Chapter 4
Vidar
Frost blooms on my skin where we almost touched. I hide my hand, cursing silently as I move toward the kitchen. My control is slipping. Five centuries of perfect restraint, and now this—betrayed by my own form at the proximity of a mortal woman.
She saw it. The frost. Her eyes caught the patterns forming before I could conceal them. Her gaze is too perceptive, missing nothing. Like her camera, seeing what should remain hidden.
I busy myself with food preparation, a human ritual I barely remember.
The simple vegetables and dried meat require little skill, but the mundane task anchors me as I fight to strengthen my glamour.
The skull mask wants to emerge, the antlers strain to expand to their true size.
My fingers ache with the effort of keeping the crystalline claws retracted.
The fire still burns too hot, but I don't leave again. Weakness, to retreat twice from mere discomfort. I'll adapt. I've endured worse than warmth.
"You're not eating?" she asks as I place her bowl on the table. Her voice has recovered its strength, losing the rasp of near-death.
"I prefer to hunt," I say, the admission slipping out before I can consider it. "This is... emergency stores."
She nods, accepting this oddly specific detail without pressing further. Her eyes—ordinary brown, yet somehow unsettling in their steady focus—remain on me as she eats. Her movements are tentative at first, then hungrier as her body remembers its needs. Life reasserting itself.
"The storm," she says between bites. "Is it always like this here?"
"No." I remain standing, unwilling to sit in human fashion when my legs want to fold differently. "The weather here is... responsive."
"Responsive to what?"
My eyes meet hers. "To me."
She pauses, spoon halfway to her mouth. Her pulse quickens—I can hear it across the room, the tempo of prey sensing danger. But she doesn't look away.
"That's not possible," she says, but her tone lacks conviction. She's seen too much already to dismiss impossibility.
"Many things exist beyond common understanding."
"Like your... headpiece?" she asks, gesturing vaguely toward my antlers.
I nearly smile. Her directness is unexpected. Humans usually talk circles around the obvious, afraid to name the strangeness before them.
"Yes."
"What exactly are you?" she asks, setting down her spoon.
Wind rattles the windows, my storm responding to the challenge in her question. The fire dims slightly, ice forming on the inside of the glass panes. My control wavers.
"Finish eating," I say instead of answering. "You need strength."
For a moment I think she'll push, demand answers I'm not ready to give. Instead, she nods and returns to her meal. The practicality that caught my attention in the storm reasserts itself. Survival first, answers later.
The small emergency radio from her pack suddenly crackles to life on the shelf where I placed her belongings.
The device she thought dead from the cold now functions—my doing, though not consciously.
The static resolves into a voice, speaking Icelandic about weather warnings and a missing tourist. Her name. Freya Lindholm.
Her head snaps up at the sound of her name. Hope and confusion war on her face.
"My radio's working?" She rises, moving toward it. "They're looking for me already?"
"Your guide reported you missing when you didn't return," I say, translating the broadcast. "The search has begun but is suspended due to dangerous conditions."
"The storm you control," she says, no longer a question.
I incline my head slightly, neither confirming nor denying. The radio goes silent again, its brief moment of life extinguished as my attention shifts.
"Will you let me go?" she asks, her voice steady despite the fear-scent that rises from her skin. "When the storm ends?"
"Yes."
The word surprises me as much as her. I'd made no such decision until this moment. Yet I find I have no desire to keep her prisoner, despite the peculiar pull she exerts. She doesn't belong here. Her warmth, her very presence are discordant notes in my winter symphony.
Relief softens her features, followed immediately by wariness. She doesn't fully trust my answer. Wise.
"Thank you," she says regardless, finishing her meal. "For saving me. For this." She gestures to the food, the fire, the shelter.
Gratitude is an uncomfortable gift. I turn away, watching snow swirl beyond the window rather than face the warmth in her eyes. Humans and their emotions, so quick to form, so freely given.
"Night comes," I say, noting the deepening blue beyond the white. "You should rest."
"And you?" she asks.
"I'll sleep later," I say, unwilling to appear too human or too monstrous. The truth lies somewhere between—I need rest, but not as much as mortals.
She glances at the single bed, then back to me. "Where will you sleep, then?"
"I'll rest here," I gesture to the chair near the fire, though I'll move it further from the flames when my turn comes.
Her heart rate increases again. Calculating options, risks. The cabin offers no privacy, no separate spaces beyond the crude bathroom. One bed, one room, one long night ahead.
"That chair doesn't look comfortable," she says finally.
"I've slept in worse places."
A small smile touches her lips. "You sound like a character from a sci-fi movie."
The reference means nothing to me, but her smile creates an unexpected warmth that has nothing to do with the fire. Disturbing.
