Chapter 2 #2
“You are three seasons in arrears,” Luceran goes on. “Your debt grows while your land withers. Tell me, Bartal Devlin.” His gaze sharpens. “What exactly did you think would happen?”
Father doesn’t answer.
He can’t.
That’s the problem. He never thinks that far. He hopes. He works until his lungs rattle and his boots split and then hopes some more.
I’ve done the books. I’ve smudged ink over every column, counted and recounted until my eyes blurred. There is only one answer.
We cannot pay.
“Please,” Father rasps. “We just need more time. One more season. If the frost pulls back…”
A crack splinters through the layer of ice on the dais step beneath his boots. Luceran’s mouth twists, humorless.
“The frost,” he says, very softly, “does not ‘pull back.’”
Something flares in his eyes then, a brief, raw flash of grief or rage or both, and I know, with a certainty that sits sick in my gut, that he could crush us like insects if he wished.
“So,” he says. “What am I to do with a human who cannot pay his due, and will not obey my summons?”
The dark-haired rider at the door shifts. “The mines, my lord. Let him pay in labor.”
My heart lurches, and I scowl at the rider. How dare he offer up my father’s life?
Father’s breath rattles in his chest, the sound thin and weak. I see his shoulders tighten beneath his worn coat, the way his hand trembles where it clutches my sleeve.
No.
Cold we can endure. Hunger we can endure. But the mines… the stories… if they are true... men go in and don’t come out.
Luceran doesn’t look at the rider. He doesn’t have to. The weight of his attention stays on us.
“It is an option,” he murmurs.
My mouth moves before my fear can stitch it shut.
“You will kill him,” I say. “If you send him there. He doesn’t last half a ride without coughing blood. You want him to swing a pickaxe for twelve hours a day underground?”
Luceran’s gaze flicks to Father’s chest, as if he can see the brittle lungs inside.
“Is that true?” he asks.
Father straightens. Pride is a stupid, stubborn thing. “It’s nothing,” he says. “A little winter cough. I can work.”
Luceran’s jaw tightens once more.
“If he dies in your mines,” I say, every word an effort, “how does that help you? You lose the man and the tithe.”
His eyes return to me. They are not kind. They are not cruel.
They are calculating.
“I am not in the business of mercy, Neve Devlin.”
“That isn’t what I’m asking for,” I snap back. “I’m offering you a solution.”
Father hisses my name again, horrified. But it’s too late now. The words are already forming clearly in my mind.
Luceran’s brows lift the barest fraction. “Are you?”
My hands are shaking, but I curl them into fists so he can’t see.
“I’ll go in his place.”
The hall seems to breathe in around us. Even the wind pauses at the windows.
Father chokes. “Neve, no…”
I plow on, before courage can abandon me.
“You need workers? I’ll work. There must be something in this castle that needs doing.
Books to be kept. Letters to be written.
Accounts to balance. I can read, write, track every grain and coin that comes through your hands better than any dull-witted steward.
Put me in the kitchens, the stables, the scullery, the mines.
I don’t care. I’ll earn back what we owe. ”
I force myself to hold his gaze. To let him see that I mean it.
“You don’t touch him,” I finish. “You don’t send him to the Aurevault. You don’t take the farm. You take me.”
Silence.
Frost creeps a little farther along the floor, tendrils weaving toward my boots. My toes go numb.
Luceran regards me with interest. His eyes darken.
“You offer yourself,” he says slowly, “as payment for your father’s debt?”
“Yes,” I say. My voice doesn’t shake. I’m absurdly proud of that. “For as long as it takes.”
“And what makes you think,” he asks, “that anything you have to offer is worth that much?”
Heat slams into my cheeks. Humiliation burns hotter than the cold.
“Because I know the numbers,” I grind out.
