Chapter 16
“Kai.” My knuckles ache from knocking urgently on door after door. Everything is so cold here. My nose drips and my ears ache. I can’t get warm. “Kai, are you in there?”
It takes me a long time to find the right one. Once I do, he yanks it open irritably, then softens when he sees it’s me. The speck in his eye glints, and his scowl returns. “Get in here.”
I shiver. His room is just as cold as the hallway. “Kai, I’m freezing. I need warmth.”
“What do you want me to do about it?”
“Let me light a fire,” I beg.
“I’ll roast.”
“Would you rather I freeze?” My teeth chatter. “Be a gentleman.”
Grumbling, he throws dusty logs of wood into a grate. “Why do you have those, anyway?”
“When I first arrived, I liked a roaring blaze.” He keeps his back to me as he crouches to strike sparks to life in the kindling. Light licks up the walls, shimmering as the surface melts. “Before I got used to the cold.”
Kai tugs off his shirt.
Bare-chested and barefoot, he faces me. A smile plays over his lips when he finds me staring. Embarrassed, I jerk my gaze away.
“I’ve never seen you like this before.” Watching him spar with the other knights in the training yard at Montrace Castle feels like an eternity ago.
I was never this close to him when he was in a state of undress.
We were hemmed in by propriety, by social expectations, by the vast gulf between our social statuses. Here, none of that matters anymore.
“It’s hot in here,” he says, shrugging.
“Objectively, sir, it is not.” Suddenly, however, I’m not quite so cold. Still, I tug my cloak around my shoulders and curl up as close to the fire as I can without setting myself alight. Warmth slowly creeps back into my limbs. “Kai, has The Snow Queen asked you to play a game?”
“We play games all the time.” He’s seated in an ice chair several feet away, out of reach of the fire. “Chess. Card games. She loves word games in particular.”
“I suppose she cheats to win,” I mutter sourly, forgetting that he can hear me with his witch-heightened senses.
“She is scrupulously honest. The fae cannot lie and they cannot go back on their word.”
I stare into the flames, thinking. “You shouldn’t kiss her hand or cheek anymore. Try to avoid touching her.”
“Why, Gwen? Are you jealous?” He smirks.
Yes, but I’m not admitting that to him. “Haven’t you noticed the way her cheeks turn a shade pinker and her lips redder every time you touch her?
She’s stealing your warmth, bit by bit. Feeding on you.
Drawing it out.” Savoring his life force like it’s a rare treat.
I shudder with revulsion. “You shouldn’t eat anymore of her ice food, either. ”
“Her nourishment protects me from the cold.”
“Kai?”
“Gwen.”
“Try it my way for one day. Eat nothing she gives you. Avoid touching her. I will give you the coldest food I can make. Let’s see if eating ordinary human food changes you back the way you were.”
I want him to touch me again. I would kneel between his knees and run my tongue over his chest right now if I didn’t think it would stick to his skin. How embarrassing would it be to be caught with my tongue frozen to his chest?
I need to warm him up. Literally. My instincts that I couldn’t save him with cold rejection were correct. But I still don’t know how to melt his heart.
“What do you see in her, Kai? Do you love the fae witch?”
“No, I—” He bites off the sentence. “Love is unnecessary. She…I…”
“Tell me. As a friend.”
“She chose me to be her companion.”
“You could have been a king,” I remind him softly. “You are needed back in Montrace.”
“My brothers…” An agonized whisper like he’s trying to summon a long-buried memory. Again, his expression twists as the shard intervenes. “Mother has things under control, I presume.”
“She does, but she is only the regent. You are the true king.” Twisting, I curl my fingers around his. “Come home, Kai. There is nothing for you here.”
Nothing but a frozen future full of sorrow and regret.
He grabs my wrist and hauls me into his lap. Frost bites through my shirt and stings my nipples. I settle myself astride his thighs with my hands braced on his shoulders.
“You’re feverish.” His one good eye burns with emotion. The other glints angrily. He clutches his temple, grimacing.
“The shard reacts when you look at me.” Casting about my pockets, I produce a kerchief I’ve used to hold back my hair and tie it around his head to cover the silver eye. “If we cover it up, does that help?”
“A little.” His hands drop to my hips. “I look ridiculous.”
“Very piratical.” For the first time since I’ve arrived at the ice palace, I smile. If I ignore the blue tinge to his nail beds and the way his veins are visible beneath his too-pale skin, I can glimpse the old Kai. My friend. “I’ve missed you.”
He releases a long breath and drags me forward in a tight embrace, burying his face in my breasts.
I run my fingers through his hair. It’s silkier than I imagined it would be.
I’ve barely touched him like this. I’ve hardly touched him at all, except for that one night at the ball. Longing simmers beneath our embrace.
“These could be the last few days we have together,” I say softly. Talking into his hair, I tell him about The Snow Queen’s challenge and what’s at stake.
“You shouldn’t have taken her bet. You won’t win.” Kai slides his palm up my spine. Despite the chill, with the fire to my back it’s a tolerable contrast. A hint of pink has crept into his lips. He’s stealing my warmth. I give it willingly, though it costs me dearly.
“If there’s a chance of freeing you, however small, I’ll always take it,” I tell him.