She rises, wrapping the fur more securely around herself. Her other clothes still aren't fully dry—the fire I maintain is sufficient for human survival but not strong enough to dry thick winter gear quickly. My weakness, my limitation.
"I'm going to..." She gestures toward the bathroom.
I nod, turning away to give what privacy I can in the confined space.
When the door closes behind her, I allow my glamour to thin slightly.
Relief floods through me as the antlers expand a few inches, the pressure on my skull easing.
The mask rises closer to the surface, eye sockets widening to improve my night vision.
Just for a moment, just a small release of the constant restraint.
The bathroom door creaks. I clamp down hard on the glamour, wincing as the magic binds tight again. Too slow—her sharp intake of breath tells me she glimpsed something of my true form in the dim light.
"Sorry," she says, though she has nothing to apologize for. "I didn't mean to... startle you."
Interesting choice of words. Not 'I didn't mean to see' or 'I didn't mean to intrude.' She apologizes for my reaction, not her observation.
"It's fine," I say, voice rougher than intended. The glamour still settling, throat adjusting from true form to human approximation.
She moves to the bed, still watching me from the corner of her eye. Not fear exactly, but heightened awareness. The fur she wears leaves her shoulders bare, freckles scattered across skin flushed from the warmth of the cabin. I look away before my gaze can linger inappropriately.
"We should discuss sleeping arrangements," she says, practical even in this awkward moment.
"You take the bed. I'll remain here."
"You said the storm will last three days. You can't just stand there for three days."
"I can."
She sighs, a surprisingly human sound of exasperation. "That's not what I meant. I meant you shouldn't have to."
The concern is unexpected. Humans typically worry only for themselves when in danger. Yet here she is, considering my comfort when I'm clearly the more dangerous being in this cabin.
"The bed is large enough," she continues, words coming faster now, betraying nervousness despite her practical tone. "We can share it. Just to sleep. It's only logical, given the situation."
Logical is the last word I would use for what she suggests. Dangerous, reckless, tempting—these fit better. Yet I find myself considering it. The pull between us grows stronger with proximity, a current I neither understand nor can fully resist.
"You would share your sleeping space with a stranger?" I ask, testing her resolve.
She meets my gaze directly. "I'd share it with whoever saved my life."
Simple words, yet they strike somewhere deep, a place long frozen. The gratitude again, freely given despite her fear. Despite what she's seen.
"Very well," I concede. "But I must warn you—my presence brings cold. The fire's heat only counteracts it partially."
"I've got furs," she says with a small shrug. "And I'd rather be a little cold than have you looming in the corner all night like something from a gothic novel."
There's that hint of humor again, unexpected and oddly disarming. I'm unaccustomed to being teased, to the light in her eyes that accompanies it.
She arranges the furs on the bed, creating a clear division down the center. A boundary between her world and mine. Unnecessary—I have no intention of crossing it—but the gesture speaks to her need for control in an uncontrollable situation.
"I'll extinguish the lamps," I say, moving to do so.
"Leave one," she requests. "Just dimmed."
Fear of the dark? No, something else. She wants to see what's in the room with her. Sensible precaution.
I reduce the flame in one lamp to a faint glow, then stand awkwardly beside the bed. She's already slipped beneath the furs on her side, face partly hidden in shadow.
"I promise not to snore," she says, another attempt at lightening the strange tension between us.
I remove my boots but nothing else, lying stiffly atop the furs rather than beneath them. The bed, unused for decades before today, feels strange beneath me. Too soft, too warm, too intimate. I position myself at the edge, maintaining maximum distance between us.
"Goodnight, Vidar," she says softly.
My name in her mouth sounds different. Newer. More alive.
"Rest well, Freya."
The silence stretches between us, broken only by the crackle of dying embers and the howl of my storm beyond the walls. Her breathing gradually steadies but doesn't deepen into sleep. She remains awake, aware, her mind working through the impossibility of her situation.
Frost forms on my side of the bed, spreading in delicate patterns across the furs. I can't stop it entirely, not with her so close. Her warmth calls to something in me, awakens hunger I'd forgotten could exist.
"Your side is sparkling," she murmurs, voice heavy with approaching sleep.
"I warned you about the cold."
"It's beautiful," she says, and then her breathing finally slows into the rhythm of slumber.
Beautiful. The cold that kills, that nearly took her life hours ago. The frost that speaks of my inhuman nature. She finds it beautiful.
I lie motionless beside her sleeping form, listening to her heartbeat, feeling the weight of her trust in choosing to rest beside a monster.
Outside, my storm rages on, but here in this small space, something else builds—something I have no name for, something that terrifies me more than any enemy I've faced in five centuries of existence.
I close my eyes, not to sleep but to center myself, to regain the control that slips further with each hour she remains in my domain. Three days, I told her. Three days until the storm passes and she returns to her world.
I already suspect those three days will change everything.