Sitting at the dining table, everything is disconcertingly normal, uncomfortably usual after kidnapping the most important person in the area. After almost dying. After Idyne killing those people. Bukki looks sleepily scatterbrained, as usual, and Marcí is fretting over him, as usual. Idyne, as always, talks at us like we're dolls at a tea party. Zena is as much the seven-year-old as ever, Marcus is as silent as ever, and Jacin is, if possible, looking creepier and more brooding than ever. The only difference is that Leavi and Aster aren't here.

I ask Marcí where they are.

She turns to me, surprised. "Didn't Leavi tell you?"

"I haven't seen her all day."

"Oh. Bukki was..." She lays a hand on one of his, smiling at him. "Sick. And dear Leavi didn't know how to help him. But that blessed wizard came and saved him, gave Bukki more time." She blinks away the grateful tears that are trying to form, but her face falls as she continues to speak. "But now the boy's paying for the spell. I don't know much about it, but he's been in bed ever since. I think Leavi is with him."

I frown. As much as Aster gets on my nerves, I don't want something to happen to him. Too many things have gone wrong as is, and for both his and Leavi's sakes, I want him to be okay. My tongue suddenly remembers to respond, and I manage a stilted, "Thanks."

Marcí gives me a curious look, and Idyne tilts her head at me. I offer a thin smile to the first and ignore the latter. A minute or so after Marcí finishes eating, I do too. When I get into the kitchen to wash my dish, she's standing at the counter, putting together a plate. A bowl of broth already sits on a tray.

She looks over at me. "I'm going to take this up to Leavi and Aster in a minute." She hesitates. "If you're wanting to go check on her, you can take it instead."

I pause, watching the ripples in the broth. Do I want to go check on Leavi?

Yes.

Would it be a good idea or serve any sort of purpose?

"No." I turn away from Marcí and finish washing my plate. "Thanks."

As I head upstairs for the night, light reflects off the snow outside the living room window. I pause on the stairs, and the others pass me, heading to their rooms. The snow is piled so high, I can hardly tell the difference between the porch and the ground. There were winters in Xela when a white-out would hit and we would be trapped in the house for days at a time because the snowdrifts got so big. This doesn't look so high as to keep doors from working, and I silently curse that Aster is sick again. If he were well, we could go ahead and get out of here before the next storm strikes.

I'm entering my new room when someone starts banging on the front door. Worry spikes through me, and I hurry back to the opening of the stair. Marcí sets the tray down and opens the door just in time to interrupt another round of banging. I jerk back around the corner.

Veradeaux guards.

"Well, hello, sirs," Marcí says. "Did you trek here all the way from the manor? You must be freezing! Let me get you—"

"You know what we're here for." My heart pounds as I scramble for a solution.

"If this is about that business from before, I told you, the miscreants already ran off."

"We'd like to check for ourselves."

I scurry to my room and scoop up my bag—thank skies I've kept it packed—then dart to my old room. Leavi sits beside the bed, and Aster looks half-dead in it.

"Leavi," I hiss. She jumps, turning. Before she speaks, I hold a finger to my lips. "Get your stuff together. Guards are here."

Her eyes go wide, and she pushes to her feet. Then she looks back to Aster. "I'm not going to leave him here."

"I know! I'll—" I can't carry him myself. But between me and Jacin, he'd get to where we're headed. And if Jacin's complicit in our plot, he can't rat us out either. "I'll get Jacin to help carry."

She nods. "I'll grab Idyne."

Idyne? It clicks. She thinks this is because of the kidnapping, not the rescue. Either way, we're dead, so I guess it doesn't really matter. But Leavi's already across the hall, so I head out. Downstairs, Marcí is still arguing with the guards, and I hope she can somehow keep them busy enough to give us our chance to get out. What we really need is for her to take them to the dining room or kitchen so they won't see us coming down the stairs. Then we can leave through either the front or back door, whichever is more accessible.

