19. Raven
“What did you do to it?” Winter murmured, gliding his fingers and lips across my collarbone.
I held against a shudder and blinked upward.
“It’s scared. Trying to find safety and burrow deeper.”
“I didn’t do anything.” And that was the truth.
Chace had been the one to use the collector’s eye. I’d merely been on the receiving end. The magic apparently hadn’t appreciated the confrontation.
Thoughts of Chace pushed at the recesses of my mind, yet I refused to give them space. Not while I lay beside a drunken prince who was attempting to extract his magic from my body. I kept my stare locked on the ceiling while mentally fixed on tracking every movement he made.
Sober Winter, I liked and mostly trusted. Inebriated Winter, I was yet undecided.
“You’re so gorgeous,” he whispered against my neck as his fingers drifted a line across my stomach.
I deftly relocated his hand to the surface of the bed. “Focus.”
Tiny tingles of exiting magic danced along my skin.
Transferring from me to him before faltering once more.
He’d been experiencing a lot of fails since we began an hour earlier, and I was seriously rethinking my not-so-brilliant plan.
Clearly his intoxication was not helping the process at all…
and mostly served to make his hands extra roamy.
“But it’s so hard,” he replied. “When you’re here, like this, wearing my clothes, looking so terribly sexy and feeling so soft…so warm…so magical.”
A wayward touch skimmed along the edge of my breast, and I jolted, smacked his hand away. I parted my lips, preparing to reprimand him, but he bolted upward and captured my mouth, inhaling my words, my breaths, and…
A glacier careened through my body, ice chips collecting into frozen balls, rolling through me, swelling larger and larger, crashing through my operational systems and senses.
My limbs wouldn’t respond to my demands.
I couldn’t move, and my lips… They were becoming frigid.
Were they blue? Was my entire body blue? Was I frozen to the bed?
The mystical drag sucked and sucked, pulling not only the winter magic but, I feared, pieces of myself. My bones and muscles stiffened as sharp, icy nails raked over and through me. Scraping and clawing in search of something. Stray clusters of magic?
Winter shifted, and without breaking the connection, swung his leg over my body, straddling me.
His weight pressed against my hips, pushing me through the mattress.
His hands clamped onto the sides of my face, holding me to him, lips locked as he inhaled endlessly.
Summoning the magic to him. Except it fought his call, sinking anchors into my organs and soft tissue.
My body began to shake and convulse.
This won’t kill me. As uncomfortable as the process was…it won’t kill me.
A knock sounded at the apartment door, but Winter didn’t halt in his efforts. The sensation of the magical extraction was shifting between crashing balls of ice, a torrid avalanche, and a sandstorm choked full of icicle daggers.
A second set of knocks, and Winter acted as if he hadn’t heard a thing. In fact, he acted as if he’d forgotten I was anything more than a bottle to be drained dry. I wanted to scream, kick, and punch, yet I couldn’t move. My body was too heavy, trapped in a block of ice.
Only it was magic that held me still, and magic could be overcome. The mystical powers of the citizens populating the citadel were not absolute. Not like the powers granted in the transitions of souls. In death.
Inwardly, I pushed against the prince’s relentless force, at all the bits and pieces of magic fighting to stay with me. I swept them up with star-dusted fingers of nightly power and thrust them into the cyclone being consumed, absorbed by Winter.
And still, Winter drank from me, even though I felt nothing more to give. Had he not taken all the magic? Or did some still hide, buried in dark crevices inside of me?
Didn’t matter. He’d done enough. I needed him to stop. I needed to breathe.
But…I couldn’t move, and I couldn’t talk, and…I needed him to stop. Needed him extracted then knocked straight.
I mentally reached out in the same way I had when confronted by the Watcher in the underground tunnels. When I had managed to move the chain wrapped around the child and the chair. Only no chain was present in the bedchamber to call to my aid.
A creak came from the next room, followed by a thunderous crash and rattle. The door to the outer hall banged open, and heavy footsteps dashed into the room.
“Good gods,” someone expelled.
“Check the bedchamber,” said another.
During my stay at the palace, I had not known any of the palace guards or personnel to lay a hand on Winter. Whatever the sentries saw when they burst through the bedroom door brought an immediate change in royal handling.
