The Frost Maiden's Kiss

by Claire Delacroix

  Into the ruins?

  Had Malcolm become more daring or was he reckless? Did he know more of the ruins than the rest of them, or did he have no care for his hide?

  Elizabeth readily recalled that the Fae liked those caverns and could not suppress her excitement. The Fae were responsible in some way for the change in her brother, and Elizabeth was determined to find out what that change might be.

  “I will go and speak to him,” Elizabeth offered, stepping forward even as her family started at her words. “If he goes into the ruins, he might feel threatened by the Fae.”

  “And you alone can see them,” Alexander said with a nod. “Of course, you shall come with us in a week.”

  “Nay!” Elizabeth spoke with a passion that had become rare for her. “I must go on the morrow, before Midsummer’s Eve.” She saw the others exchange glances of wonder, and Eleanor press Alexander’s arm to encourage his agreement.

  Alexander considered her and she held his gaze, hoping he did not ask what she sensed or saw, for there was little she could tell him. She had a feeling, ’twas no more than that, and an urgency fed by her own yearning to join to Fae.

  “I will escort you there, after the mass in the morning and wait for you at the borders,” he said and she smiled in her anticipation. Alexander studied her for a moment, as if amazed by the sight of her, then he smiled as well.

  “You will not come into the hall with me?” Elizabeth asked, but Alexander’s eyes narrowed slightly.

  “I sense that you would speak to Malcolm alone,” he said. “I will see Malcolm and his bride in a week.”

  “Thank you, Alexander!” Elizabeth said, not hiding her pleasure.

  Her oldest brother smiled. “You have asked for so little these past years, Elizabeth. I am glad to see you impassioned with some matter, as once was so characteristic of you.”

  The others smiled at her with affection and Elizabeth found herself blushing, the heat of her response chasing some of the chill away.

  Chapter Nine

  Catriona was fearful as she seldom had been. She waited in the solar, unable to rest even though she laid abed. The hour was late. Her lord husband had yet to come to her. Her mouth was dry and her hands were trembling, and it seemed the night would last forever.

  Vera had brought Avery to be nursed, then taken him to the other chamber, insisting that a couple must be alone on their wedding night. As irksome as the older woman’s chatter could be, Catriona found the silence worse.

  It gave her fears time to breed.

  The masons had been paid that day, and all had gone well. The masons had drunk well of the ale when it arrived from Kinfairlie and saluted their host. Compliments had been exchanged, then most of them had loaded their carts and left.

  Ravensmuir seemed oddly silent without the sound of their camp, and the fields looked bare without their tents. Catriona had the odd sense that she was not the sole one awaiting something in the night.

  She heard a tread on the stairs then and burrowed beneath the covers. She felt a coward when she feigned sleep, but she did not know what else to do. She heard her husband wish Vera a good night, then he came into the solar. He did not bring a light. He shed his boots just inside the portal and Catriona struggled to make her breathing sound slow and regular.

  She could not imagine why she troubled herself. If he had desire for her, surely he would simply awaken her. Or maybe he would just take what he desired. She prayed for strength in this moment, knowing that her son’s future hung upon her fulfillment of the laird’s expectation. Any nuptials could be put aside, if the match were not consummated. What would happen to Avery then?

  She heard her husband shed his garments, his tabard and undoubtedly his chausses. She heard the straw pallet rustle as his weight settled upon it, and heard his breathing close beside her. She squeezed her eyes shut as his hand eased beneath the covers and landed upon her waist.

  “I know you are awake, Catriona,” he murmured, drawing her back against his warmth. Catriona let him do as he would, though her entire body was so tightly clenched that he could not be unaware of that. “And you should know that I would demand only two tokens from you this night.”

  She turned to look at him, uncertain.

  He held up two fingers. “First an answer.”

  That sounded simple enough. Though Catriona feared what he might ask, she nodded.

