9. Raven
“What are you doing in my room?” I glared at Winter and the parchment he held. Hadn’t I been holding that when I’d fallen asleep? “And what gives you the right to go through my stuff?”
“I didn’t go through your stuff. I found this”―he thrust the message forward―“on the ground, beside the bed, and picked it up for you. I had no plans to read it. It just happened.”
“Just happened?” I stomped forward and snatched the parchment from his hold.
Like coming into my bedchamber without an invitation?
Thank the mercies of hell I hadn’t slipped into anything too comfortable before dropping into a deep sleep the night before.
With a heavy sigh, Winter dropped his head forward. “I’m sorry I upset you.” He gazed up through heavy lashes. “That was not my intention.”
I crossed my arms and glared. “And you didn’t think I would find it upsetting that you simply let yourself into my room…again…while I was sleeping, no less? Do you have no respect for personal boundaries?”
“Gods. You’re gorgeous.” He bit down on his lower lip.
“What?” My entire body jerked back a step.
If he believed complimenting me would successfully redirect my thoughts and cause me to forget his infraction, he had another thing coming.
“You just…” He waved his hand in a circle before me. Around me. With a half-lidded gaze, he appeared to devour the sight of me. “You get this ethereal glow about you when you’re upset. It’s intense, and wild, and, gods help me, excitingly attractive.”
Was he talking about my reaper’s gift? Was my anger somehow activating one or more?
I clenched my teeth and glared. Whatever he was doing, intentional or not, it was not going to work. I was mad, and I was going to stay mad.
“Your attempt to deflect will not work.”
“Again, I’m sorry.” He clasped his hands in front of his waist, clutching tight enough to squeeze the blood from his fingers.
“I wanted to make sure Valen treated you well yesterday, and I tried checking on you last night, but you didn’t get in until late.
And when you finally did, you were asleep before I could call on you. ”
I shifted my weight to one hip. “And you knew I was asleep because…” I let the word roll slowly off my tongue. “You let yourself into my room then, too? Without my expressed approval?”
“I was concerned. You were recently injured, quite gravely, might I add, and you are still healing. Who’s to say—”
“Just because I am a guest here, under your roof, doesn’t mean you can simply barge into my room whenever you feel like it. I’m a guest, and as such, there are boundaries.” I started pacing.
“I am fully aware, but—”
“But nothing,” I snapped.
“But,” he continued, and my glare narrowed, “in addition to my concern regarding your day with Valen, I thought you would want to know, rather immediately, that I saw your coworker Chace.”
My arms dropped to my sides, all my defenses going limp.
“You saw him?” My eyes widened, and my jaw slackened. “How did he look? Is he all right?”
He tilted his head as his hands relaxed and slid to his sides. “Is there something going on between the two of you?”
“What? No.” I jerked back another step, my heart flopping on a flutter. “That would be…”
I sought the correct word, and in the silence, his brow arched.
I flung my hand in a dismissive wave. “Absurd.”
A hint of a smile flashed to Winter’s lips.
It was there and gone in a blink. “Yet again, it would seem I owe you an apology. Your relationship with that individual, whatever it may be, is none of my business. Although I must confess to being pleased at hearing the two of you aren’t romantically involved. ”
Heat flushed my cheeks, and I prayed my skin hadn’t brightened to match. Was I embarrassed due to my unsure emotions regarding Chace? Or born from my curious and unexplored feelings where Winter was concerned?
“But to answer your question, Chace…” He dragged the name off his tongue as if it stuck like tar as he tipped his head to his shoulder with a shrug. “He seemed all right.”
All right? That word could mean a plethora of things. How all right was Chace? Was he all right in the sense that he was alive? Was he just all right in the fact that he was talking, hopefully walking? Or were there no serious injuries to his mental and physical state?
Before I opened my mouth and asked him to clarify, Winter clasped my shoulders and turned me toward the bed, saying, “I think you should sit down.”
Oh no, oh no, oh no.
All right didn’t really mean all right at all. Why else would he want me to sit down?
“Why—” My throat closed up, so I restarted my question, even as I allowed him to steer me to the bed. “Why must I sit down?”
