It didn’t take long.
The girls broke through the windows and fell onto the snow, pulling others out to safety, screaming into the night. Pandemonium took over, the fire rising from all the buildings, bringing a brightness to the camp. It didn’t feel like winter anymore—but blazing summer.
When my work was done, I threw the torch into the snow.
It went out with an audible sizzle. Wisps of smoke started to rise. The snow that had surrounded it immediately melted away from the heat, and now it sank deeper into the powder.
The girls screamed as they ran from the cabins.
“This way!” I ran to the first group and guided them away from the burning cabins and to the main road, which was lit by torches to guide the way. “Follow it to the road!” I continued to run back into the camp, collect more girls, and organize the exodus.
Sometimes, I passed Raven doing the same, directing the women to safety.
When most of the girls were gone, I searched for Raven, knowing we had to run before we got caught.
But she was nowhere in sight. “Raven!” I shouted into the night, over the clamor and screams of the guards, over the loud crackle of the fire because it made a cabin collapse into burning rubble. The smoke was starting to get too thick, making it harder to breathe. “Raven!” We had to get out of there before we were caught or suffocated.
Then I found her.
The executioner had her by the throat, ready to choke her to death right there in the snow. “Raven!” I sprinted to her and noticed another girl coming from a different direction. She jumped onto his back and slammed her fist into the back of his head.
I ran faster, pulled out the knife Raven gave me, and did the bravest thing I’d ever done.
I jumped on him too—and killed him.
I killed someone.
There was no hesitation as I slammed the knife into his back, into his legs, any piece of flesh I could find. All I cared about was my sister, and I would kill anyone who got in between us.
He collapsed, his blood spilling out into the snow.
I dropped the knife, looked at my red hands, and felt disoriented from all the blood. “Raven, are you okay?”
She was already on her feet, sprinting to a collapsed cabin. “Help me!” She stuck her bare hands into the fire and tried to lift the burning wood. Her palms immediately pulled away at the heat, but she tried again anyway.
If she was willing to burn her own hands, someone important was underneath. I rushed to her aid and did the same, grinding my teeth as we lifted the heavy piece of wood a little higher, revealing Magnus underneath.
But the two of us weren’t strong enough.
“Bethany, please.” Raven turned to the blonde who had helped me take down the executioner.
She took one look at Magnus, not showing an ounce of pity.
Raven’s hands were nearly on fire, but she didn’t drop the wood.
I had to pull my hands away because it was too much. I could smell my own burning flesh.
But Raven held her position without me. “Please, Bethany. Please…not him.”
Bethany still looked uncooperative, but she did it anyway.
The three of us lifted the wood off Magnus and pushed it aside.
Bethany and I immediately shoved our hands into the snow to cool the burns to our flesh.
Raven ignored the agony and hooked her arms underneath Magnus and dragged him away from the building, across the snow, and to safety.
Bethany pulled her hands out of the snow, rubbed them together, and then turned to me. “We’ve got to run now. They’re coming.”
I nodded.
She ran for it.
I lingered behind, watching Magnus rise to his feet and scream at Raven. “I fucking saved you!”
I ran to Raven on the ground and pulled her up by the hand. “Come on! We gotta go.”
Magnus was livid, his anger brighter than the flames destroying the cabins that had once surrounded us. “Run…before I kill you.”
She finally ran with me, her hand in mine, and didn’t look back.
We made it back to Paris.
Bethany was with us, packed in the car with a couple other girls we could fit. Everyone else had run, waved down cars on the road, took different routes through the countryside so the guards couldn’t hunt them down.
That part of the exodus wasn’t organized because we didn’t have the resources of the police, so we’d just hoped for the best.
We returned to the apartment, Bethany with us, and it was strange to be back in the living room after everything that had just happened. The burning cabins were still in my eyes. My hands still ached as if they were on fire. The fear and anxiety were just as paramount.
I wondered if Fender knew yet.
Would Magnus tell him the truth…that it was Raven?
Would he tell him I was there?
When Bethany stepped into the apartment, she had a breakdown. She fell to her knees and sobbed, touching the rug under her fingertips to make sure it was real, her tears making stains on the cream color.
Raven kneeled beside her and rubbed her back. “I know…I know.” She got choked up too.
It was impossible not to.
After Bethany took the day to get back on her feet, we helped her reunite with her mother and daughter. They lived outside Paris, in a little town in a small cottage. Raven used the last bit of her savings to rent a car and take her there.
We walked with her to the door, watched it open, and then saw the way her mother looked at her.
It was the same way my mother used to look at me.
The way Raven had looked at me when she saw me at the top of the stairs.
They hugged, cried, and then the sweetest little girl came down the hallway. “Mommy?”
Bethany fell to her knees and cried harder than she had in our living room. “Oh, baby…”
It’d been days since we burned the camp to the ground.
Raven and I didn’t talk much about it.
Like we were waiting for the repercussions.
We didn’t run because we had no money and nowhere to go.
And Raven was convinced the guards hadn’t seen our faces, that Magnus was the only one who knew. “He wouldn’t say anything.” She sat on the couch, her eyes out the window more than on the TV.
I was in the corner of the other couch, my knees pulled to my chest, watching the rain pelt the windows. “He looked pretty pissed off, Raven.”
“I know…but he wouldn’t.” Her face was permanently somber now, the high of liberation gone the second we’d left Bethany behind. Once the action and excitement were over, she was filled with sadness. Maybe even a little guilt. “He…wouldn’t.”
“Even if you’re right, there’s only one person who could have done it.” Fender would figure it out even if Magnus lied. I was the only other free person who had escaped the camp, and I certainly wouldn’t have done that alone.
She stared at the TV with a blank face. “The camp doesn’t exist. The girls are free. The drug enterprise doesn’t exist. There’s nothing for them anymore. They’ll move on.”
I knew Fender better than anyone. “He’ll want revenge.” And I wouldn’t be able to protect her this time.
“Then he can come and get it,” she whispered. “I have no regrets—and I never will.”