I throw Jacin's door open. He rolls to his feet, scowling, and I raise my hands. "Leavi needs our help."

I can't help wincing as I say it, but the anger on his face flips into worry, and I grit my teeth and hope this is the right thing to do. The guards' voices rise, and he follows me as I hurry through the hall. "They'll take her if we don't leave, and she won't leave without Aster." Jacin just pushes past me and hefts Aster onto his back as the girls shove into the room.

"No," a guard says. "We want upstairs."

All four of us, standing there, share a silent, panicked glance. I dart to the window, throw it open, and scramble up. Leavi follows, and with Jacin below, we pull Aster onto the roof. Idyne pushes the window closed with her foot, and we sludge through the snow into the middle of the roof. I try to push the snow away for us all to sit, but the freezing water still seeps through our pants. We sit, shivering, listening to the men shove through the bedrooms, hoping no one left anything behind, desperate for them not to turn and look up as they leave.

But eventually, the footsteps thud back downstairs, then crunch across the porch. We hunker down against the wind, bringing ourselves as low to the ground and out of sight as possible. Too scared to move, united as one unthinking mind, we just huddle there, wondering when it will be safe, hoping the moment we stand isn't the moment they discover us.

Finally, Leavi speaks up. "We'll die of hypothermia if we don't get back inside." The individual thought breaks up the petrified group-mind, and we start to rise.

Then I grip her arm. "What if they left someone behind?" We all pause, looking at each other. My fingers drum on the side of my leg. "Look, I'll go scout it out, and—"

"No, you won't!" Leavi says.

I'm not just trembling from the cold, but my voice comes out harsh. "What else are we going to—"

"They're not looking for me," Jacin interrupts. "I'll go."

Relief washes over me, but I just nod. There's a collective sigh as he swings back into the room, and though I know I'm breathing, it feels like I'm frozen, without air, without thought.

This was a bad plan. I don't trust Jacin. He could just as easily give us up as help us. The whole reason I included him was so he couldn't turn us in. Stupid! Now we're backed into a corner, and we'll get caught, and I was right all along—rescuing this boy was a death wish. It's going to be guards that come up, not Jacin, and—

His head pops over the edge. "They're gone."

The others relax, but as we pass Aster back down and swing into the room ourselves, I swear we'll step into the hallway, into the arms of the guards—

The hall is empty too. I pause, glancing around slowly. "They're really gone?"

He nods. "They tried to leave one, but Marcí chased him away."

"She just chased him off?"

His arms cross, a challenge in his voice. "That's what she told me." Our eyes lock. He's dangerous.

I wave my hands. "Whatever." I go back into the orange room, feeling safer there than in the hall. Leavi follows, resituating the blankets around Aster. The other two come with her. Silence reigns as we watch Aster's ashen face.

"We can't stay here," Leavi murmurs.

I turn. "What?"

Her face is tight. "We can't stay here while he recovers. If they wanted to leave someone here, then they're going to keep coming to check, and we can't keep hiding up there." We're both still shivering.

My arms cross. "Why don't we just leave then? Let's just go, get out of here. Surely another storm won't come for a few days. That's got to be enough time to get to the next town, right?" I turn to Jacin, mentally pleading for him to agree that it's not far.

"In these conditions?" he says. "No." My spirits fall into despair.

"We can go back to the farmhouse," Leavi says, and I bury my face in my hands. "It's warm enough, especially if we all stay in the same room."

My head snaps up. "But we can't light a fire," I say, as if that somehow proves staying there is impossible.

"It's all we've got."

My jaw tightens.

"Sounds like a plan!" Idyne chirps.

"No one will want to come there, anyway," Jacin says. "Even if we light a fire. The townsfolk all think it's haunted; if they think they see smoke, they'll just make a sign to warn off shades and keep going about their day."

Leavi pulls in a deep breath. "Then... it's decided."

Angry, I push out of the room. I thought we were done with that place.