The Winter King

by C. L. Wilson

  “All the homes have cellars. Hopefully, the villagers had enough warning to reach them before the avalanche hit. That gives us time to dig them out before they freeze or suffocate. Most buried without some form of shelter will die within the first half hour.”

  She swallowed hard. “What can I do to help?”

  He handed her a shovel. “Join a search party and start digging. The men with the probes will set flags everywhere they think they’ve found survivors.”

  “What about melting them out? Would that help?”

  “You think you can do that?”

  “You know I’m not very good at controlling my magic, but I can at least try.”

  “Then come with me.” He held out a hand and led her up onto the spill of deep, packed snow. They clambered over the icy debris until they reached the closest flag—a pennant of red wool fluttering on a long, thin barb that had been thrust into the snow. A dozen Winterfolk were crowded around, digging their way down through the packed snow. They had already cleared a hole about four feet wide and six feet deep, but hadn’t reached the top of the villager’s house yet.

  “The house is another four feet down, at least. See if you can melt down to the rooftop.”

  Kham bit her lip. Storms, she could summon. Trying to channel heat in such a small area was a different matter.

  “What happens if I melt more than just this area?” The mountains were thick with snow. If she didn’t concentrate heat in a very narrow radius, she risked flooding the valley with snowmelt. “I don’t want to make things worse than they already are.”

  “You concentrate on raising the temperature. I’ll keep the snow on the mountains in check.” No hint of fear showed in his expression or his voice. She was struck once more by the reassuring strength that radiated from him. He was a man she would trust to bear the weight of the world. When he wasn’t driving her to distraction or irritating her with his domineering ways.

  Truthfully, even then, even at his most distracting and domineering, she would trust him to stand between her and danger and rest assured in the knowledge that danger would dash itself senseless against his unyielding will before it ever had a chance to harm her. He was the rock to which an entire kingdom could anchor itself with perfect confidence.

  Kham focused her attention on the hole the rescuers had been digging. She wanted to be as strong as Wynter. She wanted to master that calm, imperturbable sense of certainty that surrounded him like a cloak of invincibility. She wanted his people to look at her and see not the daughter of an enemy king but a woman as strong in her own right as the king they adored. Someone who could complement their king’s strength, not just shelter in it. A woman worthy of their respect—and of his. A queen.

  Wynter’s queen.

  She focused on the source of her power: the sun’s golden white heat. When she summoned a storm, she let anger fuel her power. She knew she could concentrate the sun’s heat at least on a personal level, as she did when she melted a metal hairbrush or boiled the tea in her teacup. She knew what that felt like . . . like a storm inside her soul, battering against her skin to gain its freedom.

  Summoning that feeling on demand was difficult, so she recalled past wrongs, emotional hurts, wounds that had struck hard and deep and never been forgotten. Her father’s face, purple with anger, his eyes flashing a flickering orange like the flames in a hearth. The feel of his signet ring smashing into her cheek, branding her with his fury. Maude Newt and her endless, sneering interference and tattling. Reika Villani trilling with laughter and stroking one slim hand possessively over Wynter’s golden skin, turning to regard Khamsin in mocking challenge, daring the pitiful Summerlander to stop Reika from claiming Wynter as her own.

  “It’s working.” Wynter’s voice interrupted her increasingly agitated thoughts.

  Kham opened her eyes to find herself surrounded by a cloud of steam. Waves of heat radiated from her palms. She was sinking quickly through a large round hole in the snow. Moments later, her feet came to rest on the steep, shingled roof of a house.

  “That’s good! Stand back, Your Grace. We’re coming down.” Ropes spilled over the sides of the crater she’d created, and four Wintermen rappelled rapidly down to join her. Three of them immediately pulled hatchets from their belt loops and began hacking a rescue hole in the roof. The fourth held out a hand.

  “Please, my queen, if you will allow me? Karl, Joris, Svert, and I will see to the family. There are many others who could use your help.”

