Dead of Winter

by Kresley Cole

  So I let my body vine grow, a rose stalk. Creeping out from my collar, it stretched upward like a serpent, then twined around my head in "crown" position, leaves jutting up. I found wearing it like that a comfort.

  Jaws dropped.

  As the air grew thick with the smell of roses, I raised my purple claws. Reaching for the nearby breaker box, I slashed the metal door like it was paper. Gasps sounded.

  With a chuckle, Aric headed back inside, and I followed.

  I heard Jack tell the men, "Anybody not a fan of his balls, try something with that one. Anybody else, know that we're goan to be building a haven in Louisiana, a place called New Acadiana, for white hats only. If you fit the bill, you got something mighty fine to look forward to."

  By the time Jack locked the garage door and joined me and Aric in the living room, Rodrigo had returned, dressed, armed, and holding a two-way radio.

  When Aric strode toward the fire, spurs clinking, Rodrigo stared after him with a blend of awe and fear.

  Jack snapped his fingers at the man. "You heard anything?"

  "Meeting's tonight. They're sending a truck here." He stepped on one of the new carpet stains, and blood splashed up around his boot. "I'm heading outside to flag them down. ETA fifteen."

  Jack told him, "I'm bringing my girl with me."

  Aric slowly shook his head. "Do you truly think I'll allow you to take her out of my reach? Straight into a meeting with soldiers? You're deluded in your young age."

  Rodrigo said, "Uh, the conditions of the meet are that you come alone and unarmed, with no Arcana."

  Once the man had left, I told Jack, "I don't like you going by yourself. Much less with no weapons. Let us follow you."

  "Tonight's important, peekon. You got to trust that I know what I'm doing."

  "In other words, the Empress should trust that you know who to trust," Aric said. "If your co-conspirators betray you, our element of surprise will be gone. Surely Milovnici put a price on your head."

  "He did. I'm the general's most wanted, and he ain't dicking around. The bounty's a woman, free and clear."

  My claws sharpened at the threat to Jack--and at the idea of a woman being passed around like that.

  "You bade the Empress flaunt her abilities, but not just to frighten those slavers," Aric said. "You're using us to secure power. Once freed, those men will disseminate information--that you shaped."

  Jack nodded. "There'll come a time when soldiers are more afraid of us than of the general."

  "Wars are won by perception." Aric stroked his golden stubble. "Again and again, I've witnessed this."

  "I let that rumor grow about me and the Bagmen because people want to believe that something like that can actually happen. They need to believe it." A new story to tell. "Like they need to believe there's a girl out there who can seed the ground, if they could just ease her wrath enough."

  "You're turning her into a nature deity. With her own fables." Aric's tone wasn't disapproving, more contemplative.

  "Ouais. Right now I want as many people as possible to think I'm riding the countryside with life and death--"

  Aric bit out, "You are."

  "--and that the two of them demand order."

  Headlights glared through the windows. Jack glanced past a curtain then back at me. "It's them. Before I leave out, I'll get you settled in a room." He clasped my hand, leading me up the stairs. Over his shoulder, he enunciated to Aric, "Get her settled upstairs in a room--to herself. "

  On the second floor, Jack headed toward a back bedroom. Blue walls with race-car wallpaper. "You stay in here with the door locked till I get back. Try to get some rest."

  "This is so important that you'll let me stay here with Aric?"

  "J'ai les mains amarrees." My hands are tied. "You can't imagine what's on the line. Short of this, I'd never leave you. I trust you, but him? I put nothing past that Reaper."

  "I'm nervous about you going alone."

  "Tracasse-toi pas pour moi." Don't worry about me. "Are you goan to be safe here with him?"

  I removed my pack and coat, tossing them on the bed. "You saw how he fights."

  "No, I mean safe from him. He woan try to steal you away?"

  "He can't, and he won't. Remember what I did to the plague colony?" How could we ever forget?

  Jack exhaled. "Promise me you woan let him guilt you into anything. It's goan to be you and me, Evie. Just . . . just doan give me anything else to hurt on."

