“You’re awake,” she says, voice calm and reassuring. “That’s good. You gave us quite a scare, Miss Vale.”
Vale.
That’s my name.
Roxy Vale.
Wildlife photographer.
Twenty-six years old.
I know these facts the way I know how to breathe. They are automatic, fundamental, but there’s something underneath thatcertainty, something that shifts and writhes like smoke trying to take shape before dissipating into nothing.
“What h-happened?” My voice comes out rough, my throat raw as if I’ve been screaming.
Maybe I have?
I can’t remember.
“Car accident,” the kind nurse says, checking the IV in my arm with practiced efficiency. “Looks like it was a few weeks back, and you were wandering the wilderness ever since. You’re lucky to be alive. They found you in the snow off Route 16, your car wrapped around a tree. Hypothermic, concussed, and blood loss from the head wound.”
Route 16.
The Appalachian pass.
I was there for a shoot.
The memories surface sluggishly, fragments that don’t quite fit. Snow, mountains, and trees stretching toward the sky so clear it hurt to look at.
But there’s…something else.
“There was a man,” I say suddenly. “In my car. A man who—”
“The deceased,” the nurse interrupts gently. “Yes. The police will want to talk to you. Johnathan Jones. Ex-military. They’re still investigating, but from the evidence, he flagged you down, got in, and then… the crash.”
Johnathan Jones.
The name means nothing.
But when I close my eyes, I see blood on tactical gear, terror in gray eyes, hands grabbing my arm hard enough to bruise.
Ice.
Blue eyes like winter.
A voice that could freeze the air in your lungs.
Not human.
The thought surfaces without context, foreign and immediate, and I grab for it desperately because it’s the only thing that sparks recognition in the empty landscape of my memory. But the harder I reach, the faster it dissolves, leaving nothing except a bone-deep certainty that I’ve forgotten something crucial.
Something that matters more than breathing.
“The doctors say you’ll make a full recovery,” the nurse continues, oblivious to the panic clawing up my throat. “No permanent damage. You’re very fortunate.”
Fortunate.
Right.