  He indicated her cross. “I was surprised by this treasure today, for I had thought you penniless or near to it.” Catriona’s chest tightened as he met her gaze. “How did you come by it?”

  “It was given to me by my mother.” Catriona frowned. “She put it in my hand when she was upon her deathbed.”

  “Was she a noblewoman as well as a midwife?”

  Catriona frowned, for she had wondered as much herself. “Not so far as I knew. I was surprised to learn that she possessed such a gem, and I believe she meant to tell me more of it, but she had no time to do so.” She grimaced. “I wish she had at least shown it to me sooner, for I should have liked to have learned more of her life in earlier times.”

  His gaze roved over her features, and she thought he sought the parts of the tale she did not tell. When he spoke, though, he did not ask for more detail of her childhood, as she expected. “Yet you did not sell it, not even to secure the future of your child.”

  Catriona shook her head. “I feared to be cheated, for I know little of its value.” She fingered it and cast him a smile. “But in truth, it is all I have of my mother, and I could not have surrendered it for any price.”

  “I am glad you did not.” He traced the line of the chain with a fingertip. “Would you wear it always, or would you rather I locked it in the treasury?”

  “I would prefer to wear it.”

  “Then you shall.” He smiled at her. “Was that so difficult?”

  Catriona smiled in turn and shook her head. “Nay, sir.”

  He lifted that brow again.

  “Malcolm,” she corrected herself, feeling that it was audacious beyond all for her to address him so, even though he was her husband.

  Husband.

  Malcolm smiled and reclined beside her. He was wonderfully warm and the weight of his hand upon her waist was not unpleasant. His thumb moved against her skin in a caress that made her pulse flutter.

  “And the second token?” she found herself asking, her words breathless.

  That simmering gaze landed upon her mouth. “A kiss, Catriona, no more than that.”

  “You may take whatsoever you desire from me, my lord.” At his glance, she corrected herself. “Malcolm.”

  “Nay, Catriona, you will take that kiss from me.” He laid back then, those eyes gleaming like stars in the night, and waited. Again, she had the sense that he was as agile as a predator, but this time, she knew he sought to win her trust. She might not ever give it fully, but she had to meet him halfway.

  “I have little skill in this,” she admitted.

  The corner of his mouth quirked. “Yet I have it on good authority that one can always choose to change the future with one’s deeds.”

  He was right. She had no desire to spend all of her life afraid of intimacy, simply due to one horrific night. If she meant to move beyond her past, she had to choose to do so.

  And here was the best opportunity.

  She had kissed him once.

  She could do it again.

  Indeed, he was chivalrous in inviting her thus, rather than simply claiming his due. Catriona sensed again that she had wed well, against all expectation.

  She rolled to face him and placed her hand upon his chest. Malcolm only waited. She leaned over him and touched her lips quickly to his, so quickly that she had only the barest taste of the ale. She retreated, fearful of his reaction.

  Still Malcolm did not move.

  “I apologize,” she whispered. “That was a poor excuse for a kiss.”

  “I did not complain,” he murmured, his words rumbling in his chest beneat
h her palm.

  Catriona eased closer, feeling more bold, and raised her hand to his jaw. The muscle was taut there, a sign of how he controlled himself.

  And he did as much for her.

  She realized the gift he gave her with his patience and knew that he must be repaid well for such a deed. She would give him a kiss worthy of a wedding night.

  Catriona leaned over Malcolm, letting her hair spill around them. She smiled down at him, feeling how his pulse quickened beneath her hand. That sign of his response, that they both savored this, was all the encouragement she needed. She bent and endeavored to kiss him as he had kissed her that night in the stables. She slanted her mouth over his, as if to coax the kiss from him, then slid her tongue over his mouth. She compelled herself to kiss him with leisure, as if they had all the time in the world.

  Malcolm sighed. He fitted one hand into the small of her back, bracing her as much as he held her, his thumb still moving in that slow caress. His other hand slid up her arm and neck, his fingers spearing into her hair at her nape. He held her with exquisite tenderness, letting her kiss him as she chose.

