Chapter 5
“She cannot force you to seduce him.” Nana paces the living area of our tiny home. She can only take three steps in any direction without hitting the table, one of the mismatched chairs, or the ancient wardrobe that lists against the wall.
“She is the Queen Regent. She can do whatever she wishes, including banishing us if I don’t. Kai won’t stop her.”
A year ago, I could have counted on him to protect me.
It pains me deeply to know that he’d probably enjoy seeing me thrown out.
Considering how he despises everyone, I can’t fathom how I’m supposed to seduce him, either.
The queen was clear that I don’t have to actually sleep with him.
She would prefer if I don’t. But if that’s what it takes to get through to Kai and remind him of who he is, that is a sacrifice the queen is willing to have me make.
My virtue is expendable as long as I can remind her son of his true nature. Forgive me if I am not exactly flattered.
“But why would she ask you to do this?” Nana protests.
“Because she believes I can reach him.” With the cream covering my scars, I feel a degree of confidence I’ve missed for the past year.
The white streak in my hair is the only reminder of everything I lost. Part of me is conflicted.
I miss the person I was at sixteen, nearly seventeen, her heart full of hope and love.
If I can reclaim a part of myself, I might stand a chance of bringing back the old version of Kai, too.
“Can you?” Nana asks skeptically.
“I have to. I want to.” If there is any chance of breaking through the coldness that has overtaken my dearest friend, I must try.
I can’t bring myself to write him off as lost forever.
The queen is right. Something happened to him that day.
If I succeed in restoring him to his true self, perhaps the queen would let us marry.
That is what I would request as my reward.
For Kai to be given a chance to choose me.
I want to pick up the shattered pieces of what we once meant to one another.
If he didn’t feel the same way about me as I did him, I could accept it if he only wanted to remain friends, no matter how much it would hurt my heart to stand by and watch him marry another woman.
Yet when I think back on that day, I remember the way he dragged me back to him and asked breathlessly, One kiss? For luck? In trying not to dwell upon the pain of that day, I had locked away the memory that now gives me a thread of hope.
Nana gazes at me with worry etched on her face. “You’re sure about this?”
“Yes.” I embrace her tightly. “Even if I weren’t certain, I don’t have any other choice, but the task is easier because I want to do it.”
“If anyone can reach that boy, Gwen, it’s you.”
I pray she is right.
On the day of my eighteenth birthday, Kai storms across the barbican and through the gate on an enormous black charger, leading a contingent of soldiers whose armor glints in the sun. They sweep through the gate like a surging sea, and all the women rush to the allures on the inner walls to watch.
Including me.
I fill my lungs with air, able to breathe freely for the first time in months.
My arms are covered to the wrist in delicate lace that no scullery maid could ever afford.
My freshly-washed hair is braided away from my face, and my scars are covered with the cream the queen gave me. I haven’t felt beautiful in so long.
Still, the other women shun me. They don’t know what to make of my changed appearance and improved clothes.
I admit I did a poor job of befriending any of them while growing up, for I had Kai and never sought anyone else’s company.
After my injuries, no one wanted to be friends with the scarred scullery maid.
I won’t worry about them right now. I’m focused on the man who separates from the rest of the knights. Kai casts them a disdainful glare and receives an array of dirty looks in return. The animosity between him and his men is palpable.
“Get these weak and useless animals into the stables,” he snarls.
The horses are anything but weak. Their flanks are heaving and flecked with foam, their nostrils blown wide. I know very little about horses, but even I can tell they have been ridden hard for a long time.
I lean over the wall. A light breeze teases strands of my hair free from the braid and ruffles my skirt. Kai lifts his gaze to the walkway and scans the women gathered there with an expression of distaste.
When his attention snags on me, I hold his eye and wait. My pulse ticks faster, then skips a beat at the flicker of interest that passes over his face.
Suddenly, he jerks his head and presses one hand to his eye. I fold my arms on the warm stone, watching in bewilderment. Is he in pain?
When he raises his head again, he sneers at me before turning away. I frown. Something is wrong. He wouldn’t let me look at his eye that day. Didn’t want to talk about it when he came to visit me. That silver speck must be what’s causing my childhood friend’s unhappiness.
He seems so isolated. Proud and arrogant, yes.
But the way he looked pained for that brief moment tells me that it’s not him being cruel.
It’s that thing in his eye. An ice knife, perhaps?
But that doesn’t make sense. He wasn’t bloodied that terrible day.
Judging from the damage they did to me, and to several members of the royal family, The Snow Queen’s ice knives can only injure you physically, not compel you to behave against your true nature.
