Everything has a price tag. I learned that when I was six and traded a shiny marble for a pocketknife that didn’t have a blade. I got cheated. Ever since then, I look at the world like a ledger. Love is just a high-risk loan. Trust is a currency that most people counterfeit.
Remy stood at the door of the mountain lodge and felt the cold wind try to steal the air right out of her lungs. Her boots were thin. She had spent her last fifty dollars on a tank of gas and a tire chain that looked like it would snap if it hit a pebble. She was an investigative journalist with no job, no reputation, and a bank account that was basically a graveyard.
She knocked. The sound was flat against the heavy wood. She was here to find Bernie.
He wasn’t called “Prince” anymore. The papers called him a thief. They called him a traitor who ran away with the crown’s money before the revolution could take his head. To Remy, he was just a story. He was the one big win that could buy her life back. If she could get the truth out of him, she could sell it to the highest bidder and finally stop eating cold beans out of a tin.
The door groaned open.
The man standing there didn’t look like royalty. He looked like a guy who had been chewed up by the world and spat out into the snow. He was wearing a heavy wool sweater that was unraveling at the cuffs. His beard was thick and messy. But his eyes were the same ones she had seen in the blurry photos: sharp, dark, and full of a deep, ancient fear.
“The lodge is closed,” he said. His voice was like gravel rubbing together.
“The road is washed out,” Remy lied. Or maybe it wasn’t a lie. The snow was coming down so thick it looked like the sky was falling in chunks. “I’ll freeze to death in my car. That’s a high price to pay for a closed sign, don’t you think?”
Bernie looked at her. He didn’t see a woman in distress. He saw a threat. He weighed her worth right there on the porch. He looked at her shaking hands and her cheap coat.
“Inside,” he said.
The lodge was a hollow ribcage of a building. It was all shadows and the smell of old pine needles. There were no lights. Just a small fire in a massive stone fireplace that looked like it was struggling to stay alive.
“I don’t have food for two,” Bernie said. He sat in a chair by the fire. He didn’t offer her a seat.
“I’ve got a bag of jerky and some crackers,” Remy said. She sat on the floor, close to the heat. Her toes felt like they were being pricked by a thousand hot needles as they thawed. “We can trade.”
“Everything is a trade with you people,” he muttered.
“You don’t even know who ‘you people’ are,” she said.
He leaned forward. The firelight hit his face, showing the jagged scar that ran from his ear to his jaw. “You’re a hunter. I can smell the ink on your skin. You want to know where the money went. You want to know if I killed my brother.”
Remy felt a cold spike of dread in her stomach. It wasn’t the cold from outside. It was the way he looked at her. It was like he was looking at a ghost.
“I want the truth,” she said. Her voice broke, just a little.
“The truth is a luxury,” Bernie said. “And we are both very poor.”
The wind screamed outside. It sounded like a woman crying for help. Then, there was a heavy thud against the side of the house. Not the wind. Something solid.
Bernie stood up in one smooth motion. He didn’t look like a disgraced drunk anymore. He looked like a wolf. He reached into the woodpile and pulled out a heavy iron poker.
“What was that?” Remy whispered. Her heart was slamming against her ribs. She could feel the pulse in her throat: a fast, frantic beat.
“The debt collectors,” Bernie said. He looked at the door. “They didn’t follow you, Remy. They followed the scent of the story. You brought them right to the kitchen table.”
The fear in the room was thick. It was a physical thing. It felt like the air had turned into lead. Remy realized then that she had made a terrible bargain. She had traded her safety for a chance at a career.
“Who are they?” she asked.
“People who don’t care about ledgers,” Bernie said. “They only care about silence.”
Another thud. Then, the sound of glass breaking in the back of the lodge.
Bernie grabbed Remy’s arm. His grip was like a vice. His hand was warm, but it made her shiver. “The cellar,” he hissed. “Move. Now.”
They ran through the dark. Remy tripped over a rug, and her knee hit the floor with a sickening crack. The pain was white-hot. She gasped, her eyes stinging with tears. Bernie didn’t leave her. He scooped her up, throwing her over his shoulder like a sack of grain.
He dropped her into the dark of the cellar. It smelled like damp earth and rot. He climbed down after her and pulled the heavy wooden hatch shut. He bolted it.