  Kham blinked. “Of course, I—oh!” She started in surprise as the man wrapped his arms around her. But before she could think to fend him off, he’d looped a harness around her waist and thighs and hooked her to a loop in a second rope. He caught her hands, then dropped them with an exclamation of surprise as the remnant heat scorched him through his gloves.

  “Sorry. I’m so sorry.” Kham plunged her hands into the packed snow to cool them.

  “Hold the rope tight, Your Grace, and don’t let go. Understand?”

  “I—yes, yes, of course.” She wrapped her now-cooler hands around the rope.

  “Good.” He gave her shoulder an awkward pat. “You did good, my queen.” As her jaw went slack in surprise from the unexpected compliment, he cupped his hands around his mouth and leaned back to shout, “Up!”

  Kham’s rope went taut, and she fought for balance as she was suddenly hoisted up, off the buried rooftop. When she reached the top of the crater, two burly men helped her to her feet while a pair of well-bundled women freed her from the harness straps and rope.

  “Come, Your Grace, quickly. Over here.”

  She caught a brief glimpse of Wynter, who nodded approvingly, before she was hustled off to the closest dig site and asked to summon her magic again.

  The sun set, and the rescuers broke out torches to light the area. Kham called upon her gifts again and again, melting her way down to the buried homes so the Winterfolk could locate and rescue survivors. Not every hunt ended in joy. Each time the rescuers unearthed a body rather than a living soul, guilt struck Khamsin hard. That pain fed into her power, keeping her going long past the point of exhaustion, but when the Winterfolk urged her to take a break and rest, she waved them off and stumbled to the next flag in the snow. So long as there were people buried beneath the snow, she was determined to do everything she could to help them.

  The last house she uncovered belonged to Derik and Starra Freijel. She stood, swaying, by the lip of the pit she’d melted through the snow and waited for the rescuers to dig through the rubble of the house to find the cellar. At last, the couple and their two children were pulled from their icy prison, and the jubilant shout went up, “Alive! They’re alive!”

  Thank all the gods. Khamsin took two steps and collapsed facedown in the snow, utterly spent. The frozen flakes sizzled beneath her palms and melted against her overheated face. Her whole body was running such a high temperature, she felt on fire.

  Big hands turned her over and gathered her close against a familiar hard chest. She tried to open her eyes, tried to give Wynter some sort of sardonic quip, but the effort was too much. Her head fell limply back against his arm.

  Cool lips touched hers, and a refreshingly icy breeze swept over her, cooling her more. “Do that again,” she mumbled. “Feels nice.” She was rewarded by more cooling kisses against her closed eyelids and hot brow. “I’ll be fine in a few minutes. I’m stronger than I look.”

  “I know, min ros. I know.” Wynter’s husky voice whispered in her ear. “Tomorrow, you’ll be ready to fight Frost Giants barehanded, but for now, just rest.”

  Of the two hundred folk who called Skala-Holt their home, only twenty-one had been lost to the mountain of ice and snow that had come crashing down upon them. It was the most successful avalanche rescue in Wintercraig history, thanks in no small part to Khamsin. That truth did not go unnoticed, and Winterfolk lined up five thick
to doff their hats and offer up prayers and thanks as Wynter carried his unconscious queen past. He released her only long enough to mount Hodri, then the gathered villagers handed her back up to him and he carried her before him all the way home, not stopping until they reached Gildenheim.

  She did not wake during the long road home, nor when he carried her to her room, nor even when put her in her bed and sat beside her to divest her of her coat and boots and unlace the ties of her bodice so she could breathe without restriction. The only time she stirred, was when he rose from the bed to leave.

  Her fingers curled around his wrist. “Stay,” she whispered.

  She’d never asked him to stay before. Ever. And how shocking that such a tiny little word, such a small, whispered request, could rob the strength from his body and leave him trembling.

  “I’m not going anywhere,” he vowed. He pulled away only long enough to pull off his boots and clothing, then he crawled into bed and gathered her in his arms, spooning his body against hers. “Sleep, min ros.” He brushed the hair back from her still-overheated brow and rested his head against hers.

