Pitch glowers at you, inspecting you with a sneer. He moves closer, causing you to move back and trip over a rock. With a scoff, he reaches out to you, wrapping his hand around your neck. You clutch his wrist and try to pry his fingers off, but his grip is unwavering. He could choke you to death, but all he does is hold you there, forcing you to your toes with the slightest tug. His thumb moves under your chin, forcing your head up to meet his gaze. You kick at him, trying to lose his grip. Your legs aren't long enough to even touch him.

With his free hand, Pitch reaches for a lock of your hair, rubbing it between his fingers. His eyes have a glint of an emotion you thought impossible to find in the Nightmare King: longing. As quickly as it came, it vanishes, replaced with a sneer. He brings your face closer to his, turning your face with a press of his thumb. His nail digs into your jaw. Locking your eyes with his, you can see your reflection in his golden irises, fear on your features while he bores into your soul. An electric shock staggers through your system, causing you to shudder and gasp as darkness takes your sight for a second.

Pitch releases your neck, but the Nightmares around you keep you trapped. You can't read him when he opens his mouth to speak. Before he can say anything, a horrendous creak comes from the sky, the world spinning away in newfound darkness. The darkness wraps around you, ensnaring you tighter the more you try to free yourself. The creaking noise grows louder, prompting you to snap open your eyes.

You're in your bed at Lady Jay's, the blankets tangled around you. The other four girls you share the room with are nowhere in sight. Propping yourself up on your elbow, you feel your heart pounding in your ears and that you can't stop shaking in fear and cold. Wait, cold? Twisting your torso, you find that the window is open, Jack Frost sitting on the windowsill with his back to you, looking down on the snow-covered streets below.

Eyes widening, you shift around in your blankets, wrestling them free and huddling underneath with only your head poking out. Jack hums a lazy tune, tapping his staff to the beat of the song. He hasn't noticed you're awake.

"Jack!" you whisper-shout, startling him. He falls backwards off the edge, landing on his back next to your bed.

He groans with a smile on his face, his feet resting on the wall. Slightly pink with embarrassment, he says, "G'morning, Snowflake."

"What are you doing here?" you continue to whisper-shout.

"Well, I figured that we could have some fun today, so I was waiting for you to wake up. Why are you crying?"

Wiping a hand across your face, you find your palm is wet and a small line of red is its heel. Stepping out of the other side of the bed, you rush to the bathroom, thankful none of the girls are around. Jack jumps to his feet and follows you, watching you inspect your face in the mirror. Your eyes are red and puffy. With a tilt, you can see the thin, scabbed line that runs from the middle of your chin to your jaw, the part that was bleeding earlier already scabbing. Moving your hair, you see faint marks on your neck. In the mirror, your hand trembles as you raise it.

"Are you okay?" Jack asks, breaking the silence.

The dream was real. "I—" your breath is shallow when you try to answer. "I'm fine." But you're not. He can see you're not.

"What happened?"

You shake your head, your hand rubbing your throat. You can't look at him.

"Tell me." He rests a hand on your shoulder, his other moving to your wrist, removing your hand from your neck. The marks are faint, but the mark from Pitch's thumb is prominent, discoloring the area around your Eve's Apple. His grip on your wrist is hard, barely containing his anger. "Please."

You shake your head again, resting it on his shoulder. The dream was real. Everything that happened…

"Hmm…Well," he begins again, "when was the last time you got a dream?"

You can't remember any dream past the nightmare. Muffled, you say, "I don't know."

His body shifts against your forehead. "Didn't Sandy give you a dream last night? I asked him to."

You whip your head up. "That was you? You gave me that? That was no dream! That was a nightmare with Pitch and everything!" Your voice rises an octave and speeds up before you realize the bathroom door is open.

You close the door as Jack sputters, "What? Pitch? What did he—did he do this to you? You have to tell me what happened!"

"No."

"Please. This is really important. The other Guardians have to know. Please."

You bite your lip and feel hot tears fall and blur your vision. Jack hugs you, resting his cheek on your head.

"You died," you whisper, "You all died."

He squeezes you. "And Pitch?"

"He grabbed me." He grabbed you and marked you through a dream. "He was looking for something. He could see me."

"Is there anything that would make Pitch come after you?" he asks, pulling away slightly.

"No." You watch his expression and remember what he said earlier. "Why did you have to ask to send me a dream?"

"You're not a kid anymore," he says shrugging. "I didn't think Sandy sent dreams to anyone who wasn't a kid."

"Maybe that's it," you say, pulling away completely. "I'm not a kid. I'm seventeen. You, Sandy, and the others are the Guardians of Childhood. I'm not a child anymore and yet I believe in you." You watch his concerned, upset, handsome face. Stop. Stopstopstopstopstop, you chastise yourself. He's immortal. He'll get bored of you and leave when you get older.

He'll leave you. Your only friend will leave you. What right do you have confining an immortal spirit to your life through friendship? He'll stay young while you'll grow old. He has more important things to do than be around someone as insignificant as you.

"Go, Jack," you whisper. "Leave, please. It's Christmas Eve; North probably needs you." If not, someone else does. You open the bathroom door and return to your room, feeling him behind you.

"Are you sure?" he asks, the room devoid of anyone but you two.

"Yeah." You don't look at him when you answer, instead choosing to focus on your unmade bed.

"Okay, then." He walks past you to the window, soundless. You sit on the bed, fingers playing with a loose seam on a blanket, wrapping the string around them. The wooden sill creaks when he steps on it. Before you hear the whoosh of his winds flying him away, you feel a quick, cool tough against your hair. When you touch it, frost comes away on your fingertips. You turn to the window, about to ask him what he did, but he's gone. Sighing, you clutch the blanket and bury your face in it, crying all over again. It's better that he's gone. After a while, you close the window and lock it.

For the rest of the day, you go through the motions of your chores, numb. The Christmas tree in the foyer gains a few last-minute ornaments. The carpets in the corridors are vacuumed for dirt. Dust bunnies are swept away on wooden floors. Dishes cause your hands to be prunes. At least you don't have to work outside.

The only notable moment that happens during the day is when an eight-year-old girl and an eighteen-year-old boy come to visit you. The girl is blonde, the boy brunet: Sophie and Jamie Bennett. They end up dragging you outside into a snowball fight with the other kids on the block. Their antics make you smile when you recall the memory later during dinner, but it doesn't make you happy. Jamie was probably put up to inviting you outside; none of his friends were opposed to you, but none of them tried learning your name. That night, alone yet with four other girls in the room, you curl in a ball of sadness and silently cry yourself to sleep. Your head is turned toward the moon. Blissfully, you have no dreams, just soothing darkness.

I do apologize with the delay in this update for the chapter. My beta and sister, Ashley, got an emergency roommate and spent the past few days preparing. There's a cat in her room now!

With this series, as in ROTG in general, I feel like the fandom doesn't characterize Jack the way he should be and is just appreciated for his looks. I am guilty of this and I admit it. Ergo, I am trying to fix it. Jack is just a boy. He is an immortal, immature boy who can be serious, but would rather have fun. He's not easy to write, especially when as the author, you want to make him more like yourself, more mature. I feel like this is also a problem with the current Young Adult industry; protagonists are written as nearly omnipotent individuals who figure something out with but a split second. Yes, these characters are meant to be like teenagers, and yes, there are very intelligent teenagers, but I think it's insulting for someone to write a protagonist as all-knowing when that is not how teenagers would act, when they are not ready for that responsibility, when they would not know what to do. I'm going off on a tangent, but this is something that I need to remind myself for when I start publishing my own original content.
-Z