53
Jeryn
I turned to face the sun. But not the same one. Not anymore.
Beyond the medical den’s open mullioned doors, the castle terrace extended toward a vista of alpine mountains capped in snow. The afternoon sun was a gray bruise in the sky, dull and murky compared to the burning firmament I’d grown used to.
A shaft of pale light hit my profile. The wind pierced my skin, its chill cutting across the tight ledge of my jaw. Winter did that to people, polished the essential parts. I appreciated how it numbed the soul, the blast of cold enabling me to function.
I rounded back to the table, my boots striking the tile floor. The sterilized room peered blankly at me. Shelves of manuscripts, scrolls, diagrams. Instruments with smooth and serrated edges. Curettes, extractors, tubes, shears, lancets, surgical knives. Blue cupboards of flasks, beakers, jars. Tinctures and elixirs.
This den was the only place that made current sense to me. Everywhere else in this fortress, I hadn’t gotten used to the surplus of luxuries. Glass windows. Polished furnishings. Baths and servants at my disposal. Meals consisting of game and wine. The wardrobe of velvet and leather. People bowing and curtsying the instant I strode into a room. Overwhelming.
On the surface before me stood a row of bottles, each labeled by my hand. Specimens of a legend and a kingdom. Plants of the rainforest, as well as the woodlands looming outside this stronghold.
My fur coat was draped over a chair. A draft rustled the prickly collar.
I flattened my palms on the table and stared at the vessels. Transporting my remedies from the ruins, plus samples of the rainforest’s flora, had offered advanced remedies. Yet I scowled. I had been at this for ages, trying to find the correct blend of Summer and Winter that would yield new treatments. Personal restoratives of a family nature, in addition to humanely tested remedies, compared with the toxic mixtures and sharp methods of experimentation mounted on the wall.
I might not succeed. Even assuming I did, this feat could take decades at minimum.
So be it. I’d been bred for that.
A knock caused the door to wince. My eyes sliced toward the entrance. Fucking incompetence. I had given instructions not to be disturbed. It appeared I would have to illustrate my wishes more tangibly.
Well. Few knew whether to translate my silence as “Yes” or “No,” much less “Come in” or “Get the fuck out.” That had not changed, with only a rare mastering the skill. This included my first-in-command, my family, the jester and princess, and …
Fuck. I scrubbed Flare’s face and the last three words she’d whispered from my mind. For her sake, I would not risk going there. If I did, the memories would incapacitate me.
Despite not receiving an answer, Indigo entered. The sight of that perpetual nuisance stiffened my joints. I’d been having doubts about his fealty since before my exile in Summer, a state of affairs that hadn’t changed.
The warrior’s silver cloak swept the floor as he bowed. “Your Highness.”
“I’m indisposed,” I clipped, giving him a pointed look that caused his posture to waver.
“Yes, Sire,” he replied with uncertainty. “However, the Queens request an audience.”
Ah. I straightened and relented with a brisk nod.
Yet the knight dallied, his mouth compressing as if he’d been holding that insufferable trap shut since he and the convoy had stumbled upon me in the rainforest. I had returned to them once Flare had vanished out of sight with Poet and Briar. Thereupon, I had made sure to deter the legion from discovering the ruins. The fake camp I’d set up near the shore had achieved that.
Indigo had been the one to unspool the vine from around Solstice’s limbs. With pride, I could presume who’d used those knots to detain my First Knight. In any case, only one-quarter of the troops had survived the rainforest, its predators, and the wounds our clan had inflicted in the dark.
Presently, the soldier lingered but said nothing. My eyes thinned, and I lifted a brow in cold inquiry.
His bravado faltered. So much for verbalizing himself. But for treasonous reasons, I deemed it unwise to encourage this one. For a long time now, my intuition had been detecting the reek and prowl of an imposter.
Like a hotshot, Indigo flexed his shoulders. Indeed, here it came.
“You were gathering wood, Sire,” he testified.
