It shouldn’t be hard. I’d frozen him out for a reason, and he could give all the explanations he wanted, but it did not change what had happened. “You are still not telling me everything.”
The corner of his mouth twitched in the smirk that had become more familiar than my own face. “What do you wish to know?”
Everything. Nothing.
I wanted him to fill in the years between his arrival in Balar Shan and the night of Maura’s proposal. Minutes in that throne room had been hell. What had it been like for him to spend years here? For him to watch his mother, a human, spend her limited mortal years in this fetid place? It must have been excruciating. A torture not unlike my own, watching my sisters’ line struggle for life on this dying continent.
Isanara shifted her weight. She drew me back to the present, again. If it wasn’t intentional, it was damned lucky.
I could not let myself feel anything for Garrick, not even pity.
“I understand your decision,” I said.
With that, the adrenaline that had kept me on my feet rushed out of me. I was a four-hundred-year-old frost witch. But in that moment, I was an exhausted, nearly naked woman in another person’s bedroom.
My quaking thighs started to give. I stumbled. Isanara was on her feet, pushing hard into my calf for counterbalance. I grabbed for one of the posts at the end of the bed.
Garrick caught me, his huge, warm hand closing around my wrist, his forearm bracing mine, keeping me upright. His thumb and forefinger pressed into the Lifebind.
Sensation tore through my veins, scalding the tender inroads of my body as it surged and searched for my heart.
I ripped my hand away, stumbling backward, hitting the bed, and falling back onto it. I got my arms behind me fast enough to keep from collapsing completely. Any pity or compassion I’d felt was devoured by the icy anger at the reminder. No matter what I chose, Seraxa’sgiftbound me to Garrick.
“Do not touch me,” I hissed. “I said I understand you. That is not the same as forgiveness.”
Garrick held the hand that had touched me against his body, as if it had burned. He’d felt the same burst of sensation thatI had. As I watched, blinking back the tears that rose with my anger, he rearranged his face into neutrality.
“Take the bed. I will sleep on the floor.”
He did not say anything else as he turned away, and he did not look back again in the minutes that followed. He lay right down on the hearthrug, with all of his clothes on, and the ever-present bow tucked against his chest like a lover.
I was desperate to be rid of my dirty, ragged shift, but I only removed it once I was fully beneath the coverlet and sheets. I crumpled it into a ball and shoved it down toward the foot of the bed. Maybe Garrick would not notice that I was naked in his bed. I told myself I did not care.
I told myself a lot of things as I curled into a ball, Isanara at my back. But I felt it.
The first crack in the ice.
CHAPTER 15
KORYN
I should have gottenout of bed when the sun first hit my face. I would have gotten out of bed if I weren’t such a coward. But I didn’t, and the gods punished me for it.
Delectable warmth overtook my body, making it nearly impossible to focus on anything else. Months I’d spent out in the cold, exposed to the elements. I was a frost witch, but I wasn’t immune to discomfort, and now…. gods, the heat was so decadent. And the hand sliding up my stomach? Perfection.
He paused where my abdomen dipped into my belly button, pressing the heel of his palm into the crease. Not enough to cause discomfort, but an acknowledgement of my body and all its curves and crevices. He splayed out his impossibly large hand, his fingertips brushing the undersides of my breasts.
Potent heat spread from every fingertip into my being. The ice inside of me turned liquid, my body languid beneath his questing touch. I arched against him, needy for every tiny point of contact that I could get.
He did not disappoint me. He was incapable of it. His other hand joined the first so he could cup both of my breasts at once. Dark God curse me, I’d never been with anyone whose hands were large enough to truly hold my breasts like that. He flickedhis thumbs over the tight buds of my nipples while his smallest finger caressed the sensitive crease beneath my breasts.
I wanted his mouth. Needed it. A pleading whimper slipped from my parted, panting lips.
But instead, his hands left my breasts. One of them tracked lower, back over the curve of my abdomen. Another sound, throatier, needier. I’d wanted his mouth? Wrong. This was what I needed—his fingers a few inches lower, where desire pulsed and throbbed. I was a second from begging.
He slid his fingers into the tangle of curls that guarded my entrance. The fragile control I’d had snapped. My shoulders drew together beneath me as my back bowed, and my hips lifted from the soft bed, reaching for his touch. The blankets were gone entirely.
I sank my teeth into my bottom lip.Touch me, I silently begged.
