Chapter 3 #2
By nightfall, I'm weak enough that my shivering becomes violent. Full-body spasms that I can't control, jaw aching from chattering teeth, hands so numb I can't feel my fingers anymore. But I'm alive. Horribly, impossibly alive.
The fruit sits in the basket like an accusation. Perfect and impossible and everything I need to survive another day.
I last until midnight before my willpower breaks.
"Please," I whisper.
"Please what?" He doesn't even look up from his book.
"The food. I need..." Pride wars with survival, and survival wins. "I need to eat."
"Do you?" He turns a page. "I thought you weren't hungry."
"Please." The word tastes like ash, but I force it out. "I'm sorry. I was being foolish. May I please have some food?"
Finally, he looks at me. "Of course. You only had to ask."
He hands me a piece of bread and some dried fruit, and I fall on them like a wild animal.
The taste is incredible—warmth and sweetness and life flowing back into my starving body.
I hate myself for the desperate sounds I make while eating, hate him for making me beg, hate the situation that's reduced me to this.
But I eat every crumb he gives me, and when I'm finished, I feel stronger. Warmer. More alive than I have since this nightmare began.
"Better?" he asks.
I nod, not trusting my voice.
"Good. You'll need your strength tomorrow." He closes his book and settles back in his seat. "Sleep if you can. The real journey begins at dawn."
But sleep doesn't come easily. I spend the night huddled in my cloak, listening to the impossible sounds of the crystalline horses and the wind that carries voices I don't recognize. And trying not to think about what it means that I survived another day in conditions that should have been lethal.
Trying not to admit that maybe—just maybe—he's right about what I am.
DAY THREE: THE brEAKING POINT
Dawn comes too soon and not soon enough.
I wake stiff with cold, my muscles aching from a night spent shivering despite the furs he finally allowed me. The carriage has stopped, and through the crystal windows, I can see a mountain path that winds upward into clouds.
"Time to walk," Aratus announces, opening the door and stepping out into the snow like it's a summer meadow.
I follow more slowly, my silk dress and delicate boots—perfect for garden parties—immediately soaking through with ice water. The cold hits me like a physical blow, stealing my breath and making my eyes water.
"How far?" I gasp.
"Far enough." He gestures up the path. "My palace lies at the peak. We should reach it by nightfall if we maintain a good pace."
A good pace. In these conditions. In these clothes. With feet that are already going numb in my inadequate boots.
"I can't," I whisper. "I can't walk that far in this cold. Please, just leave the carriage—"
"The carriage goes no further." He's already walking, his stride steady and sure on the treacherous path. "Keep up or freeze. Your choice."
I stare after him in disbelief. He's actually going to leave me here. Actually going to make me follow on foot or die in the snow.
"Wait!" I try to run after him, but my heeled boots slip on the ice immediately. I go down hard on my knees, the impact sending shockwaves of pain through my legs.
He doesn't stop. Doesn't even slow down. Just calls back over his shoulder: "Keep up or freeze. Your choice."
Pride wars with survival, and survival wins again. I haul myself upright and start walking, each step a small agony as the cold seeps through my inadequate clothing. The path is treacherous—ice and loose stone and snow that seems deliberately placed to slow me down while leaving him untouched.
Within an hour, my feet are bleeding in my ruined boots. Within two, I'm tearing away the bottom of my dress for makeshift bandages, not caring anymore about modesty or propriety. Within three, I'm falling farther and farther behind despite my best efforts.
Every time the distance between us grows too great, the temperature drops even further. His magic reminding me that cold is his domain, that I exist only at his sufferance.
"Please," I call when I fall for the dozenth time. "Please slow down. I'm trying—"
"Try harder," he calls back without turning around.
By midday, I'm stumbling more than walking. My hands are so numb I can't feel them anymore, my feet are agony in their frozen boots, and my breath comes in harsh gasps that turn to ice the moment they leave my lips.
But I don't die. Don't even pass out, though every step feels like it should be my last.
By evening, when we finally reach the palace gates, I understand something I've been refusing to see all along.
I am not human. Not fully. Not anymore.
Human women don't survive what I've survived. Don't walk twenty miles in subzero temperatures wearing silk and velvet. Don't endure three days of cold that should have been lethal.
I am something else. Something changing. Something that belongs to the terrifying, beautiful creature who stands waiting for me at his palace doors.
The palace itself is impossible—black stone and ancient ice twisted together in architecture that shouldn't exist. Towers that scrape clouds. Walls that shimmer with barely contained magic. Courtyards visible even from here, filled with ice sculptures that move like living things.
It's beautiful. Terrible. Everything I've been taught to fear about the Fae made solid and eternal.
And it's going to be my home for the rest of my life.
"Welcome to the Frost Court," Aratus says as the gates open on their own. "Welcome home, Elise."
I look up at him through eyes blurred with exhaustion and tears I don't remember shedding. He's still beautiful, still terrible, still utterly inhuman in his perfection. But now I can see something else in his frozen-lake eyes.
Satisfaction. Like a hunter who's finally driven his prey exactly where he wants it.
"I hate you," I whisper.
"I know," he replies. "But you'll learn to love me anyway. They always do."
He lifts me effortlessly, carrying me through the palace gates like a bride crossing a threshold. My last coherent thought before exhaustion claims me is wondering if any of those other women he mentioned were given a choice in the matter.
Or if they all started just like this—broken, desperate, and finally ready to become whatever he wanted them to be.