Chapter 41
Chapter Forty-One
Stellen
The safest place for Thyra to sleep is with me, but it’s also the most dangerous.
Once again, I have only bad choices.
Making a decision, I call softly to my wolf, “Nara, take us to the Rose Room.” And then to Thyra, “We should sleep in a different place each night.”
Not only can we remain unpredictable that way, but no assassin would think to look for me in the Rose Room.
At least for one night, Thyra may be able to get the rest she clearly needs. She doesn’t show it on the outside, her posture strong, her head held high, and her speech and gaze alert, but her breathing betrays the physical strain she’s hiding.
We both need sleep. The malfunction of my heart in the night and my unwilling collapse was a warning I can’t ignore.
Even if going near the Rose Room will be very difficult for me.
Nara takes a right turn and then a left, padding toward the eastern side of the palace grounds. My mother’s old wing. Where she raised me and my sister.
Nara pulls to a stop in front of the elegant stone building decorated with large roses carved into the exterior walls.
Many of the stone flowers are chipped now. Their petals were fragile to begin with, delicate works of art, but the onslaught the stone later endured is clear in the cracks extending across the exterior wall.
Despite myself, my body tenses, my arms clenching tightly around Thyra’s waist.
Maybe this was a bad idea.
Before I can rasp a change of command to Nara, Thyra leans harder against me, a subtle change in her posture I might have missed if I hadn’t been paying attention.
She’s reached her limit.
I’ve warned her enough about asking for help that I’m certain she won’t admit it.
I move before I know it, scooping her off Nara’s back and into my arms, bundling the cloak around her body. Her head fits to the crook of my neck, her legs hooked over my left arm.
The momentary heaviness of her body speaks of her relief as she relaxes before she quickly stiffens, as if she’s remembered my rules.
“I can walk,” she gasps, her blue eyes flashing to me, a tension in her body that is of my own making. “I don’t need help.”
“I know.” But I don’t put her back on her feet, carrying her through the arched opening and into the stone garden, every flower and every stem carved from rock. “Consider this an imposition.”
She closes her eyes. “Okay, then. An imposition.”
I carry her along the path, past the carved flowers and to the wooden door that leads into a small compound—a building and another garden behind it concealed within more walls.
A stone oasis I haven’t been able to bring myself to enter for a long time. Not since I ordered everything put back in place.
I’m conscious of Nara’s retreating footfalls behind us. She’ll bring the palace staff so they know where to deliver the food, just as she brought Lilis to me this morning.
Nara is my silent communicator. My constant friend in a world of enemies.
I reach the door. Cracks zigzag through pale-yellow wood, but it looks like one of the staff has mended the cracks at some point, filling the battle scars with shining resin.
I pause there for longer than I intended, testing my heart, the tension in my chest. Pushing against it but somehow unable to move.
In my moment of hesitation, Thyra extends her fingertips toward the shining cracks, her eyes wide open now. “Flowing like tears.”
Dripping down a door that was supposed to represent safety and instead let evil in.
I flinch as a quiet scream comes from far away, deep in my memory. The same thrashing cry the crow mimicked on the battlefield this morning. The cry of a fragile thing whose throat is being crushed—
A snarl rises to my lips.
I shouldn’t be able to feel this pain.
I shouldn’t be able to remember it.
To remember is dangerous.
I shake myself as hard as I can.
A moment later, I’m aware of Thyra’s hand. Bare. Her sleeve pulled back. Her fingertips brush my skin, her palm a firm weight against my heart. I don’t even know how she got her mitten off, let alone extricated her arm from the cloak bundled around her.
I’ve stood here for longer than I should have, every muscle in my body tense and unable to unwind.
Thyra raises herself upward, her hand slipping behind my neck as she presses her lips to the side of my throat. But not in a kiss.
She hums against my throat.
A soft sound that vibrates through my vocal cords, a tantalizing flush of sensation. Soothing. And agitating.
A need I’ve been fighting for hours hardens my body and now I fight another instinct. The desire to push her up against this door of flowing tears and peel her cloak and armor away from her body…
Instead, I push against the door, making myself unlatch it and move inside.
It’s like stepping into the past.
A white ceiling soars overhead, the walls painted with icy-blue roses and decorated with gold filigree in the shapes of leaves. Wooden chairs with pastel-pink upholstery arc around a table while an ivory chaise lounge rests to the right.
Beside the chaise is the large thermal conductor, a column of ceramic that extends from the floor to the ceiling, radiating warmth around the drawing room.
A door in the center of the far wall leads to a hallway, which in turn leads to multiple rooms, including two bedrooms and finally, the hidden garden at the back of the compound. Another garden made of stone.
The floor has been cleaned of bloodstains.
Thyra’s eyes widen. “It’s warm in here.”
