Chapter 145

Sloane

The first night, I walked until the stars began to go.

The road climbed the whole way. Not steeply, at first. A long, patient grade, up between the pines, with the snow packed hard in the old wheel ruts and soft and deep at the edges. I walked in the ruts. My boots crunched. My breath went up in front of me and froze on the scarf Cassandra had wound round my neck, until the wool was stiff with it.

I didn’t look back after the curve. I had looked back once, at Liam standing at the bottom of the road with his hand raised, and that was enough. That was all I was going to let myself have.

The pack was heavy. Nathaniel’s pack. I could feel the shape of everything Cassandra had put in it through the canvas against my spine. Bread, and cheese, and a twist of paper with salt in it, and dried meat, and a flask. Matches in a tin. A knife in a leather sheath. Spare clothes, rolled tight.

I had stood in the middle of that room with her arms round me a