With a gentle press of his fingers upon my shoulders, I settled on the edge of the mattress. Anxiety wrung my muscles and squeezed my throat.
He folded his hands around mine and dropped to his knees before me. My mind reeled, and my heart pounded. What was he doing? What was happening? Was the room growing hotter?
Winter’s chest heaved. “Chace told me something, and I am unsure how to tell you this, but…”
He swallowed hard and paused his delivery for too long. Far too long.
Oh gods. Help me, blessed death.
Chace isn’t okay. Something bad happened. Something Winter is afraid to tell me.
Frost slipped over my skin. “Just say it.”
“Mr. Aldine. I only have Chace’s word to go on.” He shook his head. “I have no proof of this myself.”
My hands fisted so tightly they stung. “Spit it out already.”
“I am sorry. There is no easy way to say this.” He reached up and molded his palm to the curve of my arm. “Mr. Aldine passed.”
“Died?” My voice sounded tiny. A fraction of myself. “As in dead and gone? Died while here in Veritas? Not turned into some kind of zombie like Earl?”
“Yes.” Winter’s brow pinched, a perplexed expression tugging at his face. “Good point, but yes. Chace said your elder died.”
The Killian said he’d stayed Aldine’s death summons. Allowed him to live. Did the Killian lie?
A tear that felt less like saltwater and more like an ice chip escaped the corner of my eye and slid along the length of my cheek.
I needed time to process—the information, the change, his death, my emotions.
My chest squeezed painfully tight, and I wasn’t sure I was breathing. I sucked in air but received no relief. My lungs became a depository of razors. Oxygen and warmth drained from all my systems.
A brittle, bone-aching chill assaulted my body.
“Raven?” Winter shook me softly then started rubbing my skin. “Holy gods. Raven?”
My fingers were freezing. Turning blue with Winter’s glacial magic. I yanked, tugging my hands free from his hold, but he recaptured them before I could pull away.
“Raven.” He leaned closer. “I thought my grandmother…”
Pulling my hands away once more, I shook my head, signaling him to halt with the questions.
“Please, Raven.” He reached for me again, and again I jerked back. “Let me help you.”
“Don’t.” I pressed a flat hand into the space between us. “I need to be alone for a spell.”
His fingers grazed the curve of my cheek, clearing away my tear. “You don’t need to be alone, Raven. You never need to be alone. I can be here for you. Be anything you need right now. Let me do that for you.”
“You’ve already done so much. You saved my life.” I slipped my hands under my thighs, hiding my bluing skin. “But right now, I want to be alone. Please grant me that.”
He shifted back, his gaze never leaving mine. For excruciatingly long moments, he scrutinized my face, my posture. Yet I held his gaze, wishing he would go already. And as if sensing and caving to my desire, he nodded and rose to his feet.
“Should you change your mind and decide you’d like a shoulder to lean on, simply let one of the guards know, and I shall return.” He spun and swept from the room like a ghostly wind, the only sound the soft click of the door lock.
I stared at the double glass doors leading to the outdoor space and the crackle of ice creeping across the glazed panes.
The slightest hint of morning light had begun to cast shadows across the terrace beyond.
And the crow, he waited there. For my responding message, the promised breakfast crumbs, or something else, I didn’t know, but it struck me as odd he had either remained or returned.
He would continue to wait, because now…in the light of Aldine’s demise, even more than before, I had to rethink my reply to Chace. Was the elder’s passing the reason Chace wanted to meet and talk in person?
That has to be the reason. Why else would he want to see me?
If Chace was now safe, I doubted he would harbor any need to assure me as such with visual confirmation. And he sure as hell didn’t relish spending time with me, so the requested meeting couldn’t be for any other reason than Aldine’s passing.
Still, I wanted to see him, confirm for myself with my own eyes that he was indeed alive and—mostly—unharmed.
But not just yet. Not until I mastered my emotions and magical infection. Because…the room was plummeting in temperature, the space becoming an icebox.
I glanced down at Chace’s message, slipped tight against my thigh. Pulling the parchment to my chest, I tipped onto my side against the bed and opened the gate to a flood of tears. Gave in to a long, hard, ugly cry and allowed frost to sweep over me.
