Snowstorm King

by H L Macfarlane

  Elina’s brain was numb. She couldn’t possibly take in all of this information, not least when she was drunk and terrified. “…why did your father agree to the spell?” she found herself asking, though she didn’t know where she found the strength to speak.

  Kilian rolled his eyes. “The man was a fool. He loved his country, and everyone in it. He happily agreed to such stupid terms. And my mother…she was already ill, so she couldn’t leave the castle anyway. He thought giving up his freedom was a small price to pay to be a good king. And he was, of course.” Kilian looked out of the window, where the wind was howling so loudly it was if it wanted to scream at him. “My father was a good king – even I can admit that. He was calm, trustworthy and quick to love. You know how short and mild our winters have been. That was his doing.”

  Even though it felt rather like approaching a starving bear or wolf or mountain cat, Elina took a few tentative steps towards Kilian. He didn’t look at her. “So he…passed the spell to you?”

  “Against my will,” he muttered, staring at the floor. “In the dead of night, when I should have been asleep but was, in reality, too drunk to even be unconscious, he loomed over my bed and cursed me to stay.”

  “Your father…he died in September?”

  Kilian nodded. “He cursed me in summer, though, before Gabriel left. Clearly he knew I planned to run off. But because he still sat on the throne until his death, I didn’t inherit his powers until autumn.”

  “That would explain this god-awful winter,” Elina muttered despite herself.

  She regretted it immediately. Kilian whipped around and grabbed her once more, pushing her backwards until her legs slammed against the bathtub.

  “Is this a joke to you?!” he screamed right to her face. “Am I a joke to you?”

  “No, I –”

  “Because that’s what it seems like. No, that’s what it is like – with everyone. You think I don’t know what people say about Kilian Hale, the king they never wanted? The king they hope disappears? The king they expect to fail, so god only hopes that his saintly brother Gabriel returns from the war soon, right?”

  “I didn’t say anything like that!” Elina protested, though of course she was guilty of having such thoughts on numerous occasions. But that had been before she knew why Kilian didn’t simply do everyone a favour and leave. Of course things were different now she knew.

  And yet the person standing in front of her was nevertheless frightful and intimidating. Elina tried to lean away as much as she could; Kilian responded by picking her up and throwing her into the steaming bath.

  “See, even you shy away from me and you’re my servant!” he seethed, hands curled around the edge of the tub as Elina spluttered and choked on murky, salty water.

  When she finally regained her breath enough to meet Kilian’s gaze there were tears in her eyes. “I am not your servant,” she said. “I never have been.”

  “Of course you are! Why else would you be here?!”

  “Because you blackmailed me!” Elina cried out. When she tried to get out of the bath Kilian reached out and stopped her from doing so with a heavy hand on her chest. She continued to struggle nonetheless, water soaking through every inch of fabric clinging to her skin. “You wouldn’t have helped Alder if I hadn’t –”

  “You really think I’d have let the town die?! Do you honestly believe I could have looked out of my window and watch people literally starve to death when there’s enough in the castle stores to help them through seven winters, Elina?”

  “Then why did you force me to –”

  “Because I was lonely!” Kilian didn’t seem to be aware of what he was saying. His fingers curled around Elina’s shirt; he bent down until his head was just above hers, eyes wild and and angry and so bitterly sad that Elina realised she’d been a fool not to see how Kilian had felt before.

  “You – why didn’t you simply ask me to keep you company, then?” Elina asked quietly.

  Kilian choked on a laugh that sounded more like a sob. “And would you have said yes?”

  “…no.”

  “Then you see my problem.”

  “Ask me again.”

  Kilian blinked. He narrowed his eyes. “What do you mean?”

  “Ask me again to keep you company.”

  There was a pause. Kilian looked at her, and Elina looked at him, and their eyes gave absolutely nothing away to the other.

  “You…” Kilian murmured, voice barely audible over the storm outside that was his very own doing. “Will you keep me company?”

