Chapter 1
ONE
There should only be darkness.
The blackout should envelop me, swallow me whole, and I should only hear the fae speak around me—I shouldn’t actually fucking see them.
It’s Emily’s fault.
It’s her light that dances over the black ice, glitters over her own blood that streams from the net to the road, and flickers over the tall, muscular frames of the two male warriors who trapped us.
One is ice.
The other is fuckery.
It’s all the spite I can conjure as I’m frozen on my back, sprawled over the hood of the car, suffocating against the tightness in my lungs.
The voices are barbed wire wrapped around gravel—and they take turns speaking, a language that isn’t unlike whips lashing down on the black ice.
Their conversation carries on like the winter fae didn’t fucking slam me down on the hood of the car and blow the breath right out of me, like I’m not suffocating now, or like I didn’t hit my head so hard on landing that I suddenly can’t understand speech anymore.
Why else is it that—as Bee’s lips move and curl around words, desperately uttered words—I don’t understand a single thing she says?
My own lips part—but they part around emptiness. Nothing more than a pitchy sound, a whistle in a failed wheeze.
My lungs can’t drag in breath.
I’m trying, I’m trying…
But there’s a fog draped over me, a weighted blanket pinning me down on the hood of the car, and even just existing here, it’s a serrated ice blade forcing its way down my chest.
All I can do is plead, silently, as the breath leaves me…
Lashes are too low over my eyes, a haze too thick over the road. The dark fae pacing around me shifts between a blurred outline and an icy face aimed down at me.
Bee’s garbled words silence.
I drag my stare to her—and I can hardly make her out through the tightness expanding in my chest, drawing me closer and closer to unconsciousness…
Or death.
Feels like that’s where I’m headed.
No more than a frayed ribbon of air reaching down into my starving lungs, my mind is ebbing away… and I really am suffocating.
That fae, that winter one, he tugs out of his pace and moves for me. A tall, menacing silhouette, broad and muscular, with wintergreen eyes.
It happens quick, too quick.
In a blink, he’s grabbing me by the jacket.
A bolt of fright strikes me.
My back lifts off the hood of the car, maybe just an inch, like the absolute final scraps of breath, of life, is spent on fighting his touch.
The heels of my boots press lamely into the windshield, as if I can kick myself down the hood and fall onto the icy road. But the fae’s fist is too firm in the front of my parka, and I’m too depleted.
Faintly, I’m aware of his other hand rummaging over my body—and I think he’s digging through my pockets, searching me.
I hear the distant clatter of my things hitting metal, all the stuff I have shoved into my pockets falling all over.
I worm against his hold, against his search—his coldness.
That glare aimed down at me doesn’t soften. It’s winter latched onto aloe vera, it’s the frosty hue of iceberg lettuce, it’s the insides of a fucking cucumber, pure coldness—
And it’s looking down at me.
The reach of Emily’s torch is disturbed by her falling blood trails, distorting fragments of light into something reddish and murky, but the light dances over the glossy pallor of this fae’s skin, the sharp angle of his nose, the shadows cutting along his jaw—and it’s a face of cold fury.
My insides constrict, and it’s more than the tension suffocating me, it’s the instinct to curl up into nothing and disappear.
But I can’t. I’m stuck here, pinned under his gaze, my heart thumping louder and harder with each passing second.
A drop of pee escapes again, the warmth quick to freeze against my flesh—and just as it does, he rips his hand out from the depth of my parka pocket.
I flinch—as if I expect him to have ripped out my guts… but instead, it’s the blue curve of my inhaler in his grip.
Bee shouts something.
More garbled noise.
Before I can drag my dazed gaze to her, my sight fading away with the last of my life, the winter fae brings the inhaler to my face.
I feel the graze of plastic against my parted lips.
If I had more sense, more awareness in the moment, I might flop away from him, cry out at his touch, or screech the question thrumming in my mind like a violin cord, struck: what the actual fuck is happening?
But death has me.
There’s no fight left in me.
There’s nothing but fear rattling around the insides of my limp body.
The fae shoves the mouth of the inhaler between my lips. It digs into my teeth before he turns it, then it pushes in further—
He presses down on the metal top, and that sweetly bitter medicated air rushes into my mouth.
My chest swells. But just a little.
Not enough.
Not nearly enough.
Bee’s garbled voice echoes in the daze.
Distantly, I understand she’s telling the fae what to do, to feed me this medicated air, once, twice, and the third puff of pressure from the inhaler floods my prickled lungs.
My breathing eases.
My mind is returning to me, slow, but I’m still limp on the hood of the car.
Arms splayed, I feel the touch of the inhaler still pressed against my lips, but the fae does nothing to add more into me, he doesn’t press down on the other end a fourth time.
He just looks down at me, cold, before he turns his cheek at the sound of the other dark warrior speaking in that strange, thick sound again.
I slide my warped stare to Bee.
The distortion of my sight is clearing.
