Page 99 of Winter’s Teeth

“Were you talking about Arthur?”

Everly appeared in the living room with a towel cupped under her honey-brown waves, scrunching at the ends.

My jaw flapped. I’d been ready to move on from the never-charming topic of Arthur, but my sister looked so... Innocent. So curious. Perhaps fearful? I couldn’t read the look exactly behind her eyes, which was a first for me. Usually, we knew what the other was thinking as if we were twins.

“You don’t need to worry.” I forced a smile. “There’s no chance he’ll find us here, and if he does turn up, I’ll personally make sure he can never smolder menacingly at anyone again—”

My baseless angry ramblings were cut short when Everly shouted, “You can’t hurt him!” Cat mugs rattled on their shelves as the shrieking echo of her outburst faded.

I blinked, but I wasn’t the only one stunned.

Everly wrung the towel nervously, twisting it around her fingers in front of her stomach. Her voice hitched when she continued, “He... He’s just misunderstood. My Arthur isn’t a villain. He isn’t...He—”

I jumped up, ignoring the pain in my leg as I hobbled to Everly, taking her by the arms when a panic attack descended on her. Her chest heaved and sputtered, her eyes casting about for something to latch onto. Something safe.

“Hey. I’m right here. I’m here, and I hear you, Evie. If you say I can’t hurt him, I won’t. I was just mouthing off. I couldn’t even if I tried.”

The look I cast Fox said something completely different. Stockholm syndrome much?

What the hell happened to my sister? What the hell did Arthur do to her that she would completely forget about her fiancé and cry at the mention of her captor losing a single hair on his head.

Fox crossed his arms over his chest, teeth sinking into his lower lip. Something about his look didn’t sit well with me. Like he knew what my sister meant. Like he knew where she was coming from.

Frankly, I didn’t care what tragic backstory Arthur may or may not have had. I saw enough. I saw the dead bodies of officers who just wanted to help. I saw what his cousins did under his order. I saw what he did to Fox and Corbin the night he tied them up in the woods, and I saw Fox half dead in the stream the day we met. All because of Arthur.

Arthur deserved hell or worse.

Everly spun away, and before my feeble ankle could stagger after her, she slammed the bedroom door shut. The lock clicked into place, barricading herself in.

“Leave her be,” Shira advised. “I’m sure she’s been through hell of her own since the botched wedding. Getting tangled up with the Winters is no joke. She’ll need time to sort herself out.”

My eyes met Fox’s again, then the white tulips in a vase on the kitchen counter.

I was more tangled than a hundred double knots. The only hope was to cut me out, hacking and slashing, sparing nothing. But...

I didn’t want to be freed. I wanted to stay with Fox. With Corbin and Shira, too.

Maybe to some I would appear as delusional as Everly, so I tried to be understanding. It lasted all of three seconds.

The hatred for Arthur lowered to a simmer that wouldn’t lose its heat anytime soon.

***

SOFT WHISPERS AND THE gentle thunking of a knife against a cutting board drowned out most of my tumultuous thoughts. While Shira and Corbin worked on an early dinner, I snuggled up against Fox’s side with damp hair from a glorious shower. We watched a movie about horse racing, which Fox claimed he’d seen twice before even though I’d never heard of it.

My gaze darted to Shira’s phone charging on the bookshelf across the room repeatedly. Every time I locked eyes with it, I debated turning it on to text my friends.

“Are you sure we can’t take you to urgent care tonight?” Fox tried for the tenth time when commercials flashed on the screen, interrupting the horse movie.

“My leg isn’t gonna fall off. I can wait a day.” Until Everly was ready to come out and speak to me again, I wasn’t going anywhere.

He gave me a look that said he disagreed. Pursed lips, a slight frown, but he shook his head as he looked away. Smart man that he was knew it was pointless to argue with me when it came to anything regarding my sister.

“Dinner in five minutes,” Corbin called. “Fox, can you help me get the folding table and chairs out?”

My source of heat left my side, and I bit back a groan of protest. With that brief moment alone though, I reached for Shira’s phone, pulling it off the charging plug to hold down the power button. As it lit up, my heartrate kicked up into my throat, making me second guess if I should really be doing this.

I swiped past notifications on a background of Shira and Corbin smushed together smiling to get to the messaging app. I found Riss’s name right at the top, and without reading a single one of her messages, I sent her two, short sentences.