  In other words, don't get with Aric. "I haven't made any decisions. And until I do, I'm not doing anything--with anybody."

  "You mean that bastard's still in the running?" Jack swiped his palm over his face. "I ain't hearing this."

  "I can't deny that I have a history with him." And an Arcana connection.

  The truck driver laid on the horn. No concern about attracting Bagmen?

  "I got to go. But we will finish this later." With a wince, Jack shrugged from his bug-out bag. He placed his bow on the bed and removed the guns from his holster. At least he still had his vest on. "Keep this transceiver." He handed me the two-way radio. "I'll take another one, so you can call me for any reason."

  I clipped it to my jeans pocket. "Reviens back sain et sauve. T 'entends?" Come back safe to me. You hear me?

  My use of French made his brows draw together. As if he couldn't help himself, he gripped my nape and kissed me. Short. Heated.

  He drew back just before I broke away. "Doan want to leave you. After tonight, I doan plan to ever again." As he left the room, he murmured, "Nothing to hurt on, bebe."

  When Jack reached the first floor, I heard Aric say, "Rest assured, mortal. I'll keep her safeguarded--and warm."

  "My gun. Your skull. Think about it." The front door opened. Closed.

  I locked myself in, then crossed to the window. An army convoy truck awaited. Two guys with machine guns hung off the sides, outriders ready to blow away anything that neared.

  What was Jack heading into? Shoulders back, he strode past the array of bodies. With exaggerated movements, he opened one side of his jacket, then the other. To show them he was weaponless?

  As he climbed into the cab, he gazed up at the window, giving me a chin jerk in farewell. I kept the truck in sight until the fog swallowed the taillights.

  How could I not worry? Add it to my ongoing apprehension about Selena and Matthew. I fought the urge to reach out to him, to check on him. But if Matthew needed a break from me, I'd respect that.

  I unzipped my pack and pulled out my sleeping bag, unrolling it against the wall. I'd just wondered what Aric was up to when he called from downstairs.

  "Come to me, Empress." I could hear the grin in his voice. "Why fight temptation?"

  Curiosity seized me. But joining him would be a mistake. When he turned on his charm, he was seduction personified. The last time I'd been alone with him, he'd touched me with reverence, murmuring, This is joy I feel, is it not?

  I called back, "Going to sleep."

  "Hmm. Your loss . . ."

  I exhaled a huff of breath. Damn it.

  29

  Aric waited at the foot of the stairs, broad shoulders back, blond hair drying. The golden stubble on his chiseled jawline glinted in the firelight.

  Too gorgeous for his own good.

  "We're in a house with electricity and food. If you don't take advantage of all its offerings, someone less worthy will." He had his helmet under one arm and a leather saddlebag slung over a shoulder. His version of a bug-out bag. What would a man like him pack?

  With my own bag in hand, I joined him. "What do you suggest?"

  "You could have a hot meal. Come, sieva, unless you eat more, you can't continue to ride as you have been."

  The idea of downing another energy bar made me queasy. The pantry here had been stocked.

  "Afterward, you could have a long, hot shower." When I faltered, Aric pulled off his gauntlets and reached for me. He laid a bare hand on my lower back, ushering me into the kitchen. Bef
ore he released me, his fingertips dug in a little, as if he battled with himself to let me go.

  "We should prepare a feast." He placed his helmet, swords, and gauntlets on a counter, his bag on the floor.

  He motioned for me to give him my pack, but I wasn't sold on staying. "You expect us to fire up the stove in a slave boss's house and cook?"

  "Let's." His amber eyes were playful. "And if we get thirsty from our labors . . ." He opened the refrigerator with the toe of his armor-covered boot, revealing a twelve-pack of bottled beer. "Not as bracing as the vodka we always share, but we'll manage."

  "Even with the bodies out there, shouldn't we be anxious about more slavers coming? Or the men in the garage getting free? Or Bagmen? It's A.F., we should be anxious about something."

  "If for some reason I don't hear a threat, Thanatos is right out back. He's quite territorial." To put it mildly.

  I sidled over to the pantry. Among the offerings was a jar of maraschino cherries, just like Jack and I had found at Selena's.

