I have frostbite.
My skin has turned pale and my lips blue.
I have frostbite.
Because of him, I am dying.
“Rosaline,” I am being called… a whisper in my ear as I sleep. “Rosaline!” but I don’t want to listen. I’ve lived in a world full of ice my entire life. I’ve lived in a place that I hated because I had no idea where to go, and I had no idea how to survive being the hunted. I was not willing to risk it… not until I met him. In my world, I was a monster. I was not a Keeper; I was not Rosaline. I was simply a foot stool. I was simply a slave to those that were rich with “power”, but they didn’t know who I really was. My best friend didn’t know who I really was. She was one of them. She was the first of many to betray me. She turned her back on me because of jealousy, because she was a brat. He didn’t want her. He thought she acted like a little puppy dog, always following us around like she had a leash attached to her neck. I guess he didn’t love me either.
I feel the cold creeping up my legs like hundreds of little spiders, biting me as they go. I hear my fire slowly burning down, no longer crackling next to my door. I know something is wrong, but in my sleep, despite who is really next to me, I see him. I see the moment that everything went wrong playing over and over in my head like its on replay. I see the first day I saw his face. I see the day I was assigned as his guardian.
Over and over and over and over and over I replay that last moment. The moment my breath was stolen from me, the moment I was betrayed by the one I loved… The moment I knew the real Wynter.
I was left for dead in the snow. If my brother hadn’t been looking for me, had he not heard about what was going on in Russia- the death of my family, my being arrested- he wouldn’t have found me there, and I would have died. There would have been no more Rosaline Maria Vasquez. All  because of Wynter Duranichev and his father, Aleksandr Duranichev.