  Elina tilted her head up, snaking a hand behind Kilian’s neck before she could stop herself. She pulled his lips to hers.

  “Yes.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Kilian

  How had the events of the day culminated in such a moment – Elina’s dark, wine-stained lips willingly pressed to his? Kilian’s mind went blank. For one, blind moment, there was nothing. His body wouldn’t move. Wouldn’t react. And then –

  Kilian reciprocated Elina’s kiss with a ferocity and passion he hadn’t felt in a long, long time. He collapsed into the bath with her, not caring for the water he displaced to the floor, drenching the rugs and wooden boards in one fell splash.

  He couldn’t get close enough, nor could he get his hands through Elina’s hair – her braided crown was secured far too tightly to her scalp. So Kilian made do with straddling her lap, bending low to deepen their kiss until he leaned back with enough force to pull Elina on top of him in a wave of steaming bathwater.

  Kilian closed his eyes to protect from the sting of the salt in the water; when he opened them a somewhat dazed and heavy-lidded Elina was pressed against him, hands still entwined in his hair as she finally pulled her lips away from his.

  “What was that for?” Kilian asked, hating himself for even asking the question when the mood had suddenly – finally – become good enough for him to find himself in such a suggestive situation with Elina.

  Elina didn’t look away as she replied, “Because you were right. I thought you a joke. Everyone else still does. Now, knowing the truth and…actually looking at you properly, I…” She paused, as if deciding whether she should utter her next sentence. “You’re pathetic, Kilian Hale, but for the first time in my life I now know that it’s not all your fault.”

  Kilian stared at her, too stunned to speak. When he burst out laughing he surprised even himself, considering how dark and angry he’d been mere moments before. He slid a hand down Elina’s back, fingering the waistband of her skirt until he found the buttons that would loosen it. Elina’s eyes darted downward when he proceeded to remove the material, her face red from heat and alcohol and embarrassment.

  “So you kissed me because I’m pathetic?” he murmured, finally pulling the length of Elina’s skirt from her body and tossing the drenched material unceremoniously to the floor. Her white undershirt barely covered her body to her thighs; soaked through as it was it hardly hid anything at all. “How pathetic do I need to be for those hands of yours to wander downward, Elina?”

  He was gratified when the flush of her cheeks crawled across her ears and down her neck. “I – I never said I kissed you because you were pathetic. Only that you’re pathetic in general.”

  “Oh? Then why, specifically, did you kiss me?” Kilian asked, placing his hands over Elina’s to guide them down from his hair, across his chest and to his navel.

  “I – because…” she hesitated. Her hands wrung the edge of Kilian’s shirt nervously beneath the water’s surface; he was aching for her to move them further down. “Truthfully, I’m not sure,” Elina finally answered. “I don’t even think I like you.”

  Kilian chuckled, urging Elina’s lips back to his own for another kiss. He slid his tongue into her mouth, running it across the edge of her teeth before biting gently down onto her lower lip.

  “It doesn’t seem to matter whether you like me or not, going by the situation we’re currently in.”

  �
�Kilian.”

  He paused abruptly at the sound of his name which he, aside from her having mistakenly uttered it earlier, hadn’t heard spoken by another person since before his father died.

  “What is it?”

  Elina looked a little uncertain. Kilian’s hands found her thighs, repositioning the woman on top of him until she was properly sitting on the aching pit of frustration that had left him hard after most every encounter with her over the past week. She cried out in surprise.

  “What did you – ah – stop trying to pleasure yourself when I’m speaking to you,” she complained when Kilian rocked her against him; a low groan whistled between his teeth at the sensation.

  “Do a better job of speaking, then,” he replied, hands roaming up beneath Elina’s shirt even as fumbled to hold a coherent train of thought.

  “You said you liked me earlier. But is that simply because you’re lonely? Is it because there’s no one else? Is – this – because there’s no one else?”

  To that, Kilian could only laugh. “Elina, I’m sure you remember what happened two nights ago. Considering you were sober and I was wasted, I imagine you remember it much better than I do, in fact.”

