That warm sweetness lasted until it again disappeared, and Damien found himself on his knees. He was naked, the wound on his stomach and chest healed, but when he lifted his arms they were covered in every slice he had ever given himself. Hundreds, thousands maybe, all risen to the surface, angry and ugly and weeping blood.
Movement in the darkness revealed the long, slim lines of a woman’s body. She stalked from the shadows and stood over him, smiling down, but there was nothing kind in that look, only joy for what she was about to do. His stomach dropped as she raised a dagger to her mouth and snapped her teeth down on its tip.
Delphine, no, please!
Damien threw his hands up, and she struck out but didn’t cut into him. The weapon had been turned, the hilt offered up. He took it from her, every muscle aching in protest of what he was about to do as he raised the dagger to his own face. Blood, hot and wet, spilled over his cheek, the blade slicing through his skin with a sluggish agony he could neither stop nor quicken. And then he was awake.
Heart beating madly, body covered in cold sweat, Damien jolted, the brightness of the room blinding him. Everything ached, pinpricks and arcana pulsing through his limbs, and his stomach roiled. He groaned, running his good hand down his face and then reached out as if his fingers should have found someone, but the space beside him was empty.
Blinking, he sat up, the chamber a cloudy shade of blue through sleepy eyes and smelling of mint. He couldn’t quite recall where he was, when he had fallen asleep, how he had gotten there, but he did know he desperately needed to take a piss.
He wavered as he got to his feet and instinctively traipsed across the room to the smaller, attached bath. He found the latrine, and as he stood there waiting for his bladder to empty as if it had been filling for days, he tugged at the linen wrapped around his arm. He worked at the knot, done so well by nimble fingers, and it eventually gave way, unraveling to reveal only a thin line left running up his bicep. The wound had healed nicely considering how deadly it had been. And then he suddenly realized why.
Damien willed himself to finish, hopping in place, and shouted for Amma. There was no answer other than his own voice echoing back off the icy walls of the chamber. He ran across it, no sign of Kaz either, and burst into the hall.
The Winter Court palace was massive, and he could scarcely remember the way they’d been brought, the ambush in The Wilds, the fall into the frozen Everdarque, the meeting with that fae all a jumble, piecing itself together in his mind. Damien called Amma’s name again as he raced down a reflective hall, his own shadow passing him by. No answer. His mind swam with what could have happened—that so-called king could have her in any of the rooms in this place, a tower, a dungeon, his bedchamber. At that, he growled and moved even faster, turning down another hall that spilled into some grand chamber, a table in its center, much too small for the rest of the space. It was strange, but he had no time to consider it. Basest beasts, had Amma been whisked away to another court?
Before he let himself spiral deeper into frenzied concern, he closed his eyes and reached out with his mind. His arcana sparked, chaotic and confused. There was only a vast wasteland of nothing, though noxscura plucked at his senses, pulling him in every direction and willing him to stay right there.
And then he found the blood that he needed, with its curiosity and its liveliness and its human warmth. Amma. Her heart was pumping madly, she had been running, screaming, but the presence of her was all around and nowhere at once.
“Fuck!” Damien’s eyes sprang open, and there, standing just ahead of him, was one of those fat, little not-birds the fae had conjured. “You!” He pointed at the egg-shaped creature. “Show me where they are.”
The flippered being turned on a webbed foot and waddled away. Damien sprinted after but quickly caught up, and though it was clearly doing its best, Damien fell into a walk so as not to pass it up.
“Faster,” he demanded, and a beady, black eye roved up to him before it flopped down onto its rounded belly and suddenly propelled itself over the smooth stone at an astonishing pace. “Didn’t realize you could go this fast,” he coughed, bolting after it.
The creature led Damien right out to the massive throne room, straight down the entry tunnel, and through a passage cut into the block the fae had used to seal them in. He dashed outside, down the steps of the palace to the lake still glowing turquoise under a constantly darkened sky. The dusting that made it possible to walk across was still there, the fishbird propelling himself even more quickly across the ice.
Damien hurried to the bank, his arcana impossible to call up properly, senses blurred by the Everdarque, but Amma was close, and he opened his mouth to yell for her once more.
Freezing wetness slapped Damien in the face, shocking her name off of his tongue. He turned, and there was Amma, half hidden behind a mound of snow, a bright shock of color draped in a pink cloak amongst the white and blue shadows of the Everdarque’s wintery night. Beside her was the fae king, as silver and sharp as the world around him, both blending in and jutting out, a ball of packed snow hovering over his hand.
“You got him!” Amma squealed and then propelled herself over the bank. “Damien, you’re finally awake!” She ran with the same speed she’d had in the hut in The Wilds, but stopped short of embracing him, hands covered in thick mittens as she threw them up like she might have grabbed him about the neck under other circumstances. Instead, she carefully set the soft mittens against his arm. “And look, you’re healed, but you must be freezing.”
Only then did Damien feel the elements, and the cold bit at him, but his heartbeat settled as he surveyed her shrugging off the long, fur-lined cloak. “Why are you out here? Are you unharmed?”
Amma nodded. Beneath, she was wearing a dress a velvety, thick fabric, skin completely covered, but her face showed no distress beyond a sudden concern aimed at him. She threw her cloak over his bare shoulders and pulled it tight around his neck, brow pinched, round lips pulled into a pout. Damien knew that look, and it used to make his chest tight and annoyed, but this time his heart squeezed in a different way. “We were just working on the finer details of having a snowball fight. I havesomuch to tell you.”
The fae king strode up behind her, looking tall and beautiful and smug and exceedingly punchable despite that Damien knew aggression toward any fae was ill-advised at best. “Ah, the sleeping prince has finally woken.”
Damien would have sneered at him, balling a fist covertly beneath the cloak, but a round bundle of animate sweaters waddled up. “Kaz? Is that you in there?”
The imp made a gurgly, little noise through a slit in the knitted fabric, barely able to move arms and legs that poked straight out, but he was solidly protected from the cold, and didn’t even shake. Amma laughed sharply, and Damien chuckled, his ire subsiding for the time being.
Back in the relative warmth of the palace, Amma guided Damien over to a hearth glowing with an actual fire despite being carved from ice. He was sure it hadn’t been there before, but it was central to the throne room now, huge and elaborate with a stone ledge hovering over the flames holding a small number of pots. “You were asleep for three days,” Amma explained as she picked up a thick linen from a tray and retrieved a teapot from the ledge.
Many things could happen in three days. Damien glanced over at the fae king. He was on the other side of the throne room, distracted with Kaz who had gotten himself stuck in the many layers, working with the imp to peel them off. “I did not intend to be.”
“I know, but I’m glad—your wound needed it.” She offered him a cup of what was in the pot. “Taste this, tell me what you think.”
Damien took a sip of the tea, senses filling with the scent of pine, its heat lighting up his throat and blooming in his chest agreeably. “It tastes as though you’ve boiled the northern forests.”
“That’s good?” She squinted, lip caught between her teeth.
He took another sip, the feeling coming back into his hands around the copper mug. “Absolutely.”
Amma’s grin warmed him even more than the drink. “Hemlock pine tea, like Laurel taught me to make.”
