Chapter 19
We fall and fall.
There is nothing but darkness and Kai’s strong, warm arms surrounding me.
Wind whips my hair. He buries his face in the crook of my neck and whispers, but the words are torn away before I can fully hear them.
I feel his lips moving on the shell of my ear and shudder.
Clutch him closer. If we die like this, I can die happy.
Instead, we splash into warm water and come up laughing. I can’t swim well, and my boots are no help, but the warmth. I can drown happy as long as I’m not cold anymore. Kai’s arm around my waist prevents me from going under the surface.
“Where are we?” he asks. More heavy objects fall into the water all around us. Indistinct voices echo throughout the cavern.
“Somewhere beneath The Snow Queen’s Ice Palace, I guess.”
A sliver of light in the distance prompts us to exchange glances and splash and flail our way toward it.
The rim expands into a half-circle. The current picks up as we approach the exit, and carries us out into the sunlit world.
All around us and on the grassy bank ahead, people drag themselves out of the water, smiling and laughing with bewilderment.
“I’m alive,” they say, one after another. “Who are you?”
Our toes touch the ground. Kai brings his palm to my back as we wade to shore. “This is Gwen. She is the one who saved us.”
To my mixed embarrassment and horror, one of the men drops to his knee.
Another man places his hand reverently over his heart.
A woman in a style of dress I recognize from Kai’s history books curtsies to me.
Her skin is the color of evening in a mountain valley and her beautiful dark eyes linger on the man with the braids. He salutes me.
Some of these people must have been frozen for centuries, judging from their attire.
“I didn’t do anything,” I protest.
“You succeeded where I did not,” the woman with the dark eyes says, taking my hand. “I couldn’t guess the word in time.”
“You heard that?” I squeak. Kai’s hand moves down to curl around my waist. We’re still drenched and dripping, knee-deep in water, but with sun beaming on the back of my neck, it feels like the dawn of a new day. One full of possibility.
“You aren’t the first woman to go in search of a man she loved.
That is what the Queen wanted. For us to follow.
” Apprehensively, a slight woman with a curtain of black hair falling straight as a waterfall between her shoulder blades turns her gaze to the mountain.
“The fae witch envies us because we can fall in love, though her heart is frozen. She taunted us and denied us, but now she is defeated and alone.”
“For eternity.” Her beloved slips one arm around her waist.
One of the men stands alone, a knight in silver armor with reddish hair tied up in a topknot. He looks a bit lost.
“He doesn’t have anyone waiting for him,” Kai observes. His eyebrows knit with concern. If I needed reassurance that he is the Kai I loved and missed, I have it in that small gesture. In the mere fact that he notices and cares about the plight of someone other than himself. Gods, I missed him.
“I think I might know where to find his lover.” I grin up at Kai. “If not, can we find a place for him in Montrace?”
He smiles fondly at me, but then his expression closes and he stares at the horizon.
“If Montrace yet stands. My mother…” He trails off. “I was vile to her. To you. To everyone. I have so much to make amends for.”
The guilt in his eyes is a harpoon to my middle. I don’t know how to tell him that they think he’s dead. They were relieved. “No. Kai, we all knew something had happened to you. Your mother wanted me to help you return to your true self.”
“Which you have done.” He carefully eases away from me, untwining my arms from his waist. A rush of mortification floods my limbs.
“The things we did…” Now that we have survived our ordeal with the fae witch, I will have to face the consequences of my actions.
Kai takes me by the shoulders. “We did them together. If anyone dares to whisper a single syllable against you, or tries to shame you in any way, they will answer to me.”
I give him a watery smile. I want to believe he’ll defend me.
But the fact remains that he is still a prince, and I am nothing but a scullery maid who failed to guard her virtue.
He will not marry me…and I cannot return to the castle for long.
I’ll go home with him to say goodbye to Nana.
Then, it’s time for me to make my own way in the world.
I’m not afraid anymore. I outwitted The Snow Queen. I can find my way. Yet when I look at Kai, I can barely breathe, knowing that our reunion is only temporary.
Our first stop is at Christabel’s castle. She welcomes our motley group with open arms. Seeing her joyous reunion with her lost knight brings tears to my eyes—especially since mine with Kai is so bittersweet.
He is no longer the brash boy I fell in love with. He’s quieter, more serious. Unfailingly gentle and chaste with me. I almost miss the mirror shard that brought out the worst in him. At least then I commanded his attention simply by existing.
Now?
I’m all but invisible to him. He regards me with distant fondness, but he doesn’t try to come to my bed, and frowns when I have the temerity to suggest he sleep with me.
Christabel and her beloved’s tenderness to one another only underscore the distantly respectful way Kai treats me. We’re back to being friends—and only friends, it seems. Which isn’t what I want, but it’s all I was ever going to have.
I accept that, now.
At Christabel’s feast to celebrate our defeat of The Snow Queen, I am seated to Kai’s right, in a place of honor as if I’m his wife.
During the princess’ speech welcoming us to her realm, he takes my hand under the table and squeezes it.
I let it linger on his knee, wondering what he would do if I slid my hand higher up his thigh. How far would he let me go?
But then he smiles easily at me and returns my hand to my own lap.
The man who wanted to crawl beneath a table to taste me is gone, apparently. I may have saved his life, but only one of us can return home now, and it won’t be me.
I’ll see him safely there, of course. I need to check in with Nana. Maybe she will have advice on how to start over after everyone has decided you’re an amoral whore, and you’ve been forced to become someone stronger than you ever thought possible.
“You don’t seem happy,” Kai says later when he walks me to my room.
“I am,” I lie. How can I say, I miss the way you were when you were being controlled by a fae witch? I didn’t like the way he treated me, exactly, but I preferred his blunt pursuit over this courtly politeness.
“You’re so beautiful without your scars,” he says.
When I emerged from the underground lake, my skin was as smooth and unmarred as the day I was born.
The only remaining sign of The Snow Queen’s ice knives is the streak of white above my left eye.
If that had been taken from me, I might go mad, thinking the past few years of struggle and yearning were all a dream.
I duck my chin, feeling naked.
“Gwen, you don’t have to hide anymore.”
“I’m not used to being looked at,” I mumble. “I spent years trying to avoid anyone seeing me.”
He kisses my forehead. “Everyone who looks at you sees what I see: a beautiful, strong, clever woman who defeated The Snow Queen at her own game.”
Against my wishes, tears press the back of my eyelids, seeking release.
“Still a scullery maid.” I summon a watery smile and jerk my head at my door. “Will you stay tonight?”
A whore’s invitation. Kai’s brows knit together. “That would be unseemly.”
My stomach drops. I feel like I’m falling endlessly the way we did after The Snow Queen shattered her own ice palace to release her hostages. Down and down, but instead of the warm embrace of a magical lake, all I find is a bottomless pool of dread.
“Don’t worry, Gwen. You will be handsomely rewarded for your efforts upon our return to Montrace,” Kai says, every inch the chivalrous knight, the honorable prince, the future king.
“Step down,” I whisper.
“What?”
“I’m asking you to step down as king. Let your mother rule. Our children can be her heirs. Please. That’s all I want. To be with you is the only reward I ever desired.”
Confusion etches into the corners of his eyes. There remains a white speck in the iris of his right eye, no longer silver. A scar from the shard. I find no glint of challenge there. I want to weep for the loss.
“You know I can’t do that.” He kisses my head. “Get some sleep. We’re safe now. Everything is going to be fine.”