Chapter 17
Chapter
Seventeen
Elara
Winter smells different here.
In the gutters of Marrowbrae, snow quickly turned into a gray-brown blanket of slush, bringing out the smell of filth and starvation. But in the white palace courtyard? It smells of pine needles, frozen stone, and a clarity in the air that comes with the chimes of ice expanding somewhere.
I wade through the calf-high drifts, the weight of my heavy green skirts dragging against my shins. It’s oddly calming. Grounding in a way that makes me dare to angle my face toward the rare, pale warmth of the sun.
A few yards away, the oddest domesticity I’ve ever seen plays out on a stone bench. Mother sits there—after I finally forced her out of her mourning bed—her fur-lined cloak pulled tight, deep in conversation with…my husband.
Vale’s been strangely present for the last two days, only occasionally vanishing to guide souls to their final resting place. But he always reappears, as if he took my whispered “stay” not as a woman's single plea, but as his wife's eternal wish.
My ears prick each time I make out words between them, but the wind carries them off before I can piece together their conversation. Whatever the subject, it makes Mother’s lips wrinkle. Not with a frown, but with a reluctant, fragile smile.
My mouth twitches in response.
Fine. I’ll allow it.
I stop in a deep drift near the empty stables and let my leather-gloved hands reach for the white powder out of sheer habit. The brightness at my core intensifies, turning golden, giving a warm, unexpected sheen to my grief.
I dig past the cold crust until my fingers strike something solid. A stone. I pull it up and stare at the gray, round thing. Then I scoop up some of the white powder. Work it around the stone for speed. Pack it for impact. Smooth it round for true aim.
Daron’s snowball recipe.
That golden warmth in my chest flares. But it doesn’t banish the grief there.
It merely changes it into something that still aches, but it’s a sweet kind of throb that brings a smile to my lips.
Given the chance, would I cut that out of me?
Carve the love from my chest? The memories it sustains? The laughs it holds?
Never.
Because love and loss are on the same coin—one side warmth, one side ache—but the value never changes. And to carve out the grief would be to erase the love that made the memory worth living. A thousand times over.
I straighten, turn, and look at Vale.
His heart is healing. It has to be. The tower. The bloody sorry. Daron’s hand held in his. The grave, and his cloak around me. Each one something Death was never supposed to do. What if Death can love me?
My chest warms at that.
What if he already does?
Perhaps not to his full capacity yet, with the third and final string trapped inside my crown, but it might be enough to break this curse…
if only it wasn’t shackled by his fear. And if I want him to lose that fear?
Then I have to show him that grief and love go hand in hand—two parts of a coin that holds the value of life itself.
I look down at the snowball. Pain is a good thing. Reminds us that we’re alive.
In a sort of excited trance, I wade through the snow, closer toward the bench. I pull my arm back, aiming straight at the buttons of Vale’s pretty blue coat—or perhaps that living, beating heart underneath.
Then I throw.
The snowball cuts clean through the air and smacks his shoulder. Thud. Snow bursts on the midnight-blue velvet, sending a frantic spray of white across his dazed face.
Mother lets out a startled, joyous bark of laughter. It amplifies the brightness at my core, flooding the courtyard in reflected light from the snow crystals below.
Vale’s hand flies to the impact site, his eyes blowing wide, green irises capturing the sunlight as he looks at me in pure shock. “Whatever was that?”
“Revenge for a dozen lies.” I reach down and grab a handful of fresh snow, packing it anew, a wicked grin stretching my face. “I’ll give you five seconds to up your defense. Five…four…”
Vale glances at the snow on his shoulder. Looks at Mother, who’s still chuckling into her cloak. Then, he looks at me.
A muscle feathers in his jaw. The corners of his mouth twitch as if fighting a millennial habit of boredom. Then, a shadow of a smile—dark, dangerous, and brilliantly alive.
“You have a very poor sense of self-preservation, wife.” He bends down, his long fingers digging into the drift. “Run.”
A spike of energy.
Giggling, I turn, hitching up my skirts and bolting toward the old stables. But not without gathering more snow, twisting around, and letting another snowball fly.
This one misses by a mile. It breaks right beside Mother, making her rise with a laugh before she swats at our nonsense and turns toward the palace to flee our childish game.
