Chapter 61 Shadows In The Snow

• The silence was heavier tonight.
• Lucy walked a few steps behind Daren, her breath rising in pale clouds, eyes darting between the darkened alleys of Talawan. The city no longer belonged to the living. Every broken window seemed to breathe out frost, every shuttered door whispered of people who had given up. Yet she still heard faint echoes — the creak of something shifting, the scrape of a shoe. Not enough to be seen, but enough to remind her they were not truly alone.
• Daren didn’t speak much, but his body was a language Lucy had learned to read in the weeks since he appeared: the sharp tilt of his shoulders when he sensed danger, the flex of his gloved hand near the hilt of his blade, the way his pace slowed when the cold thickened with unease. Tonight, all those signs were there, and they quickened her heart in ways she hated to admit.