As I looked down at the shadows below, Varg's coarse voice echoed in my mind.
"Mourning the dead is the work of the weak." But those below were not dead. They were lives snatched back from between the teeth of monsters.
"Vespera!"
The voice was clearer this time, yet raspy. As I leaned out the window, I saw three figures rendered unrecognizable under the moonlight. Chloe, Dominic, and Melanie... The glittering, pristine youths from the human borders were gone; in their place stood three ghosts smeared with Alberta's dark earth, blood, and sludge. They had drenched themselves in mud from head to toe to mask their scent while fleeing the sterile, lethal hands of the vampires. There was no trace of grace left—only the raw, pungent scent of survival.
"Chloe!" I whispered, my voice breaking with a sob. "You're alive... F*ck... you're alive! You're in one piece!"
"We need to get out of here, Vespera," Chloe said, the dried mud on her face cracking as she spoke. Her eyes were darkened by the shadows of the horrific hours she had endured. "Varg might have locked you in a cage, but we're not leaving you to these monsters. Jump down, we'll catch you. We have to hit the terrain; if the wolves catch us here, we'll never see the light of day again."
Chloe looked around in terror. "Unless you're entering the 'World's Scariest Husband' contest, we have no business with him. Hurry up, move it!"
Dominic tossed his stone aside and grabbed the vines climbing the manor wall. "Hurry, Vespera! The vampires will realize we've escaped, and the wolves are everywhere. Come down before this place becomes your grave!"
Dominic blinked, his voice strained. "We're not in a game where we can just buy more credits to restart! I swear, I even thought about eating a mushroom like Mario just to grow, or smashing my head against the bricks. This madness has to end!"
I looked at the muddy scene below. On one side was Varg—the man who saw me as a 'freak,' locked me in a room, and mourned an unnamed woman whose name he never spoke. On the other side were my friends, who had returned from hell for me, trading their lives for mud.
The milky-white glow inside me seemed ready to explode at the sound of Chloe's voice. The blue vapors rising from beneath my fingernails drew an escape map into Alberta's night.
"I'm coming," I said, pushing aside the weak little girl inside me.
Varg might have cast me aside, claiming he wouldn't sleep in a bed without his Luna. But tonight, neither his locks, nor his loyalty, nor his savage laws would be enough to keep me here. He could stay within these cold walls with his nameless ghosts; I was diving into the filthiest form of freedom.
I tightened the sash of my robe and took one last look at the bloodstains and the silver ointment Varg had left on my skin. I was no longer a guest. I was no longer a prisoner. I was the architect of my own escape.
I climbed onto the windowsill. As Alberta's freezing wind licked my bare legs, I let myself fall toward the muddy hands waiting below.
When I dropped into those sludge-covered arms, cold snowflakes pierced my bare shoulders like needles. But the only thing I felt was the warmth of Chloe's trembling, mud-caked arms.
"Vespera, quick!" Dominic whispered, his voice nearly lost in the howling wind.
Dominic and Melanie began grabbing handfuls of the slushy, frozen mud and smearing it over me. The silvery ointment Varg had applied with his coarse fingers was now being buried under a black, filthy layer. Melanie rubbed the mud onto my neck, chest, and arms ruthlessly.
"We have to mask your scent," Chloe said, her eyes scanning the surroundings in terror. "Varg's giant wolves will pick up this scent from a thousand leagues away."
Chloe let out a small, hysterical giggle. "When one of those fanged fashion disasters pushed me down, I left my blood-stained scarf in the bushes. It smelled like blood and like me. As Marilyn said..."
"Chloe, shut up!" Melanie snapped, stifling a laugh. "We look like we rolled through Shrek's swamp. It's embarrassing that you're still trying to act charismatic. We look terrible."
"A shared passion between Marilyn and me," Chloe said, trying to light up her mournful eyes with a forced smile. "We wear nothing but No. 5 to bed, we don't need anything else... My perfume lured the wolves, look, they're everywhere. And now, we're rescuing the princess from the tower."
"Yes, but where to?" Dominic asked, burying me in mud down to my feet. They were scrambling to make a plan to flee the garden.
"If we head toward the three o'clock position, I know an abandoned spot. It reeks! The wolves' noses won't be able to tell us apart from the rot."
I shivered under the heavy, cold slime being smeared over me. Varg had locked me in like a 'freak,' burying his dreams within those stone walls. Now, my friends were burying their beauty under this mud just to save me.
I felt baptized in the sludge.I hid my smell with blood and mud.
"Move!" Dominic commanded. "Move it, god! Hurry!"
"God, please... let us never see those fangs and claws again!"
"So cold outside,your hair is wet."said Chloe. "Is all this luxury a joke? Couldn't he even afford you a hairdryer set?!"
"Chloe!"
"What!"
"Your voice awakens the wolves."Melanie hissed.
"I was always Team Werewolfs. I've given up on them all, I hate them."Dominic groaned.
"Stop shipping people! Swallow the mud and snow, be quiet!"
As the blizzard descended upon Alberta like a white shroud, the group began to sprint toward the abandoned mine shafts. Vespera's bare feet struck sharp fragments of ice, sinking and rising through snow that reached her knees. Behind her, the castle—the fortress of Varg's unshakable and coarse authority—receded like a massive tombstone into the storm.
With every breath, Vespera gasped for air, Varg's tone echoing in her mind: "I will not sleep in the bed of anyone other than my Luna."
"Run, Vespera!" Chloe shouted, gripping her hand tightly. "Don't look back! We won't let that monster find you!"
When the storm rendered them blind, the rusted, creaking mouths of the mine shafts emerged from the darkness. This place was like the forgotten, oxygen-depleted lungs of the world.
Varg could remain faithful to the memory of the woman whose name he longed for. Vespera would no longer be his "captive child."
She was now a vengeance cloaked in mud, an awakening blended with the storm.
As the cold, metallic scent of the mine burned her throat, she looked back at the storm one last time.
She didn't know if Varg would come after them; but if he did, he wouldn't find that small, weeping girl.
"Goodbye, heartless Alpha. The key isn't in your pocket anymore."