by Shae Ford
It was such a strange feeling, such a terrifying thrill — not even when she’d stared into the face of Death had her chest risen and fallen with such fury. She had to bite her lip to keep her heart from leaping out her throat as she dragged Jake inside.
She slammed the door behind them.
“Elena …”
At last, Jake seemed to understand. His eyes didn’t rove but locked onto hers — searching, questioning. With far more courage than she felt, Elena managed to growl: “I’m not going to tell you again, mage. Be quiet.” She pulled her mask away slowly, let it fall to her chin. “Now … take off your gloves.”
He did. Jake grimaced as he tugged them free and set them on the small table beside her bed. Next came his spectacles. When he turned around, it was all she could do to keep her footing.
He stood blurry-eyed and powerless before her. His bare hands flexed nervously at his sides. And yet … her legs felt like lead, her boots seemed welded to the floors. “Come here.”
When he stepped within her reach, she caught him by the wrists. She pulled him in against her. A strange, heart-rending warmth spread out from his hands and across her waist, down her back. But though his hands moved, his eyes never left hers — and his gaze held her to her feet.
“Are you sure?” he whispered, hands pausing their climb. “You … you’re certain?”
Her heart was too high, her throat too swollen with warmth to answer. Instead, she grabbed him under the chin and pulled him down to meet her lips.
Oh, her head went light. Every pinprick of her flesh bunched together tightly in a swell of blood. She could taste the magic in him. It coated his tongue: not as bitter as she’d expected, but oddly … sweet.
His hands rose and his thumbs dragged across the twin black daggers strapped to her arms — bold and unafraid. She’d lost count of how many throats they’d hewed. Slight and Shadow had sent hundreds of men to their graves. And yet, Jake handled them without fear.
A thrill rose up her spine, trembling as Jake drew each blade from its sheath and set them aside. Then his lips came back — firm, calm, and brave. Warmth trailed each pass of his hands, every dart of his tongue …
Then quite suddenly, the warmth began to fade.
She felt it first at his lips: they brushed gently across her chin and left a cold line in their wake. The frost spread from his tongue and onto hers. It slid down her throat and into her middle. Icy patches formed beneath his hands. Everywhere he touched, he froze her.
Soon, she couldn’t feel anything. Her skin eased and slipped back, hardening across her bones like a river’s flesh against the winter. It dulled the pressure of Jake’s hands. Her arms slid from around his shoulders and fell limply to her sides — suddenly too heavy to lift.
Jake’s hands seemed to widen, to grow, to become impossibly strong. The pressure began to hurt her; the cold stung her lips —
No, she thought furiously. Elena squinched her eyes and tried to concentrate on the warmth she’d felt before — tried to remind herself that it was Jake who held her now. And Jake would never try to hurt her. But out of the dark came a face that wasn’t Jake’s at all.
Holthan’s black eyes stared down at her, now. It was the biting pressure of his lips that she felt scraping down her throat, the painful grip of his hands. It was Holthan’s horrible, gloating laugh that stung her ears …
“Elena?”
All of the cold fled her body as Jake pulled away. Her eyes snapped open. They clung to his, trying desperately to forget the man who ruled her fears. But though she fought, a shadow of his face still hung before her.
“Are you all right, Elena?” Jake said again. He half-reached for her and drew back. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
“You aren’t going to hurt me. I’m fine. Don’t … don’t stop.”
She rushed into his arms.
The cold rushed back.
Elena tried to fight it off. She was determined to shove Holthan away, to forget everything she’d known and begin something new. Nadine told her that she’d been wronged — that what Holthan had done to her wasn’t love at all. She swore that love was different, and Elena knew she loved Jake. She was certain of it …
So why did the cold still bite her flesh? Why couldn’t she see him through Holthan’s face?
“I can’t,” Jake gasped. He pulled back again and hurried to the bedside table. “I can’t do this to you, Elena. I won’t.”
