Chapter 7
Mikael
The fear in Beckett’s voice reached Mikael long before true understanding did.
It slipped through the dense fog that swallowed his mind in jagged fragments that refused to settle into anything coherent.
The pounding against the cottage door and the raised voices outside eventually followed close behind, it was the naked terror in the boy’s small voice that cut through the darkness most clearly of all.
“Please don’t let him in.”
The words lodged deep inside Mikael’s chest sharp enough that even in his half-conscious state he reacted instinctively.
“Hold on a minute!” Lyra called toward the door, her voice raised just enough to carry over the pounding. It softened immediately when she turned her attention back to the boy beside her. “I would never let anyone hurt you, especially not in my own house.”
“But what if it’s him?”
The child sounded terrified in a way that suggested this was not the fear of imagination but the fear of someone who had learned too early what it meant to hide.
“He doesn’t know where we are, Beckett,” Lyra assured him gently, though Mikael could hear strain buried beneath her calmness now. “You’re safe here.”
“But what if it is?”
Wake up.
The command came from deep within himself in reaction to the fear inside this house where only warmth had existed before.
Even through the fog consuming him, Mikael remembered her hands that warmed his skin, the steady crackle of the fire nearby, and the sound of her voice drifting through restless darkness while pain and fever tried to drag him under.
And now danger stood outside her door.
Wake up!
Mikael fought upward through the crushing weight holding him captive and dragged himself painfully toward consciousness while agony immediately slammed into him from every direction.
His ribs burned with every shallow inhale, his head throbbed so violently it felt as though his skull had been split apart, and exhaustion wrapped around every limb like iron chains determined to pull him back beneath the surface before he could fully rise.
Still, he forced against it and tried to move or even open his eyes. He tried to force his body into obedience through sheer will alone and got nothing except a weak twitch of his fingers against the blanket before the darkness dragged heavily at him again.
Why was his dragon not helping?
The pounding against the door came harder this time, strong enough to rattle the walls of the cottage.
“Open in the king’s name!”
The voice struck a memory buried somewhere deep inside Mikael’s mind.
Flashes of snow and men rose sharply through the haze.
Cutting winds that tore at the skin across the mountainside, a snowcat somewhere near the cliff, and horses snorting, but the images dissolved before he could fully grasp them.
Then another voice cut through the confusion, colder and sharper than the others, disciplined in the dangerous way only a seasoned soldier could be.
Dag.
Mikael recognized him instantly. Relief should have followed but instead, panic surged low and vicious through his chest.
I am the king.
Dag was his guard captain. Loyal beyond question, ruthless when necessary. The kind of man who would drag himself through fire if duty demanded it and never hesitate long enough to consider whether the king wished to be saved at all.
And somehow, despite knowing that Dag’s presence meant safety, the thought of being taken from this cottage filled Mikael with a deep, instinctive dread he could neither explain nor control.
I am the king.
The realization surfaced in fragments, incomplete but undeniable, and with it came the certainty that Dag would remove him from this place immediately because that was what loyal guards did. They secured the crown, removed the threat, and restored order.
But what exactly was the threat? Staying or leaving? Why did the mere idea of leaving this room and this woman feel unbearable?
His dragon stirred violently beneath the haze clouding both of them, sluggish and weakened but suddenly alert in a way Mikael could feel deep in his bones.
Mine.
The possessiveness struck him so hard his chest tightened painfully around the word. It made no sense. He barely knew the woman tending him.
Yet the thought of being carried away from her felt suffocating in a way he could not rationalize, and injury or fever no longer seemed enough to explain the fierce resistance rising inside him.
Movement stirred nearby, and Mikael recognized Lyra instantly by the subtle shift in warmth beside him and the strange steadiness that seemed to follow wherever she moved.
“I told you it wasn’t him,” she said softly to Beckett. “I have to open the door.”
“They’re here for the king?”
“Yes, now get into your safe space in the closet while I deal with them.”
“But—”
“Now, Beckett.”
The sharpness in her tone carried enough authority that tiny footsteps immediately scrambled across the floorboards. The child was practiced at hiding. Even Mikael’s mind registered that.
