Soldiers rose, half-sloshed and puffed with pride, adjusting their sashes and wiping mead from their beards. One by one they made for the door, boisterous and ready to bask in the adoration of a grateful kingdom. A grateful queen.
“You coming, Huntsman?”
Graham didn’t look up. Just shook his head.
“Why the hell not? You're the reason we survived that fool war. All these men owe you their lives. The queen?—”
"Go on." Graham cut the man off before he could say her name. "Celebrate. You deserve it. An old, tired man like me just needs rest for his weary bones."
They scoffed at that. Graham was in his prime, but he felt ancient. Aside from not wanting to see her on her throne, out of his reach, he didn't want to rub elbows with any more of the pale, porcelain sons of the north, all silk-lined collars and flaxen hair that never seemed to tangle. He was broad where they werenarrow, sun-dark where they were snow-pale. His hair was black as coal and always too long, curling damp at the nape of his neck. His voice was rough, and so were his hands—callused from blades and blood and breaking through ice that never melted fast enough.
He didn’t have the kind of muscles sculpted for show, the kind court women liked to admire from a careful distance. His were built for work. For hauling, hunting, dragging half-dead men from the battlefield. Built for pinning a woman down and making her forget her breeding.
The matriarchs of the Snow Kingdom liked their men delicate. Pretty things they could sharpen their wit against or crush beneath their polished boots. But every so often, they wandered into dark corners to have a bit of the rough.
Just enough dirt to remind them what power tasted like when it begged.
Just enough to ruin themselves—quietly.
She had come to him like that at first. But she’d kept coming back. And like a fool, he’d let himself believe she wasn’t just using him for the bite. That maybe—just maybe—she’d meant it.
He shot out of his seat. The stool clattered to the ground and cracked, the wood splintering. He couldn't stay here. If he did, he knew he'd get ensnared back into her trap. He wouldn't be gone by morning. He was leaving now.
Graham laid a few tarnished coins on the ale-stained table—more than enough to pay for the drink he hadn’t finished, the stool he'd broken, and the praise he didn't deserve.
He downed the rest of his ale in one long swallow. It burned on the way down, bitter and sharp, like regret aged in oak. He didn’t flinch. He turned to go.
“Huntsman?" Behind him, a voice cut through the din. Thin. Reedy. Too nasal to be born anywhere but behind velvet curtains and cushioned chairs.
Graham didn't answer. Just turned and glared.
The man's throat worked, and he shrank into himself a bit. He had to clear his throat once, twice before resuming. "Her Highness begs an audience.”
CHAPTER THREE
The late king's room was a shrine to masculine austerity—dark woods, heavy fabrics, and a chill that not even the roaring hearth could quite chase away. The bed dominated the space, a towering monstrosity of carved ironwood with a headboard etched in the crest of Thornhall: a roaring stag framed by thorns. Its posts rose like blackened branches, twisted and regal, holding up the sagging canopy of blood-red velvet. The bedding was thick, serviceable, a palette of storm-gray and oxblood—no frills, no softness, no invitation. It smelled faintly of old smoke, waxed leather, and the ghost of a man who had never quite lived up to the throne he’d claimed.
Raveena stood before the looking glass on the wall in her late husband's chambers. Tall and unforgiving, the mirror's silvered face stretched nearly floor to ceiling, framed in black iron thorns that curled like barbed wire. It reflected her with brutal honesty—no magic, no illusion. Just the cold truth of her face, her figure, her crown. Each night it had been in her line of sight as her husband had mounted her and performed his duty. She'd taken those five, sometimes ten, minutes to regard her reflection and look for flaws in the dark.
Morning light spilled pale and merciless across the marble floor. The snow-filtered sun showed everything: the shadows beneath her eyes, the faint bruise along her jaw, the bloom of a blemish rising like a betrayal just beneath her left cheekbone. Things had gotten a little out of hand in last night's bed sport.
She lifted a gloved hand, fingers bare at the tips, and summoned a current of cold magic through her veins. The mirror shivered. Frost bloomed in delicate veins along the edges of the glass. Her reflection stared back: cloud-white, high-boned, pale eyes like a storm over deep water.
The blemish marred the illusion. Not large, but noticeable. Her face had always been nearly symmetrical.Nearlywas the danger. Any flaw became obvious by comparison.
Raveena exhaled slowly, pressing her fingertips to the imperfection. The skin beneath her touch tingled, tightening and smoothing as if the magic were ironing out time itself. The swelling receded. The color cooled. A perfect canvas once more.
She stepped back, checked the angle of her crown, and adjusted the tilt of her head. Her gown was slate-blue velvet, trimmed in silver fur, cinched just enough at the waist to hint at softness while promising steel beneath. The bodice framed her shoulders like armor. The sleeves shimmered with ice-thread embroidery—sigils of her line, symbols of frost, thorns, and flame.
Stitched just above the curve of her left wrist, subtle but deliberate, was the silver silhouette of a wolf mid-prowl. It was not the proud, antlered stag of Thornhall but the emblem of Fenvalen—the frostbitten kingdom of her birth, where wolves ruled the woods and queens ruled the land. A reminder of where she came from, of the blood that still ran wild in her veins.
When the Queen of Thornhall passed into the veil, the old king found himself with a daughter too young to claim the matriarchal throne and an army too feeble to defend it. Heneeded a bride—strong, cunning, and from a bloodline with teeth. Raveena had been one of many princesses paraded before him, but she was the one who stood her ground, who spoke of alliances not as favors but as contracts. While others fluttered lashes, she laid out strategies. While they simpered, she hunted.
She didn’t win the king’s heart. She won his hand. And with it, a kingdom. Now she might lose it all because of a barren womb.
If Raveena had borne a daughter to her late husband, she would have married her stepdaughter off to some faraway kingdom, and the throne would've passed peacefully to Raveena's daughter. But her womb had betrayed her. And now her back was to the wall.
The key was Charming.
