020 | BROKEN PROMISES

If I opened my eyes, I would wake up. Some subconscious part of me already knew that – and it held my eyelids closed, keeping me hostage in the dark. I considered fighting it, but traces of pain and blood and betrayal broke through my memories and forced their way into my present mind. 

I winced against the onslaught, against the feel of having bones and flesh that throbbed and ached, against the abject horror of knowing I was doomed, and that was enough to throw me back into my body. 

I didn’t know how I was alive, but I forced my eyes open to face whatever awaited me. I expected to awake to more pain, to the bite of snow beneath me and a blizzard in the air, to be utterly unable to escape the numbing cold and the red-hot agony – 

But there was nothing. Just silence, broken only by the pops and cracks of the fire in the hearth. I frowned at it: a large, stone monstrosity set into the wall at the foot of the bed. I did not recognise this room,