Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Glory

THERE”S A HOUSE at the top of the hill. We can see it now. Gray smoke puffs from the chimney, hinting at warmth inside. It gives me strength to push forward despite the way I shiver, despite the harshness of the cold seeping into my bones and weakening my muscles. Huxley and I make it to the top of the harsh incline, both fighting for each breath as our tired bodies carry us through the thick snow.

Huxley reaches the top first and turns back to reach out his hand to me. I take it and let him pull me, helping me make the last few steps up the hill before the land levels out. We don’t stop moving. Though the upward climb is done, the snow is thick in the clearing surrounding the small brown house.

I recognize the inherent danger in showing up unannounced to someone’s secret home in the middle of the forest, but the danger we face in the elements is far greater. I don’t let go of Huxley’s hand as we march forward, leaving our tracks in the snow. I look at the bright, round moon overhead, shining down at us like a spotlight. It’s haunting in the sudden stillness, and an unnerving quiet settles around us.

“It’s not snowing anymore,” I whisper. Somehow, it feels wrong to speak any louder as we approach the house.

I glance over at Huxley to see him nod, a tight smile showing tension through his cheeks. His eyes are firmly on the house in front of us…a house in the middle of the vastness of Sugar Wood Forest.

It seems odd to me that there’s a house here.

Our family owns a significant acreage of this land, though I don’t really know how far our ownership extends from our home—and I don’t know how far away from our home we’ve traveled.

Regardless of what I know and don’t know, we’ve found this strange house and we’re desperate. We need warmth and we need it now. Though the front windows are dark, I can see the faintness of light somewhere within, perhaps coming from someone’s bedroom. Surely, if anyone’s home, they’re asleep at this time of night.

We trudge forward, heading straight toward the door. I’m ready to pound my fist on it, but Huxley steps in front of me, pushing me behind him protectively. He knocks on the door…but we’re met with no response. He knocks again, and again, and still, no response.

“They must be asleep. Maybe they can’t hear us?”

He nods and knocks again, pounding his fist against the brown wooden door. We wait and wait, both shivering and bouncing to ward away the cold.

“There’s a light on in the back,” I tell him, moving toward the window where I saw it. “Maybe if we go around back and knock?”

Huxley looks apprehensive, but there’s no room for apprehension when we’re this cold.

“Stay here,” he tells me, and I nod before he disappears around the side of the house.

A few moments later, I hear him knock against a back door or the wood siding maybe…I don’t know. But when I hear the third tap of his fist echoing in the distance, the front door shoves open, swinging out toward me, and knocking me backward. I gasp in surprise as I land on my ass in the snow, which instantly sends a chill up my spine.

Looking up, I see the shadowed silhouette of a man in the dark doorway. There’s a spark, the flickering embers of a cigarette, then a white puff of smoke drifting from him into the night. It’s the same spark and smoke I thought I’d seen out in the forest when Huxley was burying my father.

I’m stunned into stillness as the man in front of me moves forward, revealing himself as the glow of the moonlight bathes him in a peculiar light. He tosses his cigarette into the snow, and it lands beside me. He’s shirtless, wearing only a pair of tattered, well-worn jeans that hug his rugged hips. He squints down at me as he steps closer, and I can see the darkness in his eyes. They match his dark hair, which is thick and wavy, long enough to frame his chiseled jawline.

He blows out a final puff of smoke from the corner of his plump lips and his eyebrows—as dark as his raven hair—dip together in the middle.

“What are you doing out here, little bird?” It doesn’t sound so much like a question, as if he doesn’t care for my response.

Who is this man?

He takes a step closer, and I flinch, then quickly scramble to my feet. As I open my mouth to speak, to yell for Huxley to come back, the dark man moves swiftly into my space, turning his hand to slap his palm over my mouth while the other sweeps around behind me and grips the back of my head.

He pulls me in close. “Shh,” he hushes me. “Don’t say a word.”

My eyes are wide as I watch him.

“It looks like you’re in some trouble, little bird.”

I shake my head against his hand.

“And you two made a mistake coming out here.”

My heart beats wildly, reminding me that it is, in fact, still solid, that it still exists, that it’s not ashen particles floating away like smoke in the night. The man’s eyes catch and hold mine for a single beat before he moves. Both his hands come down at the same time to grab my shoulders and he turns me roughly, shoving me inside his house.

“Hux!” I shout, and it’s the only sound I manage to make before the dark stranger slams the door behind him and locks it.

I’m locked in.

I stumble backward awkwardly, my heels tripping over a rug, my ass colliding with a wooden table, its legs screeching across the hardwood floor as my weight shifts it.