  He was hers to command, this powerful man, and it was a heady realization indeed. Catriona found herself deepening the kiss, daring to trust him, even as she ventured more. His fingers flexed and she felt him shudder with desire, but he did not force her closer. His body grew taut and a new heat emanated from him, but the play of their lips and tongues was all at her command.

  It was a gift fit to make Catriona weep. While hers was not so fine a kiss as the one Malcolm had given her, it set her heart to racing in a new way. She felt a strange and languorous heat unfurl within her, and when she finally lifted her head, there was satisfaction in her husband’s smile. He eased the hair back from her cheek with a gentle fingertip, then lifted her hand from his jaw and kissed her palm, his gaze clinging to hers.

  God in heaven, but she could come to love this man.

  That was a revelation sufficient to make her blink.

  “Well done, lady mine,” he murmured and Catriona felt a surge of delight. He urged her back to her side and wrapped his warmth around her, that arm still around her waist. “I believe we are well matched indeed,” he whispered, the way his breath tangled in her hair sending a thrill through her.

  Catriona eased back against his heat, then froze when her buttocks collided with the evidence of his arousal.

  Malcolm caught his breath, then pressed a kiss to her shoulder. “Sleep, Catriona. You are safe in my hall, even from me.” His words were husky and she heard the strain of his control. “I swear it to you.”

  Catriona closed her eyes, recalling her own pledge to be the best wife she could be. She found herself drifting to sleep, at ease in a man’s embrace as she had never imagined she could be. But then, she felt safe, as well, a state she had never expected to feel again.

  Truly, the Laird of Ravensmuir gave her much.

  * * *

  Malcolm heard the tune first, just as he had before.

  It was a merry jig, a lively tune coaxed from a fiddle and one destined to set every foot to tapping. It was beguiling, that melody, one that seemed familiar for all its marvel. Once it rolled into a man’s ears, it was nigh impossible to deny the temptation to dance.

  And therein lay the danger.

  Malcolm was in the stable, though he knew himself to be in Ravensmuir’s new hall. It was cursed cold and there was snow on his boots, the tips of his gloved fingers still chilled. He knew himself to be in the solar, abed with Catriona, but the sight before his eyes did not change despite his conviction. The golden light that surrounded him was even more incomprehensible, for he knew that he had boarded over the hole in the wall of the last stall of the stable.

  Yet still he stood, Rafael one step behind him, and looked into the caverns that still riddled the cliff where Ravensmuir had perched.

  He glanced back to Rafael, only to find that man wearing the garments from their journey northward. He heard the winter wind whistling through the crannies and realized that he was dreaming of that night again, in that moment before they passed through the portal.

  Then Rafael pushed past him, just as he had that night, enticed by the merry tune.

  Even knowing he should not, Malcolm found himself doing as he had done that night, following Rafael into the passageway that extended down into the earth. Even as it had done before, the light extinguished itself when they had taken a dozen steps. The music continued, as it had then, but it seemed more haunting to Malcolm.

  More treacherous.

  Just as he had done that night, Rafael leapt onward.

  Malcolm cried out, but his friend ignored him. He lunged after his companion, fearing the worst, but did not catch up with him before the flickering light of his lantern was lost to sight.

  And Malcolm was lost in darkness, only the tune from the fiddle leading him on.

  It seemed less of a temptation in the darkness, and more of a warning. Still he pursued Rafael and the music, knowing he owed a debt to his old comrade.

  Malcolm had not gone far before he tripped over something, and then something else. Whatever lay across his path was heavy and soft, though not as tall as his knees. The smell gave him some hint as to what he walked through, for he smelled blood and excrement, dirt and decay.

  How had he returned to a battlefield? How could the corpses from the Continent be found beneath Ravensmuir. It made no sense, but just as he had in December, Malcolm knew it to be so. He had to seek his footing with care, even knowing that Rafael was leaving him far behind. A torch flickered far below, casting a vivid orange light. Though Malcolm did not know whether it was lure or salvation, he made his way toward it.