They yanked Winter back, breaking his connection with me. I sucked back oxygen like I’d been holding my breath for a decade. My fingers popped and crunched, breaking free from encrusted ice as they curled into the comforter.
The guards dragged Winter from the bed, the prince struggling against their hold, all the while maintaining his locked gaze upon me. Eyes as wild as a stormy sea stared at me. Varied frothy blues crashing into one another, slammed with pockets of snow and cracked ice.
He was high…on magic.
I slowly sat up, the warmth returning to my extremities, and the sensation of Winter’s magic fading into the background. I wiggled my fingers and toes, kick-starting the blood flow.
A third guard dashed into the room and halted at the sight.
“Get the royal healer,” one of the males holding the prince ordered.
“Wait.” I leaped off the bed and threw out my hand as if to grab the guy a room away.
He paused, turned back to face me.
“Don’t get the healer for me,” I continued and glanced over Winter. “I’m fine. Truly. And the prince…”
After the things he’d said over dinner, I didn’t think he’d want Valen involved.
No, I was pretty sure he would be against the idea.
And if Winter were to see the queen in his current state, amped up on mystical energy, she might syphon his magic to use it on the citadel barrier and undying force.
I couldn’t do that to him. He’d been so thrilled to have the magic back after so long.
I rubbed my palms along the sides of my night pants.
“The prince is just a wee bit intoxicated. We don’t need to rouse the royal healer for such a thing.
” I glanced out the window to verify that it was truly dark outside.
“And the queen definitely doesn’t need to see him like this. What do you say we let him dry out?”
Winter struggled, albeit lightly, as the guards considered him, me, the situation.
“Maybe someone can get Lucas?” I added. “I’m sure Lucas will know what to do and will be happy to help.”
Because the two males had a history and seemed to have a good rapport.
None of the guards said a word, but when they all exchanged glances, and the one who had spoken the most nodded at the last one to enter the room, I was confident it was Lucas the male ran off to retrieve and not Valen.
I released a sigh and slumped against the bed. Eyed Winter until help came.
When Lucas arrived, shackles in hand, he begrudgingly clamped them into place around the prince’s neck and wrists and escorted him from the room. He tossed me one sorrowful departing glance before vanishing into the outer hall.
Too late, my tongue unglued, and my thoughts caught up to the moment. Had shock or exhaustion trapped my question amongst the unspoken? Because… Shackles? Really? That seems a bit excessive.
The night had been too short and too restless.
My mind had hardly given me any peace after the event with Winter.
Somehow, during that session, the chandelier in the receiving room had come crashing down, and the supporting chain had snaked along the floor and stopped within inches of the bedchamber door.
I wasn’t sure which disturbed me more—the falling chandelier and snaking chain, or Winter high on magic.
Someone, or several someones, would replace the light fixture later in the day. But the hour was still young, the morning light only beginning to peek a gander at the world, sending lazy beams through windows to stir the sleep away.
Even though I didn’t expect Neive anytime soon, and I imagined Winter was sleeping off his overindulgence, I had locked my bedchamber door to ensure privacy.
Cozy under the covers with my back pressed against the headboard, I read Chace’s note once again.
My attention tugged back and forth between several lines.
Using the al Sada, the death owl, to communicate Aldine’s passing was inventive.
But Winter had already broken the news to me, so that didn’t take me by surprise.
The reaper’s demise was likely the reason Chace had wanted to meet in person.
I now wished I’d had the time and foresight to ask him what had happened when I’d seen him.
Then again, we’d been kissing, and, well…
The thought drew my gaze to the start of his letter.
You were wild in the most unexpected and exciting way. I cannot recall any exercise or enthusiasm ever leading my heart to pound with such excess.
I wonder where things might have led had you not—
Ignore that last bit.
I bit down on my thumbnail, wiggled my finger, and read that section again.
The rest of the letter read as if to support his first few lines, expressing concern for me and wanting me to stay safe in the castle.
He was apparently worried about dangers beyond the palace wall.
Maybe Winter had been right. Maybe a monster lurked nearby that I had yet to learn about.
I would consider that possibility later. For now, with the light of day finally skimming over the outer walls of the castle, I regarded the last paragraph of his correspondence.
A moving shadow upon the highest point of the jeweled peak draws the interest and the eye. What would you make of it?