“You will,” she snapped, the words bolstered by a sudden fear. Rage burned at the sides of her head as she watched him pull on his gloves. “You have to! I swear I’m ready for it. There’s not a doubt in my mind that this is what I —”
“I can’t,” Jake said again, shoving the spectacles up the bridge of his nose. He wouldn’t meet her eyes as he swept past her to the door.
When he opened it, Elena felt the whole earth fall out from beneath her.
“Fine. Go on, then! But don’t you dare try to come back to me, mage,” she yelled as he ducked into the hallway. “Don’t ever come back!”
*******
Days passed. The sun rose and fell. Its light gathered, pooled … slid into the crack between the walls and floor … plunged the world into darkness. Elena sat cross-legged in a corner of the room. Her eyes were open, but unseeing.
What’d happened with Jake was entirely her fault. She should’ve known that he would pull away at her slightest flinch. He was so careful, so kind. Had she held her ground against the memories, she might’ve woken that morning with him by her side — her heart flooded with warmth.
Instead, she battled the cold alone, fought on through endless nights … and she was still no closer to forgetting.
Each time she tried to force him into the darkness, Holthan rose against her. Every horrible moment flashed behind her eyes — glancing her with a dagger’s bite. She watched through a cold, blue film as he defeated her over and over again. Soon, it became clear that she would never overcome his laughter. She would never be able to shove his hands aside.
Holthan lived on to torment her, even through his death.
Elena still wasn’t strong enough to stop him.
In a few of the darkest hours, she thought about telling Jake. Perhaps if he knew, he would understand that she needed him. Perhaps he would see that the warmth he’d given her might be the thing that melted the ice from her blood. Perhaps this would be just another battle they might face together …
No.
No, with the rising sun came clarity: Jake could never love her if he knew the truth. He wouldn’t look at her in the same way again. The woman he knew was strong, after all. The mask she wore was of a warrior who could not be beaten. But inside, she was a broken thing.
Nobody could love something broken.
It was that thought that finally dragged Elena to her feet. She wouldn’t try to fight the cold any longer. She would simply cover it up, and perhaps time would eat its edge.
The mansion was alive that afternoon. Servants bustled here and there. She followed the pattern of their steps and slipped around them to avoid their eyes. Elena was little more than a plume of smoke, a breeze so slight that it hardly stirred the things it passed. She drifted through the crowd on the balls of her feet and took refuge among the shadows.
A manservant peeled from the main room and set a brisk pace down one of the hallways. Elena followed silently in his wake — using his broad shoulders as a shield against the eyes of passersby.
“What’s all this confounded noise about?” a blustering voice called from up ahead. “No sooner does a man get his grand-nephew settled for a nap than the whole house erupts. It’s a curse, I tell you — a curse!”
Elena slipped behind the manservant’s right shoulder when she saw a frazzled crop of gray hair approaching. Of all the many bodies swarming around the mansion, the Uncle was the absolute last one she wanted to be caught by.
She had no choice but to pin herself against the wall when the manservant stopped abruptly
. “There’s trouble in Harborville, Mr. Martin. Captain Lysander’s ordered an emergency sailing —”
A metal platter struck the polished stone floor in the main room, and the resulting clang woke the baby with a scream.
“Confound it all!” Uncle Martin swore. He bounced the blankets in his arms for a moment, but to no avail. “What in high tide are they doing with the silver? No — you come with me,” he said when the manservant tried to escape. “You can explain it all on the way.”
Elena kept herself close to the servant’s right shoulder throughout his reluctant turn, slinking behind him as she would an opened door. The Uncle and the servant took off back towards the main room, and Elena ducked into a nearby chamber.
She was careful to breathe lightly as she entered. Her mask muted the stink of magic in the spell room, but she could still taste it. The fumes made the back of her throat itch and stung the sensitive flesh inside her nose.