It took a moment to comprehend this. He meant the lumber Flare and I had been collecting at the cove. Prior to the chase, we’d abandoned those timbers.
To this, I said nothing but waited for more.
Not for long. “There were two slings.”
And I had two arms. Though, pointing that out would sound defensive.
On to the next query. My silence prompted the knight to grow a pair of testicles. “It seems uncommon that you would leave them there.”
Correct. “Uncommon” was putting it mildly—a deliberate choice of word, often tossed casually around like daggers during roundtables between adversaries.
How uncommon to make that decision.
What an uncommon train of thought.
Anyone trying to survive wouldn’t abandon supplies, especially not a methodical man like the Winter Prince. Meaning that if I’d been gathering wood when the armada had appeared, I must have seen the ships. Yet I hadn’t remained to greet my rescue until later, in a different location.
Meaning I had vanished. Possibly in a hurry. Shortly before my brethren had been shredded by unseen forces, which they’d assumed were purely fauna.
I stared, denying this bullshitter my response. To do otherwise would require bending to his will.
I could remind him of what had happened to the last soldier who’d broken my trust. Though, doubtless Indigo remembered that disembowelment. He had witnessed that incident in Autumn, when I’d gutted one of his fellow soldiers in the presence of Poet and Briar. And while the troops had trusted my judgment, understanding the knight to be some form of traitor to the Crown, Indigo had nonetheless been casting me cursory glances ever since.
I would deliberate whether Rhys had recruited this warrior as a spy, but no. The Summer King’s informants had been scholars. By contrast, Indigo’s attitude could be a result of my falsified allegiance with Poet and Briar, which had been out of character for me. I had made the public excuse that I’d suspected Rhys of duplicity and therefore worked alongside Autumn to expose the king. While the explanation had satisfied my court, this soldier’s wariness hadn’t gotten past me.
Unlike Rhys’s spies, Indigo didn’t require the influence of Summer to motivate him. Nor did he know about my condition, because the spies hadn’t gotten that far into their investigations. Instead, the knight’s misgivings were rooted in something else, feasibly having to do with Flare.
With deadly calm, I selected one of the bottles and parsed its contents, holding it up and speaking in a detached voice. “I heard a disturbance in the wild and assumed some of the troops had crossed into the forest ahead of the rest. Naturally, I pursued this possibility.” With supreme focus, I set down the vessel. “I understand why you’re smarting that my Summer captive got away from us both—”
“I’m not smarting,” the obstinate knight protested.
Cooly, I lifted my eyebrows. At which point, the man sealed his mouth shut. Cutting off Winter’s prince was tantamount to civil disobedience. He might as well be asking me to extract his balls with a set of pliers.
Because he stayed quiet for a minimum of ten seconds, I trampled over the silence. “Needless to say, wood was hardly on my mind.”
Once more, Indigo recovered. This time, he had the guts to grow confident. Therefore, insolent.
His eyes flickered. “Pray, was anything else on your mind, Sire?”
Two words. “The forest.”
The deadly realm with its perilous rainfall and carnivorous fauna. This fact insinuated I’d been too preoccupied to acknowledge anything but the dangers my visitors had placed themselves among. Logically, I had meant to warn them. At which point, I’d gotten caught up in the presumed fauna ambush.
Indigo had anticipated a guiltier answer. However, the reply made sense, as had my numerous other explanations regarding the past year. Details about my survival to the convoy, to the nobles, to my family.
What. When. Why.
I had weathered Winter’s inquiries and responded with dismissals, abbreviated versions, half-truths. While I detested removing Flare from the equation, as if she had lasted only a short while with me, my accounts had satisfied the court.
I thought of my fierce little beast. The image froze in my mind, every facet of her preserved under a layer of ice. If anyone tried to breach it, they would find themselves stripped of their flesh and missing several pertinent organs.
I respected my knights. My whole life, I’d treated them as my equals.
