Bluewing by Kate Avery Ellison Page B

and get moving. Talking about emotions made me itchy and restless. I didn’t know what I felt. There was too much inside my head, and I hadn’t had the luxury of sorting it out, not while I was grappling for survival, worrying over my sister, dealing with Blackcoats, and trying to arrange the rescue of my beloved friends.
    Or was Everiss right? Was all that just an excuse to delay addressing my feelings?
    I pushed all these troublesome ideas into the back of my mind and set out across the snow. Gabe and Everiss followed without a word.
    We kept to the tree line but didn’t enter it until we’d rounded the edge of Echlos. There’d been a path here 500 years ago. Gabe knew it better than I did, so I let him lead. The path itself was long gone, but the impression of it remained as an old deer run now. Trees twisted overhead and bent close around us.
    “Where are we going?” Everiss panted, stumbling behind me as I ducked under branches and yanked my cloak free of grasping twigs.
    “We need to check all the traps, and we need to search the woods for berries. Unfortunately for us, Ivy is the one who always knew the best places,” I said.
    Ivy . Thinking of her filled me with worry. Was she seeking a pass to give her access to the Frost right now? Would she get it? If she was unable to obtain it, when would we see her again?
    “I seem to remember there being a lot of berry bushes around the house of the Compound director,” Gabe commented. “We should try there.”
    I remembered that house—an opulent building with sweeping white curves and a roof like a bird’s wing. The fields and gardens around it had been filled with snow blossoms—brought here because they were the favorite flower of the director’s wife. They’d been bred to withstand extreme cold, and that was why they now bloomed amid our harsh winters.
    “It’s far from here,” I observed. “But all right.”
    We set out across the wilderness, weaving around massive rocks that protruded from the snowy earth, pushing aside branches laden with ice. When we finally reached the field that led to the house, Everiss stopped and sucked in a breath. “What is that?”
    A portion of the house and roof were still visible, covered in vines and snow and shimmering in the pale sunlight like a fallen dove. A swath of blue lay between us and our destination. Snow blossoms. Thousands of them.
    “Could this place be any safer from Watchers?” Gabe mused, looking at the snow blossoms in amazement. “This field is literally carpeted with them. They’ve spread everywhere.”
    I waded through the sea of flowers. The fragrance wafted around me and tickled my nose.
    “Where are you going?” Everiss asked, a hint of panic entering her voice.
    “Gabe said he remembered berry bushes growing here,” I said. “We need to find them.”
    “The berry bushes used to grow on the north side,” he offered. “Behind the fountains.”
    “Fountains,” Everiss repeated, her eyes wide. “What is this place?”
    “It used to be the home of a very rich man,” Gabe said.
    “Why has no one found it before?”
    “Watchers,” I said with a short laugh. “Nobody else dares come this far out except crazy and desperate people like us.”
    As the house grew closer, the details sharpened. The mansion was massive, dozens of times the size of the Mayor’s house in the village. Columns covered in lichen and hardened vines stood like sentries frozen in eternal duty. Trees grew through the holes where windows had once been. A ghostly air clung to everything, silence mingled with the sadness of beauty long neglected.
    “It’s eerie,” Everiss whispered. “Have you heard the tales the Trappers tell about the ghosts that roam the far edges of the Frost? Perhaps they live here.”
    I ignored her. A thought was taking shape in my head. “Do you suppose there could be anything worth salvaging inside?”
    Gabe eyed the ruin with skeptical interest. “It’s possible, I