Chapter 9

CHAPTER 9

Emma woke to wind.

The whistle filled her ears, flooding her skull until her brain threatened to freeze solid. She tried to block the sound, but her hands rose in fitful spasms from where they were buried in the snow. They numbed to rigidity before they could go higher than her chest.

“H-h-he . . . ”

The word stalled on Emma’s tongue, garbled by the clicking of her teeth. Every muscle in her body clenched, tightening harder while the gusts picked up. Her eyes closed under the blasts of frigid air, ice forming on the lids while the ebb and flow of the gales gave way to one massive roar.

The sound hit Emma like a brick wall, rattling her bones. The sinews in her legs stretched as the force snatched her from the snow, wrenching hard enough to drag out a scream when her knees popped free of their sockets.

“God!”

She pried her eyes open just wide enough to see the landscape thirty feet below her, the smoke from the cabin’s chimney wafting past her face. She coughed on the f