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Just as I’o looking for hirabs ht into his arms For the second time, in a second storm, he’s come to hold me steady And there’s so much I want to tell him about what’s happened in this whole horrible month without him, but there’s no time The wind has picked up, and we can’t , hand in hand, into the darkness

The wind sounds like voices It sounds like, and Linden saying I love you I don’t stop to listen I don’t respond But sos and snowbanks, and we pull each other back up We are unstoppable And then we ate, which is of course locked

There’s a panel, but my key card doesn’t work on it

Did I really think it would? "What now?" Gabriel shouts to th of the fence, looking for the place where it ends, but it soon becomes abundantly clear that there is no end to it, that it must wrap all the way around the property in a circle that’s miles and miles wide

What now?

I don’t know I don’t know

Escape is so close I can reach through the bars and touch the free air I can alrasp at a tree lis The trees would be ih; the fence is too icy I try scaling the iron bars and fail every tirabs s me to his chest, and wraps it around the both of us We kneel together against a snowbank, and I think I knohat he’s trying to tellto freeze to death

But I don’t feel the acceptance I felt in the hurricane

I was so sure that night that I was going to die, and yet so, and when I clihthouse, I saw the exit I don’t believe that was for nothing

I feel Gabriel kiss one cold I draw back a little, pull his collar up around his ears He slides his hands underwarhter from my pocket, and with the wind it’s alle free of Gabriel’s coat, and he cups his hands around the flame so that the on’t steal it It calls to irl who lit ht a different ht now the onlyin our hands It’s the only light in all this darkness, and I think I’d like nothing ht this place on fire To watch it burn like those ugly curtains Light one tree and watch the fire spread to thehn has soht on this blizzard I’ he’ll find Gabriel’s and my body frozen and dead, so hopelessly close to our escape

It can’t happen I won’t give hinite one of the trees, I hear a voice on the wind I think I’ain, but Gabriel looks too We can just ht

I hurry to hn co us into his base tables in the same room as Rose’s and Jenna’s corpses I start to run, but Gabriel stops hn at all

It’s the nervous attendant who took Gabriel’s place

The one who said I was the nice one; the one who toldso, but with all the wind and snow, I can’t hear his words So we just watch, Gabriel and I, as he swipes the key card across the panel The gate hitches a little, trying to dig through the snow, but it opens

For the longest time I just stand there, not sure what to make of this Not sure if I should trust it I ahn to--I don’t know, pop out fro

But the attendant is waving us along, and I think he’s saying, "Go, go!"

"Why?" I say Iover the wind "Why are you helping us? How did you knoere here?"

"Your sister wife asked me to help you," he says "The little one The redhead"

Chapter 27

We run for what feels like all night It feels like the world could have ended and there’s nothing left but this path, and these trees, and this snowy darkness We stop to catch our breath, but the frozen air offers little relief to our gasping lungs We are cold and exhausted, and still the wind rages

In the library I read a book called Dante’s Inferno about the many circles of a place called hell, in the after-life In one of the circles were two lovers ere forever punished for their adultery by being trapped in a windstorm, unable to speak, unable to hear each other or have a moment of stillness

That could be us, I think And the sad part is that we’ve never even had the chance to beco bride who haven’t been granted one moment of true freedom to explore hoe feel about each other I’love