“Sniffles is sniffles until Death happens by,” said Corra ominously before whizzing off into the bowels of the fort.
I frowned at that pleasant thought, then opened the doors anyway. Cold winter light cascaded through the gap. Drifted snow blocked the door, striped in sunlit shades of marigold and honey. I bent to brush my hand against it, gasping at the jolt of cold. Tiny crystals clung to my fingers, rapidly melting against the heat of my palm. A memory washed over me, of the first and only time I’d seen snow.
It had been some months after Eala was stolen and I was left in her place. Mother had not yet learned to love me—in the grief and anguish of losing a daughter, she ordered my nursemaid to keep me out of sight, to feed me, but to leave the windows open in case I exploded into a flock of birds. My nursemaid, Caitríona, was more interested in flirting with a smirking kitchen boy than minding me. So I wandered the halls and grounds of Rath na Mara like a tiny ghost, clad in little more than underthings.
There had been a snowstorm. Cold daggers stabbed down from dark branches. Stars gleamed through black trees. Pillows of white buried my legs to the thighs. And Rogan’s warm hands, barely bigger than mine, enveloped my frigid fingers as he crouched beside me and brushed wings of white snow off my cold, bare shoulders.
It was the first time we met. I didn’t remember why I’d gone outside or even what Rogan said to me when he found me. But after that night, we were inseparable. He gave me hand-tooled leather boots he’d outgrown and velvet cloaks he’d put holes in. He shared his portions with me at feasts so I didn’t have to fight the hounds for scraps of meat. We slept curled together like puppies on his fine feather mattress.
Sudden sorrow burned my throat and pricked my eyes. Long before I’d fallen for him, before he’d chosenherover me, before we’d been thrown together in a strange place with an even strangermission, we’d been…friends. Best friends. Things had gotten so complicated, so tense, so strained between us. But I missed him. I missed that boy who’d warmed my hands and brushed snow out of my hair and learned to love me even before Mother had. I missed my friend.
As if summoned by my thoughts, Rogan—now so tall and handsome and golden-haired—came thundering up the hill on his stallion. Finan was stark against the snow, his hooves launching a wake of white behind them. Rogan almost didn’t see me standing there at the door to the fort, but when he did, his eyes narrowed to slits of blue sky. He flung himself down from his horse and came at me so fast I experienced a burst of irrational fear. He wrapped his arms around my waist and carried me back inside the dún like I weighed nothing. He kicked the huge oaken door shut behind us.
“What in Amergin’s name are you doing outside?” he demanded, gruff. The cold had slapped hectic spots of red on his cheeks, and his eyes were bright in the dim hall. He held on to my waist even after setting me down, like he didn’t think I could stand straight on my own. His fingertips were cold, but his palms were very, very warm. “You should be in bed.”
“My fever broke,” I told him. “I’m feeling much better.”
“So you decided to get yourself sick again?”
He clasped my chilly hands between his large, calloused palms and gently rubbed them. The gesture was so similar to that snowy night twelve years ago that it made me dizzy. Did he remember? I doubted it. I pulled my hands free.
“Where were you?”
“I rode into Finn Coradh yesterday morning.” He slung a heavy pack down from one shoulder. “You needed more medicine. I didn’t expect the weather to turn so treacherous—I had to stay the night at the inn.”
“An inn famed for its ale and its whores, if I remember correctly.”
Hurt darkened his eyes. “Do you really think I’d bed a stranger when you were here, alone, fighting for your life with winter fever?”
I fought a spear of guilt. “What would I know of your bedding habits, princeling?”
“It was one of the worst nights of my life, Fia.” He caught my arm. “I hated not being able to protect you when you were at your weakest.”
His rough grip and soft words made me restless with confusion.
“I don’t need you to protect me,” I retorted.
“Are you sure?” he growled. “When you go and get yourself dripping wet and bleeding and frozen half to death on the coldest night of the year? If Tír na nÓg is too dangerous for you—”
“Then what?” I demanded. “You’ll call off the mission? Leave Eala as an enchanted swan maiden forever? Betray your queen? Let the Folk win?”
“If it meant keeping you from harm?” His voice was taut with emotion. “Maybe.”
I dared a glance at his face from beneath my eyelashes. The guttering torches on the walls caught the edges of his irises and gilded them gold. Our eyes collided with enough warmth to make me feel feverish again. I almost let myself bask in that heat. Then I remembered, as I always did—my face washerface, and she was the one he’d chosen.
Her bright hair, pale as moonlight and delicate as cobwebs. Her soft body, curving in its perfection. The heavy golden torc around her throat, marking her as noble, princess, banfhlaith. Not a changeling with a stolen face and a borrowed mother.
“Don’t be ridiculous.” I brushed past him toward the stairs. He shadowed my footsteps, then bounded past me, bracing his arm against the banister and blocking my path. He was close enough for me to see every fleck of blue in his green eyes. Smell his sharp, masculine scent, like sun-warmed skin and vetiver. I tried to push him out of my way, but I was still weak. His muscles were rigid under my palms.
“How do we make this work, changeling?” His voice held a note of desperation.
A wave of resentment and longing and frustration rose up in my throat, choking me.
I didn’t want to do this now.
“Leave it alone, princeling,” I bit out through clenched teeth.
“I won’t. Before you got sick, you barely spoke to me for a month. But when I cared for you these past weeks, you leaned into me—like you accepted my care, wanted my affection. Now you recoil from me again.” His eyes bored into mine. “What happened to us? We used to be so close. We used to be… we used to be friends. Of that much, at least, I’m certain.”
