Was I dead?
I think I was dead.
There were clouds in my head-thick, suffocating. My body didn’t feel like mine. I couldn’t tell if it was moving or floating, heavy or light. The world around me was strange, distant, like I was caught between two realms.
Snow.
I remembered snow. Biting winds, the cruel embrace of frost gnawing at my skin. I’d been running. From what? From who? Him. Maybe me.
But now… warmth.
Why did I feel warm when I should’ve been frozen solid? Why did my veins hum like molten fire coursed through them?
My eyes fluttered open, but the world remained blurry, soft edges and muted colours blending into one. Something heavy pinned me down. Not crushing, but holding me-an unfamiliar weight on my limbs. I blinked, my lashes brushing against skin that felt raw, and finally, shapes started to form.
Blankets. Thick, suffocating blankets.
And hands.
Warm, calloused hands sliding up my thighs, pressing into my skin like they belonged there. Strong, possessive hands that didn’t tremble the way I did. My breath hitched, and for a moment, my fever-addled mind whispered nonsense.
More.
The warmth was addictive, and even in my delirium, I found myself leaning into it. Every touch sparked a flicker of life in my frozen body. Who was it?
“Ptichka,” a deep voice murmured, rough and low like the growl of a storm.
Ptichka. I knew that voice.
Judas.
The realization should’ve been a slap, but it wasn’t. Instead, it felt like velvet-soft, wrong, and far too tempting.
I managed a hoarse whisper, my throat a desert. “Why… warm? Why… here?”
His lips were close. Brushing against my ear as he muttered, caressing my senses and making them his solely for this world belonged to him along with mine. Tainted words teased my ears. “Then where? You’d rather die buried in snow than be with me? I won’t let my possession die that easily.”
Possession. His favorite word. I should’ve been furious, but my mind was slow, hazy, and his voice was like a lullaby wrapped in razor wire.
“You’re… warm,” I mumbled, shivering despite the heat consuming me. Moving closer to him, breathing him, drinking him and drowning in him.
“Yes, baby,” he whispered keeping his tone bordering on possessiveness. “Unlike you, I’m not a reckless little fool who thinks she can outlast a Russian storm.” His hand cupped my cheek, fingers brushing the damp hair away. “What the hell were you thinking?”
I didn’t have an answer. Maybe I wasn’t thinking at all. Maybe that was the point.
His hand trailed down, grazing the curve of my waist, his thumb dragging a line that left fire in its wake. I whimpered, half in protest, half in surrender. He was touching me everywhere but between my legs. And I knew it was bad, but I couldn’t process anything. I needed his warmth. I didn’t want to stay in that snow. It was so cold.
“Cold,” I murmured moving closer to him and feeling him stiffened before he snuggled me to his broad chest.
“You’re cold because you’re stubborn,” My nightmare groaned as his voice hardened and but his hands softened. One slipped beneath the blankets, cupping my hip, his palm branding me with its heat. “And you’re warm now because I’m here. You owe me for that, Ptichka.”
A shiver-not from the cold-rattled my frame. “What… what do you want?”
His laugh was low and dangerous. “Oh, little bird, how many times do I have to explain, huh? You just need to understand one thing.” His fingers dug into my skin just enough to draw my attention fully. “You don’t get to leave me. Not in the snow, not in the fire, not in any hell you can imagine, are we clear?”
The words stung, sweet poison dripping from his tongue. But beneath the venom, there was something else. Something raw.
I hated him.
But he pressed that trigger for me.
I hated that his hands steadied my trembling. I hated that his warmth chased away the cold, that his voice filled the void in my mind.
I hated him.
But I needed him.
For the heart that couldn’t be held, was the soul most cursed to ache.
“You… make no sense,” I whispered, my words slurring as my eyes started to close again.
“And yet,” Judas murmured as his lips brushed my temple like a promise he had no intention of keeping, “you keep coming back to me, little bird.”
Before the darkness took me, his voice curled around me, low and intimate, like he was telling me a secret meant for no one else.
“Sleep, my little dove. Heal. Because when you wake, I’m going to remind you exactly what it means to belong to me.”
