She stirs, turning within the circle of my arm to face me. Her eyes—ordinary brown, yet somehow more compelling than any magic I've witnessed—find mine. No fear clouds them, only curiosity and something warmer.
"You're still here," she says, voice husky from sleep.
Where else would I be? This is my domain, my cabin, my bed. But I understand her meaning. I didn't flee after our encounter. Didn't retreat behind walls of ice and indifference.
"Yes," I say simply.
Her fingers reach up, tracing the edge of my jaw where the skull mask receded during the night. My glamour has reasserted itself with rest—the antlers reduced to their crown-like appearance, the skin more human than frost.
"I thought I might have dreamed it all," she says.
"You didn't."
"Good." A smile touches her lips, unexpected and devastating in its effect on me. Something stirs in response—an echo of a smile I've forgotten how to form.
She sits up, keeping the furs wrapped around her. Her hair falls in tangled waves down her back, one shoulder bare where the covering has slipped. Frost immediately forms where my gaze lingers on her skin, as if my very attention carries winter with it.
"Are you... okay?" she asks. "After what happened?"
An odd question. I am not the fragile one here. Not the mortal whose body was claimed by something ancient and cold.
"I should be asking you that," I say.
"I'm fine." She looks down at her skin, where faint traceries of frost still shimmer in places my cold marked her most deeply. "Better than fine, actually."
Her frankness continues to surprise me. Humans usually speak in circles, in euphemisms and half-truths. She cuts straight through to the heart of things, like a blade through ice.
"You should have frozen," I say, the words emerging more harshly than intended. "My touch has killed before."
"Maybe you didn't want to hurt me." She says it so simply, as if the answer is obvious.
I consider this. Perhaps she's right. My cold responds to my will, conscious or not. And I wanted... want... her alive. Warm. With me.
"What happens now?" she asks, breaking the silence that has stretched between us.
A question I've been avoiding. What indeed? The storm still rages, though gentler than before. The search parties remain at bay. We have time yet before decisions must be made.
"Now you eat," I say, practical concerns easier to address than the larger questions hovering between us. "Your bodyneeds nourishment after..." I hesitate, unsure how to name what transpired between us.
Her cheeks flush pink, a reaction I'm beginning to find endlessly fascinating. "After you tried to bring the roof down on us with those antlers?"
I blink, startled by her teasing tone. Then something long dormant stirs—a chuckle, rusty and barely recognizable, escaping before I can contain it.
"They did leave marks," I acknowledge, glancing at the gouges my antlers carved in the ceiling during our passion.
"Battle scars," she says with a grin, sliding from the bed with the fur still wrapped around her. "Worth it."
I watch as she gathers her clothes—now fully dry—and retreats to the bathroom. The space feels emptier without her presence, colder in a way that has nothing to do with temperature. I rise, dressing quickly, moving to the kitchen area to prepare food.
My hands work automatically while my mind circles back to the question she asked. What happens now? I cannot keep her here forever, though part of me—the ancient, possessive part—wants nothing more. She belongs to the human world, to warmth and light and the changing seasons of a mortal life.
I belong to winter. To solitude. To the endless cycle of snow and ice and cold.
When she emerges, dressed but with hair still tousled, I have a simple meal prepared. We eat in companionable silence for a time, the only sounds the clink of utensils and the distant howl of the storm.
"Will you tell me what you are?" she finally asks, setting down her spoon. "Really?"
I consider deflection, half-truths, the kind of mythical nonsense humans tell themselves to make sense of things beyond their understanding. But she deserves better. She's seenmy true form, felt my cold inside her, and still sits across from me without fear.
