Chapter Thirty-Seven
Thyra
Ashiver runs down my spine, destroying the heat that was filling my body.
Stellen has touched me a lot.
Three days ago, I would have instinctively feared any physical contact with him. I explicitly thought as much when Antony warned me I shouldn’t have reached for his own face.
I fight the immediate impulse to jolt backward, focusing on the other sensations running through my body rather than my fear.
My heartbeat calms, perhaps irrationally, because…
Stellen rests his hand beneath my chin so carefully. He doesn’t grip me. Doesn’t confine me.
I’m free to pull away whenever I wish.
I stay where I am. “I see.”
And then I consider that he didn’t have to tell me. He could have left me ignorant, allowing his people to gloat over my naivety as they waited for him to end me.
But what if…he doesn’t hurt or kill me?
What if his people start to believe that his touch doesn’t mean death, after all?
Suddenly, I understand what he wants me to know.
“If you’re seen touching me,” I say, “and you don’t harm or end me, then the defenses you’ve built will weaken.”
Just as he must keep secret the injury to his heart.
His pale eyes brighten as he appraises me. “My place in this kingdom has always been tenuous, but keeping Frost Fae at arm’s length has ensured my survival.”
“Then you do have a dilemma.” I turn my cheek into his palm, enabling him to press his whole hand to my face. “It seems to me you have two options.”
He arches an eyebrow at me. “Which are?”
“The first option is to stop touching me.”
His lips compress. “Or?”
I lean forward, moving myself away from his hand but raising my own toward his heart. Maybe it doesn’t count because my hand is encased in a mitten, but…
“What if I were to touch you back?”
My hand hovers in front of his chest while his eyebrows rise. Then lower.
“That may make things worse,” he says. “If you aren’t afraid to touch me.”
“Not if it’s clear that I’m…” Withdrawing my hand, I purse my lips, uncertain how to phrase it, my forehead crinkling. “You must have had lovers. Surely, they’re the exception.”
He remains unyielding. “Would you really want it to look as if you’re in that role?” His jaw clenches, and he begins to pull away. “It would diminish you.”
I press forward. “How so?”
“You’re the Oracle. You are not a courtesan.”
I don’t know enough about Frost society to have even known they have courtesans, and I’m about to ask him more about them when his focus flickers away from me.
For a moment, I’m certain he glances toward Lilis, and for the life of me, it looks like he… But I’m certain I must be imagining the pinch of skin between his eyebrows that speaks of concern.
Either way, I capitulate. “You’re right. I’m not a courtesan, whatever role they play in Frost society. But I’m also certain I’ll only be diminished if you treat me so.”
His gaze rakes across me, but he’s once again silent.
This time, darkly so.
“Stellen?”
His voice is grating. “My mother was diminished. And she was the queen.”
I catch my breath at his rasp. A sharp sensation slides across my chest, a tendril of music in his voice wrapping around my heart. A piece of wire is threatening to cut me.
It must be cutting him more.
He warned me that in this kingdom, even a queen can be made to suffer.
Memories have the power to destroy us.
My shoulders relax. I raise my mittened hand again, and this time, I allow it to connect with his chest, pressing across the largest rip in his tunic.
“Then you know,” I whisper, “how to ensure the same doesn’t happen to me.”
He presses his hand over mine, his brow furiously furrowed. “You would have to sleep in my bed. That means putting you in the path of—”
“Assassins, yes. You mentioned. A good night’s sleep eludes you.”
It was one of the things he said he wanted from me. When he told me he wanted his enemies dead, he also said he wanted to sleep through the night without listening for assassins.
“I’m accustomed to sleeping badly,” I say. “Also, it seems my Oracle power is alive and well here in Frost. It’s better if you’re closer to me at night. It will be easier for me to save you that way.”
I give him a bright smile.
He blinks at me.
I bite my lip and ask, “Do you have humor here in Frost?”
“We do not.”
But one corner of his mouth momentarily twitches upward, and the shadows lift from around him.
Then descend again. “You said your Oracle power is alive and well here. Which implies it wasn’t before.”
I shake my head. “It was sporadic in the Iron Kingdom. Strong at first and then…blocked somehow. But here, I feel…”
Oh, dare I say it?
“I feel stronger.”
Strands of gleaming, white hair fall across Stellen’s face, concealing parts of his smile as he inclines his head toward Nara. “Well, then…”
He rises to his feet, and I follow him.
At my nod, he scoops me up and places me on Nara’s back.
