“If I win, you have to let me visit my sister—alone.”
He considers me carefully, as though searching for deception. “And if I win?”
“You won’t.” I’ll ensure it. Nothing will keep me from Elora. Nothing.
He huffs, and his spear disappears into the ether. “If I win, I want something in return.”
“You already have my blood. What more could you want?”
“Dinner. At the time and place of my choosing.”
I stare at him in confusion. “But we already eat dinner every night together.” A vast improvement on our earlier meals, dinner now consists of occasional conversation.
“That is my request.”
I shrug. “Fine.” An easy request to fulfill, should I lose. Which I won’t.
Moving to the weapons hanging on the wall, the Frost King chooses an enormous bow of cedar wood, along with arrows fletched in goose feather. I have never seen Boreas use a bow. He holds his spear as if it is an extension of himself. The bow, not so much.
We position ourselves in front of the target. “You first,” I say. “Three attempts each. The person whose arrow hits nearest to the center of the bull’s-eye wins.”
The Frost King draws. The muscles of his arm bulge as he fights the tension in the bow, and releases. The arrow hits the edge of the bull’s-eye. Decent, but not good enough.
I’m already drawing my bow. As I exhale, I release. My arrow hits nearer to the center, just inside the bull’s-eye.
“Adequate.”
My gaze cuts to his, and narrows. The edges of his mouth soften. Not quite a smile, but almost.
His second arrow lands even nearer to the mark, just bypassing mine, and he makes a sound of satisfaction. My pulse climbs, rising to meet the challenge. I nock, draw, release. My second arrow lands a hairsbreadth off-center.
“Close,” he murmurs with what sounds like approval.
But not close enough.
The king prepares his final shot. But instead of looking at the target, he looks at me. I lick my lips, drawing his focus there. With his gaze locked on my mouth, I feel the undeniable urge to lean closer; my neck burns in memory of his tongue. “Second thoughts?” I whisper.
“Never,” he breathes.
His arrow lands dead-center, quivering from the force of impact. He has hit the target’s heart.
“A worthy attempt,” he says, “but I’m afraid that concludes the competition.” The Frost King slides me a pitying look before leaning his bow against a nearby bench. He thinks he’s won.
One arrow remains. I draw it from the quiver, brush my fingertips over the fletching. Who am I? Wren of Edgewood. Provider, sister, survivor. My world narrows to the arrow protruding from the target’s center, and a feeling of rightness moves through me. My breath unspools.Now, I think, and release.
The arrow arcs like a falling star, splintering through the middle of the existing arrow shaft, the head buried so deeply in the target it has disappeared from view.
23
“YOU WILL TAKEPHAETHON.”
We stand in the stables, the Frost King and I. The lamps have been extinguished, for it is a bright, cloudless day, the doors open to the sun—a good omen.
Phaethon, the fiend, arches his long, smoky neck over the stall, sniffing my trousers for possible treats. I nudge the brute’s head away, unwilling to admit that he might have a personality. “I will walk.”
The king tightens his fingers around the reins, leather squeezed in his gloved hand. His eyes are so dark they appear black, no distinction between pupil and iris. He looked at me much the same days ago in the library, his arousal evident. I didn’t know what to do about it then. I still don’t.
“You take Phaethon, or you don’t go at all. Your choice.”