*******
I didn’t know how long I floated in that abyss. Seconds? Hours? Days? Time didn’t matter, not when my thoughts were a broken reel, looping snow and fire, freezing winds and his warmth. Always his warmth.
When I woke again, the first thing I noticed was the absence of cold. My body no longer trembled uncontrollably, though a dull ache had settled deep in my bones, a reminder of how close I’d come to the edge. The second thing I noticed was his absence.
The room was empty.
For a moment, the silence was deafening, pressing down on me like a physical weight. The warmth still lingered, though faint and fading, as though the space had just been abandoned. The air smelled faintly of him-cigarettes, leather, and something darker, something uniquely Judas.
Was he here?
Did he bring me here?
Of course, he did.
I forced myself upright sluggishly and unwelcome, every muscle groaned in protest. The thick blankets pooled around my waist and their heavy warmth was replaced by a chill that seeped in despite the room’s apparent coziness. The fire crackled in the nearby hearth mocked me and the heat failed to reach the cold hollow in my chest.
He was gone.
I shouldn’t have cared. His absence should’ve felt like a reprieve, a chance to think clearly, to breathe without the suffocating weight of his presence. But instead, it left a strange ache, a void where his hands, his voice, his gaze had been.
Swinging my legs over the edge of the bed, I planted my feet on the floor. The wood was cold against my skin, and I grimaced, clutching the edge of the mattress for support as I tried to stand. My legs wobbled like a newborn foal’s, but I managed to stay upright, my breath coming in shallow, uneven gasps.
A single chair sat near the hearth, its back to me, and on the table beside it was a half-empty glass of amber liquid. Whiskey, probably. Judas’s signature.
I took a shaky step forward, then another, my bare feet dragging against the floor. My mind was a foggy mess, fragments of memory flashing like broken glass. The snow. The cold. His hands on me, anchoring me to the present, pulling me back from the brink.
Why?
My hand reached for the chair’s backrest, steadying myself as I peered at the table. Beside the glass was a folded piece of paper, its edges crisp and sharp. My name was scrawled across the front in his unmistakable handwriting, the letters bold and deliberate.
Ptichka.
My fingers trembled as I unfolded the note, the paper crackled in the silence. The words were simple, direct, but they carried the weight of him, his presence bleeding through even in his absence.
“Don’t wander. I’ll be back soon.”
The helplessness twisted and turning as I lowered myself into the chair. My body sagged against the worn wood and every ounce of strength drained from me. The firelight danced across the words, casting shadows that seemed to shift and writhe like spectres.
I hated him.
But his absence reminded me of something far worse: the emptiness he’d filled, the cold he’d chased away. The thought unsettled me and carved a hollow pit in my chest.
I clenched the note in my fist, crumpling the paper as my jaw tightened.
I wanted to ask him about those pictures, about those notes, and about everything. But then what? Would it change anything?
He was the type of man who thrived on my misery, who spun lies so intricately they felt like truth. Even if he gave me something, a sliver of honesty, it would be tangled in threads meant to bind me closer, to trap me in his web.
He would never tell me.
Frustration gnawed at me, and my throat tightened.
Maybe he didn’t think I deserved to know.
A bitter laugh escaped me. What was I even doing?
The fire whispered lies of warmth. The cold lived in me now, a quiet, relentless thing.
I thought of leaving, of vanishing into the snow. But the storm wasn’t freedom. It was just another prison.
Judas had done that-turned every choice into a cage.
I hated him. Not for what he’d done, but for the way he lingered. In my mind. In the cracks of my soul.
The curtains hung heavy over the window. Beyond them, the snow erased everything. Landmarks, purpose.
A blank world.
Like me.
I wasn’t waiting for the storm to end. I was waiting for him. And I hated that most of all.
I was so in my thoughts I didn’t hear it at first but the sound of the helicopter was distant at first, faint and muffled by the thick walls of the mansion. But it grew louder, more insistent, like a storm breaking through the air. My body stiffened and every muscle locked up as realization dawned on me. He was back.