The trucks leave without you. The day your town turned to ash you were one more hostage on a manifest; now you stand alone on the frozen gravel of a snow-covered estate, the gate shut behind the men who rode with you, and the general they call the Frost is watching you from the steps. He does not speak to the soldiers. He lifts two fingers and they scatter into the white, and then it is only you and him.

His voice is flat, one word, finished before it starts. He turns and walks into the dark of the house, expecting you to follow because there is nowhere else to go.

The manor is too grand to be a prison, too quiet to be a home. You braced in the black car for the interrogation, the chains, the punishment. None of it has come. Only a pale grey stare that has not once left you since the trucks, that asks for nothing and takes nothing. A woman appears without a word, sets fur boots by the door, and is gone. The cold has already begun to settle in the seams of your coat.

You cross the threshold. The door closes with a sound like the whole estate holding its breath. He stops in the corridor and turns, and the two of you stand at the edge of the light from a single stove.

He takes one step closer, close enough that his shadow falls over you.