“Get back,” I say, but my voice is weak.

The man doesn’t say a word as he stalks toward me.

“We were lost,” I explain. “We were out too late in the dark and we got lost. We just…We were hoping you could help us.”

Still, he doesn’t speak.

I back away, and he follows.

“C-can you help us?”

He keeps moving toward me.

My breaths quicken with fear, sensing the inherent danger we put ourselves in the moment we stepped foot on this man’s property. I don’t think he wants to help us. I don’t think this is a good man. I think I should be afraid.

Huxley pounds on the front door, screaming for me, and the man glances toward the sound over his shoulder. I take advantage of the distraction, turning and running down the dark hallway, heading for the only room with a light on at the back, thinking maybe I can lock myself in or escape through a window.

And then what?

Back into the freezing forest?

I make it to the room with the light and rush inside, but he’s right behind me. I reach for the door, ready to throw it shut, but he slams his massive palms against it and shoves it open. I back up as he comes toward me, and for the first time, I see him clearly in the light.

He’s…beautiful.

Beautiful and dark and dangerous.

My hands clench into fists at my sides, a cold sweat breaking out on my palms. “Please, we were just cold…”

My eyes dart down to the fair skin stretched taut across sculpted abs. My gaze traces the lines, taking in the full picture of a strong, brooding man—a man looking at me with anger spreading across his cheeks which are speckled with black stubble.

My distraction is what does me in. In a flash, he comes after me, his hand darting out so fast that I don’t have time to react before it latches onto my throat. His fingers curl around my neck, slipping around to the back to grip just beneath the base of my skull. He tugs me into his hard body with a sharp yank, and I slap my palms against his bare chest to push back.

“No!” I shout, but it’s far too late for protests.

He moves behind me as he turns me around to face the door, his grip on the back of my neck so tight that I imagine bruises will form at the imprint of his fingers. He shoves me forward, marching me out into the hallway and back into darkness.

I hear Huxley frantically tugging at the locked door, and it rattles on its hinges. I reach my hands back over my shoulders, trying to grab hold of his wrist to fight him away, but he’s strong, so much stronger than me. He forces me into a dark room across the hallway, but it’s only dark for a moment.

Sudden light bathes the room as he flips a switch behind us…and I desperately want to go back to the darkness.

This isn’t a bedroom.

It’s a prison.

Two paces into the room and metal bars draw a line across the space, creating a rectangular cage. Like a beast with its hungry mouth open wide, the cage door stands ajar. And the man holding my neck is ready to feed me to it.

Shoving me through, he walks me into the prison cell and slams me into the far corner. I bring my arms up protectively just before I hit, and they jam between my chest and the corner where the walls meet, my fists balled beneath my chin. He moves in close, his frame molding to my back, pinning me in place.

His body is warm against mine. I’m frozen, and in my desperation to melt, I feel a strange sort of relief drip down my body like liquid heat. I want him to stay, enveloping me in his warmth.

But he doesn’t stay.

He steps back, and I whirl around in a flash, adrenaline quickly reminding me that I’m in danger here. I lunge, preparing to make a run for it, but he’s quicker. He crouches in front of me and snaps something metal around my ankle too quickly for me to process. I look down and see the cuff he’s placed around my ankle, but before I can shake it off, he secures it with a padlock.

I panic. I scream and pull my leg to the side, jerking against the heavy chain attached to it—a chain that’s bolted to the floor.

“Huxley!”

There’s a crash, the sound of glass shattering, and the dark man and I both turn our heads sharply to look toward the hall. He turns on his heel and stomps away, leaving me in the cage with the door open. It doesn’t matter that the door is open because I can’t leave the space. I test the length of the chain and it’s a goddamn tease. I can take one step outside the cage and that’s the farthest I can go.

I start to scream for help, but I swallow my sound as I hear fists colliding, skin slapping skin, bodies hitting the wall, hitting the floor, grunting and shouting, as Huxley undoubtedly fights the mysterious man.

My eyes widen, my heartbeat flurries, my breaths quicken with anxiety. I become as still and quiet as a statue as silence falls too suddenly, and I strain my ears to listen.

There’s a thump, then the undeniable swoosh of a body being dragged across the floor.

Drag, stop.

Drag, stop.

Drag…

The stranger comes into view, bent over, his arms beneath an unconscious Huxley as he drags him backward along the hallway.

I gasp and my hand slaps over my mouth.

No, no, no…

Huxley saves me…Huxley always saves me.

If he can’t save me now, then we’re both doomed.