But I had limits. Where the safety of Flare, my family, and my kingdom were concerned, let no one test me. Most of all, anyone who meant my woman harm would die graphically. And slowly, for I was known to be a patient executioner.
My expression mirrored the man’s shrewdness—then exceeded it a thousandfold, cautioning the knight to remember his place. Underestimating the Prince of Winter was a fatal error. One more slip of the tongue would smack of treason and condemn him to a prolonged death sentence.
Go ahead, I silently provoked. Question the prince.
Indigo flinched and retreated a step. Much better.
But just in case. My fingers fell to the scalpel knife at my hip, and my voice sharpened like steel—refined, polished, lethal. “Is there anything else?”
“No.” Indigo cleared his throat. “Nothing, Sire.”
I cocked my head. “One might think you actually mean to keep the queens waiting.” When the man blanched, registering that he’d neglected his sovereigns, I murmured, “Dismissed.”
Spite lurked at the fine edges of his countenance. With a bow, the motherfucker grunted, “Your Highness.”
Your Highness. That form of address, I had yet to reacquaint myself with. It compromised my equilibrium, as it had within seconds of my rescue, when I’d found myself surrounded by men and women-at-arms, the troops sinking to their knees and chanting.
My name. My title.
Long live … somebody.
Indigo stalked away. After everything that had happened regarding that incompetent pissant of a monarch, Rhys, this knight wasn’t my first enemy. Nor would he be the last.
Be that as it may, the shithead would not speak out again. To this court, I was too smart, too merciless to challenge unless he wanted to donate his liver to research. Moreover, Indigo valued his rank above all ambitions. It outweighed his aversion toward born souls or the unlikely notion of his sovereign protecting one.
Someone called my name. I blinked, my head snapping toward where my grandaunts stood at the suite’s threshold, with their arms entwined and their gazes clinging to me. Silvia, the sentimental. Doria, the steadfast. They had sprinted down the steps in cloaks of amethyst and sapphire when I’d returned, then wept and flung their arms around me before I’d properly dismounted from my horse and planted myself on the ground.
The blanket of snow under my boots. The woodland scents of pine, cedar, and smoke. The arctic temperature biting into my flesh.
The culture shock had rendered me useless. I’d slumped into Silvia and Doria, my face burying in the tufts of their white curls.
I had anticipated my arrival, expecting to make straight for my parents’ chambers. Instead, I had procrastinated like a fucking coward, unable to carry myself there. For hours that day, I’d shut myself up with the queens in their antechamber until they urged me, saying it would be fine.
At last, I had reinforced my spine and summoned the courage to navigate the halls. Approach the Royal Suite. Dismiss the guards. Knock, step inside, close the door.
Since then, months had passed. Still, Silvia’s tear ducts filled behind the rims of her spectacles whenever she saw me, as though I might vanish again.
Guilt assailed me. Yet I would do it again. For Flare.
I stepped away from the table and inclined my head. “My Queens.”
“Jeryn,” Silvia gushed.
“Come,” Doria beckoned, motioning toward the terrace.
The women strolled outside. Behind them, I shrugged into my coat and followed, the fur slapping my calves and the chain accents of my steel-tipped boots rattling like bones. I stepped up to the railing, where the chalet castle pitched over the vista, the stone sills and overhangs dripping with icicles. Ahead, I peered at the panorama of coniferous trees. Snow powdered the needle leaves, the trunks’ widths could house villages, and owls kept vigil somewhere in the branches.
No ocean surf. No buzzing mist.
This land was quiet. A whisper might cause an avalanche.
Each morning, I awoke in priceless bedding, expecting the opulence of my suite to look different. Warmer. Brighter. I expected a female body to stir naked beside me. I often caught myself leaning in for a kiss, reaching for those enduring hands, eager to flip her over, spread her thighs around my hips, and fuck her until she felt nothing but my hard cock and earth-shattering bliss.
I cleared my throat, pulling myself together as Silvia and Doria gained my side. The women flanked me like bookends. So they meant business.
