I heap blankets over his body. Alba’s apprentices pile more wood onto the fire. She touches the man’s forehead every so often, nodding to herself. “He is warming.” Then her attention shifts to the arrow sprouting from his shoulder.
“That arrow is from our men,” she says, her gaze latching onto mine.
“Yes.”
Alba’s mask of calm breaks beneath her disgust. “Brutes. A life is a life. Now hold him down. If he wakes while I attempt to remove the arrow, it could drive the head deeper.”
I haven’t the arm strength to restrain a fully grown man, so I lay across his chest, using my weight to secure him.
The man is young, too young to leave this life. How on earth did he manage to cross the Shade? As the Frost King’s bride, I was granted immunity from its influence. This man was not. Shouldn’t he have turned into a specter?
Blood pours from the opening as Alba pulls the arrowhead free. An apprentice applies pressure with a cloth to staunch the flow, then proceeds to clean the wound, stitching his skin shut.
I’m bandaging the area when a cold wind slides down my spine, prickling my skin.
“What is this?” A hiss slithers from the doorway.
My pulse accelerates despite my outward calm. Girding myself for the battle ahead, I slowly straighten, sending the healers a wordless glance that tells them not to worry. His quarrel is with me.
The Frost King’s form blackens the doorway. His hair hangs loose and tangled and so much wilder than I’ve ever seen it. His skin is completely colorless, save two pink stripes across his cut-glass cheekbones and the rich flush of his mouth. Blood coats the hem of his tunic, and scores mar his breastplate as if from battle. His spear is nowhere in sight, but that makes him no less terrifying. And indeed, he is terrifying. Fury claps across his countenance like a thundercloud. With him, he carries the reek of death.
“Hello, husband.” Striding to the king’s side, I take his hand. “Let’s talk.”
He digs in his heels. I jerk him forward, and he follows me into the hall, growling under his breath like a damn animal.
Once the door shuts, giving us privacy, he pulls free. “My guards informed me you’ve sheltered a man from the outside. Is this true?”
“It’s true.” I plant my hands on my hips. “What of it?”
“Do you realize what you have done?”
“Saved someone’s life?”
His nostrils flare. My every pore attempts to recoil from his nearness. He is too close, this predator.
He says, “You have invited the enemy into my home.”
The words give me pause. In the short time I have known my husband, I’ve learned something: to him, everyone is an enemy.
“Why do you say this man is a foe?” I ask.
“Have you looked at his eyes?”
“No. I was too busy trying to prevent him from bleeding out.”
“Of course you haven’t,” he says, as though he expected my oversight.
My spine snaps upright at the affront. He has some nerve.
“I will tell you what I saw. A man, wounded and lost, who came to your citadel for help. Instead, he was shot.” Every word is expelled in a single, diamond-pointed moment of rage. “You do not kill an unarmed man.”
“He is not unarmed. And he is no longer a man.”
For whatever reason, I swallow down my argument. The wounded man carried no weapons, but was there something I overlooked?
“I could not have his death on my conscience. So I acted. I do not regret it.” Too many things die in the Gray. I could not allow one more to meet that fate.
His blue eyes flicker like a cold flame. It is another moment before he replies, “You had no authority to make this decision.”