Stars dying in the canvas of my vision, and I can make out that’s she’s on the road… bound in something like a rope.
Her arms are pinned to her body, and she’s sprawled at the boots of the dark-haired warrior with an angry scar running down his face.
Dare.
That’s the name she used over the CB.
When he was only a distant threat, one to light a fire under our asses, but one we thought we had a chance at escaping.
Now, he speaks in his language, then he firms his grip on Bee’s restraints—and he hoists her up from the road.
The flare of panic in her grey eyes reaches me through the dusty light, through the blur, but she turns her terrified stare on the cold warrior—and she growls out something I don’t understand.
The cold one tosses the inhaler aside.
It lands on the chest of my parka.
Whatever Bee is saying to him in that otherworldly snarl, it feathers a muscle in his jaw, it does something to him.
A shudder ripples through the muscles beneath his leathers, and I just feel it, the danger lifting up around me like a thick mist of frost—and the cold of it somehow snakes between my parted lips, reaching down to my lungs.
That icy breath is a mere second of reprieve.
But the cold warrior holds Bee’s stare as he seizes the hilt of the knife burrowed in my shoulder—
My heart stops.
A sharp breath cuts through me, an almost protest, words that don’t have the time to conjure, a shout that is quick to mutate into a strangled scream.
He rips out the blade.
I lift with it, my back arching off the car, and a scream is torn out of me.
My hollow cry splits the air—and I hardly hear the background shouts from Bee.
The warrior stands over me, his cheek to me, and the bloody blade in his fist.
The sight of it is the only clear thing in my vision as everything else blurs around me, and stars ignite all over.
My spine flattens to the car again, muffled by the backpack, and I’m writhing against the searing hot pain bleeding at my shoulder.
I touch my hand to the wet heat of the wound.
Bee’s shout is a distant echo, a background noise to the moans ribboning out of me, “The CB, the CB!”
I hold onto the sword in the mist. Her voice.
“One, two! One, two!”
Her words are cut off with a grunt.
My dazed gaze drags to her through the shadowy light, just as the scarred fae yanks Bee into his chest.
No…
He’s taking her away…
My finger lifts from the cold metal of the car. I mean to reach out for her—but instead, warm tears stream down my cheekbones to tickle my hairline, and my hand falls flat.
That Dare, that fucking beast, is pulling her away from me—leaving me.
“A bargain! There’s a bargain!”
My lashes flutter, slick with tears.
I part my lips but all that comes out is a wispy sound.
Dare loops his arm firmly around her middle, then hoists her back—edging too close to the all-consuming darkness, where the torchlight doesn’t reach.
Bee’s wild look is aimed right at me.
My tears spill for us both.
Her fate at the hands of this polished beast, a male she tried so hard to evade; and my advancing end at the hands of ice himself.
I should do something.
Anything.
But whatever flare of fight I had for that brief moment is gone. A flame snuffed by ice.
So all I do is watch.
It’s all I can do.
My body has nothing. My bones are brittle, muscles ruined, lungs seared.
I ache to reach out for her, to roll off the car and run to her—but the fight withers before it can shift from my mind to my body.
Through the tears warping my sight, Bee’s mossy stone eyes are glaring at me. A look that communicates, that speaks to me.
She thrashes in the fae’s hold, a worm too slippery to grip. His face is twisted with bitterness as he shoves something against her mouth… a cloth of some kind. Still, he’s dragging her away, slowed down by her struggle, but not stopped.
Don’t leave me.
Don’t leave me here.
An ice-cold flurry lifts in my chest—enough that my hands slap on the rusted metal of the car, and I writhe, slow, aimless, until I’m sliding off the hood.
I thud to the hard ice.
The clatter of my inhaler hits the road in front of me.
I turn my cheek to it, lashes too low over my eyes, distorting the sight of Bee being dragged into the edge of the light.
That male, that scarred fae, he’s got her firm in his hold—and forcing a cloth against her face to muzzle her.
A wispy whimper escapes me, a sound that resembles the weakest ‘no’ ever heard.
I roll onto my knees.
But I don’t get to move an inch more than that.
The winter fae is suddenly towering over me.
I blink, and he’s there.
I cringe from him, my teeth bared in nothing less than braced cowardice.
That doesn’t stop his hand from coming down on the nape of my neck—and he pins me.
The pressure turns my gaze down to the road.
I’m folded over, tears falling to the black ice, heart frozen in my chest, breath stuck in my throat—and for a beat, all I can hear is the blood pulsing in my own ears.
“Don’t run!” Bee’s shout is fast followed by a hacking sound, like she’s still fighting off the cloth. “Just trust me!”
Far away…
Too far.
Now I know they’re in the darkness—where sound is just that bit off, that bit distant, that bit distorted.
Then Bee’s voice joins that distortion, “Just wait for me. The CB! Argh—”
Her shouts end.
Silence frosts the road.
And I’m left in a thick quiet that’s disturbed only by my thundering heartbeats.