Doria spoke first. She gestured behind her toward the medical den. “You spend a great deal of time there.”
“I always have,” I deflected while studying the view.
“Not to this extent. The people wish to see you.”
“They have seen me.”
In my periphery, the queens pruned their lips. My reply was not untrue. The people had seen me that first evening, after I’d reunited with my grandaunts. Emerging onto the castle’s deck, I had stood before the masses, and the kingdom had cried out. The court had chanted my name, the mayhem flooding my eardrums.
In my suite that night, I had bent over a plant pot and tossed up my meal. I’d gone from being cloistered to this. Escorts, callers, well-wishers.
Swamped. Constantly.
A feast with the courtiers. A meeting with the queens and our council. Another meeting with the Court Physician. An inspection of the castle’s infirmaries, medical halls, laboratories, dispensaries, apothecaries, clinics. An update on new research practices, most of which involved practices that curdled my fucking stomach, which I planned to shut down and supplant.
All in due course. Proceeding tactfully was paramount.
Another feast. Another meeting. A queue of hunters and university students, the line stretching around the castle, my subjects eager to welcome their prince home.
Finally, a visit to another part of the castle. One that my grandaunts must have heard of by now. While that trip had been overdue, it had also been a risk. To prevent widespread talk, I’d needed to make the effort look like an afterthought rather than a priority.
Be that as it may, the citizenry wanted to see me as often as my family did. It was not a request.
Doria spoke with concern. “You seem unhappy.”
“Lady Noelle shall be arriving in a fortnight. She and her kin are to be esteemed guests,” Silvia hinted. “You remember her, don’t you? The pretty one from the glacier province?”
“Her brother will be attending as well,” Doria added, prompted by my silence.
Either the sister or brother would have sufficed, if that arrangement were my desire. Yet only one preference dominated my mind, body, soul. One person.
The queens had hoped this news would alter my mood. I cast them a sidelong glance that declared otherwise, to which they exchanged fretful looks.
Doria broached, “We heard you’ve been visiting the fools quarter of the dungeon.”
“What else did your spies tell you?” I wondered.
“That you’re inspecting their living conditions—a transaction you didn’t discuss with us. Among other courses of action.”
That was true. To the former, I did not wish to implicate my grandaunts should people draw an unwelcome conclusion about my visit to the dungeon, however well I’d paced myself.
The latter invoked my dealings with Summer. To avoid suspicion, Poet, Briar, and Aire had remained on the mainland when I’d arrived. With their ship docked the whole time, no one had suspected them of a thing. Not even Summer’s oafish king or its astute queen.
Poet and Briar had assured me that Flare had set off on her tidefarer without incident. The news had buckled my limbs.
Several days later, the jester, princess, and knight had departed for Autumn while I met with a groveling but petulant Rhys and his better half, Giselle. Thereupon, I instigated the plan Flare and I had forged before parting ways.
To keep Summer’s nose out of The Phantom Wild, I had cited unknown diseases lurking in the forest, the contagions likely unresponsive to vaccination. Considering my warnings and experience as a castaway—not to mention an authority on illness—the report had shaken Summer. The court now believed its rainforest to be contaminated and wanted nothing to do with that realm. Not even seafarers and sand drifters would venture there.
Rhys had asked how Summer could atone for my so-called traumatic misfortune. In an alternate reality, lobotomizing the cocksucker would have been refreshing. In this reality, such a crime would complicate Season relations. Not that Summer stood a chance of winning a war against Winter. But neither was that the point.
As compensation, we’d come to a documented agreement regarding The Phantom Wild. Summer had declared the rainforest neutral continental territory and placed it under Winter’s jurisdiction. I had requested sovereignty under the guise of medical research. Coming from me, it was a sound reason that everyone understood.
This ensured the rainforest would remain uninhabited, its history preserved. Having the ruins under Winter’s protection meant Rhys could not touch it, which would enable our clan to supply details of the ancients after all. How they had built a castle and created a diverse community, which had lived in peace and prosperity until their untimely demise. Prior to the invasion, had I thought of negotiating the realm from Summer, it would have given Flare and me a chance to expand our plan.
