Chapter 24: Five Hours in the Snow
Alex
Five hours.
It had been five long, endless hours spent on my knees in the freezing courtyard snow.
At first, the cold had felt sharp. It was biting at my skin and screaming for my attention. It was a pain that I could at least understand. But as the time passed, the cold turned into something much worse. It became a deep, hollow ache that crept slowly into my bones and my marrow. It settled there as if it planned to stay inside my body forever. My knees did not feel like part of me anymore. They felt like they had fused to the frozen ground. I could no longer tell where my skin ended and where the icy snow began.
My breath was coming slow and shallow now. Every time I took an inhale, the freezing air felt like it was burning my lungs. Every time
