Chapter 89
The Cold
COLSAR
It was bitter cold. Colsar had forgotten how the mountains cut through leather and fur to the bone, how the air at this altitude worked its way in slowly, stealing heat, patience, and mercy.
The first time he came here, he had been younger, less aware of what winter could take from a man who believed himself built for war.
Now it worked into old scars, waking them one by one.
He had been in the high provinces for weeks, first to escort the sovereign to safety and then to hunt what should never have walked again.
The undead did not fall easily in frozen terrain, and burning the corpses afterward was worse, a task that clung to him long after the flames had died.
Smoke threaded itself into hair and armor.
It clung to his throat. It followed him into sleep.
One more village remained. One more stretch of treeline to clear.
After that, he would go home. Home. He had never thought of Rathmor that way before.
It had been obligation, alliance, politics.
A location marked on a map and defended for reasons that had nothing to do with comfort.
Asharin had changed the architecture of the word, had taken something he’d treated as duty and turned it into a place he could feel in his chest. Now home meant her voice at dawn, the warmth of her body when she curled close without realizing it, and the brief, defiant laugh she tried to hide whenever he pretended not to be amused.
He had hated leaving her that morning, hated it with a violence he did not speak aloud because he did not permit himself that kind of softness in front of soldiers.
He had nearly turned back twice before clearing the city gates, and the only thing that had kept him moving was the certainty that this was necessary, that he could do what had to be done and return to her quickly.
He trusted Junis to guard her. He trusted every name on the list of safe houses he had left in her keeping.
He had even written Eravic Vaelor’s name among them, despite despising the way the man looked at her.
The truth was that Vaelors were many things, but liars were not among them.
If nothing else, they could be trusted with her safety.
Sevrin, too, would protect her. His brother might be ruthless, might be calculating, but he always put the realm first, and a scandal involving Colsar’s wife would fracture alliances Sevrin could not afford to lose.
He needed Yvara’s bastard. He needed the Baron’s gold.
He needed Colsar’s armies. He would not jeopardize any of it for infatuation.
He would not be that foolish.
The wind carried the sound of hooves before Colsar saw the rider.
His hand went to his sword out of instinct rather than alarm.
When General Rorin broke through the tree line at speed, no formation, no measured advance, Colsar’s stomach tightened.
This was not a scheduled arrival. Rorin did not slow until he was nearly upon him.
He swung down before the horse had fully stilled.
“General,” Colsar said, already scanning his face. There was no forearm clasp, no flask, no briefing.
Rorin’s expression was wrong. “My prince,” he said, breath hard from the ride. “The princess—”
Colsar did not remember crossing the distance between them.
“Tell me.” The question came low and dangerous.
“The moment you left,” Rorin said, “things went badly for the princess.”
The cold vanished from Colsar’s awareness. Something tight drew across his ribs, as if his body had decided it could not afford breath.
“Explain.”
Rorin swallowed. He looked briefly toward the tree line, then back at Colsar, as if he would rather face undead than this conversation.
“I am not one for gossip,” he said carefully, and even the phrasing sounded like a man preparing to step onto thin ice.
“But my son Edrin serves as a page. He hears what others do not, and he hears it from mouths that do not realize they are speaking.”
Colsar grabbed him by the jacket. “Say it,” he growled.
“The princess has been suffering at the hands of your brother,” he said.
“It started the day you left. King Sevrin was displeased,” he said.
“There was some dish she disliked. Something that made her ill. He insisted she eat it. Servants heard raised voices. Glass breaking. The princess was sick that night.”
Colsar did not move.
Rorin continued, his voice lower now, as if the walls of the world might carry the report back to the palace. “After that, he ordered she only eat when dining with him. If she refused, she would not eat at all.”
Snow groaned beneath Colsar’s boots as his weight shifted, a reflexive preparation for violence. “And then?” he said, with no inflection.
“The King had her chambers locked,” Rorin replied. “From the outside. She was not permitted books. No correspondence. No visitors. The only thing he allowed was letters to him.”
Colsar’s hands closed slowly at his sides. “Where was Junis?”
“The ports were closed the day after you left,” Rorin said. “No one was permitted through without direct royal authorization.”
He had closed the ports. The bastard.
Rorin drew a breath. “There is more.”
Colsar said nothing. The silence demanded the rest.
“The dinners,” the general continued carefully, “were strange, but not indecent.”
Colsar’s eyes burned. “Define strange.”
“He commissioned gowns,” Rorin said. “Not for Yvara, but for the princess. He required her to wear them during private meals.”
“What do you mean private?” Colsar demanded, and the restraint he’d carried for weeks frayed at the edges.
“I mean he dismissed the court,” Rorin replied, “but never the staff. Servants remained along the walls the entire time. The doors were not locked from the inside. There was no physical impropriety.”
Colsar’s voice dropped into something lethal. “Did he touch her?"
“No,” Rorin said immediately. “Not once. No touching, no kiss, no closed door. The staff swear to it.”
The answer should have soothed, yet it only reshaped the threat into something worse, something that lived in proximity and control.
“He would sit across from her for hours,” Rorin continued, “watching, dictating how much she ate, counting bites, correcting her. The servants say he did not eat at all, only watched her.”
A muscle worked in Colsar’s cheek.
“It was not the behavior of a lover,” the general said quietly. “It was the behavior of a man who wanted proximity without consequence.”
Colsar inhaled and the air felt like ice inside his lungs. “And she endured this.”
“Yes,” Rorin said. “For hours at a time. The servants tried to shorten the evenings by adding spirits to his goblet. They took pity on her. They say she would leave pale and shaking, sometimes barely able to stand.” He hesitated, then added, softer, “She never let him see her cry.”
That nearly undid Colsar more than any report of violence would have, because it sounded like her, like survival itself.
“She grew thin,” Rorin went on. “There were rumors she slipped out at night to find food herself.”
Colsar closed his eyes once. He opened them again without blinking. “What else?”
“One servant attempted to smuggle her letters,” Rorin said quietly. “The King had his hand removed for it.”
The mountain wind seemed to hush, as if even it listened.
“And,” Rorin said quietly, “there are whispers she may be with child, that perhaps that is why she looks so fragile and tired as of late. Some say it is jealousy of your heir that drives the King’s cruelty. Others claim the confinement is protection. No one agrees. Only that she has grown pale.”
The word child tore through Colsar in a way that felt almost physical.
He did not respond. Then he shifted, the transformation ripping through air and snow, and he was already running
He tore through the undead without counting them, not bothering to preserve strength, not measuring distance or wound or fatigue.
Frozen lakes cracked beneath his weight as he crossed them at speed, and forests swallowed him while hunters mistook him for some mountain predator and loosed arrows without hesitation.
One shaft buried itself deep in his side and snapped when he shifted back into himself hours later, but he left the iron lodged there and kept moving because pain was simpler than thought, and forward was the only direction that mattered.