The chattering of my teeth was a constant hammering through my skull, the freezing temperature of my skin and blood akin to a throng of needles constantly pecking my body…everywhere.
I crushed a thick wool blanket firmly to the underside of my chin, attempting to stave off the chill. An impossible attainment, given the chill came from within me. I was the source. The generator. Or, more accurately, Winter’s magic working within me.
I hadn’t moved in so long…aside from the incessant chattering of my teeth…that I was slightly fearful I had, quite literally, frozen in place.
When daylight shone brightly beyond the ice-laced windows, Valen came to retrieve me for the day. Unable to call for assistance, much less actually move, I didn’t answer his door-knock-turned-pounding.
When I failed to respond, he had the guards grant him entrance. His footfalls marked his path across the receiving room. One step inside the bedchamber doors, he paused, rubbed his arms, and stormed back out.
Winter arrived moments after Valen’s departure and now sat on the edge of the bed.
He pressed his hands to my shoulders, attempting to pull the frosty magic from my system. “I’ll fix this. I’ll heal you. And I plan to do so before Valen returns with my grandmother in tow.”
The queen would see me as a frosty, teeth-chattering mess?
Thank merciful death I had managed to stash Chace’s note in the safest place I could think of—folded against my skin, beneath my corset. Of course, in my current state, the message could permanently freeze to my body.
In no mood for conversation, I allowed Winter to do all the talking, whereas I merely…mostly…listened. Words were sometimes lost to the cracking and crashing of ice in my skull. And honestly, thinking was something I presently felt wholly inept at.
When I tried to pluck any words from my thoughts, all I heard was cold, cold, cold; ouch. Cold, cold, cold; hurt. Cold, cold, cold, cold.
“Blimey.” The queen’s voice rose from the outer chamber, my receiving room. “This certainly won’t do.”
Winter’s grandmother stepped into the bedroom, paused, and tossed a raised-brow stink eye toward me, where I remained huddled and shivering on the bed.
“Do not think for one moment this thing”―she twirled a finger, indicating the icy condition of both me and the surrounding room―“will somehow nullify our arrangement.”
“As. If.” My words were curt, clipped, and rocked with unending shudders.
Winter leaned close, his lips at my ear, for only me to hear. “If you wanted to get out of working with Valen, you should have come to me. We could have devised a better plan than this.”
No doubt he meant to cut some of the tension in the moment, but when he smiled against my skin, his lips brushing against my earlobe, some of the frost plaguing my system expelled with his touch.
An involuntary gasp escaped my lips as warmth spread across my cheek and down my neck. When he pulled away, the chill of ice quickly returned.
Don’t go. Stay here and do that some more, I wanted to say, but my teeth remained ground shut.
“Move, boy.” The queen motioned Winter from my side with a wave of her hand. “I don’t want you around her.”
Winter’s back jolted straight. “This is my magic. It cannot harm me.”
“The magic is not the reason I wish you to be removed from her presence. Like your brother, you have a weakness for pretty curiosities. Consider this pretty curiosity unhealthy and ill advised.”
“I am not my brother. And I am more than old enough…and then some…to decide upon my own actions.”
The queen scoffed. “Need I remind you who holds the authority here?”
While maintaining her gaze upon Winter, she extended her hand to Valen. He dropped a vial into her awaiting palm. A vial the same as, or similar to, the one the queen had used the first time she pulled the cold from my skin.
Winter glared, his hands curled into tight fists at his sides.
“Now go,” the queen said to him, then she downed the liquid. She returned the empty vial to Valen and grabbed my hand, yanking it free from my hold upon the wool blanket. “Go!”
A rage-filled sigh seethed through Winter’s clenched jaw as he spun and stalked from the room.
My gaze drifted from the queen’s firm grip to Winter, tracking his retreat from the side of the bed until…
Icy fire slammed into my hand and raced up my arm, straight to my skull. My head kicked back, my eyes slamming shut. I might have convulsed. Possibly screamed.
Was the queen purposely torturing me?