The Winter King

by C. L. Wilson

  The bare skin beneath it was blackened as well, but the thick layer of ice that coated him had broken away and not re-formed. A faint hint of golden color had leeched back into his skin. Hope fluttered in her breast. Roland’s sword had melted the Ice Heart in Wyrn’s Temple. Was it possible her lightning had done the same to Wynter’s heart?

  She laid a hand over his lightning-struck chest. The thud that answered was so slight, she almost missed it, but it was followed by a second thud, then a third. Weak, sluggish, but a heartbeat nonetheless. A living, beating heart.

  “Wynter! Wynter, wake up! Please, beloved. Come back to me.” She dropped her sword in order to seize his shoulders and give him a shake. Then she grabbed his face between her hands and chafed his cold skin, all but willing warmth back to his flesh.

  “Dear gods, please, please, let him live. Please. I’ll do anything, give anything, pay any price, only let Wynter live.” Muttering frantic prayers over and over again, she pulled him into her lap, cradling his head against her chest, smoothing the cold silk of his hair back away from his face. Hot tears spilled from her eyes and rained gently upon his face. She kissed his cold lips, breathing into his mouth. She clasped his cold hand against her cheek and pressed her lips into the still-icy palm. “Come back to me, Wynter. My husband, my love.”

  The thick fans of his white lashes stirred, fluttering against his still-pale cheeks.

  Her breath caught in her throat as his lashes lifted, and a smile of utter joy broke across her face as she beheld eye of glacier blue rather than the soulless clear ice of Rorjak’s wintry stare.

  “Khamsin?” He frowned up at her in puzzlement.

  She laughed. “Oh, thank the gods for their infinite mercy.” She fell upon him, showering him with kisses, weeping with abandon. “I thought I’d lost you forever.”

  “Lost me? What’s going . . . on?” His voice trailed off as he caught sight of the carnage surrounding them. The garm and thralled Winterfolk fighting tattooed Calbernan islanders. The maimed bodies of his people littering the snow. “The Calbernans. Falcon.” His face lost all expression. He turned back to her and she was horrified to see the blue leaching from his eyes, the golden color leaching from his skin. “You betrayed me. You brought the sword to your brother. You joined them to fight against me.”

  “No! Wynter, no!” She reached for him with desperate hands as he shoved out of her grasp and climbed to his feet. “I didn’t betray you. I would never do that! I couldn’t! I love you.”

  “Liar.” The voice that emanated from Wynter’s lips was no longer his own. It was a dark, raspy, threatening voice, pure evil, filled with corruption and hate and all things vile. Just the sound of it sucked the warmth from her flesh and drained the hope from her heart. The ice that had melted from Wynter’s skin re-formed over cold, white, bloodless flesh.

  “Wynter, please! Don’t do this! Fight him! You can’t let Rorjak win. You’ve got to fight him. Please, beloved. Please.” Her chin trembled. Her voice broke, and she began to sob, tears spilling down her face. “I love you. I love you more than I ever thought possible. More than I ever knew I could love anyone. Please, stay with me. Please.” Her hands trembled. Her whole body shook, racked with heartbreak.

  “You pathetic, mewling skurm,” a voice sneered at her back. Something white slashed through the air.

  Kham gasped and scrambled backward to avoid the killing stab of Thorgyll’s icy spear.

  Reika Villani had not fled the battle, after all. She had, instead, escaped into the forest in order to circle around and attack her foe from behind. “He is not your love, nor will he ever be. He is Rorjak the Great, God-King of Mystral. And I will be the queen who rules beside him through all eternity.”

  “Like Hel you will.” Kham lunged for Blazing. Her fingers closed around the hilt, and she thrust the blade towards the heavens, screaming, “Helos help me!”

  Power rushed to her call. The diamond in Blazing’s hilt went blinding white. She slashed the blade towards Reika, instinctively channeling the power down her arms and out through the sword the same way she had the lightning. Instead of flames, a concentrated golden white beam of energy shot from its tip.