  She frowned. “What are you getting at?”

  Kilian sighed when he moved Elina against him once more, hands on her waist inexorably climbing upwards even as Elina watched him do so nervously.

  “I called for a prostitute to be brought to my chambers as soon as you left,” he explained, so off-handedly that it took a moment for Elina to realise what he’d said. When she did she tried to recoil, but Kilian only pulled her closer against him. His lips found her collarbone, trailing kisses across her wet skin. Beneath his mouth Elina was trembling; Kilian only wanted her more as a result.

  “When the woman arrived I couldn’t stand to look at her,” he continued, his words barely a mumble against Elina’s chest. “All I could think of was you. I sent her away – I, Kilian Hale, sent a prostitute away. Unheard of. So to answer your question, Elina Brodeur…”

  He glanced upwards at Elina, her eyes glittering and dark as she stared back at him. “I don’t just like you because I’m lonely. Granted that’s how I got to know you, but that’s not why I like you. And it’s certainly not why I’m physically attracted to you – I’ve wanted to bed you from the moment I saw you. But you already knew that.”

  “You saw me as an object,” she replied, turning her head away until Kilian used a hand to make her look at him once more. “Viewing me like that is different from being attracted to me for me.”

  “I guess that’s true. Which leads me to ask: though you profess not to like me, are you nonetheless attracted to me for me? Or are you, in your own words, viewing me as an object right now?”

  Kilian glanced very pointedly downward; the meaning was not lost on Elina.

  “I don’t – I’ve never viewed you as anything less than a person.”

  “Merely a pathetic one.”

  “I – yes. And a cruel one. And a lazy one.”

  “And yet here we are.”

  Kilian kissed her before Elina could construct a response, and this time her hands moved on their own. They ran beneath his shirt, fingers gliding over soaking, slippery skin without quite touching Kilian where he was dying for her to.

  When his own hands finally crept over Elina’s breasts he paused, and pulled his lips away slightly from hers. “Nobody has ever touched you like this before, have they?”

  She shook her head. “Nobody.”

  “Have you ever imagined someone touching you like this?”

  “I – no. There’s no man in Alder I could imagine ever wanting to touch me.”

  Kilian found this deeply sad and frustrating. How could an entire town be so narrow-minded simply because a baby was born a bastard to a foreigner? He wondered how the people of Alder would react to the dark-skinned people Kilian had met on his travels across other continents. Not well, he imagined.

  “They are all fools,” he said with surety, for of course they were. Except the woodcutter, who was a threat for Kilian to consider when he was not half-naked in a bath with the woman he so desired.

  Elina laughed softly. “I know they are.”

  “When you go to bed tonight, will you think of me touching you?”

  “When I…go to bed?”

  Kilian nodded and, though he hated himself and his body was screaming at him not to do it, gently moved Elina away from his lap. “You are drunk. As much as I want this to continue, if I’m to prove I actually respect you then…we can continue this sober.”

  Elina’s eyes widened in disbelief. “You’re always drunk, Kilian. I doubt you’re even sober in your sleep.”

  “I can’t argue with that,” he chuckled, hands reaching out for Elina even as he tried to resist doing so. “But from tomorrow I will be. Though god knows if either of us will like who I am sober.”

  She quirked an eyebrow. “I don’t even like you as you are now, remember?”

  “It’s very quiet outside.”

  Elina seemed taken aback by the sudden change in topic. She cocked her head to the side to listen, a motion so irresistible that Kilian reached for her beneath the water’s surface despite himself.

  “You’re right,” she said. “It’s quiet outside. I assumed…”

  “You assumed what?”

  Elina blushed. “I assumed the weather would get rather wild if you were – you know –”

  “If I was half-naked in a bathtub with a beautiful woman?”

  She nodded whilst Kilian laughed. “It was certainly bad enough after you left the other night. And I’ll admit to having seriously considered stranding you here by getting in as tempestuous a mood as possible.”