  When I was with Aric, things reminded me of Jack. And the opposite was true as well. Which meant I was forever screwed. If I chose one, I'd never stop thinking about the other.

  Pain awaited me, no matter what I did. The idea couldn't be more depressing. . . .

  My foraging turned up a family-size lasagna in the freezer. The package didn't even have ice on the edges. The meal wouldn't be gourmet, but it'd be hot and cheesy.

  Game. Set. Match. I dropped my bag. "Fine. We'll eat. Just so no one else can have it." I tossed it in the microwave, then hopped up on the counter to sit, my transceiver within reach.

  Aric opened two beers--pop-tops with his fist--handing me one.

  The same reasons for drinking still applied: possible imminent demise plus severe mental confusion equaled to hell with it.

  He leaned one broad shoulder against the kitchen doorway. He was so tall, he barely cleared the frame. "Uz veselibu."

  "What does that mean?"

  "Cheers." We both took a swig. "The mortal's meeting must have been dire for him to leave us together."

  "Jack trusts me."

  "If only you could return that trust."

  I frowned. "Why do you have to taunt him so much?"

  "Because he gives me much fodder." Aric took a long draw from his bottle.

  "You called him a drunkard, but we're drinking right now. You like your vodka well enough."

  "Yet I didn't bring a liter of it in my valise."

  "No. But you smoked opium for centuries straight."

  Lips curving, he said, "And this is why I should never tell you anything."

  "Like who my sworn enemies are?"

  His grin deepened. "Am I to get away with nothing, little wife?"

  "Jack was a prisoner of the Lovers, just days ago. I still have no idea what they did to him--but it's safe to say he's been through enough without your jabs."

  Aric's amusement faded. "I give as good as I get."

  "Put yourself in Jack's position. A man with a deadly touch singled out his girlfriend to torment, and she had no clue why. Then the man took her away. Violently. What would you do if someone else treated me like that?"

  His expression told me everything.

  "In any case, you're so much older, so shouldn't you be more mature?"

  "Mature? You know I don't age physically between games, but I probably don't mentally either."

  "I don't understand."

  "I go into a kind of stasis." Staring past me, he said, "The centuries between feel like one long dream. The games are like briefly waking in the night--to an awareness of threat and peril--only to slip back into slumber once the game ends."

  My God, his existence had been horrific. And then I would come along every few hundred years to crash his life. I took a deep drink.

  But I couldn't feel guilty any longer for misdeeds committed by another incarnation. I wouldn't. "I'm sorry for your past, Aric. I wish it had been different. I wish I had been. But I refuse to keep paying for what I did in past games."

  He seemed to shake away a haze. "Do you, then?"

  "In our first meeting, you skewered me with your sword. In other words: you started it. You didn't ask me to marry you, just ordered it. I played the hand I was dealt."

  "I take your point."

  Hadn't really expected him to say that.

  "Let's begin anew, Empress."

  Over the rim of my bottle, I said, "I haven't decided anything."

  He made a sound of frustration. "The mortal can't provide for you like I can. I offer you a home. Does he think you'll live in that muddy outpost?"

  Defensive, I said, "Jack plans to rebuild Haven House for me."

  Anger flashed across Aric's face. He schooled his reactions as quickly as he did everything else, leaving his emotions to seethe beneath the surface. "If you desire something, all you have to do is tell me. It will shortly be yours. You'll see soon enough."

  I swallowed. Was he referencing the gift he'd spoken of? The trick up his sleeve? I almost dreaded learning what it was.

  What if Aric could straight-up end the game? Blow up the machine?

  "Deveaux will never understand you as I do. As only another Arcana can." Aric replaced my beer. Because I'd finished it.

  "Maybe not. But we have other ties." I thought of the ribbon he'd kept all this time, the one now in my pocket. I thought of our mutual longing for our home.

  "As do we. We are wed." Aric set down his bottle, moving in front of me. "I think of you as mine. You don't see the countless times a day I have to stop myself from touching my wife." His eyes were just on the verge of glowing. Like this, his gaze reminded me less of stars, and more of a sunrise.

