Dead of Winter Read Free Page A

petted the feather fletchings, the sound like riffled cards. She stared, seemingly at nothing.
    One of Finn’s legs was splinted, elevated on a bug-out bag. A metal crutch leaned beside his cot.
    A fire burned in the center of the tent, vented out of the roof. More Arcana sat on benches around it: the Tower, Judgment, and the World Card, an alliance of three.
    Joules sized me up. Gabriel tilted one of his black wings in greeting. Tess Quinn waved shyly, her fingernails bitten to the quick. Matthew dropped down to sit beside her.
    â€œWell, if it isn’t our fair Empress,” Joules said in his thick Irish accent.
    Selena shot upright, her silver-blond hair tumbling over her shoulders.
    â€œEvie!” Finn called. “How did you get free of Death?”
    This could get tricky. “Uh, I had an opportunity to . . . steal away.” Steal Death’s horse and saddle, steal a new bug-out bag, steal my hi-tech all-weather gear. “It’s not important. I’m here now.”
    â€œYet you didn’t accept my offer.” Joules’s reddish brown hair was disheveled, his gaze cagey.
    Selena—who’d called out no greeting—said, “If you got a jump on Death to escape, then you could have brought Joules’s payment.”
    Aric hadn’t been the only one to offer a deal to save Jack. Joules had demanded Death’s severed head in exchange for a rescue. “It’s not that simple,” I told them. “Things aren’t how we thought them.”
    â€œDid you have a chance to kill the Reaper or not?” Whatever Joules read in my expression made him say, “You feckin’ did! A shot at the Endless Knight! The one who always bloody wins!”
    Selena’s lips parted. “Death dies; J.D. lives. What part of that equation are you having problems with?”
    â€œWe can hash everything out later.” I was nearly choking with worry and exhausted to the point of kicking toes-up. “For now, let’s focus on—”
    â€œWe were in an alliance to defeat Death,” Selena bit out. “One you started. When Matthew told us you’d recovered your powers, we believed you’d do whatever it took to free J.D.—especially from the psychotic Lovers.” Selena swiped a hand over her livid face. “Instead, you betrayed all of us. J.D. more than anyone! Do you know what they’ll do to him?”
    My grandmother had told me they warped and perverted their victims, making them confuse torture and pain for pleasure. “I have an idea!” My glyphs moved over my skin, a sign of high emotion—or aggression. But I grappled for patience. “Which is why we need to stop arguing over things that can’t be changed and start planning a rescue!”
    Maybe Gabriel had done a flyover for recon on the army; he’d know the lay of the land across the river. We could plot a mission.
    â€œ Start planning?” Selena sneered. “You don’t have a plan? You’ve got some nerve to show up here with no answers and no payment,sauntering in with your fancy new clothes, looking like you haven’t missed a meal.”
    Exactly the way she’d looked when I’d first met her .
    â€œBecause of you, J.D. is suffering right now.” Voice rising with each word, she said, “You should have paid the Tower!” With her supernatural speed, she leapt from the cot, lunging to attack.

3
    Selena’s good hand was in the air, poised to backhand me; instinctively my thorn claws shot out—
    â€œGamekeeper’s blood!” Matthew cried.
    Selena and I both screamed in pain, matching red lines glowing across our hands.
    Cyclops sprang inside the tent, baring his monstrous fangs at her. I used Selena’s moment of shock to scramble back.
    Tess whimpered and shrank away from the beast; Gabriel flared his wings.
    â€œTh-that wolf was dead!” Finn sputtered from his cot. “The