  Reika froze in midlunge, a look of almost comical surprise stamped on her coldly beautiful face. Khamsin scrambled to her feet and spun around, sword drawn back for a second strike. She hesitated in confusion. Reika was still frozen in midlunge. She hadn’t moved a fraction of an inch. As Khamsin watched, the skin of Reika’s face shifted along an invisible seam, like two blocks of ice moving in different directions. Then her legs folded, and her body separated into two vertical halves that crumpled to the ground. The seared and cauterized flesh of her bisected corpse steamed in the winter air.

  Thorgyll’s spear dropped to the ground and rolled down the hill, coming to rest at the blood-drenched feet of Dilys Merimydion.

  She heard the tinkling sound of breaking ice behind her. A draft of cold air washed over her, prickling her flesh. She didn’t need to turn around to know the Ice King had risen again.

  Merimydion met her eyes, then glanced at the spear at his feet. She nodded.

  “I’m sorry, my love,” she whispered. She steeled her heart, clenched her fist firmly around Blazing’s hilt, and spun around to stab her blade deep into the Ice King’s frozen heart.

  A split second before the blade plunged into Rorjak’s flesh, she saw the glimmer of blue in his eyes, the shimmer of golden warmth rising beneath the icy white of his flesh. Her arm jerked. The sword that had been aimed directly at Rorjak’s heart pierced scant inches above it instead.

  “Merimydion, wait!” she cried, but the Calbernan had already scooped up Thorgyll’s spear and let it fly. Khamsin had no time to think, even less time to act. Instinct took over.

  She leapt between her husband and the icy, irrevocable death rushing towards him.

  “Wynter, I—” The breath in her lungs left her in a sudden rush as the spear slammed into her shoulder. The weapon impaled her, piercing flesh and bone, then burying its enchanted point into the thick plate of Wynter’s armor. The armor crackled with frost.

  Warmth fled inch by rapid inch as the god-killing magic of Wyrn’s enchanted spear consumed her.

  In helpless, frozen silence, she stared up into the dawning horror in the eyes of the man she loved. And then her world went white.

  “Khamsin! Khamsiiiin!” Wynter grabbed the cold shaft of Thorgyll’s freezing spear and yanked hard. The spearhead was stuck in his armor plate. He yanked again, and again. “Valik! Laci!” Around him, ice was shedding from the members of his army as Rorjak’s vile enthrallment melted away. The walking slain collapsed to the ground in a natural death, while the rest emerged from the torpor of their enthrallment in varying states of confusion.

  “You, there! Calbernan!” Wyn jabbed an imperious finger at the huge, tattooed brute who’d thrown the spear that impaled Khamsin. A few minutes ago, Wyn had nearly lost himself to Rorjak a second time when his instinctive feelings of betrayal and hate at the sight of the Calbernans fighting alongside his wife had given the Ice King the chance to overpower him again. That one moment of doubt might have doomed Wynter again had not Khamsin slain Reika.

  It was Reika in whom the Ice King had fully manifested. Reika, who had lusted for power over everything else, just like Rorjak. To gain that power, she’d surrendered herself to the Ice Heart and to Rorjak. He’d used her as his entrée back into the world, used her to manifest his power. Except, a daughter of Ermine clan wasn’t the powerful avatar Rorjak desired for his reincarnation. He’d wanted Wynter, with his royal weathergifts and his Snow Wolf blood.

  And that had been his downfall. Because from the moment Wynter saw Khamsin’s tear-stained face and heard her sobbing “I love you!” the Wolf in Wynter’s blood would not let him hurt his mate. That Wolf had refused to be conquered. He’d held out, fighting Rorjak’s attempt to subsume him,
until Wynter, listening to his wife’s tearful pleas for him to fight, listening to her sobbed professions of love, had realized that even if Khamsin had tried to help her brother, even if she had betrayed Wynter in every way, it didn’t matter. She was his wife, his queen, his mate. His heart.

  And he loved her.

  He loved every exasperating, fiery, rebellious, beautiful, challenging, volatile inch of her.

  And with that realization, Rorjak lost all chance of claiming any part of Wynter ever again.

  “Get over here and help me get this thing out of her!” Wynter snapped at the wary Calbernan. “Move, damn you!”

