“Where’s the shack?” she asked. She turned in a slow circle, peering through the white swirl. “I don’t see—”
The whip snapped. Not at her, but close enough that she recoiled. The wagon lurched forward. The driver didn’t look back as he left her in the middle of the mountain trail like a dropped sack of grain.
Lila took one step, then another.
The world pitched sideways.
Hunger and cold and exhaustion joined hands and pulled her down. Her knees hit the snow. The satchel strap burned across her palm as she tried to drag it closer. Her breath wheezed, shallow and frantic. Black spots crowded her vision like birds.
The last thing she saw was white.
Endless, merciless white.
High above the trail, where a ridge of rock broke the wind, Silas Greyhawk watched the wagon vanish into the storm.
