“No.” His hand was still on my throat. Still pressing against the absence of a pulse.
“I didn’t care that you were wrong. I didn’t care that you were cold. I cared that you were running. I cared that you thought I was the kind of monster who would let his bride die alone on a stone floor while he slept down the hall.”
He gathered me up. Lifted me from the floor like I weighed nothing, cradled me against his chest, his arms warm bands around my frozen body.
“You chose the cold,” he said. “But you don’t get to choose to fade. Not yet. Not until I’ve had a chance to show you what the cold can offer.”
He carried me toward the door.
Toward whatever came next.
OLWEN
He didn’t take me to the healers.
I’d expected to be carried through the corridors to some sterile chamber where clan physicians would poke and prod at my frozen flesh, cataloguing my wrongness, documenting my monstrousness for whatever trial or execution would follow.
But Cador walked past the healer’s wing without slowing. Past the great hall. Past the kitchens and the servants’ quarters and all the places where people might see, might question, might witness the Raven King carrying his blue-lipped bride through the castle in the dead of night.
He took me to his chambers.
The door was heavy oak banded with iron, barely ajar. He kicked it open, carried me inside, kicked it closed again. The lock engaged with a heavy click, not a simple latch but something more substantial.
The sound of a door meant to keep things in.
Or keep things out.
The room was larger than mine. Darker. A fire burned in the massive hearth, but the flames were low, casting more shadow than light.
Black silk sheets on a bed the size of a small boat. Furs piled thick on every surface. And cold, even with the fire, the room was cold in the way his lands were cold.
The chill of deep places, mountain peaks, and graves.
He laid me on the bed.
The furs were soft against my back. Heavy. I sank into them, my body too weak to do anything else, too far gone to protest or question or fight.
The ceiling above me was vaulted stone, carved with ravens in flight, their eyes catching the firelight.
I waited for the accusations. The questions. The demands for explanation that I was too frozen to give.
Instead, he crossed to a cabinet against the far wall, opened it, and removed something that glinted in the firelight. Black glass, curved, wickedly sharp.
A dagger.
Obsidian, I realized. Knapped to an edge that looked honed. The handle was wrapped in leather so old it had gone brittle, and symbols I didn’t recognize were etched into the blade.
Old symbols. The kind that might well predate the Shift.
He turned back to me. The dagger caught the light, and for one long moment I was certain this was it. This was the execution.
Quick and clean, a mercy killing for the creature that had invaded his home, his bed, his life.
I didn’t close my eyes.
If I was going to die, properly die, finally die, I wanted to see it coming.
He crossed to the bed. Knelt beside it, lowering himself to the floor so his face was level with mine.
