Page 4 of Trapped with the Ice Queen

Tears welled up in her eyes again. For the first time, she let herself feel the weight of it—the helplessness; the fear; the awful, crushing loneliness.

No one was coming.

She rested her forehead against the steering wheel, her breath forming tiny clouds that lingered in the frigid air. The silence crept back in, pressing down on her chest like a heavy weight.

2

ALEX

The storm was alive. Not in the romanticized, storybook way city folk imagined, but alive in the raw, unforgiving way Alex Carter knew all too well.

The wind howled through the pines, bowing their branches in reverence to Mother Nature, while icy gusts whipped at the windows of her cabin. From the warmth of her kitchen, Alex sipped black coffee, steam curling into the air as her mind cycled through the list of tasks she’d already completed.

The woodpile was stacked high, the generator ran smoothly, and the fire in the stonehearth burned steady. The scent of pine and cedar filled the small space, a testament to the freshly split logs she’d hauled in earlier. Her cabin was a sanctuary of practicality and self-sufficiency, every corner reflecting her need for order and efficiency. She’d built shelves to hold neatly labeled jars of dried goods and canned vegetables, made curtains from thick fabric scraps that kept the draft at bay, and hung her snowboarding medals on a beam out of sight—mementos of a life that now felt like a half-remembered dream.

The cabin was hers in every sense: simple, efficient, and functional. It was a far cry from the blaring lights and crowded slopes of the Winter Olympics, where her name had once been shouted by strangers who now only remembered her in passing.

Alex Carter? Wasn’t she the snowboard champion? The multiple gold medalist? Years ago? I can’t remember the year. It was a long time ago.

Here, in this corner of the Rockies, she was alone, and it suited her just fine.

Alex stretched, feeling the satisfying pull of her muscles after morning chores, and set the empty mug on the counter. Her reflectionflickered in the window: sharp cheekbones, chapped lips, dirty-blonde hair in a short cut still mussed from her beanie. Outside, the world was white chaos. The kind of storm that turned roads into death traps and made every decision a matter of survival.

She glanced at the clock mounted on the wall, a basic analog she’d salvaged from her parents’ garage years ago. The hands pointed to 3:30. Her late-afternoon patrol would need to start soon.

She moved to the mudroom section of her cabin, pausing to adjust the line of gear hanging on a rack she’d built herself: snowshoes, ropes, ice axes, an old first-aid kit in a dented red tin. The items were as well-worn as she was, tools of a life spent knowing how dangerous the mountains could be. She added a flare gun to the pile, the bright orange handle a sharp contrast against the muted wood paneling of the room.

Alex pulled on her snow gear with practiced precision. Layers of warmth and water-resistance went on first, followed by her thick-soled boots laced tight, gloves snug, and a waterproof jacket lined with reflective tape. Each piece bore the scars of years spentnavigating storms like this one—torn seams stitched back together, scuffed soles, and faded fabric. She wrapped a scarf around her neck and tugged it up to cover her nose.

Her breath clouded the lenses briefly as she glanced out the cabin’s small window. The storm seemed to mock her with its intensity, snow whipping in wild arcs that made it hard to distinguish sky from earth. The whiteout conditions would be perilous, but she wasn’t deterred.

Patrolling was a self-given responsibility, one she could technically ignore, but she wouldn’t. The mountain didn’t care who lived or died; it simply existed, indifferent and magnificent. Alex couldn’t afford that kind of indifference. Not since that one time?—

She shook her head, unwilling to let the memory surface fully.

“Just another day,” she muttered under her breath, steeling herself as she grabbed a radio from the shelf.

The familiar weight of the radio in her hand steadied her. She'd done this hundreds of times before, though something about today's patrol feltdifferent.

She stepped outside, the cold biting at the strip of exposed skin between her scarf and hat. Snow swirled violently, stinging her cheeks and muffling the sound of her boots crunching through the drifts. The storm had erased all familiar landmarks, reducing the landscape to a uniform, suffocating white.

The cabin door shut behind her with a muffled thud, the sound swallowed instantly by the wind. Her truck waited just beyond, its dark shape barely visible. She trudged through the drifts, each step an effort against the storm’s fury, and climbed into the cab.

The truck’s interior was as no-nonsense as the rest of her life. A wool blanket lay folded on the passenger seat, a compact emergency kit tucked beneath it. A pair of snow chains clinked against each other in the footwell. She patted the dashboard affectionately. “Alright, girl. Let’s see what you’ve got.”

The engine groaned awake as she turned the key, a low growl of defiance against the storm. Alex let it idle a moment as she adjusted the heater knobs. The map clipped to the dashboard showed her planned route: a loop down the main roadleading to the highway before circling back to the cabin.

It was a routine she knew well, one that allowed her to check for stranded vehicles or signs of trouble. She didn’t expect to find anyone out here in this weather. No one should’ve been reckless enough to venture out, but “should” didn’t mean much when people panicked.

She eased the truck into gear, its tires gripping the icy ground, and began the descent. The windshield wipers fought against the barrage of snow, creating narrow strips of visibility that let her see just enough of the road ahead.

As she drove, the storm roared around her, and yet Alex felt oddly at peace. This was her element—the solitude, the challenge, the untamable beauty of the Rockies. It was a far cry from the life she’d left behind, but out here, she could breathe.

The snow had always been her first love. Only love.

The first half-hour passed in eerie quiet, the only sounds coming from the heater and the rhythmic swish of the windshield wipers. The road wound through denseforest, the lodgepole pines leaning under the weight of the storm. Visibility was abysmal, and Alex kept her hands steady on the wheel, her eyes scanning the terrain for anything unusual.

The storm was relentless, battering the truck with sheets of snow that turned the windshield into a flickering blur. Alex adjusted the defroster, watching as a small patch of glass cleared again, revealing the swirling chaos outside. The map clipped to the dashboard wavered in the heater’s gusts, but her route was committed to memory, even the parts that the map didn’t reveal. The sharp turns, sudden dips, and narrow shoulders of this mountain road were as familiar to her as the callouses on her hands.

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