  In time, would I forget what a sunrise looked like?

  I caught his knight's scent: rain, steel, and man. My toes curled in my boots. Whenever he was free of his armor, I could detect hints of pine and sandalwood.

  He wedged his hips between my knees. With our faces inches apart, he said, "If you had any idea what is going on inside me . . . I'm feeling something I have never experienced, not in my twenty centuries of life."

  I swallowed, unsure if I wanted to hear him say the words.

  His irises brightened and brightened. Eyes fully aglow, he rasped, "I am in love with you." Irresistible Death. "And you love me in turn."

  I gazed at his mouth, recalling how I'd kissed that faint dip in his bottom lip. "Why would you say that?" My voice sounded so far away.

  "My fierce Empress protected me before you left our home. Your concern told me much." Pride lit his expression. "What foe did you think might get to me, little wife?"

  Flustered, I said, "I didn't know, okay? You said you were always a target."

  He pressed a kiss to my forehead, as if in reward. When he drew back, he gave me a real smile, not a smirk, not a grudging half-grin. I'd only seen this a couple of times before.

  And it was devastating.

  Inner shake. "Admit it: after my poison kiss, when you were reaching for your antitoxin, you believed I'd given you a lethal dose."

  "I admit it. And I was chastised for my doubt when I woke."

  "Chastised? Chastised? You broke my heart that night! You didn't notice--or care--how much you were hurting me!"

  "When I recognized that you weren't over your infatuation with the mortal, I might have been . . . testing you." He'd tested me the other night as well! "I needed to know if you felt something as strong for me."

  "What if I'd surrendered?"

  His lips parted as if he was imagining that even now. "I can't believe I'm about to say this, but I'm glad you didn't. You told me that you would grow to hate me. I didn't believe it then, but I do now. I should never have put you in that situation."

  "Testing me doesn't excuse what you did. Coercion is not cool."

  He backed away, stabbing his fingers through his hair. "Then teach me what is! I have no experience with a wife, but you know my capacity for learning. I can learn to be what
you need."

  "I don't think something like that can be taught. It's part of your makeup, part of who you are."

  "My upbringing and history have shaped me, but I do evolve. Going into each game, I've adapted to different epochs."

  Epochs? How did he endure it? When he was this close to me, I could feel his palpable yearning. I could sense that gut-wrenching loneliness he'd suffered.

  I pictured him in his mausoleum of a home, surveying all his lifeless collections. He'd devotedly tended to those treasures, those relics of the past, because they were all he had--all he'd ever hoped to have.

  "Aric, selfless acts might be beyond you. And even sex with you would come with strings. What if I hadn't realized you were minus one condom?" The memory stoked my fury. "You were about to trick me--to betray me."

  He raised his blond brows. "There was no trick, sieva. I didn't set out to deceive you."

  "You had my entire future mapped out--with me knocked up--and you never mentioned it to me."

  He moved in front of me again, gripping the counter on either side of my hips. "It's been this way between husbands and wives for thousands of years. At the time, I thought if we were so blessed, then all the better."

  Because his concepts about marriages and families were from a different epoch.

  He swallowed. "You accuse me of calculation; know that I haven't enough experience in this subject to calculate." A flush covered his high cheekbones. "I was barely capable of speech when I saw you naked in my bed for the first time--much less plotting."

  Just like that, my anger deflated. I sighed. "I believe you."

  He placed one hand on the wall above me. With his other, he cupped the side of my face. "Then we've already begun. We will learn to trust each other."

  Jack had said something similar. My gaze flicked toward the door.

  Aric dropped his hand. "I both applaud and curse your sense of loyalty. Without it, you'd be mine. Right now, we'd be in our bed, having just shared our first kiss of the night."

  I laid my palms on Aric's armored chest to push him away. My hands looked so pale and fragile against his intimidating armor. How many times had I clawed this metal, desperate to get away from him?

  At length, he backed away. "The mortal has another he cares for, would risk his life for." He took a seat at the table.

  "Jack doesn't love Selena."

  "Maybe he could if you gave him cause to. Let him go, then give them your blessing."