“I’m not sure who that woman is,” he said, “or what she’s done with Marie.”
Ger stared, for a long moment, at the easy, boyish curve of that smile. It was a feat that defied reason; grinning like that. Gravity had shifted; itweighedmore now. Everything was heavier, and forcing your face toliftseemed an insurmountable effort. It was a nice smile, though. Nice lips. It was only when those lips tugged into something closer to a smirk that Ger remembered himself and met the porter’s eye. He raised a black brow, and Ger turned to the stew, stirring a little messily as he fumbled for a response.
“Thought she was going to kiss me for a minute there,” he managed finally.
He jolted when the porter laughed again, but the sound sparked something warm in his belly. Some sort of spasm within, like his muscles were trying to remember how to mimic the sound. He settled for a smile; wooden and awkward, he was sure, but it was something.
The porter’s own smile flickered—then hitched up again, sharper and a little rueful.
“You don’t remember me, do you?”
“I remember you just fine,” said Ger.
And he did. It seemed an age ago, a lifetime, but Ger remembered. He remembered shy, lingering looks in the ballroom, and eager chatter as they’d gotten slowly, deliciously drunk among friends new and old. He remembered sneaking off to the empty kitchens and sharing slabs of dark ale bread, thick with various spreads. He remembered silky black hair that feathered between his fingers, and how those same smiling lips had tasted of strawberry jam. That, he remembered quite vividly.
The porter cocked a brow, unconvinced.
“You sure?”
Ger mirrored his brow. His mouth twitched with that same ineffectual effort, but the smile did not come.
“I remember you, Jack.”
Jack outrightbeamedat him, and again, he found himself marvelling at the ease of it. Maybe it was all the time the porter spent here in the kitchens. Maybe his muscles were loose and warm. Maybe he’d just never met Avette in person, never witnessed her power—or how she chose to wield it.
“Well, that’s good to know, Gerard.”
His answer came reflexively. “Call me Ger.”
Another grin, softer this time. Then Jack pushed lightly off the counter, taking a sideways step as he passed by to lean in and say, “Stew’s burning, Ger.”
Ah, fuck.
But even as he hurried to shift the pot off the heat, even as he scraped at the burnt bottom to assess the state of the stew, Ger found his ever-present panic was almost as difficult to rouse as that near-forgotten smile. What did a pot of stew really matter, in the grand scheme of things? It didn’t. He might even stumble upon some luck; maybe Marie would strangle him to death with a teatowel by the cosy warmth of the stove.
???
After the thick heat of the kitchen, standing guard in the queen’s quarters was like being skinned alive with an icicle. The eerie winds tugged at his hair and cooled his armour, making him shiver despite the swollen glow of the flames in the grate. It was a warmth that did not touch the cold. A fire that did nothing but cast shimmering light over the veneer of frost that laced nearly every surface.
Ger’s mother, back when she’d still had the spirit to share such stories, had often told him about the day he was born. Newly widowed and heavily pregnant, she’d been travelling home from the Laune Market on foot, alone. She told him how she’d been aching and uncomfortable and hoped the arduous journey would hurry him along, only to be left utterly unprepared when her waters burst and froze beneath her feet on an abandoned, icy lane. But the woman in this story was not the mother he’d grown up with. She was formidable; fearless. She’d walked a while through the contractions until finally, she hunkered down and gave birth, unattended, in a snowbank. When it was over, she had tucked her squalling, freezing, furious newborn into the bosom of her dress to share her body warmth, and nursed him asshe waited to flag down the next passing carriage. She’d told him it was the happiest day of her life—but he happened to know that the next passing carriage had belonged to his step-father. The happiest day of his mother’s life was also the beginning of all her troubles; all Ger’s troubles, too, he supposed. That hadn’t been the point of her story. She’d meant it to uplift him;Look at the conditions you were born to, my love. If you can survive that, you can survive it all.
Maybe he’d even believed it once, but now—
Ger had quite literally been born to the snow, but this room, this palace, was something else entirely. Something beyond justcold. His bones hurt. His muscles were worn from endless shivering.Thiscold was a plague; it had seeped into his blood, blossomed in his lungs like mould in a dank, abandoned hovel.
And he wasn’t the only one who felt it.
Her broken leg stretched in front of her, Princess Mareda sat alone on the smallest in a pretty suite of white settees next to an overstuffed rail of snowy gowns. Her hand was taut and white around the handle of her crutch as she stared at the twinkling frost on the walls and shivered violently. The rhythmic chatter of her teeth was incessant; so loud that Avette stopped talking long enough to shoot her a withering glare before she turned her attention back to Imogen, who sat on the opposite settee.
“Fascinating,” the queen said primly, as though there’d been no interruption. “Very innovative indeed.”
A polite smile flickered at Imogen’s lips, but she continued without looking up, her focus intent on the small, sparkling bead of ice pinched between her two fingers. She waved her other hand over it, back and forth, weaving layer after layer of ice, turning the bead this way and that. The Winds picked up as hergestures grew quicker and more precise, until finally, she placed the little bead on her palm and sat back with a sigh that echoed the sudden drop of the breeze.
Avette turned slowly in her seat, and even seeing it coming, Ger flinched as her dark eyes locked on his.
“If you would be so kind,” she said, then tacked on a pretty smile in afterthought.
Ger did not realise he’d stilled like a hunted snowhare until the clang of metal against his own armour rang through the joints of his arm.