When he slides on behind me, I reach for his arms, guiding them forward, intending to pull them around me, but he sweeps the sides of my cloak toward my front instead, closing it over my arms.
“The wind chill will increase the faster Nara moves,” he says. “You need to keep your body heat locked in, even if you feel confined this way.”
He isn’t wrong about how awkward this feels. My legs are mostly free to move on either side of Nara’s back, but my torso is all trussed up, my arms pinned to my sides beneath the cloak’s outer layer.
Nara remains still, her ears pricked, no doubt waiting for Stellen’s signal to move.
I take a moment to wriggle my arms until I can fold them across my chest beneath my cloak.
Stellen takes my fidgeting in his stride, adjusting his hold so his arms rest above and below mine—although outside the cloak.
His right hand ends up pressed to my heart. “Better?”
“Better.”
He gives a low whistle, a calm sound, and Nara steps forward at a slow pace.
Lilis responds immediately, although I don’t miss the way she sways a little at sitting completely upright on her wolf’s back. Her smirk has vanished and now her forehead is pinched, her gaze wary.
At her whistle, her wolf moves ahead of us. Once they’re about twenty paces away, her wolf slows to match Nara’s stride, maintaining that distance. The whole maneuver is so seamless that I can imagine Lilis and her wolf have performed this formation a hundred times before.
I’m also certain that Nara’s pace is deliberately slow, since it’s clear Lilis needs a lot more time to heal.
Behind me, the Alak-Teah is ghostly white in the early morning sunlight. I’m sad to leave it, but I’m not sorry to see the back of the bloody field.
“There’s something I want you to do before we leave this field behind,” Stellen says, brushing his lips to my temple and drawing my attention back to him.
“What is it?” I ask.
“Take a look at the carnage.”
I stiffen. Stellen tightens his hold, his palm pressing to my chest.
“I know it’s horrifying,” he says, “but it’s important that you consider the details as unfeelingly as possible.”
My stomach churns as I force myself to glance at the bloody scene laid out on my right-hand side, trying to breathe through the awfulness of it.
“What do you see?” Stellen asks.
I don’t need to look twice. The scene is now imprinted on my mind. “Six, maybe seven men. All torn apart. Icy-white hair. Silver armor. Blades with beautiful handles. They’re all Frost Fae. All highborn.”
Stellen’s chin brushes the side of my face as he nods. “What don’t you see?”
I don’t need to look again. “Wolves.” I try to twist to see Stellen, but I’m pinned in place. “Highborn Frost Fae wouldn’t travel on foot.”
“Correct. Now take another look at their wounds.”
Every part of me resists. I’d much rather rely on my first impression, but I force myself to glance at the final two bodies we pass.
I’m struck by their weapons first, blades clutched in their hands, frozen to their palms by splattered ice.
As for the bodies…
My forehead creases. “The cuts are clean. Sharp. Precise.”
Stellen’s lips descend to my ear again, his whisper barely above a breath of sound. “More like blades than claws and teeth, yes?”
The Northerners didn’t carry blades. I’m certain of it. When they shapeshifted, they became completely naked. Brunkil’s coat may have concealed knives or daggers, but none large enough to have cleanly beheaded a fae.
“But…how?”
“I’d like to give you a piece of information I don’t expect you’ll already know.
” Stellen’s voice is so low that I strain to hear him.
“It may surprise you to learn that Lilis can’t stand to see an animal hurt.
She would never, for example, attack a white wolf.
In turn, no white wolf, no matter its alliance, will attack her.
Don’t ask me why. I don’t have the answer. ”
Well, that certainly explains something that didn’t make sense to me before now. “Is that why Lilis didn’t strike Fable when Fable was in wolf form?”
Stellen nods. “Even now that Lilis knows they’re shapeshifters, I’m certain she would struggle to hurt Fable. Especially if Fable is in her animal form. Unfortunately, this could mean Lilis would hesitate to hurt Brunkil, too.”
“Which could be how he got the best of her.”
“True.” Then Stellen says, “But you should also consider: Lilis has no such reluctance when it comes to killing fae.”
I consider Lilis’s stiff posture as she rides her wolf ahead of us. The way she remains alert to our surroundings. Then the wound on the back of her head and, although I can’t see it right now, the cut above her eye and the bruises on her face.
And then, this time without looking, I consider what I saw of the battle behind me. Ice splattered across weapons. Precision cuts through limbs…
Dear Goddess…
“Stellen.” I nudge his chin with my forehead since turning my head is as much as I can achieve right now. “Who were those men? And why did Lilis kill them?”