chapter 258

Frost grew over the windows even as the duvet kept her warm. Isla watched the ice-crystals grow for a while, allowing her brain to be empty, content to exist and be. The morning would bring the beauty of the ice for sure, that crunch under boot and the bold greeting cold air brings. Yet between now and watching her breaths rise as new white-puffed clouds there will be a very cold night. The kind that only stops at the doors of the well-made houses. The cold weather that seeped through any thin cloth to drain the soul, instead feeds the soul of those well wrapped in warm layers of well insulated fabrics.

It was the same type of coldness that reached into one's bones, as if their heart were a door left wide open to the icy wind, slamming only to open again. The only thing to do would be to keep moving, keep heading toward home and the steady warmth of the hearth. There was a lot on her mind that night. And she even tried her best to get Nathan off her mind. She wouldn't just stop thinki