeared into the shadows of the hallway, moving with a confident, predatory grace that suggested he could see in the dark. I stood there, hugging myself, listening to the house settle. Creaking floorboards. The wind whistling through a chimney.
I felt small.
That was the thing about being Aurelia St. James. I was designed to be displayed. I worked in ballrooms, in lecture halls, in studios with floor-to-ceiling mirrors. I was an object of light. Here, in the dark, in the cold, I felt like I ceased to exist.
A minute later, a mechanical thrum vibrated through the floorboards. Lights flickered on—sconces on the walls buzzing with orange warmth.
"Let there be light," I muttered.
Atlas reappeared. He didn't look happy. His jaw was set in a hard line, and he was wiping grease off his hands onto his jeans.
"Generator is running," he said. "But the main furnace is dead. Error code on the panel. I can’t fix it without parts."
"So... no heat?" I asked, my voice rising an octave. "Atlas, it’s five degrees outside."
He looked at me. Really looked at me. He scanned my shivering frame, my chattering teeth, the way I was curling into myself. For a second, the "Enforcer" mask slipped, and I saw something else. annoyance, yes, but also calculation.
"The main house is going to be an icebox by morning," he said. "We can't stay in the master wing."
"So we go to a hotel," I suggested hopefully. "There’s a Four Seasons in Stowe. It’s only an hour drive."
"We are not going to a hotel," he said, cutting off my escape route. "We’re going to the Caretaker’s Annex."
"The... what?"
"The guest cottage. Out back. It runs on a separate propane line and has a wood stove. It’ll be warm."
He bent down and picked up my bags again. "Grab the groceries from the truck. And don't slip."
The "Annex" was a generous term. It was a small, rustic A-frame connected to the garage by a covered walkway. It was meant for the groundskeeper, not for the heiress.
But Atlas was right. It was warm.
As soon as we stepped inside, the heat hit me.
It was a dry, cozy heat coming from a cast-iron wood stove that Atlas had apparently bullied into existence in the ten minutes he’d been gone.
The space was small—intimate. A single open living area with a kitchenette, a small loft with a ladder, and a bathroom the size of a closet.
One room.
One sofa.
And, as I glanced up at the loft, one bed.
"You're joking," I said, dropping the grocery bags on the small pine table.
Atlas was kneeling by the fire, poking at the logs with an iron rod. The firelight danced across his face, highlighting the sharp angle of his cheekbone and the jagged scar through his brow. He looked elemental. Like he had been born in the fire.
"It's this or hypothermia," he said without looking back. "Take your pick."
"There is one bed, Atlas."
He stood up, dusting off his hands. He seemed to fill the room. The ceiling was low, and his head brushed the exposed beams. "I’ll take the couch."
"The couch is five feet long. You're six-five."
"I'll manage."
He walked past me into the kitchenette, opening the grocery bags I’d brought in. He started unpacking with efficient, jerky movements. Pasta. Sauce. Eggs. Coffee. He put things away like he was organizing a tactical loadout.
"Why are you so angry?" I asked. The question slipped out before I could filter it.
He froze, a carton of eggs in his hand. He didn't turn around. "I'm not angry."
"You are. You're radiating it. You’ve been clenching your jaw since we left campus. Is it me? Is it the job?"
He set the eggs down slowly. He turned around, leaning his hips against the small counter, crossing his arms over his chest. The space between us was only a few feet. I could smell him—woodsmoke now, layered over that crisp cedar scent.
"I'm not angry, Aurelia," he said quietly. "I'm tired. There's a difference."
"Tired of what?"
"Of fixing things," he said. It was such a simple, honest admission that it knocked the wind out of me.
He stared at me for a moment longer, his dark eyes searching my face for something—a crack, a flaw, a reason to dismiss me. Then he sighed, rubbing a hand over his face.
"I'm going to check the generator fuel levels. Stay inside. Don't touch the stove. Don't burn the place down."
He grabbed his jacket and walked out, the door slamming shut behind him, taking all the oxygen in the room with him.
I unpacked my bags in the loft. It was humiliating. My silk pajamas, my La Mer face creams, my textbooks on Ballet History and Kinesiology... they all looked ridiculous in this rustic, wooden box. I felt like a show pony unleashed in a wolf sanctuary.
I sat on the edge of the bed—a queen mattress with a heavy flannel quilt—and stared at the ladder.
Three weeks.
Three weeks of him sleeping ten feet away from me. Three weeks of his judgment. Three weeks of trying to pretend that I didn't feel a magnetic pull every time he looked at me with those dead, dark eyes.
My stomach growled.
I climbed down the ladder. The annex was quiet. The fire crackled softly. Atlas hadn't come back yet.
I walked into the kitchenette. I needed water. I needed vodka, but Atlas had confiscated my "emergency supply" before we even left the parking lot.
I reached for a glass, but stopped when I heard a voice.
It was muffled, coming from the covered walkway that connected the Annex to the main house. The door was slightly ajar, just a crack.
"...I know. I know, Mom."
Atlas.
I shouldn't listen. It was rude. It was an invasion of privacy. It was exactly what a St. James would do.
I crept closer to the door, pressing my ear against the cold wood.
"I sent it," Atlas was saying. His voice was different. It wasn't the low, commanding rumble he used with me. It was higher, tighter. Strained. "The transfer went through an hour ago. Fifty thousand. It pays off the arrears and covers the next six months."
Pause.
"No, don't ask where I got it. It's legal. I worked for it."
A longer pause. I could hear him pacing on the concrete of the walkway.
"You can't leave, Mom. You promised. If you walk out of those doors, the money is gone. Burned. You have to stay. You have to... you have to try."
His voice cracked.
Just a fracture. A tiny, hairline fracture in the stone facade of the Anvil.
"I can't come visit. I'm working. I'm... I'm upstate. A special training camp. Yeah. Just focus on the steps, okay? Please. For me."
Silence. Then a heavy sigh that sounded like it scraped the bottom of his lungs.
"I love you too. Bye."
I backed away from the door. My heart was hammering in my throat, but it wasn't from fear this time.
It was shame.
Hot, viscous shame that coated my insides.
He's doing it for his mother.
The money. The deal with my father. The humiliation of babysitting me. He wasn't a mercenary. He was a son. A desperate son trying to keep his mother alive.
I looked around the small, warm room. I looked at the groceries he had unpacked. I looked at the fire he had built to keep me warm.
I had called him a neanderthal. I had called him a brute. I had treated him like the help.
But standing there in the kitchen, I realized that Atlas Thorne was twice the man my father was. My father threw money at problems to make them go away. Atlas sold himself to fix them.
I heard his boots on the concrete. He was coming back.
I scrambled away from the door, rushing to the stove. I grabbed the kettle, filling it with water, trying to look busy. Trying to look like I hadn't just peered behind the curtain of the Great and Powerful Oz.
The door opened. A blast of cold air swirled around my ankles.