Chapter 159

Liam

It had been snowing since noon.

Big, soft, slow flakes, coming straight down out of a white sky with no wind behind them, so that by three o’clock the whole shore of the lake was smooth and new, and every footprint we made carrying the wood down filled in again behind us. The pines along the water were heavy with it. The lake itself had frozen a week ago, gray and solid from shore to shore, and the snow lay on that too, unbroken, all the way across to the dark trees on the far side.

I carried wood with the rest of them. Everybody did, on the Longest Night. It didn’t matter if you were the Beta or a boy from the kitchens. You carried your share down to the shore, and you stacked it where the old women told you, and you didn’t argue.

Ryan argued about the drums. He always did. He wanted them by the boathouse, where the sound would carry over the ice, and old Mrs. Aldous wanted them by the steps, where they had always been, and in the end they went b