  From its light, he saw the dead. They were fallen on every side, the floor of the cavern sticky with their shed blood. He claimed the torch from the brace on the wall and lifted it high, not wanting to consider who had lit it for him. That music would drive him mad with its incessant invitation.

  There were carcasses piled with abandon on every side and the air was thick with the smell of rot. Some men were bound and others shackled. Some had their eyes put out or their ears cut off. Some had slit throats and others were missing hands or feet. Several had been disemboweled, the smell enough to make Malcolm wretch. All were bloodied and beaten, and all were dead.

  Many of them he recognized as men he had cut down himself. That they would have taken his life if he had not ended theirs first was no consolation. The music taunted him with all the killing he had done.

  This place, this strange and horrific place, was even worse than the world Malcolm had wanted to leave behind forever. He stumbled onward after Rafael, cursing that man’s quick steps. Rafael was lured ever downward by the music.

  Malcolm was not surprised when a brighter light illuminated the way ahead. It was golden as that first glow had been in the stables, but seemed to pulse in time with the music. He heard laughter and clapping hands, signs of the living that he welcomed after journeying through this passage full of the dead. He hurried, leaping over the corpses in his way, slipping on the bloody stone, and ultimately stepping into a large cavern.

  He remembered this place. It was the largest cavern in the tunnels in the hill beneath Ravensmuir. He understood it to be collapsed, yet he stood within it. Malcolm had never come to it from the stables, though he had known it was possible. He had always descended from the hall itself to this cavern, though he had not visited it often. As children, they had been forbidden to come into the caverns alone, and he had learned much later that this hall had been where the great treasury of relics had been stored.

  There was a crevasse in the floor where the stone was cracked, and a mist rose from it, indicating that there was water within it. This cavern opened to the sea, where Rosamunde and her father Gawain before her had once docked the ship that had carried relics near and far. The cavern was smaller and lower than once it had been, the great pile of rubble that obscured at least half of it showing the re
ason for Ravensmuir’s collapse. Malcolm could see that no passage to the old keep remained.

  Beyond that, the cavern was utterly alien to him. It was filled not only with golden light and the sound of that jig, but thousands of Fae. They fluttered and danced, they ate and drank, they flirted and flitted.

  There was a throne at one end of the cavern, and a man with a long dark beard sat upon it, the rings on his fingers glittering as he kept the tune. A circle of Fae of all sizes and shapes swirled around the lone fiddler, some in flight and others dancing so quickly that they might as well have flown. The fiddler was almost obscured by the sparkle of wings and shoes and gems, the music nigh obscured by the laughter of the Fae in the hall.

  In their midst was Rafael, dancing as if he had lost his wits. He spun and kicked and laughed and clapped, more merry than Malcolm had ever seen him, though there was a wildness in his eyes.

  He was trapped.

  When a lady stepped out from behind the throne, her dark gaze fixed on Rafael, Malcolm feared the worst. She descended to the circle, this lady with hair as dark as midnight. The lady’s skin was as pale as the moon but traced with dark whorls and cobwebs, her lips were as red as blood, and her smile was as hungry as that of a wolf. She stepped through the circle of dancing Fae and reached for Rafael, but Malcolm could not remain silent.

  “Leave him be!” he shouted. “He knows naught of your ways.”

  The music stopped.

  The lady turned her hungry gaze upon him, her lips tight with disapproval.

  The king, for surely that was what he was, rose from his throne, his brow like thunder.

  When the lady raised her hand, as though to smite him, Malcolm awakened with a start.

  His heart was pounding and the memory of his promise burning in his mind. He was in the great hall at Ravensmuir, in the keep that had not existed when he and Rafael had descended into the caverns. The fire on the hearth had burned down to glowing embers. By the door, Rafael slept fully garbed, and Malcolm knew there was a blade in his companion’s hand as well.