Nonetheless, we would add this to our list of assets. Once the time was optimal to use this wildcard, our clan would act. But not yet.
As for reuniting with Flare in the rainforest, I could not say when I’d see her again. She had her mission now. Moreover, for Winter to take its eyes off my every move would require an insufferable amount of patience.
But before then, the chasm of Flare’s absence might be the end of me. My chest constricted, the knowledge calcifying.
As to my dungeon visit, Silvia misconstrued the reason. “You needn’t be worried about any fools escaping. The mad woman was an isolated incident in Summer.”
Do not call her that.
I contained the growl that clawed up my throat. My family didn’t know any better than I once had.
With my hair tied at the nape, the crisp air bit into my jaw. I would not allow these women to think harshly of my spirited little beast. If I could not impart the truth, I would at least circulate her bravery. “Before the woman died, she saved my life. I would have drowned were it not for her.”
That quieted them. I had told my queens this upon returning, but I would remind everyone until Flare was immortalized in a way she deserved.
I’d informed the court that she had vanished within the first few weeks of isolation, likely having been killed either from a carnivorous predator or one of the viruses that infested the forest. An assessment that stood to reason, since few in the Seasons expected a so-called “fool” to be smart enough to survive. Against every impulse I possessed, I had made sure to sound dismissive while recounting the story, indifference another bloody prerequisite of this farce.
And her name was Flare. Not “the mad woman.”
“You appointed me to oversee the treatment of born sou—” I set my teeth and corrected, “—born fools.”
“Ah. We did,” Doria recalled, elbowing her wife.
“Oh, yes,” Silvia agreed. “Our memories are …”
“Stubborn?” I suggested fondly.
They chuckled. Light snow fell, its descent reminiscent of rainfall. Farther off, dire wolves hunted in packs, and elks guarded The Iron Wood.
Fear gnawed on my bones. Where was she? Was she happy? To prevent myself from caving beneath the weight of those questions, I must keep busy.
I regarded my queens with deference. “Do you have faith in me?”
“Eternally,” Doria affirmed. “But we worry about you.”
“It’s what grandaunts do,” Silvia quipped, setting her fingers on my forearm.
At length, Doria contemplated my features. “You are much changed.”
Poet had echoed that in the ruins. My blood’s temperature agreed. “I have an agenda.”
“Then speak your mind.”
“That shall take a while.”
“For you, we’re never in a rush,” Doria replied.
I exhaled. They’d tended to me as a child when my mother and father had taken ill. They had appointed me as their successor. They’d reassured me after the siren shark attack. Always, these women had placed their confidence in me, even back when they shouldn’t have, when being a healer had rendered me a monster.
“I have ideas for Winter,” I said. “I will tell you, but I have a meeting to initiate first.”
Doria’s fingers twitched on my sleeve. Silvia’s eyes trembled. I hadn’t been home for long and knew what they feared, because I feared it too—that a conference meant I would be traveling. That something would happen, and I would not return.
Except I had no intention. For if I ever left these borders, I would only be tempted to find Flare, to embark on another obsessed chase for my little beast, hunting for her until my feet bled.
And if I succeeded, I would never leave my woman.
Only one thing guaranteed I wouldn’t succumb to this. Flare was free. That liberty would not last if I abandoned this life, no matter how much I craved her.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I assured Silvia and Doria. “Rather, someone is coming here.”
“Who?” Silvia asked.
The one couple I needed on my side. To enact a plot that had been outlined in the ruins, in a dining hall with five other inhabitants.
Social and medical reform was a momentous undertaking, a gamble that would involve not only the queens and myself, but our reluctant council and a host of enemies. To make a solid case to Winter, I needed an irrefutable strategy and more than facts or figures.
No. This degree of treason required allies.
Winter needed Autumn.