I am not the same girl I was before the attack, but I am still myself. I wallowed in my grief and shame for too long, but I am resolved not to do that anymore. I am going to help Kai, and in doing so, I’ll save myself and my grandmother, too.
I race down the steps in my haste to catch up with him. “Kai.”
He halts. A nervous flutter in my stomach sets in. Have his shoulders become broader or is it my imagination? He seems taller. Stronger. Harder.
I can’t say I altogether object to the physical changes in him. That fluttery feeling I used to get whenever he was near is back, a hundred times stronger. He turns to me, stone-faced. No trace of warmth. He may be cold but he is more handsome than ever.
“I am glad you returned home safely from your travels.” I doubt anyone else will make the same claim.
I stand no chance of thawing his heart by showing him the same stiff frigidity he’s displaying to me.
I have taken great care to make myself look as close to the old version of me as possible.
There was nothing to be done for the white streak in my hair, and anyway, I don’t want to pretend that nothing has happened.
I therefore asked Nana to help me braid it in a way that displays the streak prominently.
Kai’s gaze catches on it. “You look different, Gwen.”
“Today is my eighteenth birthday.” I ignore his comment about my hair, trying to figure out how to engage him in further conversation.
“I remember.” Again, that flicker of something like his old self before his features twist into disdain.
I try not to quail when he steps closer, his stride menacing, his helmet clasped beneath his arm the way it was the day of his Ascension ceremony.
Then, abruptly, he steps closer and demands, “What is this shit all over your face?”
I have no response for a long, tense minute. “Makeup.”
He takes out a soiled, damp rag, grabs me roughly by the neck, and wipes it all over my face. I sputter in protest, trying to escape, but his hand is clamped on my nape and I can’t get away.
“Stop, Kai,” I plead.
“Don’t let me catch you wearing that shit again. It’s nothing but a lie. Is that what you want to be? A liar?”
He leans in. Against my will, and certainly against my better judgment, my body responds to his, softening fractionally. A cruel smile stretches his lips.
“You want to be my wicked little liar?”
“N-no.” But he’s right. I am lying. I do want to be wicked with him. Tension coils around us. I relax fractionally into his touch.
“Tease.” His lips hover inches from mine. The silver speck in his eye glints brightly. It has turned the iris around it almost completely gray, a cold counterpoint to the blue one. “I suppose you want a kiss for your birthday.”
Yes. Not from this man, necessarily, but from my old friend? I would take that kiss and return it a thousand times.
My thoughts must be written on my face, for he closes the distance abruptly, crashing his mouth down on mine. This isn’t how I thought my first kiss would happen, but I don’t resist. I can’t. His grip upon my neck tightens, punishing.
A sound squeaks out of me and he ruthlessly presses the advantage, his tongue pushing past my teeth.
I can’t think under the assault of his mouth on mine. I tamp down the impulse to resist. I can reach him. This is an opportunity to try.
I twine my arms around his neck and open for him. Tentatively, I move my tongue over his. A groan rumbles low in his throat. I like that sound. I dare to push my fingers into the hair at the base of his skull, and am rewarded with another low growl.
He stiffens and shoves me away.
I stumble back, panting and disheveled. Dismay leaches the lust out of my limbs.
Every viper-tongued gossip in the castle will have witnessed what just happened.
Before, they might have pitied me for my misfortunes.
Now, they will mock and despise me for what looks like a desperate attempt to seduce the wicked prince.
I dart my tongue over my kiss-swollen lips. His stare pins me like a butterfly to a collector’s mat, his chest rising and falling fast beneath the hard shell of his armor.
I got around that thing in his eye for a few precious seconds, and it hated me for it. But now I’m sure the Kai I loved is in there. He might be cruel. He might say horrible things. Do worse things. I’ll let him, if that’s what it takes to get him back.
Part of me wants to push him. Find out how bad he can be. Even back then, a wicked part of me wished he would drop the courtesy and be forceful with me, but Kai was always too much of a gentleman to be anything other than perfectly respectful.
To what point and purpose? Half the castle said horrible things about me back then, too.
I hardly have any reputation to lose anyway.
Vicious comments might hurt my feelings, but that is nothing compared to how I have been wounded in ways that changed my life irrevocably.
I cannot continue to exist as a shadow. He is my only path forward.
“Thanks for the happy birthday kiss,” I say, putting all my newfound, fragile confidence into speaking those words in a sultry tone. “Welcome home, my prince.”
His features harden into a glare of disgust. He stalks away.
A grim smile touches my lips as I watch him go. Score one point for me in whatever this strange game we’re playing is.