Chapter 5 - Frayed and Frigid
Callan
I stood in the center of my study, unsure what to do with myself, breathing hard as heat flooded my veins. I glared down at my shaking hands. I’d never had a woman make me feel so ill prepared, so...hot.
So...angry and confused and alive at the same time.
Two deep breaths. I needed to calm my nerves so I could think properly.
How had she gotten in? No one could cross the threshold without permission, and I had never given it to her.
In fact, I’d given it to exactly three living souls: myself, Magdala, and the cat.
I scoured my brain for anything I might have said that could have been misconstrued, but the threshold was constructed of ward magic.
It didn’t understand nuance. It operated on the principles of oaths, blood, and ancient power.
There were greater forces at play here than misinterpreted words.
And the incident in my throne room...Her touch had melted my last unfortunate mistake and catalyst for another collection for rumors. How? With what magic? She was wearing the same suppressive shackles all the thralls wore.
Something had changed since the thralls had come to my fortress.
I could feel the warmth of it in the air.
While I wasn’t sensitive to cold temperatures, heat was different.
Since standing in the throne room with her, I’d been unreasonably warm, needing to shed layers of clothes I was usually perfectly comfortable in.
I needed to figure out why.
It meant I had another problem to add to my list. But I wasn’t sure what the problem was.
How had she melted my ice with her magic locked beneath her shackles?
Who was she? Why was I inexplicably drawn to her in a way that both terrified and exhilarated me?
I would have to add these things to the outstanding list. Obtain gems fit for imbuing, locate the other frost elves so they could help me figure out how to stop the endless winter blight, and find and kill whoever it was that wanted me dead before they succeeded.
My list kept growing, and still I hadn’t managed to cross a single fucking thing off.
It had been two months since the last time I’d been attacked unprovoked.
I’d grown weary of constantly being on guard, waiting for the next time—the next blade—to carve a path through my flesh, the next assassin to rip through my confidence.
It was bad enough I’d been driven from my ancestral home by my own terrified parents.
I now had to endure countless rumors and vitriol about my state of mind and the occasional threat on my life. This should be my priority.
But her eyes.
I ran my fingers through my hair. I needed to focus on one thing at a time, but it was impossible when one of those things kept putting herself in front of me over and over again.
I’d seen plenty of humans in my life, but she was the first I’d found even remotely intriguing, and I couldn’t figure out why.
I fucking hated it.
I should have slit her throat and rid myself of the distraction. But I couldn’t. Even the thought of bringing her harm was...
“Fucking focus,” I said aloud.
Fynn meowed loudly in response as he rubbed against my leg.
“Hello, cat.” I stooped to pet him. “You’re causing trouble, I see.”
I cherished the feel of his fur beneath my naked fingers.
I smoothed my hand down to the tip of Fynn’s tail before I stood straight, glaring at the map of the elven realm of Telrain and the Breven Mountains I’d left sprawled across the floor.
She’d spied on my work. How much of it had she seen?
The information wasn’t secret, but the way her question had smoothed over my skin with such interest—and how much I’d wanted to indulge her curiosity—was... concerning. A human woman. A thrall!
I sighed heavily before plopping down in my chair, Fynn immediately bounding up into my lap.
I’d just spent five years on the battlefield as a direct result of my father’s frivolous argument with the humans.
The war had not been something he’d discussed with me.
We were being inundated by humans in search of resources—mainly the precious stones mined from a stretch of Telrain that bordered Kaldaira—and minor disputes over territory turned into large-scale battles.
My father grew tired of sending a single battalion at a time, so I was ordered to resolve the dispute... by whatever means necessary.
And so, I set aside my abysmal imbuing, but worse, I stopped the search for my own kind.
I knew there was some tie between my magic and the endless winter blight, but until I found the rest of the frost elves, I had no one to help me learn how to temper my power.
I had exhausted everything my parents could teach me.
Though they were frost elves as well, their magic was not nearly as... violent as mine.
Magdala’s heavy footfalls echoed in the corridor. At least the thrall woman had fetched her as I’d ordered, since she couldn’t seem to follow any of my other edicts.
“You sent for me, Highness,” she gasped, out of breath from rushing up the stairs.
Her eyes dragged from my face to my waist and back to my eyes, widening with surprise. It had been a long time since she’d seen me without a shirt. I was not the teenage elfling I’d once been.
“The thrall woman was here.”
She choked before clearing her throat. “Excuse me?”
“The one you sent to feed the cat. The one who polished the floors.” I gave Magdala the full force of my glare as I stood.
Of all the people in the castle, she was the one person who knew the truth of so many things, and I needed to know that I could trust her—fully trust her.
“The one you seem insistent on throwing in front of me at every chance you get.”
She shook her head. “I...I haven—”
“How did she get in here?”
Magdala’s fear was so visceral I could taste it. Good. I needed her to sweat. To stumble. To tell me the truth, because there was no time to think of a lie.