Shelves lined with books, tables piled high with vials and instruments covered the room. She could barely see the floor for the mess. But it wasn’t nearly as messy as she remembered it being — it wasn’t as messy as it ought to have been.
The last time she’d been inside the spell room, rings of books covered the floor. There’d been various liquids inside the vials and bits of parchment strung all across the chamber, covered to their bottoms with strange symbols. Now the books sat neatly upon the shelves, the vials lay empty. There wasn’t so much as a scrawled note in sight.
A small cot lay crammed against one corner of the room. She stepped over to it carefully, wondering why its blankets had been stripped and folded to the side. Then she spotted the tongue of a rucksack sticking out from beneath the cot.
It’d been packed. When Elena sifted through it, she found a cloak, a fresh change of clothes, and a couple of books — including a plain leather tome with no title.
She drew the plain book out and held it carefully. It was Jake’s notebook — the thing he was always muttering over and scribbling in. Elena ran her thumb down its pages, watching as his words, numbers, and drawings flipped by. Some of it was written in the strange tongue of the mages.
She’d begun to flip through it a second time when a pair of shuffling steps echoed down the hall. She slid the journal back exactly where it’d been — wedged between two thicker tomes — before she kicked the rucksack beneath the cot. Elena had just enough time to walk to the other side of the room before Jake entered.
His robes scraped quietly across the floor as he ducked in, arms laden with what looked to be stashes of dried provisions. Elena watched from the shadows as he tried to make room for them in his already-bulging pack. She read the frustrated words that formed upon his lips, watched as his rounded spectacles slid further down his nose.
When they neared the tip, she stepped forward instinctively — afraid they might slide off and be broken. But Jake managed to catch them … just as her shadow crossed the wall.
He whirled around so quickly that one foot caught against the heel of the other, and he sat down hard. “Blast it, Elena! You know I hate it when you do that.” He sprang up from the cot. His face burned red as he tried to cram rations between the folds of his spare robes. “Why are you here? I thought you didn’t want to see me again.”
His voice cut across those words and scraped against the thing buried beneath them. “I’ve come to tell you I’m sorry for what I said. I didn’t mean it … I don’t want you to leave.”
Jake’s hands slowed, but he didn’t answer.
Elena stepped closer. “I was only a bit nervous.”
“Is that all it was? Nerves?”
“Yes,” she said evenly, trying to ignore the scoff in his voice.
There were so many things she wanted to say, so many things she needed to say … so many things she couldn’t tell him. They wove around inside her head as she glared at the back of his neck, trying to work them all out. In the end, she couldn’t. So she grabbed him by the robes and turned him around.
His brows lowered over his spectacles at the question on her lips.
“Please, give me one more chance.”
“I don’t think it’ll —”
“I love you.”
The words were out of Elena’s mouth before she could think to draw them in. Her chest lurched strangely at the end — the throes of some fear trying to escape. She crossed her arms and held it pinned; she tried to meet its curious gales of frost and fire with calm. But it was difficult.
Jake, and his peculiar, quiet gaze, undid her.
“Do you?” he said, his voice hushed.
“Yes.”
His face was completely unreadable. Even the vein beneath his chin moved in a steady throb. Jake held her gaze for a moment more before he sighed. Then he slid his gloves from his hands and laid them carefully upon the cot.
Elena’s heart thudded once, hard, when he stepped forward. Her arms fell from across her chest and she closed her eyes.
Be calm. You must be calm, she told herself when she felt his hands against her throat. Warmth bubbled up inside her middle and she clung to it desperately, hoping it would be enough to hold back the frost. Jake is a kind man. You love him. You —
No, the ice wouldn’t let her. Memories of a dark set of eyes overtook her vision; a spine-raking laugh filled her ears. The softness of Jake’s hand turned callused and hard. His grip became strangling. It snuffed out the warmth and left Elena frozen. But she fought to hide it.
Be calm. Don’t move. Just …
“You’ve gone cold again.”