“Coward!” I laugh after her.
Vale pushes himself off the bench, sad, malformed snowball in hand. “You’ll regret having started this.” He stalks through the high snow, much faster than me with his long legs, giving the snowball in his hands a final, menacing squeeze. “Revenge for the dozens of times you wouldn’t listen!”
Thwack.
His snowball clips my shoulder, spinning me around. The cold seep is biting, but the heat in my blood is louder. I’m laughing so hard my ribs ache, a sound that draws shadowed figures to the palace windows.
“Didn’t even feel it!”
I dive behind a frost-rimmed barrel, salt-slicked breath hitching in my chest. I don’t wait for him to find his next mark. I pop up, a snowy projectile in each hand, and launch them in a frantic arc before I bolt again.
One catches him in the thigh. The other, he bats away with a flick of his wrist. “Your aim is deteriorating, Elara!”
“Don’t make me dig for stones!” I yell back, scooping up more ammunition as I scramble toward the perimeter of the courtyard.
Vale halts, tilting his head. “Stones?”
“You wouldn’t know what to do with them.” I laugh, hurl another snowball, but miss him by an inch. “It’s only a thing for mere mortals.”
He laughs—a real, booming sound—and shakes his head. “Then you leave me no choice but to escalate.”
I turn just in time to see him lunge. He doesn’t throw anything this time. Instead, he charges right at me!
I scramble backward, my boots slipping on a patch of ice beneath the powder. I manage to lob one last, desperate ball of slush at his chest, but he ignores it. He takes the hit like it’s nothing, his hands reaching out, his eyes flashing with predatory mirth.
He catches me around the waist, his momentum hitting me like an ocean wave. We go down together, a chaotic tangle of green wool and blue velvet. The snow swallows us, a cold, soft explosion that fills my vision with white.
Vale pins me, his weight heavy and solid, his knees bracketing my hips. White powder floats down and catches on his black curls while we just stare at each other. He looks young, happy. And in that moment, maybe he even looks like my husband.
“I don’t know what’s gotten into you.” His voice is a whisper, its undertone braided with concern and awe alike. “Surrender?”
“Never.” A smug smile. Then I reach down, grab a fistful of loose, powdery snow, and smash it directly into his face.
Vale recoils, sputtering and wiping his eyes as the white spray coats his nose and cheeks. It’s the opening I need, so I shove against his chest, roll out from under him, and scramble to my feet, nearly tripping over my hem.
“Elara!” he bellows, though the word is fractured by how he’s spitting snow. “Oh yes, you better run now!”
I sprint for the yawning darkness of large doors, my lungs burning, my heart bouncing. I burst into the shadows of the stable, the air thick with the scent of old hay, dry straw, and the lingering warmth of the horses that went to pasture earlier.
Snow. Snow. Snow.
Where do I get—ah!
From the white sill of an open stable window, I gather two handfuls, my fingers tingling with the cold that seeps through my gloves. I dive behind a stack of grain sacks, pressing my shoulder against the rough burlap, forming the powder into a tight sphere while I wait for the silence to break.
The stable is deathly quiet, save for the sound of my frantic pulse in my ears. Where is he?
I peek around the edge of the burlap, my eyes adjusting to the dim, golden light filtering through the rafters. He hasn’t followed me through the door, so—
Straw rustles.
Behind me.
I bolt upright, spinning around with a gasp, my arm already cocked back to hurl the ball. Too slow.
A powerful arm hooks around my belly, lashing me back against a chest that feels like an anvil of heat and solid muscle. I let out a sharp cry of surprise as my feet nearly leave the floor, my back pressed flush against the damp blue velvet of Vale’s coat.
“Apologize.” Vale’s voice is a low, vibrating purr against the shell of my ear, sending a different kind of shiver down my spine.
His right hand snakes forward, clamping firmly around my wrist and pulling my snowball up until it’s hovering inches from my face.
“Say sorry, Elara. Say you’re an infuriating menace of a wife. ”
“You cheated!” I struggle in his grip, my heels kicking uselessly against his shins. “You just…appeared behind me with whatever that—”
White, biting cold puffs into my face.