Chapter 11 - Chilly Regrets
Callan
I should have known better. Humans had such a low tolerance to the cold—lower than any elf.
I’d carried her the entire way to my fortress and up to my study, not knowing where else to take her.
When I’d finally managed to extract her from my cloak and cover her with my quilted blanket, she clung to it with an iron grip, curled up in an impossibly small ball on my sofa.
It didn’t take long for Magdala to find me, a worried crease in her forehead as she stormed into my study.
“If you continue to frown, your forehead will stay like that,” I said, unable to resist the teasing tone that melted into my voice. Since retrieving the thrall woman, a warmth had been growing in my chest. Even with all the uncertainty, I was still in a rare, good mood.
She glared at me, her brows furrowed. She was probably just as confused as I was with the uncharacteristic giddiness that ravaged the undercurrent of anger raging within me. She swept past and knelt at the girl’s side.
“With all due respect, Your Highness, what the fuck were you thinking?” she asked, turning to face me with anger flashing in her brilliant blue eyes. “She could have died. She would have if you hadn’t put her in even more danger by carrying her...against your chest!”
I shrugged, trying to act like I didn’t care, when the truth was that I cared so much more than I should have. “I had my armor on. She was protected.”
“You didn’t even tell me why you need her. I could have sent someone else to retrieve her.” Her voice was tight with anger. “In fact, you told me to send them all away. And now you need this specific human back?”
I couldn’t hold her glare, averting my gaze to my boots. I had told her to send them all away, but this was before I’d learned who this particular thrall woman was. Or who I hoped she was. There was still a chance I was wrong.
“She’s an imbuing mage,” I said, softly.
“Excuse me?” she spat.
“You can’t stand there and refuse to admit you don’t feel her magic.” I crossed my arms.
Magdala’s hands found her hips. “This again?”
“What do you mean, this again?”
“You don’t need an imbuing mage, Highness.”
It was the same argument over and over again. Magdala didn’t think I needed suppression gems, that when I found my Soul Tied—the person I was bound to in this life and the next—they would be safe from my magic. That it would spare them and only them.
But I didn’t believe in Fate, or Soul Tied, or true love for that matter. Those were fairy tales fit for elflings. You made your Fate. You had to find your happiness buried beneath a mound of sorrows and devastation. Nothing in this world was ever handed to you without a price.
“You put yourself through so much, and for what?” She swept her hand over the thrall woman’s head in such a gentle way, a flash of jealousy burned through my veins.
I clenched my teeth, trying not to raise my voice. “For that,” I said as she ran her fingers through the woman’s curls. “So I can touch someone without fearing I’ll kill them. So, I can...run my fingers through someone’s hair.”
Magdala sat up a little straighter, her hands falling into her lap, sorrow pulling at her brow. She knew my pain. I’d explained to her what had happened the moment my powers had fully manifested in the heat of passion.
I took a deep breath, my eyes slipping closed at the memory.
The last time I’d loved. The last time I’d known the warmth of another’s touch—skin to skin.
Now, at the age of thirty-six, I’d spent almost a quarter of my life trying to hide this piece of me.
It was one thing to manipulate ice and frost—to craft a frozen blade from thin air—but to freeze another with a single touch of my skin to theirs?
To keep anyone from knowing the full devastation of my magic, I’d been sent from court.
And in my despair, I’d created my Ice Fortress—frozen solid, like my heart.
Here I toiled, alone until the war. When I finally unleashed the full depth of my power in battle, I’d scared even myself.
No one should be allowed to possess such raw magic.
I left battlefields littered with ice, my powers turning the tide of the war.
Every human I killed was preserved in my memory, even though their corpses had long melted into the soil.
And now I hid in my study, day in and day out, the need to find a way to suppress my magic building into a desperate inferno in my gut. Not just so I could have a normal life, but to hopefully stop this endless winter.
“So I can stop this blight. So I can live again,” I continued, quieter than I’d intended.
She pushed herself up to her feet, and I could see it then—the fondness of our youth.
She wanted to wrap her arms around me as she had when I was young and she was stupid.
She wanted to melt the cold parts of my frozen heart.
But I would turn her to ice with a single touch.
And even if I could control my magic, we could never have what we’d had again.
Instead, we stared at each other in silence as the walls of ice I’d built around my heart grew taller.
The thrall woman stirred, a soft whimper slipping from her, and I took a step closer as Magdala stooped to check on her.
“It’s okay. You’ll be okay.”
I turned away, letting Magdala fret over the girl while I glared down at the map still spread on the floor.
I rubbed my fingers over the scars on my cheek, the memory of the day I received them invading my mind.
That day I’d finally let down my guard after the war and ventured out onto the permafrost alone, needing space and bitter cold to think.
I was doomed to relive the claw-like weapon swinging at my ribcage, leaving a gruesome laceration.
I hadn’t been wearing my armor; I’d wanted to be a regular frost elf, basking in the gloriously frigid weather.
I’d managed to block his next blow, but at the sacrifice of my footing, and with my lifeblood oozing over the snow, my strength bled away with it.
The strange cat-claw weapon raked across my cheek on its journey to my throat.
It wasn’t until I’d wrapped an unprotected hand around his wrist that he froze instantly, leaving me a bloody mess with a massive hunk of ice pinning me to the ground.
He hadn’t been human, and that still plagued my thoughts—that there were elves hunting me as I tried to find some normalcy in my life again.
“Callan.”
“What?” I snapped.
Magdala shrank back from me. I didn’t blame her. Something vicious had taken over my voice. Some monster that left its fangs buried in my flesh from the visceral memory I’d just relived.
“Forgive me, Highness.”
I hung my head. I hated the man I was becoming.
I hated that every moment of every day, I grew more despondent and more certain my father was trying to have me killed.
More certain he’d sent me to war to try to rid this world of his broken son.
Ever angry of the man he’d sculpted me into who he now loathed more than the disappointing boy I’d been in my elflinghood.
“I think you’re right,” Magdala said, pulling me back from my thoughts as she gazed down at the girl. “Her magic is warm and fiery, but it’s not...”
“Normal,” I finished for her.
“How will you have her shackles removed?”
“I’ll take her to my mother.”
Magdala took in a sharp breath, probably thinking the same thing I was. Humans weren’t allowed at the royal palace, and my father refused to allow my mother to leave.
“Let me worry about the logistics.”
She nodded before she stood. “I can have her carried down to the barracks—”
“No.” The word ripped from me more forcefully than I’d intended. “She stays here.”
“We can’t leave her here alone.”
“She won’t be alone,” I said between clenched teeth, frustration blooming in my chest.
Why did Magdala question me? I didn’t want the thrall woman—Wrenora—I didn’t want Wrenora so far from me. I had an entrance to my study from my bedchamber and could be here in a moment’s notice.
Magdala’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. “It would be safer if she—”
“She stays here.” My words were loud enough they echoed off the walls.
I sucked in a sharp breath as Wrenora shifted on the couch in her sleep.
Magdala curtsied, her eyes never leaving mine before she glanced back to the girl’s sleeping face. When she met my glare again, her eyes were misty, pain replacing her frustration.
“Call me if you need anything, Highness.”
I nodded, not trusting myself to say more.