Weavers (The Frost Chronicles) Read Online Free PDF Page B

happy ending where Everiss and I became best friends again, and then she fell into his arms with protestations of love? He was sharp-witted, my brother. Surely he knew how silly such a fantasy was?
    But on the heels of my anger came sadness. With his seizures and withered leg, he’d had a hard life. Was it so foolish of him to want a little happiness, as unlikely as that might be?
    I was angry, but not at him. I was angry at the way things were. The Frost, the snow, the hunger, the never-ending work making quota and fearing Farthers and hanging out our blossoms to protect us from the monsters in the night. We were like fish holding our places in a fierce-flowing stream, ever swimming against the current but never going anywhere. I blinked and saw my life in a flash before me, unspooling like so much thread, cycles of frost and thaw and work and weariness that culminated in a misplaced snow blossom or a misguided word to a Farther soldier. Blood on the snow. A quick, brutal ending to a quick, brutal life.
    For a moment, I couldn’t speak.
    “Lia?” Jonn said, reaching for his crutch.
    I shook off the paralyzing melancholy and turned for the kitchen. “Where is Ivy? It’s time to eat.” I practically growled the words.
    The door banged open before I even finished my sentence. My sister was on the stoop, slinging off her snow-covered cloak and stamping her feet to warm them as she stripped off her mittens.
    “Ivy,” I snapped. “Where have you been?”
    She held out her mitten-clad hands. “Gathering winterberries. I thought we could eat them fresh for dessert.”
    Berries would stretch this pathetic meal a little farther. “Fine,” I said. “Put them in a bowl and grab the bread.”
    She hurried to comply. “Is there any milk?”
    Milk . That reminded me. “Have you seen to the animals this evening?”
    Her mouth opened and closed. I took that as a no. “I’ll do it,” she said quickly.
    That was the moment Everiss chose to emerge from the bedroom. I crossed to the door. “No, I’ll go. You bring the scraps for the chickens.”
    She nodded and looked down at the berries in her hands. My gaze slid past her to Jonn and Everiss, and I saw them lock eyes. His ears warmed. She looked away.
    Frowning, I went out into the snow.
    The barn door squeaked as I shoved it open. I took a few steps inside, humming tunelessly under my breath. As I reached for the grain bucket, a sound like a shoe against stone scraped in the near-darkness by the horses’ stalls.
    “Ivy?”
    But something about the thick silence that followed made the hairs on the back of my neck rise. I pushed myself up and fumbled for the snow shovel leaning beside the door. I raised it in the air like a weapon. “Who’s there?”
    The shadows shifted, and my blood froze in my veins.
    A figure stepped out from behind a support beam, and my fingers curled around the handle of the shovel. A man. He was thin and bundled in a thick gray coat. His close-cropped, steel-gray hair gleamed against his olive skin.
    A Farther ?
    Another glance confirmed it was true, but he wasn’t in uniform like the soldiers roaming the village.
    A fugitive?
    I didn’t have the luxury of puzzling over his origins at the moment. I was still very much alone with him in the barn.
    “Don’t move,” I said. One glance confirmed that he was too close and I was too far for me to make a run for it without being intercepted. No, I needed to convince him that I wasn’t afraid. I lifted the shovel.
    His mouth turned up at the gesture. Clearly, he didn’t find me remotely threatening.
    “I mean it,” I said, my voice cracking sharply and my arms beginning to burn from the weight of the shovel. “I’ll hurt you—”
    “I am looking for Aaron or Eloisa Weaver.”
    My parents? Suddenly my lungs were empty of air.
    “Lower your weapon,” he murmured, reaching into his coat.
    I tensed, expecting a gun. But what he withdrew shocked me. A broach in the shape of a Y. It glittered