They’d called me a bridge once, a link between courts. It was meant as praise. Now it felt like a chain. I belonged everywhere and nowhere at once, a diplomat in my brother’s shadow.
And now that shadow was moving. Cracking.
I’d watched Kaelith break control tonight, and for a breath, I’d envied him for it. But envy’s a tricky thing. It doesn’t stay still; it grows teeth.
She’d reached him. Somehow, that mortal girl had touched something in him that none of us could thaw. I’d spent years watching him from the edges of his perfection, waiting for proof that he could falter—and there it was. His weakness, his want, written in the way he’d kissed her.
And gods help me, I wanted it too.Not her, exactly—at least, that’s what I told myself at first. I wanted thefreedomshe’d given him. The right to want something and take it, no crown, no court, no father watching.
But as I stood there in the corridor where their breath still lingered, I realized that wasn’t true.Itwasher.
I’d noticed her before, of course—her fire, her stubborn refusal to bend even when the cold gnawed at her bones. But I’d dismissed it as curiosity. Harmless fascination. Now the curiosity burned hotter.
I turned away from the ice and walked toward the nearest window. The aurora still hung faintly above the Hold, crimson streaks curling through the black. It shouldn’t exist this far south, but neither should she. Maybe that was the point.
I could almost hear my brother’s voice in my head:Do not confuse warmth for power, Kael. Fire always dies first.
I smiled, slow and bitter. “Maybe. But it leaves light behind.”
And I wondered, not for the first time, if my brother had any light left to give.
I poured myself a glass of Winterwine when I reached the gallery. The liquid caught the red reflection of the aurora, swirling like blood under ice. I raised it toward the sky in a mock salute.
“To control,” I said softly. “And to the ones who lose it.”
The words felt good in my mouth. Dangerous.
Because for the first time, I didn’t want to be like him.I wanted tobeathim.
The courtyard was empty when I stepped outside. Snow sifted down in lazy spirals, each flake catching a bit of the aurora’s red light before vanishing against the froststone.
Winter nights had a sound to them—a kind of stillness that wasn’t quiet at all but alive. The Hold breathed through its walls, through the ice, through us. Tonight, the breath was uneven. Unsteady. Like it felt what I’d just witnessed.
I tilted my head back, watching the red wash of the sky pulse against the white. It looked like the heavens had been cut open. Maybe they had.
I laughed once, low and humorless. “Well, brother. You’ve managed to make Winter blush.”
The words fogged the air, a wisp of warmth that didn’t belong here.
The truth was, I didn’t belong here either. I’d always been too much—too alive, too loud, too willing to laugh when silence was safer. Kaelith had been born of Winter’s spine, the perfect heir, every word measured, every step calculated. I was the accident that came later—the reminder that our father had once strayed somewhere warmer.
I used to think it didn’t matter. That being the half-blooded prince meant I could live unbound by the crown, free to chase wine, music, and whoever caught my eye at the next court gathering. But watching them tonight—seeing that raw, uncontrollable need in him, the way she’d met it with fire instead of fear—it did something to me.
It made mewant.
Not the shallow kind that fades with morning. Something deeper. I wanted to be seen like that. To be wanted like that.
My brother, ever the paragon, had found something real—and in a mortal, no less. And all I could think was that maybe, just maybe, I could take it from him.
The thought startled me. I wasn’t cruel by nature. But this wasn’t cruelty. It was balance. Kaelith had always been Winter’s sword; maybe it was time someone else learned to wield flame.
The mortal didn’t fear me. That was important. She looked at me and saw a man, not a prince of ice and silence. She teased. She smiled. She spoke to me like I was still half-alive.
And I liked it. Gods, I liked it too much.
A gust of wind swept through the courtyard, tossing my hair into my eyes. Copper caught the aurora, flaring red. I brushed it back and smirked at the reflection of myself in the frozen fountain.
“I suppose I do look the part of temptation,” I muttered.