“I know exactly how deep in the red we are and why. Because I have spent my life fighting to keep our farm from crumbling completely while your winter eats it alive. Because your steward is either incompetent or lying to you if he hasn’t told you how many farms like ours are folding, how many men are fleeing Brunemar.
You can throw him in the mines, my lord,” I jerk my head toward Father, “and lose everything anyway. Or you can use what I actually am good for.”
I drag in a breath, chest aching.
“I am not the strongest,” I say. “But I am clever, and I don’t break easily.”
Something flickers in his gaze.
Behind me, Father whispers, “Please, Neve,” but I can’t look at him now. If I do, I’ll shatter.
Luceran’s attention drifts from my face to the fist clenched at my side, to the ink stains on my fingers, to the faint smudge of dirt on my hem. Taking in the picture. Weighing the cost.
Finally, he exhales, a sound like wind over the frozen lake.
“Very well.”
The words land between us like a dropped stone.
Father staggers. “My lord…”
Luceran lifts a dismissive hand.
“Your daughter will remain here,” he says. “In my service. Her labor weighed against your debt.”
He looks at me again, and there is nothing soft in his face.
“You will do as you are told,” he continues.
“You will obey my rules. You will not set foot in any part of the castle I forbid you from entering, and you will remember, at all times, that you are here because I permit it. If you break our bargain, Bartal Devlin will go to the mines. There will be no third offer.”
My stomach flips.
I nod, because I can’t seem to make my mouth work.
Father lurches toward the dais. “You can’t. She’s just a girl. She doesn’t know what she’s…”
“I know exactly what I’m doing,” I cut in, turning to him. My throat is tight, my eyes sting. I will not cry. Not here. “Go home, Father. Please. While you still can.”
His face crumples in on itself. He reaches for me, fingers shaking, then lets his hand fall.
“I’m so sorry,” he whispers. “This is my fault.”
“No,” I say, forcing a smile I don’t feel. “This is winter’s fault. Now go before I start thinking this is a bad idea.”
He lets out a broken laugh that is more sob than anything, then bows, first to Luceran, quickly and without grace. Then to me, as if I am something sacred, or doomed.
The riders move to escort him away. I listen to the receding slap of boots, the distant echo of the great doors groaning shut behind him.
When the last sound dies, the hall feels even larger.
His gaze pins me anew.
“Very well, Neve Devlin,” he says quietly. “You have bought your father’s life. Now we will see what your own is worth.”
My breath fogs in front of me. Just like that, I am alone in this frozen tomb of a throne room, trapped with a Fae lord who regards me like an animal he bartered a very good price for at the market.
Luceran paces, the slow drag of his steps marking a thin trail of melted frost that freezes solid again the moment he moves on. His eyes, those warring, impossible eyes, never leave me for more than a heartbeat.
“Is there…” My voice cracks, so I have to start again. “Is there anyone else here?”
“No.”
The single word hits like a stone.
No. No one. No human. No Fae loyal to him. No court. No safety.
I shiver, truly shiver.
“Just you?” I whisper.
He stops. Turns.
“Just me,” he echoes, his voice low enough to rattle the frost from the walls.
“Most days, at least. I keep a small staff, but as you can imagine, they never stay long. A week, maybe two. They clean, they cook, they do what staff do.”His gaze pins me in place.
“But when they are gone, you will serve in their stead.”
Serve.I take him to mean cook and clean, but the way he looks at me. Those brief glances that skim down my body, subtle enough he must think I don’t notice, or bold enough he doesn’t care if I do. They tell me he may mean something more.
A stretch of silence yawns between us.
Then his eyes narrow, and he begins circling again.
“Tell me,” he asks. “Why would you bargain away your life… for a man who barely had a season of his own left?”
The words crash into me.
My spine stiffens. “That is none of your business.”
“It is my business,” he cuts in, cold slicing through every syllable. “You stand in my hall, under my roof, bound by your own oath. I should know the worth of what I have just bought.”
