Her white cheeks grow pink. “Of course, Your Majesty. Don’t wear her out, though. Our girl needs her energy.”
Colden feigns shock. “Why Rowena, I would never! I’m her king!”
Rowena laughs. It isn’t as if the entire village doesn’t know how close Colden and I have become over the last several years. We’re the best of friends—with the very best of benefits.
In my bedchambers, I undress down to my shift. Colden leaves his tunic and braies on, and we crawl underneath the covers.
“I hate sleeping with you in the winter,” I say, even as I snuggle against him, my head on his cold chest.
He pulls a fur blanket over me. “This was your request. Good thing you’ve got all that magick stirring inside you. We’ll both be warm as a winter’s hearth in no time.”
Colden’s usual sarcastic tone isn’t present. Instead, I hear worry behind his words.
I brush my fingers across his face as I slide my leg along his calf, hoping to share my warmth. “Thank you for staying.”
He tucks an errant curl behind my ear and kisses my forehead. A certain tenderness he always shows me reveals itself. “You certainly don’t make leaving easy.”
“This is nothing.” I wink. “Imagine if you’d actually left. I’d already planned to command a tall, powerful tree to capture you and bring you back to the castle.”
He just smiles, though it doesn’t really reach his eyes. “Stop devising ways to humiliate me and go to sleep.”
I try. So does Colden, but I know he’s wide awake and staring at the ceiling.
After an hour of failed attempts, I give up and send my mind where I promised him it wouldn’t go.
I check the construct for my sister.
Once I find her, I jerk up, my heart racing. Something isverywrong. I can’t tell what exactly, but Raina and Alexus are in danger from more than the cold. I sense mistrust in Alexus. Nervousness in Raina. And…someone else is there.
Something.
Colden sits up behind me. “Are you okay?”
I want to tell him the truth, but I can’t. I fear he’ll only use it as an excuse to finally leave this time.
“Bad dream,” is all I say as I let him draw me back down to the bed.
He wraps me in his arms, rubbing circles on my back, and I stay there, listening to his heartbeat as I secretly scour the construct until I locate my sister again. Whatever this danger is, Raina and Alexus are surrounded by it, and it isn’t the Eastlanders.
A shudder quivers through me as I grasp what it is I’m sensing, pulsing against the threads of my magick.
Pure unbridled malevolence.
We’re going to die here.
My bodice and Alexus’s cloak are the only barriers between me and the wintry precipitation that falls heavier and heavier with every passing hour. We’ve been riding for what feels like several days since the lake. I can’t be certain because there’s no concept of time here. No sun, no moon, no dusk, no dawn. Just misery and aching muscles that have long since frozen stiff.
We’ve rested twice, though the last time was many hours ago, before we reached this path. Now, the horses’ hooves are shod in ice, their strides much slower and labored. Snow sits on my shoulders, and frost coats my face. So much for Nephele protecting us.
I tried summoning my magick, to think of any spell that might help us. I even imagined walking a circle of protection, trying to conjure a hut made from forest limbs. But walking would be treacherous in the deep snow along the path’s edge, and my hands have grown even less flexible than they were at the lake. The necessary intricate movements for a complex spell are impossible to perform.
As for the wood, it appears the construct only allows for two passages, just like Hel said. Directly into the mountains or around them.
“There are dark things in those hills,” she reminds us, and Alexus agrees to stay to the dense woodland that skirts the range instead.
I have to agree with him now about myother routesidea. Mountains are difficult enough to pass without the added dangers of this icebound magick.
The old oil lamp Alexus found at Littledenn hangs from his hand. The wavering flame gives off enough soft illumination through its amber glass that we travel inside an orb of golden light. Worry for Eastlander’s spotting us has long passed, our dire need of light the larger worry. The world outside our faint little bubble is dark but white with cold. The snow and ice that glazes every limb and needle and leaf emits the faintest eerie glow—a forest made of silver and shadows.