  Long after she surrendered to sleep, he remained there, holding her close, breathing in the sweet aromas of her scent and basking in her radiant warmth. He’d been so cold for so long. So numb to any feeling but vengeance and hatred, both of which had burned like icy blue flame in his heart, their bitter, frozen brittleness consuming more and more of him by the day.

  Valik and Laci he loved dearly, but only with Khamsin did the ice retreat. Summerlander and daughter of an enemy king she might be, but she was also the only one left in his life who could make him feel again. Truly feel, as he had before the day of Garrick’s death, before he drank the Ice Heart. There was no doubt in his mind that the fiery, irresistible passion that raged between them was all that was keeping the Ice Heart at bay.

  And now, understanding that, he also understood the real reason he’d stayed away from her for so long. It wasn’t just because he feared losing control of himself. It wasn’t just because he feared he might hurt her. He’d stayed away because of a deeper fear, one he would never admit aloud: that he might surrender himself to Khamsin’s beguilement only to find her as false as Elka had been.

  Elka’s betrayal, he had survived. Khamsin’s would destroy him.

  Wynter nuzzled the soft, curling mass of dark hair, closing his eyes as he breathed in the scent that had lodged so deep in his olfactory memory that no other woman would ever supplant it. No amount of willpower or self-denial could change that. Wynter now accepted the truth he’d suspected since the day Khamsin had been poisoned and her blood stained the snow scarlet.

  His wolf had recognized Khamsin as its mate.

  She might betray him to her family, torment him unto madness, bring his kingdom to ruin, but come good or ill, love or hatred, trust or betrayal, Wynter of the Craig would never take another woman to wife.

  Because when snow wolves mated, they mated for life.

  “Whatever you do, Khamsin, don’t betray me,” he whispered. “Don’t ever betray me.”

  CHAPTER 19

  Shades of Belladonna

  For the first time since bringing his Summer-born bride to Gildenheim, Wynter did not return to his own bed before dawn. Instead, he remained in hers, holding her as she slept. He dozed lightly only when his eyelids grew too heavy to stay open, but otherwise remained content with the quiet peace of lying beside her, watching the rhythmic rise and fall of her chest, trying to reconcile the profound desire to protect her with the fear that her loyalty belonged to her brother before him. Verdan Coruscate, he knew, had no hold on her, but her defense of Falcon earlier at the pond had made her feelings for him equally clear.

  If she had to choose between the enemy king she’d been forced to wed and the brother she’d idolized all her life, whom would she choose?

  The sun was just rising when the bedroom door latch opened with a click and the door swung inward.

  The sound fired in his brain like a hammer stroke shattering glass. He had one split second of frozen incomprehension followed by a reaction that was more instinct than thought: Protect Khamsin.

  With a roar, he sprang up from the bed and landed on the floor between the bed and the door, shielding his wife from view and buffering her from any would-be attacker. Before the door swung more than a few inches inward, his eyes were already blazing with Ice.

  “Bella!” Khamsin, who must have been awakened by Wynter’s shout, grabbed his shoulder.

  That slender hand on his shoulder saved Bella’s life. He squeezed his eyes shut to block his Gaze. When he opened them again, the Summerlander maid was standing in the frost-coated doorway, her mouth gaping in shock, staring at him and Khamsin.

  “Get out,” he growled. His teeth were bared in a snarl, and there was such naked menace in his voice that even without the added lethal force of his Gaze, it was a wonder the maid didn’t expire on the spot.

  The girl gave a squeak and stumbled backward, closing the door with a slam.

  The tension stayed with him for several seconds after she’d gone. He was scarcely aware of the threatening, warning growl that still rumbled in his throat as he waited to see if the interloper would return.

  Beneath him, Khamsin made a muffled sound that sounded like a sob. He shook his head to clear the Wolf from his mind and glanced down in concern. Her hands were clapped over her mouth, and her eyes were squeezed shut. But then she drew her hands from her face, and the sound pealed out without restraint, and he realized she was not sobbing.

