Chapter 10 #2
I clenched my jaw, hard enough to ache. My hands curled at my sides, cold surging down my body all the way to my fingertips to quell the storm that burned in my chest. I had only meant to wipe the butter from her mouth; a gesture meant to be nothing but innocent.
But the world stopped when my thumb brushed over her lip.
I had felt it. Her breath and mine, our heartbeats, synchronizing.
And then, heat.
A devastating, soul-scouring heat, tearing through the hollow of my chest cavity, and surging so low it made me throb with an urgency I hadn’t experienced in years. Not like that. Not with that kind of hunger. Not with that kind of need that burned behind my ribs like a sacred fire.
And fuck if I didn’t try to smother the flame. Tried to bury it beneath talk of manuscripts and hidden magic, drowning the scent of her skin with the memory of a different scent, that of dust and parchment and ink. It had been a desperate distraction, an act of self-preservation.
But nothing—not lore, not Ravin’s anger, not even the promise of my mother’s fury—could unmoor the image of her from my thoughts.
Of her skin flushed with heat, her lips parted in surprise.
The breathy catch in her voice when I touched her.
The way her eyes had followed mine, hesitant but unmistakably drawn.
I could’ve told her about the ache in my chest. About this unrelenting need to explore these feelings further. Instead, I’d fucking told her about the shifter-fae.
I rubbed a hand over my face and cursed under my breath.
Of all the people to confide in about my damn conspiracy theories—theories that could land us in the gallows—why had I chosen to tell her?
Telling her about this was just as bad, if not worse, than telling her about my assistance to the Christmas realm.
But some part of me had wanted her to know. Because some part of me trusted her with truths I hadn’t spoken, even in the privacy of my own head.
I crossed the room and opened the carved wardrobe that stood against the far wall.
The doors creaked softly as I pulled them open.
Stale air clung to the fabric inside, and I selected a navy-blue tunic embroidered in silver thread, one of the more subdued pieces in my wardrobe.
I pulled it over my head, adjusting the collar before fastening the buckled strap that crossed my chest. My fingers moved automatically, muscle memory from a lifetime of royal expectations, but my thoughts remained tangled in the girl dressing in my washroom.
Something about her had changed.
Those wounds hadn’t healed because of me; I knew it in my bones. My magic didn’t work like that. It could numb pain, yes. Soothe a fever. Cool inflamed skin. But it couldn’t close a wound that deep in a matter of hours. That wasn’t my doing.
So, what was it?
What was she?
Was I truly contemplating that Sylvi, the sharp-tongued, stubborn-as-hell trega I’d known since childhood, might be something…other?
Might be one of them? A descendant of the shifter-fae?
The thought was heresy. Dangerous. Enough to get us both executed if I ever dared say it aloud beyond these walls.
But I’d seen it. I’d felt it. When I pressed my magic into her body last night, I felt something hum inside her, something that responded to my power.
It hadn’t been me healing her. It had been her.
And now I had to find answers, answers I was more than certain that crone had. She knew something. She had to.
But first, I needed to find a way to absolve Sylvi of any wrongdoing before the council tried to flay her alive.
I would take full accountability for the deaths in the Warrens.
But I’d also make something else abundantly clear: You didn’t get to attack the crown without punishment.
You didn’t get to lay hands on someone under its protection without consequence.
And you certainly didn’t get to touch her and not face my wrath.
I didn’t always agree with the way my mother ruled—Gods knew I’d fought her decisions more times than I could count.
But this? This was something I would not be silent about.
I would not be indifferent to the way those monsters had planned to leave her in the snow.
I would not let rumors and whispers mar her name or that of her family.
Náldrún curse them if anyone ever tried to harm her ever again.
And that thought—that truth—that I would lay ruin to anyone who even breathed the wrong way in her direction, settled in my chest like ice-encrusted iron.
I looked at myself in the antique floor mirror and tried to tame my hair, dragging restless fingers through the tousled strands of silver.
My reflection glimmered faintly in the glass, sunlight dancing in the icy pools of my eyes, casting cold halos across my irises like winter stars breaking through bruised clouds.
I stared at myself a moment longer than necessary, searching for composure, for control.
But it evaded me.
Beneath the surface, something simmered.
I took a slow breath, anchoring myself, letting it push through my lungs like a mountain wind.
Sylvi might not know it yet, or perhaps she did and was simply too afraid to face it, but something had changed between us last night.
Subtle as moonlight casting shadows over a winter forest, but no less profound.
I had felt the shift in the stars.
I had felt her in my bones like gravity, like the return of something I didn’t know I’d lost.
She was a pull I couldn’t deny; a tether spun from starlight and blood.
And gods help me…I didn’t want to fight it.
But desire—real, maddening desire—is never a gentle thing. It’s a war. A storm. And I, fool that I was, stood in the eye of it with no armor and no intention to run.
She was my best friend. But my body burned to make her more.
And that truth alone struck me down like a war hammer. Because I couldn’t have her, not the way I wanted, the way I ached to. The sheer need to claim what was not mine was clawing at my insides, tearing through every ounce of civility, begging me to cross lines I had no right to.
I was a prince. A betrothed prince.
And she was Sylvi, a common fae.
And she wasn’t mine. Not in name, not in duty, not in fate.
That thought twisted inside me like a poisoned spear.
My hands clenched at my sides, and I watched as a shadow passed over my reflection.
My pupils widened unnaturally, swallowing the icy blue until my irises darkened, deepened, black creeping in like spilled ink, like twin eclipses devouring the light.
I blinked, and the darkness retreated.
But it had been there. Lurking. Waiting for weakness.
For her.
I turned away from the mirror, heart pounding with something far more dangerous than desire. It was something old and buried, something that had waited in silence until now.
And when I’d caressed her lip earlier, just a smear of butter, just a whisper of a touch, that thing had awoken. That ancient need. That claiming instinct embedded in the marrow of every fae male who’d ever loved or longed for something he wasn’t allowed to have.
I had tried to tamp it down with reason. With logic. With talk of manuscripts and long-lost magic. I’d buried it under talk of hidden secrets, of the shifter-fae, but the truth was raw and roaring in my chest.
I wanted Sylvi.
Not just her body—though gods, that too—but her soul.
The way she made me laugh. The way she challenged me. The way she could see right through me. The way she could wrap my heart in her hands. The way I wanted to surrender all of myself to her…
And I couldn’t have her. I couldn’t even tell her. Because to do so would invite ruin. To do so would betray the very crown I was meant to protect.
Duty.
That damn word again. Duty was a chain wrapped around my throat.
I was bound to it. Bound by blood, by crown, by oath.
Prince of Skadgard. Future King of the Frostbound Court.
And that meant I would have to choose restraint.
I would have to bury the wanting. I would have to walk into that war chamber with my heart half-dead and my hands clenched into fists behind my back.
Because this wasn’t just about me.
It was about Sylvi.
She had nearly died because of this unrest. And now the realm was ready to ignite, and they’d love nothing more than to use her as the spark.
I would not allow it.
I would bear the brunt of their anger. I would answer for the deaths. I would stand in the fire if it meant shielding her from the worst of the flames. Because no matter what the council said, no matter what my mother demanded, no one had better fuck with the female I loved.
Especially when that person was the only one keeping me from falling apart.
Even if it cost me everything.
Because Sylvi might never be mine to claim, but I would raze the world to the ground with my frostfire than let anyone take her from me.