  “Kilian!”

  “I do love it when you say my name. At least I didn’t though. That ought to count for something.”

  The look on Elina’s face suggested she didn’t entirely agree with this.

  Kilian relaxed his head against the bath, content to watch Elina sitting mostly naked on top of his legs. “I definitely want to fuck you right now,” he said, so casually that Elina almost choked in shock. “But I’m…okay with knowing I won’t. That I can wait until a better time. When my head doesn’t feel…cloudy. I don’t know. It feels nice, though a certain part of me doesn’t agree with that.”

  Elina’s hands grazed against that certain part as if to affirm what Kilian was saying. He was gratified to see her gulp somewhat. And then he sighed, shaking water from his hair as he finally pulled himself out of the bath.

  “I really need to sober up fast,” he mused, mostly to himself, shedding his sodden clothes and wrapping himself in a large robe before finding one for Elina.

  “I think this is the most modesty you’ve ever demonstrated to me, Your Royal Highness,” she said coyly, placing the robe over her shoulders before hurriedly sliding out of her shirt. Kilian deliberately turned away, not entirely trusting his self-control to see Elina truly naked.

  “Very funny. You’re welcome to stay in the castle, of course, since your clothes are soaking –”

  “Are there any servant’s clothes I can borrow?” Elina asked instead as she wrung out her skirt. Kilian couldn’t help but feel disappointed. He’d half-hoped she would want to stay in bed with him.

  “I – don’t see why not.”

  She smiled. “Thank you. My mother will be worried if I don’t come home.”

  Kilian glanced out of the window. “It’s still early, you know. Barely past lunchtime.”

  “Then I can tell her you were so magnanimous as to allow me a half-day because the weather turned fair. It might go a long way in making me like you.”

  He caught Elina’s wrist and pulled her in against him. “That’s not fair,” he said, lips grazing her jaw as he spoke. “You could hold something like that over me for the rest of my life.”

  “Would that really be so bad? To have an annoying, human, moral compass?”

  “That sounds terr
ible. That’s the worst idea I’ve ever heard.”

  When Elina brushed her lips against Kilian’s he knew it was time to say good-bye. “I’ll find some servant’s clothes myself,” she said, “and then I’ll be on my way. Have fun sobering up, Kilian.”

  “I’m still inclined to set a storm upon you the moment you set foot outside!” he called out after her once she’d strode across the room and opened the door.

  “I don’t doubt that. But if you want me back tomorrow then you won’t.”

  And so Kilian had no choice but to let her leave. Grimacing at the feeling of walking on a rug drenched in cold water, he located his half-empty bottle of vodka and smashed it into the fireplace.

  Part of him regretted it immediately.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Elina

  “Elina, wait up!”

  Elina glanced over her shoulder to see Daven racing to catch up with her. She stopped and smiled, though inside she wanted to run off to be alone. She had so much to think about, after all.

  Too much, possibly. And she was still drunk.

  Daven eyed her curiously when he finally reached her side. “Elina, why is your hair so wet? And are you in different clothes than you were wearing this morning?” he asked when her cloak shifted enough for him to see beneath it.

  “The regent – ah – had a bit of a tantrum in the bath,” Elina explained, for the first time in her life feeling a twinge of guilt about bad-mouthing Kilian Hale. Though what she was saying wasn’t a lie, so to speak. It simply wasn’t the whole truth, either.

  “He shouldn’t be having you bathe him,” Daven bristled. “Surely he must have other servants who can do that. This isn’t fair on you.”

  Elina shrugged as they continued through the murky forest, which was eerie in its stillness. She hadn’t realised just how accustomed to the stormy weather she’d gotten.

  How much I’ve become used to Kilian’s foul moods, more like, she thought, smiling slightly at the thought. Though what had happened to Kilian was horrific – tragic, even – knowing that she affected his mood to the point of influencing the weather was…satisfying. Or exciting. Or terrible. Elina thought her feelings on the matter were probably somewhere in the middle.