  The islander sprinted over, keeping his barbed trident ready to strike, but when it became obvious Wynter was no longer under the control of Rorjak, the tattooed fellow tossed down his weapon and seized Thorgyll’s spear with both big hands. One flex of those enormous biceps later, and the bloodied spear slid free of Khamsin’s flesh.

  Khamsin’s frozen body remained standing, locked in that moment when she’d chosen to sacrifice herself to save him.

  “Wyn.” Laci stumbled over. Droplets of water and chips of melting ice covered her from head to toe. “Wyrn save us, what happened?”

  “That blue bastard tried to kill Rorjak with the spear. Khamsin jumped in front of it to save me. She’s still alive, Laci. She’s frozen, but I can see the heat in her heart. I can feel it in her blood. And in this.” He reached for the hilt of the sword still embedded in his chest, intending to pull it out.

  “Wait!” Laci cried. “What if that sword is the only thing keeping Rorjak at bay?”

  The Calbernan snatched up his trident again.

  “Calm yourselves. The sword didn’t drive Rorjak out of my heart. She did that. I won’t turn again.” He yanked the sword, which had only penetrated perhaps an inch of flesh, out of his chest and glared at the Calbernan, who lowered the points of his trident but kept an unblinking eye on Wynter.

  “You said this thawed the Ice Heart; maybe it will work on Khamsin, too.” Hoping he didn’t have to stab her with the blade to get it to work, Wyn pressed the sword against her chest. Please, gods, let this work. “Come back to me, min ros. Come back to me.”

  The limbs that had been frozen solid buckled as they began to thaw. Wynter caught his wife’s body and cradled her to his chest, careful to keep Roland’s sword in place.

  “That’s it, Summerlass. You can do it.” He raised her hand and brushed his lips against the cold, soft skin of her slender fingers. She was so slight to be so brave and fierce. A marvel. His marvel. He bent over her, pressing his mouth to her cold, still lips, breathing into her lungs the first warm breath he’d had in years. “I love you.” He lifted her closer, trailing a line of kisses from her mouth to her ear and whispered again, “I love you, Khamsin. My own, Summerlass. I don’t have words enough to describe how much I love you.”

  Her throat moved on a swallow. Her lips parted. A small noise breathed out.

  “What was that, min ros?” He bent his ear to her mouth. “What did you say?”

  The fingers in his hand flexed. The lips pressed to his ear moved. And then on a bare whisper of breath, “Try.”

  He pulled back in shock. Her lashes fluttered. Silver-gray eyes looked up at him expectantly through a fringe of lush, curling lashes. One dark brow arched.

  He let out a bark of laughter, hugged her tight, and showered her face with kisses. “I love you more than the sunrise. More than laughter. More than song. I love you more than skating on a frozen pond on a clear winter day or soaking in the hot springs of Mount Freika. I love you more than any man in the history of Mystral ever loved a woman. I love you more than I love making love to you—well, no, wait . . . that’s a tie.” She punched him weakly in the arm, and he laughed again. Then the laughter faded, leaving a heart so full he thought it might burst inside his chest, and a solemn sincerity that shone straight from his soul. “I love you. Angelica Mariposa Rosalind Khamsin Gianna Coruscate Atrialan. Rorjak will never have a hold on my heart again, because it belongs wholly and completely to you.”

  EPILOGUE

  “Where are we going?” Blindfolded, Khamsin held one hand out in front of her, waving side to side. Although rationally, she trusted Wynter not to walk her into a wall, the instinct to be certain was too strongly ingrained to completely overcome.

  “You’ll see.”

  She could practically see the smile in his voice, the mischief sparkling in his pale eyes. He sounded like a boy waking on Wyrn’s Day, eager to see what the Old Man of the North had left by the hearth for him.

  In the nearly six months since Rorjak’s defeat, Wynter and all of Gildenheim had virtually transformed. Gone was the cold reserve, replaced by laughter, warmth, and friendship. With Khamsin celebrated as the savior of Wintercraig, there wasn’t a home or hearth in the entire kingdom where she would not find welcome. Even the remaining band of Reika’s followers made their peace with her and worked to make amends for their previous transgressions.

