Page 140 of Scarlet Wars
Caden’s jaw locked. “Then what?”
My eyes flicked to the left, to the hollowed creek bed glinting faintly through the trees. Meltwater pooled between stones, rimmed with frost, a thread of mist curling above it.
“There.”
“Emma—”
“Trust me.”
Before he could protest again, I pulled him into the shallow pool. The cold hit us as shock while the world went silent but for the rush of blood in my ears.
Caden sucked in a breath through clenched teeth. “Holy shit, it’s freezing?—”
“Stay down.”
We crouched low, water lapping at our chests, our breath fogging faintly against the surface. The spotlight skimmed the treetops, then swept lower, searching. The light fractured across the ripples, turning the water into a mirror of broken stars.
My fingers dug into Caden’s sleeve. “Don’t move.”
The drone hovered, its whine reverberating against the trees. For a heartbeat, its light lingered over the pool.
And then it drifted on.
The hum faded, leaving only the sound of our shivering breaths and the creak of ice forming around our clothes.
Caden moved first. No words, only a quick exhale as he shoved himself upright, water streaming off him. The sound of his boots crunching against the frozen bank felt deafening after the drone’s departure.
He turned back and caught my arm, hauling me out with a force I was slightly surprised by. I stumbled onto the mud, knees hitting the frost, lungs burning as air knifed through me.
“Caden—”
“Not now,” he snapped. “We need to move.”
The look on his face wasn’t anger, it was something a lot worse. Fear wearing the mask of control.
He stripped off his soaked jacket and wrung it once before throwing it back on. “Between the river and now this, our core temps are tanking. We’ll be dead in twenty minutes if we don’t find some shelter.”
“Well, where the hell do you want to go?” I barely managed to ask, teeth chattering as I did.
He didn’t answer, grabbed my hand again, fingers icy against mine, and started pulling me uphill through the trees.
Behind us, the forest swallowed the last trace of the drone’s hum, leaving only the echo of our footsteps and the faint hiss of wind through the pines.
“Caden,” I gasped, stumbling over a root, “where the hell are you going?”
He didn’t slow. His shoulders were rigid, breath heaving in visible bursts.
“I saw something,” he ground out, voice tight from cold and strain.
“What? What do you mean, you saw something?”
“While we were running,” he said through gritted teeth, half dragging me over a fallen log. “Looked like a cabin. Or what’s left of one.”
The words lit a small, desperate spark in my chest. My fingers were numb, my clothes heavy with freezing water, but I forced my legs to keep moving.
“You’re sure?”
“No,” he bit out, glancing back once, eyes wild in the dark. “But it’s the only chance we have.”
