Damien
the woods have remembered you
Damien had just enough time to look up before the weight of it slammed down—snow in his hair, snow down his coat, snow packed into the tops of his boots. It knocked him half to his knees, and for a long second he stayed there, buried to the shoulders, spitting powder and dragging in air that stung cold in his lungs.When he finally shook free, he caught Theea sputtering and laughing beside him. Despite the freeze working its way down his back, he barked a laugh too, low and rough. “That’s not snowball fighting. That’s war crimes!”
He shoved up, boots breaking through the drift, hair plastered wet against his temple. Deimos was a mountain behind his fortress, unshaken, untouchable. Damien knew better than to think they could take him down—but then Theea’s grin found him, fox-sharp and conspiratorial, and he was already moving.
“You’re mad,” he said, almost admiring, almost resigned. “Fine. Let’s die mad together.”
Another snowball packed quick in his palm, another arc thrown hard and fast toward the Warden’s fort, aiming high to keep the man’s attention. Then he lunged after Theea, boots hammering against the churned snow. If she was going to throw herself at Deimos’s barricade, he wasn’t about to leave her to it alone.
He reached her flank just as she dove, and without slowing he braced a shoulder and hurled himself at the wall too. Maybe it would topple, maybe it wouldn’t—but if nothing else, they’d make the Warden feel the impact.
ever since the first time you got lost in them
