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I leaned back against the soft snow bank, letting the dry powder reshape itself around my weight. My skin had cooled to match the air around me, and the tiny pieces of ice felt like velvet under my skin.
The sky above me was clear, brilliant with stars, glowing blue in some places, yellow in others. The stars created majestic, swirling shapes against the black universe-an awesome sight. Exquisitely beautiful. Or rather, it should have been exquisite. Would have been, if I'd been able to really see it.
It wasn't getting any better. Six days had passed, six days I'd hidden here in the empty Denali wilderness, but I was no closer to freedom than I had been since the first moment that I'd caught his scent.
When I stared up at the jeweled sky, it was as if there were an obstruction between my eyes and their beauty. The obstruction was a face, just an unremarkable human face, but I couldn't quite seem to banish it from my mind.
I heard the approaching thoughts before I heard the footsteps that accompanied them. The sound of movement was only a faint whisper against the powder.
I was not surprised that Solar had followed me here. I knew she'd been mulling over this coming conversation for the last few days, putting it off until she was sure of exactly what she wanted to say.
She sprang into sight about sixty yards away, leaping onto the tip of an outcropping of black rock and balancing there on the balls of her bare feet.
Solar's skin was silver in the starlight, and her long blond curls shone pale, almost pink with their strawberry tint. Her amber eyes glinted as she spied me, half-buried in the snow, and her full lips stretched slowly into a smile.
Exquisite. If I'd really been able to see her. I sighed.
She crouched down on the point of the stone, her fingertips touching the rock, her body coiled.
Cannonball, she thought.
She launched herself into the air; her shape became a dark, twisting shadow as she spun gracefully between me and the stars. She curled herself into a ball just as she struck the piled snow bank beside me.
A blizzard of snow flew up around me. The stars went black and I was buried deep in the feathery ice crystals.
I sighed again, but didn't move to unearth myself. The blackness under the snow neither hurt nor improved the view. I still saw the same face.
"Taehyung?"
Then snow was flying again as Solar swiftly disinterred me. She brushed the powder from my unmoving face, not quite meeting my eyes.
"Sorry," she murmured. "It was a joke."
"I know. It was funny."
Her mouth twisted down. "Moonbyul and Hwasa said I should leave you alone. They think I'm annoying you."
