“I meant asnowballfight, Niel. I’m not talking about true combat.”
“Oh.” He cleared his throat and looked away again. “Right. Of course.”
“Have you ever had one?”
“No,” he said, his voice absent again, his eyes refusing to come back to hers. “My father was not a believer in games such as that.”
She’d pried at a wound, looking for something bright, and found nothing but more pain. Well. Sometimes a future was the best remedy to a difficult past. Wasn’t that the very lesson she’d been learning, these past weeks?
“Here, then. I’ll show you.” She scooped up another handful of snow, dense and wet and heavy in the sun instead of the light powder that had fallen. “You take the snow like this and form it in your hands.”
“I’m too old for this,” Niel informed her, watching her movements as she patted the snowball into place with her blue mittens.
“I’m certain you’re younger than I am,” she told him, and showed him the uneven, somewhat clumsy sphere she’d made.
“We are not so far apart in age,” he muttered. Was that a faint blush on his high cheeks, or just the cold?
“I know why you’re resisting,” she said airily, as she patted the snowball into better form. “You’re worried I’ll beat you. Well, you’re right to be afraid.”
Niel snorted, but the gibe must have landed. He reached towards the thick layer of snow on the balustrade and scooped a handful, the black leather of his gloves stark against the white.
“I have ever so much more experience than you,” Ayla informed him, mock-serious. “You might best me with a sword, Niel, but this is my domain. And there are many tactics the weaker fighter may use to gain an edge.”
“Indeed?” Niel asked, his lips curling slightly at the edges like he wanted to smile. “Will you share your knowledge? What tactics are these, Lady Ayla?”
“To start with?” she said, pressing the snowball tight between her gloves one last time. It was nearly perfect now. She felt the oddest urge to impress him, though surely she ought not to care what Niel thought of her. “There is the element of surprise.”
She hurled the snowball into his face, grabbed her skirts, and threw herself down the stairs. Ayla clattered down the steps, sliding and nearly falling on an icy patch, catching herself just in time as she sprinted to the courtyard.
“Cheater,” Niel called after her. “I didn’t know we’d begun.”
She reached the bottom of the stair and trotted into the courtyard, then looked up at him. He gripped the snowy balustrade, leaning over to look down at her.
There was a grin on the knight’s face and snow clinging to his dark hair. She grinned back, a giggle bubbling to her lips.
“It’s called strategy,” she called back. “Perhaps you’ve heard of it?”
With a scowl, Niel shoved at a pile of the snow on the balustrade, sending it down into the courtyard to dust her head. Ayla shrieked and ducked her face down, throwing up her hands. When she looked again, Niel was no longer in the same place.
He was halfway down the stairs, barreling towards her, an armored warrior with a dark cloak billowing behind him, eyes narrowed on his prey.
Something low in her body snapped. For a hairsbreadth of a moment she was terrified, a frightened rabbit with a pounding heart, all instinct warning her that men with looks likethaton their faces meant trouble. But it was Niel; she trusted Niel. She quickly stooped to grab a handful of snow, barely forming it into a ball before she straightened again. Niel was at the bottom of the stairs now.Mercy, the man moved fast.
He was three feet from her when she squeaked and lobbed it into his face, hitting him squarely in the nose with a clump of packed snow. He didn’t raise a hand to block it. Nor did he reach down to grab a handful of snow like he was supposed to.
She took a step hurriedly back, slipping over an icy patch, but Niel leapt forward and tackled her down onto a thick bed of snow. With a startled cry Ayla fell back into the snowbank, sinking down a foot. The knight braced himself over her, his hands pinning her wrists. One of his legs was between her own, his hip pressing at the crux of her legs. When his breath came out in a puff of cloud, she felt it against her lips.
She grabbed for her fear, expecting it to overpower her, but found nothing. Instead, only a strange, quivering thrill at his nearness; at the way his body pressed down on hers. It was not terror, or even the cold, that made her shiver beneath him.
“I have you. Yield to me,” Niel said, his face inches from her own and his body pressing hers into the cold of the snow. Triumph shone in his eyes. A prideful, fierce smile.
Ayla stared up at him, mouth parted and eyes wide, heart pounding. Through all the layers of clothes and armor between them, she couldn’t feel Niel as much more than a hard weight making her body sink deeper into the snow’s embrace. But herbody reacted anyways. She closed her lips to stop a pathetic whimper from escaping.
“Wh—” she started, her mind still spinning. “What are you…?”
Had he really just charged andtackledher—and for the second time in a week, no less? She had not expected anything more than a few lobbed snowballs, and perhaps to put a smile on his face that stayed more than a second.
Niel blinked down at her and lifted his head further away from hers, staring at her with an expression that suddenly looked wary and confused.