They sat in the pitch black. Remy was shaking so hard her teeth were chattering. She could hear footsteps above them. Slow. Deliberate. The floorboards groaned under the weight of someone who wasn’t trying to be quiet.
“I’m scared,” Remy whispered. It was a secret. She never told anyone she was scared. She always played the tough girl. But here, in the dark, with the sound of killers walking over her head, the mask was gone.
“Good,” Bernie whispered back. He was right next to her. She could feel the heat radiating off his body. “Fear keeps you sharp. It’s the only thing you have that’s worth anything right now.”
He reached out and found her hand. His palm was rough. He squeezed her fingers. It wasn’t a romantic gesture. It was a lifeline. It was a trade: his strength for her silence.
“Why are they doing this?” she breathed.
“Because I didn’t steal the money,” Bernie said. His voice was a tiny thread of sound in the dark. “My family gave it to the people who are currently walking in my kitchen. It was a bribe. For a war that never happened. I’m the only witness left who knows which accounts the money is in. I’m a living debt.”
Upstairs, a chair overturned. A plate smashed.
Remy felt a tear run down her cheek. It felt like a hot wire. She thought about her life. She thought about all the bridges she had burned to get a headline. She had valued the wrong things. She had valued the “win” over the person. And now, the person was the only thing keeping her heart beating.
“If we get out,” she whispered, “I won’t write it. I’ll burn the notes.”
“Don’t make promises you can’t afford,” Bernie said.
But he pulled her closer. He wrapped his arms around her, tucking her head under his chin. He felt solid. He felt like a mountain. For the first time in her life, Remy didn’t feel like she was looking for a deal. She felt like she was just… there.
The footsteps stopped right over the hatch.
Remy held her breath. Her lungs ached. She felt the sudden coldness in her chest that comes when you know the end is a second away. She looked up at the cracks in the wood. A sliver of light from a flashlight poked through.
The person above them stayed there for a long time. Remy could hear them breathing. It was a heavy, wet sound.
Then, the person moved away.
They sat in the dark for hours. Or maybe it was years. Time doesn’t work right when you’re waiting to die.
The storm eventually died down. The screaming wind turned into a low moan. The lodge grew quiet. Not a good quiet. A heavy, waiting quiet.
“They’re gone,” Bernie said. He didn’t move his arms.
“How do you know?”
“The silence changed. It’s empty now. Before, it was full of gravity.”
He let go of her slowly. The loss of his warmth felt like a physical blow. Remy rubbed her sore knee. Her body felt like it had been run over by a truck.
“What now?” she asked.
Bernie stood up and pushed the hatch open. Grey morning light spilled in. It was cold and pale. He climbed out and helped her up.
The lodge was trashed. Everything of value was broken. The walls were kicked in. But the people were gone. They had probably figured Bernie had escaped into the white-out. Nobody survives a mountain storm on foot.
Bernie looked at Remy. He looked at her messy hair and her bruised face. He looked at the way she was holding her notebook like a shield.
“The road will be clear enough for a truck in an hour,” he said. “You should go.”
“And you?”
“I have to find a new hole to crawl into.”
Remy looked at the fireplace. The ashes were grey. She felt a deep, soulful ache in her chest. It was the feeling of a life half-lived. She had spent all her time counting the cost of things, and she had ended up with nothing.
“I have a house,” she said. Her voice was small. “It’s in the city. It’s small and the plumbing is loud. But nobody looks for princes there. And nobody looks for failed reporters either.”
Bernie looked at her. He didn’t say anything for a long time. He was doing the math. He was looking at the risk.
“What’s the price?” he asked.
Remy took a step toward him. She reached out and touched the wool of his sleeve. “No price,” she said. “Just a trade. You keep me from being alone. I keep you from being dead.”
Bernie looked down at her hand. His face broke. Not a smile, but a softening. A surrender. He leaned his forehead against hers. He smelled like woodsmoke and old fear.
“That’s a bad deal for you, Remy,” he whispered.
“I’ve made worse,” she said.
They stood there in the ruin of the lodge. The world was still dangerous. The people who wanted them dead were still out there. The fear hadn’t gone away. It was just different now. It was a fear they shared.
And in the cold, grey light of the mountain, it was the only thing that felt real. They didn’t have a plan. They didn’t have money. All they had was the heat between them and a long road down the mountain.
It was a high price. But as they walked out into the snow, Remy decided it was the first thing she had ever bought that was actually worth the cost.