“I wasn’t… your bargain wasn’t…” My fists tighten until my knuckles ache. “My father may not be young, but his life still matters.”
“Does it?” Luceran’s head tilts. “Mortals cling to time like it is treasure. Yet time slips through you faster than sand. Why give up what little you have for someone who was nearly out of it?”
Fury lashes through me so suddenly I forget to be afraid.
“You really are a heartless monster.”
For a moment, just a moment, I think something flinches in his expression. A flicker of heat beneath all that ice. But then it’s gone.
“Answer the question,” he demands quietly. “Why throw yourself to a monster for the sake of a dying man?”
The way he says “monster” sends a shiver across my arms.
And yet I lift my chin.
“If I have to explain that,” I say, voice trembling but steady, “then you have never loved anyone more than yourself.”
His pacing stops.
Luceran turns his head slowly toward me, and the fury simmering beneath his skin manifests in a sudden crack of ice along the nearest column.
“You presume much,” he says, voice no louder than a breath.
“I speak the truth.”
“A foolish mortal draws courage from ignorance. Do not test me again.”
“I didn’t test you. You insulted the person I love.”
“That was not love,” he spits, the word sounding foreign in his mouth. “Love does not squander itself so easily. Love does not trade a season for a breath, or a future for a past.”
“And what would you know about it?” I whisper.
The temperature plummets.
The frost beneath my boots cracks like breaking glass.
Luceran steps toward me once, just once, and I stumble back without meaning to.
“You will go to your room,” he says, voice low and lethal. “I do not want to see you again until morning.”
He turns his back on me with no further instructions.
“I don’t know where…”
He lifts a hand before I can finish.
Cold gathers instantly in his palm, swirling, thickening, until two tiny winged creatures bloom into being.
They are pale as snowflakes, but their wings shimmer in kaleidoscopes of blue—cobalt, sapphire, glacial teal—beating so fast they blur into whirling streaks of color.
They zip around me, impossibly quick, releasing high-pitched whirring sounds that raise the hairs on my neck.
Sprites? That’s what I think they are. I’ve never seen anything like them. So small, so delicate, so deceptively sweet.
Luceran doesn’t even glance at me when he gives the command.
“Take her.”
The sprites dive.
A startled cry tears from my throat as tiny hands latch onto me, my boot, my sleeve, my elbow, the fur at my neck.
One even snags a fistful of my hair, its wings fluttering madly as it pulls.
I’m lifted clean off the ground. They shouldn’t be able to carry me, by size alone, by logic alone, but they do, with frightening ease.
“Wait!”
Too late.
The doors blast open on a gust of cold, and I’m propelled through the archway.
Up a spiraling staircase. Down a corridor.
Everything streaks past in a blur of stone and shadow as my limbs flail uselessly.
Each second I’m certain they’ll drop me.
My braid whips my cheek, my boots knock together; one sprite tugs so hard at my hair my eyes water.
“Put me down! Now!”
They don’t listen.
They don’t even slow.
Only when we reach a tall, heavy door at the end of a dim corridor do they pause. Another icy gust and the door slams open. I’m hurled through the threshold, at least ten feet, before landing on a massive bed with a muffled, breathless yelp.
Before I can scramble upright, the sprites begin to unravel. Bodies loosening into drifting flakes, wings dissolving into glittering frost. They swirl together in a miniature storm, rush toward the open balcony doors, and burst into the night beyond.
Then a silence follows, so deep it swallows even my frantic breathing.
I sit there trembling, the thin frost clinging to my skin dissolving against my warmth. My gaze stays fixed on the balcony, on the darkness beyond it, as the final flake spins away on a cold draft.
My throat tightens.
What have I done?
I draw my knees to my chest, pulling my fur tighter around me as the cold steals into my bones.
I press a trembling hand to my chest.
“Father,” I whisper into the empty room. “I hope you make it home. I hope you are safe.”
Because I am not sure I will ever leave this place again.