“Did you give her permission?”
“No, I...I specifically told her not—”
“The threshold is warded, Magdala. She could only cross with permission.” I took a weighted step closer to her, relishing how she matched it with a step back. “How did she get in here?”
“I...I don’t know, Highness. I don’t; I swear it. I would never give her permission. Never. Not to your spaces.” The words poured from her in a rush of breathy desperation. She wasn’t lying.
“Have her shackles checked. I can feel her magic bleeding through them.”
Magdala swallowed hard. Hopefully she’d take my demands seriously this time.
“And no thralls,” I finally said, letting the “s” drag long.
“Of course, Highness.”
Time stretched between us as I pretended to inspect my fingernails.
A piece of me had hoped she’d have something more to say.
There’d been a time when Magdala and I were close.
I’d been an arrogant idiot, and she’d been one of my mother’s ladies-in-waiting and twice my age.
So much time was lost in the secret places of the palace, our arms tangled around one another.
We’d locked ourselves in my washroom so I could fuck her long and slow against the wall without fear of being found, our breaths mingling as we tried to hide the sounds of ecstasy.
What we’d had wasn’t love, exactly, but it was a fondness that still clung to my memories.
Our error was that I was a prince, and with that came the burden of the crown and political responsibilities.
I was betrothed to the daughter of the only other frost elf family in Telrain, and Magdala was sent away to be married in her own fortuitous match.
Two lovers plucked from the vine to be devoured by the reality of our existence.
And existence wasn’t finished dealing us true pain.
Her husband died of mysterious causes before the war, and she’d returned to court to serve as my mother’s lady-in-waiting once again.
By then, my magic had manifested, my betrothed was killed, and I’d been sent to fight in my father’s frivolous conflict.
This was to be our existence—broken by the same heartache but unable to glue one another back together.
When I looked at her again, she was gazing at the scar on my ribs.
“I didn’t know...”
I hadn’t wanted her to know. She’d seen the scars on my face, and that had been enough.
The edges of her eyes were rimmed with tears. “I wish you’d told me.”
I met her gaze, trying my best to keep the impatience bubbling under the surface of my skin from bleeding out.
“It would have changed nothing.”
“I...but I—”
“It would have changed nothing, Magdala.”
She squeezed her eyes closed before bowing her head. “Is there anything else you wish of me?”
I clenched my jaw. So much regret. The formality with which she addressed me was my own fault.
When I’d finally returned to the Ice Fortress to find Magdala running my household, I’d not been kind.
I was angry, lonely, and in more physical pain than I cared to admit.
The last thing I’d expected or wanted was my old lover attending me.
“A servant to feed the cat.” I took a deep breath, trying to smooth the frustration from my voice. “No thralls.”
She curtsied and left without another word, pulling the door closed behind her.
For a long moment, I stared at it, wishing it would swing open again, but instead of wanting Magdala to come through it, another option presented itself.
One that confused me. The thought of the thrall woman’s copper curls and honey-brown eyes boring into mine was making it hard to focus.
Her magic felt so strange and warm, even though it was restrained behind shackles.
Where I was rigid and frozen, she flowed like a sun-warmed river around the cracks in my thoughts.
I glanced down at my notes on the map. I’d circled the location of a mine where purple sapphires could be acquired.
The gem had been successfully imbued with all sorts of properties by mages for centuries.
Whether I could find one pristine enough to suppress my frost magic, I had yet to determine.
It was one of the reasons I wanted to find the rest of the frost elves.
I had hope that they could teach me to control this power without something as fickle as a suppression gem.
Fynn meowed loudly before he pranced over to the door and sat, glancing back at me.
Of course he wanted out. His dinner was sitting on the other side of the threshold, brought by the thrall woman.
I should have made an example of her for breaking the one rule I’d given after executing a man for what everyone else thought was senseless rumors.
But I couldn’t. She’d been following instructions, and I’d executed Heirod for more than rumors.
An uprising of thralls was far more dangerous than defamation.
I wasn’t so fragile that rumors could truly hurt me, but a rebellion?
That, and there was something about the woman I’d never seen in a human before: brazen courage.
Her eyes had roamed over my chest, my face, my very existence, but I hadn’t found revulsion at the scars or the strangeness of my pale skin.
There’d been fear, but there’d been appreciation and curiosity in her gaze that I hadn’t seen toward me in years.
Gooseflesh bloomed down my arms at the thought of her eyes moving over my skin like a careful caress.
Fynn meowed again, pacing back and forth in front of the door.
“Fine,” I grumbled as I crossed the room.
He circled my ankles, looking up at me with inquisitive green eyes.
“Maybe it was you who let her in,” I said.
He meowed again, this time far more insistently.
The thought wasn’t completely ridiculous, but I’d never known an animal to change the outcome of a ward.
“Behave, Fynn. And perhaps find a different friend. One who’s less human.”
I opened the door enough for him to slip out before closing it and throwing the lock.