“It’s as clear as the white hair on his head.” Scarlet sprung one of my curls playfully. “He loves you, truly he does. I can see it in his eyes and feel it emanating from him. Don’t you?”
Heat filled my cheeks, and I glanced away. “I don’t know.”
Though my very heart screamed at me that, yes, it was thawing toward the king. That, indeed, I was falling for the tall, handsome elf. Would it really be so hard to believe that he liked me, too?
At the quirk to Scarlet’s knowing lips, I said, “I don’t know. He is a king. An elf. I’ve been taught to hate them since I was a child. He stole me away from my family. But…I am learning why he did what he did. I am beginning to trust him.”
Trust? Had I really said I was beginning to trust the king? Christmas miracles truly did happen.
Scarlet nodded knowingly, “These things take time. But don’t take too long. A vulnerable heart can wait in anticipation for only so long.”
“And what of my unsure heart?” I quipped.
“An unsure heart can turn in the matter of a few kind deeds.” Scarlet kissed me on both cheeks and stood back, inspecting my face—which I was sure was as red as the raspberry preserve in my hands.
“Thank you,” I said to both Rowan and Scarlet, “Thank you for everything.”
Elden and Rowan clasped forearms and nodded in farewell. Then Elden pulled Scarlet in for a gentle hug. A spike of jealousy stabbed my heart. Their friendship, their relationship was so…easy. Why was my relationship with the king so complicated?
Little Hawthorne toddled up and handed Elden a crumbled piece of paper. On it were his scribblings and paintings, very abstract. He looked up at Elden, so proud of his art and Elden thanked the child as if it were the finer than all of the art pieces in his large palace gallery.
Elden and I slid into our saddles and started the long winding trail to Winterthorn. The peak was impossible to ignore now. The snow-capped mountain towered over the distant landscape like a constant threat.
Travel was difficult as our horses climbed the twisting trail. Craggy and unforgiving. Cold and purple. My enchanted coat did nothing to stop the chills from spiraling down my side.
“What happened to your grandmother? The first human queen?” I asked as we rode side by side on a rare open trail.
“No one knows.” Elden shrugged. “Her fate was lost to the legend of Winterthorn.”
Then I would have to discover whatever became of the woman who won the heart of the first Elf King. She was the key, somehow, to figuring out how this blight started. To discovering the cure, I just knew it.
The trees thickened as the trail wound to a close. No one traveled this way–hadn’t for six hundred years. The blighttangled all around us like a festering disease. Even the snow did not touch the ground or coat the charcoal scratched branches. The snow would fall, then dissolve into the black ground as if any pure thing would be swallowed up by the decaying blight. It didn’t take long until all sounds and sights of wildlife turned into a sharp silence in their absence—the only sound, the clomping of horse hooves on the dead ground.
The ominous blackness only got worse and worse, the closer we traveled to the looming peak in the distance. Night fell fast, as if the sunlight did not even have enough power to touch the blackened ground.
We rode on the side of a craggy cliff, the outcropping jutting out into the growing dark, offering little shelter.
“We will have to camp here tonight. Winterthorn is still a half-day’s journey, and soon enough, the light will be swallowed up.” Elden frowned at the obscured sun in the distance.
We stopped beside a jutting cliff, its sheer side offering shelter from most of the wind. Snow blew at us from the west as I attempted to put up my tent with trembling hands. I was not quaking from the cold, but from fear. We were so close to the mountain, so close to the first shade monster who prowled this part of the realm. Everything around me sulked with a blackened absence of life. I jumped at every gust of wind. Flinched at the keening whine in the air.
Elden’s boots stomped beside from where I crouched by my half-erected tent. I looked up at him, a question in my eyes about how to go about finishing the thing. But Elden’s mouth was downturned, and he rubbed a gloved hand on the back of his neck, eyes faraway.
“What is it?” Something was obviously on his mind. Something that made him quite uncomfortable. Dread swirled in my gut. As fun as it was to see the king uncomfortable, outhere so close to Winterthorn? It might mean our very necks were on the line.
Elden cleared his throat, his eyes meeting mine seemed almost—pleading. “I was wondering if you might wish to stay…in the same tent tonight. For safety reasons.”
My stomach dropped, and I shot up from where I’d been crouched. “Share a bedroll again?—”
“No, of course not, no.” Elden shook his head as if scolding himself, “You would have your own bedroll. But we are within the blight, so close to Winterthorn. I would just sleep better…knowing that you are safe beside me.”
I stared at the king. He grimaced, his eyes taking their time to slide over and land on mine.
“No, it’s silly, of course—” Elden began as he found his gloves more interesting than my eyes. But I’d already made up my mind.
“Yes, please,” I said before Elden could say another word. Silence fell between us. and I took a step closer to the king. “I would sleep better as well.”
My stomach clenched as relief flooded me—relief and a new kind of tension.