The pounding returned.
Lyra crossed the room quickly, and Mikael tried weakly to follow the warmth leaving his side, but his hand barely shifted against the blanket before the cottage door finally opened with a burst of icy wind.
“What took so long?” Dag snapped immediately. “Do you have any idea what is at stake here?”
Mikael waited for Lyra to falter beneath the force of his captain’s temper, but it never came.
“I was tending the fire. Some things can’t safely be rushed.”
Boots crossed the cottage floorboards as Dag stepped further inside. “I knew he was here. You found him and said nothing.”
“I found an injured man in the snow.”
“The missing king,” Dag corrected coldly, anger tightening every word. “Whom every household in the region was ordered to report immediately.”
Lyra answered with calm so cool it bordered on infuriating. “I don’t receive royal orders very often out here.”
Despite the situation, laughter stirred inside Mikael. Dag, however, sounded thoroughly unimpressed.
“You didn’t think to report an injured man who clearly required medical attention?”
“I provided medical attention,” Lyra shot back instantly, and for the first time Mikael heard genuine anger beneath her calm. “And unless you’ve somehow learned to control mountain blizzards now, traveling through that storm would have killed him. Leaving him unattended might have done the same.”
“You still should have called.”
“I had no way to do that.”
Silence followed again. “You don’t have a phone?” Dag asked finally.
“No.”
A lie. Mikael knew it was false because he remembered hearing it ring earlier, remembered the tension in Lyra’s voice afterward and Beckett’s fear. He prayed it remained silent now.
“Even if I could have called, what would I have said?” she demanded. “That I found an unconscious stranger half-frozen in the snow while roads were impassable? Your king is alive because I kept him alive.”
“Search the house,” Dag ordered.
“Absolutely not. You have no need.”
No.
Mikael’s body jerked violently against the mattress as pain exploded through his ribs hard enough to drive a ragged sound from his throat.
“Mikael?”
Fear entered Lyra’s voice instantly.
“He’s conscious?”
“Not fully,” Lyra answered Dag tightly as footsteps moved closer to the bed.
“Your Majesty?” Dag called sharply.
Mikael fought desperately toward the voice, forcing everything he had left into the effort to move, to speak, to command them to stop, but nothing obeyed.
“He needs rest,” she said coldly. “And you are not searching my home. I have done nothing wrong.”
A dangerous silence followed.
“You presume much for a woman harboring her king.”
“I presume,” Lyra replied while fury simmered beneath every word now, “that I don’t need armed men tearing through my home after I spent days keeping your king alive. Days that you were not here searching for him, I might add.”
Dag ignored her innuendo. “You interfered with royal authority.”
“And you’re interfering with my home.”
“You should be careful,” Dag warned quietly.
“No,” Lyra snapped suddenly, emotion finally breaking through the calm she had maintained so carefully until now.
“You be careful. I dragged him out of a snowbank and I kept him breathing while storms buried the mountains outside. Now you arrive here acting as though I’ve committed some crime because I chose not to abandon a dying man. ”
Dag exhaled slowly through his nose, a sound Mikael knew well as the narrow line between restraint and temper. “Get him ready to travel.”
Cold panic surged violently through Mikael at the words, and every instinct inside him rebelled immediately against the command while his dragon lashed beneath the haze with sudden fury.
Mine.
Not the cottage. Her.
Mikael forced everything he had left into one final desperate attempt to rise to tell Dag no, but his body betrayed him completely. Then warmth touched his hand.
Her fingers slid firmly into his palm, grounding him instantly.
“It’s alright,” she whispered. “You’ll be okay.” She bent down and kissed his forehead.
The dragon quieted immediately beneath her touch.
Safe.
The word echoed softly through Mikael’s fading consciousness, no longer possessive now but certain in an entirely different way. He clung weakly to her hand while voices around him blurred and drifted farther away.
“We’re taking him now,” Dag said distantly.
Lyra’s fingers tightened around his once before slowly slipping free, and the cold left behind by her absence cut deeper than the mountain storm ever had.
It was that emptiness that finally dragged Mikael fully back into darkness.