  Although there had been some rumbling in the court, Wynter had agreed to honor the terms of Khamsin’s negotiations with the invaders—even the part where he arranged for Falcon to be escorted to the closest port and put on a ship sailing to the destination of his choosing. Though hardly a day went by that Khamsin didn’t think at least one sad thought about her brother, in her heart she was glad he was still alive and out in the world somewhere. And each day, she prayed that Falcon would yet become the man he should have been, a man worthy of the blood that ran in his veins.

  “We’re coming to another set of stairs,” Wynter said.

  “Not too many more stairs, I hope.” As her belly had swollen with the twin babes she could swear were half-giant, Khamsin had become less and less enamored of Gildenheim’s many stairways and labyrinthine corridors. Though it was only June, and she still had months to go before the babies were due, she was already waddling so much she might soon sprout feathers and start to quack.

  “Not too many,” he vowed.

  “Is it much farther?”

  “We’re almost there, min ros.” He held her left arm in one hand, and his right hand rested snugly in the small of her back.

  She loved the feel of his hands. So big and powerful, yet so breathtakingly gentle and protective. And warm.

  Gone was the cool chill that had emanated from his Ice Heart-infused body. Heat now radiated from him like a furnace. Though he could still summon a frosty Gaze when it served him—the divine powers of the immortal essence he’d drunk would always be a part of him—the Ice King’s loveless, merciless cold no longer held any part of him in its grip.

  Khamsin had studied the histories of Wyn and Rorjak with Galacia Frey, and they both agreed that Wynter was the sort of man Rorjak could have been had the Ice King’s heart not hungered for power more than love.

  Kham thanked Wyrn and Freika each day that Wynter had made the choice he did.

  She heard the sound of someone’s whispering, only to be quickly hushed. A slight breeze feathered across her face as a nearby door swung open.

  Beneath the mask, Khamsin’s nostrils flared. “Something smells lovely.” A warm breeze carried the scent of roses and gardenias and rich, loamy soil.

  “All right,” Wyn said, unfastening the blindfold. “You can look.”

  Khamsin opened her eyes. Her jaw dropped. The smells of summer had not prepared her for the gift Wynter had created.

  They were standing in the Atrium, the place Wynter had kept his frozen shrine to the memories of his family and brother. Only the breathtaking ice forest with all its frozen sculptures was gone. In its place was a lush and fragrant garden, an oasis of Summer, blooming here in the heart of Wintercraig.

  “I know you have been missing Summerlea, but since traveling isn’t an option until our children are born, I thought I would bring a little of Summerlea to Gildenheim, so you can
visit anytime you like.”

  “It’s beautiful. But what about your ice sculptures? The ones of your parents? Of Garrick?”

  “I kept a few. I made a cold room behind the Atrium and stored them there. I don’t need those memories anymore because I’m going to make plenty of new memories with you. And I wanted this place—the heart of Gildenheim—to be as warm and alive as you’ve made my heart.”

  She smiled up at him, blushing a little at the intensity in his gaze. She tugged his hand. “So show me what you’ve done. I want to see everything.”

  As they walked, a feeling of familiarity came over her. A brick walk circled the outside of the Atrium, with several walks leading to inner circles. The feeling of familiarity solidified into certainty.

  “It’s my mother’s Sky Garden.” She looked up at him in amazed wonder. He’d re-created her mother’s private garden: the paths, the flowers, the apple and pear trees growing up the sides of the walls. Oh, it was still young, with years of growing yet to do, but the bones were here. He’d given Kham her favorite piece of Summerlea, here in the heart of the Craig. “But how did you do it? How did you re-create it so perfectly?”

  “Valik hired an artist to sketch everything and a gardener to provide all the clippings, seeds, and the like. Your sisters helped me with the planting, using your mother’s journals.”

  “My sisters.” It took a moment to process his words. “You mean my sisters are here?”

  “Surprise.” Spring, Summer, and Autumn stepped out from behind a row of flowering fruit trees.

  Khamsin screamed with joy and rushed forward. Happy tears spilled from her eyes as her sisters flung their warm arms around her. “I can’t believe it. I can’t believe you’re here. I wasn’t expecting you for another month at least!”

  “We wanted to spend more than a few weeks with you before the Calbernans arrive,” Summer said.

  “Keeping them away from you these last ten days has been more difficult than you can imagine,” Wynter said.