She opened her eyes when Jake took his hand away. Shock stole her breath for a moment before she remembered to hide it. “You’re imagining things.”
“No, I’m not. I can feel it. Your skin is like stone.”
“It’s only nerves,” she growled, stepping into him. “Quit worrying about every little thing and love me. I won’t stop you.”
“That isn’t what I want! That’s the least of what I want. At the moment, there’s only one thing in the whole Kingdom that concerns me.”
“And what’s that?”
“Your eyes,” he said shortly, glaring as if she should know full well why he was angry with her. But she didn’t.
“You can have those, too. Take whatever you want.”
“No, that isn’t … ” Jake was quiet for a moment before he grasped her hands. “When I look into your eyes, I see a monster.”
Elena glared to hide her surprise. “You knew what I was from the beginning, mage. I’ve told you that I’m a killer. I’ve made no attempt to hide it.”
Jake shook his head. “I don’t mean you — I mean me. My reflection. You go cold when I touch you … you close me out. I won’t be the thing that frightens you. I would rather harm myself a thousand times over —”
“Please, you’re —”
“Listen! No, listen to me,” he shouted, clutching her hands. “I won’t do it. Too many people have looked at me that way. I know fear when I see it — and I’ve lived as a monster, but no more. I know my magic must hurt you, and I … I won’t do it. I swear I won’t touch you again.”
He spun away from her and tugged his gloves on roughly. Elena watched, still half-frozen and in shock. “Where are you going?”
“To the plains. There’s a ship leaving this afternoon. Brend promised I could stay for a while and study things, so that’s what I mean to do. It’ll help, I think, getting some time apart.”
He swept past her, and she couldn’t even turn to follow. The truth might stop him. One confession might bring him back, might possibly change everything …
Then again, it might well end everything.
“Elena?”
When she finally managed to turn, Jake was standing in the doorway. A faint smile bent his lips as he pulled his eyes from the floor to meet her.
“I love you, as well. I always will. It was too much to ask of a whisperer to withstand a mage’s touch … but I thank you for trying.”
He slipped out the door, then — taking every last shred of warmth away with him.
CHAPTER 3
Love Without Fear
Darkness cloaked his eyes — impenetrable, at first. But it slowly began to soften. The dark gave way to a warm, golden light. The light crept from yellow, to orange, to a heated, furious red.
It was the red that woke him.
Kael groaned as the morning light glanced across his eyes — stinging at their fronts, aching across their backs. He slammed them shut once more and draped an arm over his face, absolutely determined to sleep until a decent hour …
Wait a moment.
The fog crept back. He braved the glare of the sun just long enough to peek out from beneath his arm and groaned when he saw that the hour was decent. Even through the chamber’s one small window, he could see the sun had risen a good inch above the glittering waves. All of Copperdock would be about its chores by now.
Which meant that Kael was already late.
He tried to bolt up and very nearly snapped his neck. There was a strong arm clamped across his chest. It held him pinned to the bed — and it absolutely refused to budge.
“Kyleigh?”
She mumbled unintelligibly from beside him.
He’d learned the hard way not to try to force her awake. The first time he’d grabbed her by the arm, she woke up swinging — and he tumbled off the bed with a broken nose. So he’d had to come up with a trick to get free.
After a few moments of careful squirming, he was able to reach the back of her shoulder. He jabbed, flung his arm aside to avoid the wild swing of her fist, and managed to roll successfully onto the floor. “Get up, Kyleigh,” he said as he tugged on his trousers. “Copperdock can’t have its lady sleeping in all day. The sun’s awake, so you might as well be.”
Somewhere amid her muddled swears came a word that sounded suspiciously like no.
She was a tangled mess: wound up tightly among the blankets, pillow crushed between her arms and her raven locks held tamed only by a very clumsy pony’s tail. It also looked as if she’d claimed one of Kael’s shirts during the night — the one he’d stripped off the day before because it’d finally become too filthy.