“I don’t deserve that.”
“No. Not really.”
He huffs a laugh. “I’ve been cruel to you.”
“Very.”
“Yet you’ve traveled all this way to find me.” He seems bewildered by this fact. Somewhere deep down, Kai understands that his behavior should have scared me off. He can’t figure out why I, a stubborn scullery maid in love with my childhood friend, came all this way.
“I would follow you to the ends of the earth, Kai. There is no danger I would not brave for you.”
I love you. I have always loved you. I don’t want to love anyone else. If I can’t have you, then I won’t have anyone. I would rather be frozen in time with you than live without you.
The fire crackles. I’m suddenly aware of the way his hand has drifted downward, tracing slow, small circles on the curve of my hip. He might be carved from ice but his touch trails heat. Tension coils in my belly. Gently, I tip his face upward.
I bend and press my lips to his, tasting winter in his kiss. It’s clean and bright and fresh, with a trace of warmth beneath the frost. I chase that hint of life beneath the blanket of snow. He releases an agonized moan and he grips my hips to the cusp of pain.
“I am the one who should be saying those things to you,” he whispers.
“You could always start,” I tease. His lips curve into a wry smile. His silly bandana seems to have quelled the silver shard, for now. His good eye fills with unshed tears.
“You are without a doubt the most devoted friend anyone could ever wish for. When I was a prince—”
“You’re still a prince, technically,” I remind him.
“I suppose so.” He chuckles. “I meant before all of this happened.” He points to his eye, then strokes my scarred cheek.
“I hated the things they said about you. The knights used to call you my bitch, my faithful hound. I held you at arms’ length to try and keep people from saying awful things about you. ”
“I’m nothing but a scullery maid, Kai. I’m the one who has to prove myself worthy of you, not the other way around.
That’s the simple truth.” Even if I were to save us both and return to Montrace victorious, I know that my reward will amount to little more than a brief reprieve from kitchen work—one I’ll gladly give to my grandmother, who’s earned a respite.
The fantasy I entertained as a girl that Kai would step down from his duties as prince to marry me died the day his brothers did.
This time away from Montrace is all we’ll ever have together. Even if we were to escape the Witch’s clutches, I cannot see myself returning for any reason other than to see Nana again.
I don’t know why The Snow Queen is permitting us to have this moment of intimacy. Perhaps she is feeding off our emotions.
With no viable future for us, there is no reason for me to stop him from tugging the hem of my shirt free.
Or to stay his hand as he slowly slips the buttons free.
I inhale when the placket parts to reveal my worn and shabby undergarment beneath.
Mended so many times it barely holds my breasts anymore, I’m embarrassed that he’s seeing it.
Even more so by the scars scattered down my chest over the modest slopes. The thin pale lines shine slightly in the low, flickering light. Kai traces them gently.
“You are even more gorgeous than I imagined,” he breathes.
I’m astounded, but judging from the worshipful way he stares, he genuinely means it.
“I have imagined you like this, and more, so many times. It made me furious with you for a while. I couldn’t understand the spell you cast over me.
The Queen envied your hold over me. She couldn’t break it, but she could make me try and drive you away. ”
He looks at me with anguish in his one blue eye.
“I’m not that easily scared off, Kai.” I take the opportunity to mold my hands to the shape of his broad shoulders.
With the fire at my back, the room is a tolerable temperature.
His skin is cool to the touch, like tracing living marble, but when I place my hand over his heart I feel it beating. Warm and alive. “Not even by you.”
“I realize that now.” He strips my shirt away, leaving me in the bodice.
I hold his eye as I unfasten it to reveal my breasts.
He groans and drops his forehead to my chest, feeling me with both hands, while I toss aside the abused garment.
“I’m humbled by it. You deserve silk and lace, like the dress you wore to my banquet. ”
“I wasn’t worthy of finery then, and I’m not now. I’m a scullery maid with scars, Kai. I’ll never be anything but a whore in the eyes of the people of Montrace.”
“Never that,” he says to my breasts, sucking the hard bead between his lips. The sensation is of fire and ice, so good but so intense that I squirm. No one has ever touched me like this before. “I would never have permitted that to happen.”
There was never any future for us back in Montrace, even before The Snow Queen. I have no reason not to do this with him tonight. “Make me yours, Kai.”
Two years ago, I never would have agreed to be his mistress.
Now, with time running out to solve the fae witch’s puzzle, I can’t bring myself to care about petty things like how other people might judge my actions.
After years of separation, I need this connection.
I have pursued the man I love all the way to the frozen north, and with little hope of escape, I can’t resist the chance to be with him fully.
“You don’t know what you’re asking of me,” he grits out. His hard length is trapped beneath me. I grind down, not hard, but enough to elicit a low moan from him.
“I do know.”
He grabs my shoulders and gives me a tiny shake, his one eye almost glowing with intensity. “Resisting you is the last shred of honor I can claim, temptress.”
“I don’t want your honor, Prince.” I kiss his lips. “I never did.”
There it is: the truth of my heart. I always wanted him to ruin me. I saw this darkness in him. Chased it. I am not afraid of any part of him, only what the world might do to separate us.