. . . Beep . . . Beep . . . Beep . . .
Reaching his limit of patience, one soldier finally lashed out at the annoying sound setting his eardrums aflame. "Would you shut that thing off?!"
Between the strands of hair the wind tossed into her eyes, Cress adjusted her frosted glasses she could barely see through. "It's necessary," was her only response before delving back into whatever played out on the screen in front of her.
He groaned in fury, not satisfied with her explanation. "If the princess has a tracker on her, then we can just follow it. We don't need to hear it!"
It's not that simple, she sighed within her mind. "She does not have a tracker on her, which is why we need the sound. The sonar system uses sound waves and radar to scan up to a hundred mile radius for a single body matching a unique description. I've input Princess Cinder's height, weight, hair color, eye–"
"It's necessary," General Ze'ev interrupted from the back of the pack. "And Miss Cress, it might be in your best interest not to call the target by her name."
Her cheeks heated even in the face of the bitter cold, slightly ashamed at what she was helping these men do. If another option existed, she reminded herself, she would take it.
Ze'ev's eyes found the mountain's edge once again with a clouded look glazing over them. He was deep in thought, Cress could tell, but his expression remained impassive to any other emotion. The soldier who couldn't stand the beeping noticed it as well and scoffed at the man who was supposedly his superior. She recalled seeing a lot of resentful glances from that particular soldier to Ze'ev on their journey to the frozen planet.
"What are you looking at?" he growled, finally.
A smile curled at the corner of his lips, though not how a usual smile should look. Thin and devious, none of the amusement reached his eyes set in a dark glare. Eyebrows slightly pointed towards his nose, Cress actually felt a chill from the hungry look he directed at the mountainside. His grin appeared more like a lion licking its lips than someone asked about sightseeing.
"Something I look forward to hunting," he chuckled with a husky voice.
Confused, but mostly frightened, at Ze'ev's turn to a darker side of himself, Cress found refuge in the growing ripple on her screen. Currently, there were more than eighty dots covering her screen of girls in the Capital who fit one description of the princess. One after another, the dots blinked off the screen, being eliminated by another of the descriptions she entered. Soon, the only one left would glow like a beacon guiding them to the princess.
Cress tried not to think about what horrible awful the soldiers planned to do to the princess once they found her. Death, that was inevitable. But whispers she had heard about the best of the Queen's army had her knowing her nails through her gloves. Would they torture her? Would they make her disappear? Would they make it as bloody as possible?
Would they make Cress watch?
Shivering, for the first time not from the cold, she tightened the jacket around her shoulders hoping it could thaw the fear into nothing. Her father might have been a doctor, but the sight of blood sent her head spinning. Knowing it was from a girl only a year older than she was made it no easier to swallow.
Another sound coming from her screen settled some of the nausea threatening to drain her stomach. In the screen's corner, a small red box signaled a warning for severe weather coming their way. Before clicking on the alert, Cress sent a cautious glance toward the nearly dark sky as night began yawning the day away.
"General," she tried carefully. Over the rim of her ice-crusted lenses, she saw his face had broken free of the wickedness and returned to his impassive glare. "There is a severe snow storm on the mountain's peak. And it is heading this way."
He cast his sights to the side of the mountain he had been staring at for most of their trek, then said, "It makes no difference to us."
"Yes sir," she replied meekly. "But it does to me."
With a hitched eyebrow he regarded her again, surprised she would speak out against him. To Cress's relief he didn't seem to find the act bothersome and barked orders to his men. The numbers and words didn't make sense to her until the men shifted, allowing the soldier who spoke out to fall into the last position. Ze'ev himself muddled through the thick snow to meet her at the head of the group.
"Stay behind me, I'll be able to block most of the wind. If the princess turns out to be farther than we can reach tonight, we'll take shelter."
Cress nodded in thanks as the continued, following her navigation as she directed them. Stepping into Ze'ev's footprints up the mountain, she kept her eyes locked on the almost clear screen. Only a handful of dots remained, slowly crossing off impossible matches to her requirements. Down to three, Cress realized two were deep in the actual town while one flashed not far from their location.
The last dot was on the mountain with them.
Not needing the confirmation from her network, she waited for the final dot to reveal itself anyway. A tugging deep in her gut told her no one else could be traveling up their very same mountain, leaving the direction of the palace, and heading toward whatever lay on the other side of the peaks. The beeping seized and outlined the only possible choice, the lone dot half-a-day away from their position.
"Found her," Cress reported. Following the coordinates, she led the pack of starving animals to what would eventually become their meal.
Hopefully I will have another chapter up in the next few weeks!
Cheesehead101: Thank you so much! I'm honored by your lovely reviews!
Malika DaughterOfWisdom: Thanks a bunch! There will be more fluff in the future!
muckiebuck266: Thank you!
Hyper-Blossom Z: Thanks a lot! I love the way Meyer ties in fairy tales to her novels, and I thought the characters would blend into another fairy tale world like The Snow Queen's.
Another gracious thank you to everyone reading and reviewing! Please review!