“We call this place the Rose Room,” I say. “It’s more than a room, as you can see, but my father liked to think he’d confined my mother to a small space.”
Surrounded by stone walls. From which he imagined sound wouldn’t travel.
Thyra’s hand remains pressed to my heart as I carry her to the chaise lounge, allowing her to slide to its surface.
The room has no windows—like every room in this building—only a clear panel in the ceiling that allows light through. As soon as the sun sets, the light will fade, bringing only the frantic reflections of moonlight off raging snowflakes.
The chaise is free of visible dust. So are the other surfaces around us. The staff must have been keeping the Rose Room clean. I didn’t ask them to do that, but my mother was kind to them. This must be how they honor her memory.
I back away from Thyra, my shoulders hunching.
Her hand falls to her side as I retreat to the side of the room farthest from the thermal conductor.
“My mother wasn’t a Frost Fae. She felt the cold as much as you must.” I point at the conductor.
“That heating element taps into the hot springs running beneath Frost, drawing the heat upward. There’s a heating element in her bedroom, too. You can sleep in there if you wish.”
Maybe I’m not so unpredictable, after all.
Every other building in my palace is freezing cold, a factor that doesn’t bother me at all, but Thyra needs warmth to thrive.
Already, the strain on her breathing is easing and color returns to her cheeks, signs the heat is making her stronger.
I told myself Thyra would only stay here for one night, but the realities of keeping her alive in my frozen kingdom might force me to change my mind.
Her reply is soft. “I will sleep where you sleep.” Then, with a challenging light in her eyes and the glimmer of a smile on her lips, she says, “How else will I protect you?”
With her head held high and while still facing me, she peels off the warm cloak, swiftly undoing the toggles so she can slide the Alak-Teahan garment off her shoulders and step out of its leggings.
My response is silence as I remain hunched where I stand across the room.
She takes my stern quiet in her stride.
Turning away from me, she drapes the cloak over the side of the chaise and removes her boots before she straightens, her back now to me.
Standing straighter, she stretches her arms and her neck and rolls her shoulders.
At her sigh, the Lethian armor ripples across her body.
With every languid stretch she makes, the silver threads transform themselves, shifting around her form.
Pulling away, revealing patches of skin before covering her again.
Gliding across her left shoulder blade. Her spine.
Her hip. Revealing the back of her thigh.
Then her calf. Threads exposing and then concealing nearly every part of her as she sighs through the movement.
Does she understand the impact of her moans?
My fingertips ache to trace the edges of silver, follow the threads flowing across her curves while the material settles into a new shape around her.
A glistening gown. The final threads extend up into her hair, elevating it away from her neck.
She turns back to me, revealing a low neckline that cuts in a V nearly all the way to her waist. The sleeve on her right shoulder is short, leaving the blade’s image fully visible, while a long sleeve covers her left arm.
The material swishes around her legs. Alluring sounds.
She checks out the form the armor has taken and then shrugs at it.
“Not the garment you wanted?” I ask, gluing myself to the painted wall so I don’t give in to my impulse to close the gap between us and ask for permission to explore every inch of her body.
“These threads do what they want.”
My eyebrows rise. “They do what you tell them to do.”
Her forehead creases, her arms settling at her sides before her head tilts. “They really don’t.” She quickly rephrases. “Even in the Alak-Teah, that was all the threads’ doing. It wasn’t because of me.”
Despite my vow to keep my distance, I peel myself from the wall and prowl toward her, speaking in a hoarse whisper. “It was all you.”
Her forehead creases, the first sign since we entered this space that she’s unsettled. “How?”
The gap between us narrows, but I stop before making contact. I’m standing so close to her now that the sound of her heart dominates my mind.
“Every sound you make matters.” Slowly, I lower my face to hers, drowning in her quick inhale, the dilation of her pupils, the life in her eyes now that she isn’t battling icy temperatures. “Every breath. Every exhalation. Every soft sigh. Every deep moan.”
I speak without touching her.
Battle to keep my power from my voice.
I promised myself I’d leave my Voice behind in the Alak-Teah, and I can’t break that illusion.
Her gaze sweeps across my face, her lips parted as she searches my eyes.
No matter her questions, I’m determined she won’t find the cold truth at the heart of me.
I can’t stop myself from reaching for her hand. The hand she presses to my heart. Warm fingertips from which I take no heat.
Her cries of pleasure echo in my memory, a bare fraction of what I could give her.
Lowering my lips to hers, barely making contact, I repeat, “Every sound you make matters. Especially your screams.”
She tenses, and I realize…
She must think I mean screams of pain.
We were talking about her armor and now I’ve reminded her that I triggered the Lethian threads in the bloodlands by hurting her.
I drop her hand and take a step away from her, mentally berating myself because the reality of her situation is clear.
She’s wise to expect pain from me.