  She was laughing.

  Not wickedly, not with sarcasm or arrogance, but with delight. Her eyes were dancing with mischief. “Did you see her face? And yours? I don’t know which one of you was more shocked.” She laughed again with such helpless abandon he could not take offense. The sound broke over him like a warm summer rain, and just like that, he wanted her.

  “You think that was funny?” He rose to his feet and towered over her, naked and without shame or false modesty, watching her dazzled eyes gaze up at him. She wasn’t laughing anymore. She was instead looking up at him with undisguised hunger, and he was gladder than he’d ever been for his height, his strength, the broadness of his shoulders, the muscular build of his warrior’s body.

  He bent and swept her up into his arms with effortless strength and laid her on the bed. “Good morrow, min ros,” he murmured, bending his head to kiss her lips, then nuzzle the soft skin just behind her ear. “I do believe I could get used to waking up beside you.”

  Her arms twined around his neck. “Me too.” She kissed him, and he felt her grin against his mouth as his body covered hers. “But I think Bella will demand hazard pay.”

  An hour later, Wynter gave Khamsin one last, lingering kiss, and headed back to his chambers to bathe and dress for the day. She lay there for several, long, lazy minutes afterwards, humming to herself and twirling one long, black curl around her index finger. She rolled over to lay her head on the pillow he’d used, breathing his scent deep into her lungs.

  If only all their time together could be as wonderful as this morning. She’d felt so at ease, holding him, touching him, breathing him in, reveling in his closeness. They’d seemed so . . . right. Like two halves of a whole.

  It was more than just the sex. Yes, he could just look at her, and she melted. Yes, he made her moan and gasp and explode with a pleasure she’d never thought possible. But this time, they’d seemed . . . closer. Gentler. Instead of their usual rough, wild, passion, they’d shared exquisite tenderness. Afterward, he’d watched her with the strangest expression on his face. As if he was beholding something . . . precious.

  Kham ran her hands over her face, letting her fingers linger on her passion-swollen lips. She’d never been precious to anyone. Not that way. Even with Tildy, behind the abundant love had always been a hint of pity, a measure of sadness for the child no o
ne else treasured. With Wynter, there’d been none of that.

  Of course, she’d probably misread the look on his face. Or even if she had read it right, the feeling was probably ephemeral—a fleeting tenderness brought on by the glut of pleasure they’d shared and gratitude for the lives they’d saved at Skala-Holt. Not something to trust. Certainly nothing to think would last.

  With a sigh and a pout for the cold splash of brutal practicality that seemed determined to dampen her good mood, Khamsin set aside the Wynter-scented pillow and sat up. Time to steel herself for another cold day in Gildenheim. Throwing off the covers, Kham thrust her feet into the slippers beside her bed and reached for her velvet dressing gown.

  “It’s all right, Bella,” she called to the still-frosty door. “You can come in now.”

  The door cracked open, and Bella poked her head through, casting a cautious gaze around the room. Once she ascertained that Wynter was indeed gone, she opened the door completely and carried in a tray laden with Khamsin’s usual pot of fragrant, steaming jasmine tea and a small repast of smoked salmon, soft, creamy cheese, and thick slices of toasted bread bursting with whole grains and plump nuts. Bella set the tray on the small tea table in the alcove near Kham’s bed.

  “I am sorry we gave you such a fright earlier,” Kham apologized as she took her seat at the table.

  “No, no, the fault was all mine, ma’am,” Bella demurred. “I didn’t realize the king was here, or I would never have intruded.”

  Kham closed her eyes as Bella ran Queen Rosalind’s brush through her hair, enjoying the soothing tug on her scalp. Few things in life were as comforting as having one’s hair brushed. Bella pulled Kham’s hair back and secured it at the nape of her neck with a ribbon, then reached for the teapot and poured a stream of fragrant, dark golden liquid into the porcelain teacup, adding a cube of sugar before handing it to Khamsin.

  Kham took a sip and frowned. “How long are you steeping the tea, Bella?”