Hart of Winter

by Parker Foye

  Table of Contents

  Blurb

  Sneak Peek

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Epilogue

  About the Author | By Parker Foye

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  Copyright

  Hart of Winter

  By Parker Foye

  Magic-using winter sports enthusiasts find love on the slopes.

  Luc Marling is cursed to transform into a stag from sunset to sunrise, making him vulnerable to black-hearted collectors. Thanks to a family heirloom, Luc can contain the change—but the magic is starting to fade. Luc intends to live fast while he can and doesn’t care who he hurts along the way… until he meets Rob.

  Rob Lentowicz accidentally broke the curse on a famous singer and became a magical reality-TV star. Tired of having to lie to protect his bank balance, and unwilling to destroy his family reputation with the truth, Rob runs away to France—and straight into Luc.

  They navigate slopes, secrets, and each other. But are the feelings between them real—or just magic?

  His breath came short as he became excruciatingly aware of every place they touched.

  “Brakes, wall, crash test dummy, and what else? What else do you have in store for me, Luc Marling?” Rob asked as he nosed at the hair of Luc’s temple.

  Luc had never liked being shorter than his dates, but cradled against Rob, he reevaluated his opinion. With Rob blocking out everything behind him, it seemed like only the two of them existed in the whole of France. Luc watched Rob through his eyelashes.

  “I don’t know. A kiss, maybe?”

  With thanks and gratitude to my alpha readers for their valuable feedback on this story at various points through the drafting stages. Thanks also (as always!) to the team at Dreamspinner Press for transforming Hart of Winter from a story into a book.

  Chapter One

  HE’D bitten through his lip again. Blood made a Rorschach pattern on Luc’s pillow, and he flipped it over, only to find the other side similarly daubed. His sheets smelled of blood and the alcohol he’d sweated out overnight. Luc grimaced and shoved out of bed, then briskly stripped the pillowcases and sheets. Laundry day was overdue anyway.

  “And vat do you zhink this image says, Mr. Marling?” he asked in a terrible Swiss accent as he crammed his sheets into the laundry basket. “Well, I suppose it says something about curses,” he replied in his normal voice. He glared at the overfull basket. “Like how, if I didn’t have one, I’d be able to spell all this clean. Hells, without it I wouldn’t make such a mess in the first place.”

  His imaginary therapist didn’t respond. Typical. No one in Luc’s family discussed the curse, even the members who were entirely make-believe.

  After switching out last night’s clothes for his most comfortable sweats, Luc checked the time on his phone. Still early; he could shower and start the laundry in the main house before his parents returned from their Saturday-morning shopping. They worried for him, he knew. They’d worried about him for a long time.

  Twenty-two years old and still hiding his laundry from his mother. Luc rubbed his face. He needed to get a better job, get a place, sort out his life. Maybe try writing again. He’d moved into his parents’ garage conversion as a stopgap between university and his glittering future, but a year later, he was well on the way to regressing into the little cursed kid in need of shelter from the big bad magic-using craft world.

  He hated being that kid the first time around. He had no desire to revert any further.

  Yet magic seemed to be everywhere Luc looked lately, despite users being in the minority. It was like a song he couldn’t get out of his head, playing in every shop and bar: there was the corner supermarket with ready-to-use charms at the checkout, the beauty salon offering ever-growing extensions, a banner outside the local primary school advertising a special pathway for craft-gifted kids. Luc didn’t know if everyone noticed those things or if his curse attuned him to their presence. He could’ve asked his family, but then they’d have to speak about the curse.

  He checked the leather cuffs around his wrist. He didn’t look. Looking made the cuffs—and the curse they prevented from fully taking hold—too real. He traced the stitched symbols with his fingertips and ran his thumb beneath the band, the skin sensitive, as it had been hidden since Luc was a toddler. Present and correct. The symbols on the cuffs were beginning to fray, and the colors fade, but that could be due to a lifetime of accumulated sun exposure or the ingredients in his soap. Their fading didn’t necessarily imply anything about the magic of the cuffs. Luc blew out a breath. He’d change his handwash. Everything would be fine.

  “Zis is not getting your laundry done, arsehole.”

  He grabbed a change of clothes and his laundry and headed out.

  LUC sang along with his phone as he showered, rinsing away his latest poor decisions. He emerged from the bathroom in a billow of citrus-scented steam, checked the stitching on his cuffs and yanked on his clothes, and faltered at voices from downstairs. Holding his breath, he eased the bathroom door closed. The low murmuring stopped, and Maman called upstairs.

  “Luc? Darling? Is that you?”

  “Either him or the cleanest burglar in Birmingham.” His sister, Eloise. She’d been tending bar in Spain for the summer and would head to the family chalets in France for winter. She’d worked there for years, finding something about the village charming despite Les Menuires being so tiny they only had the one craft bar, last Luc heard.

  Although maybe a place with only one craft bar would be better than Birmingham, which had an entire city quarter devoted to magic users. Luc rolled his eyes. Like he needed to stay out of trouble that badly. He could control himself. He locked eyes with his reflection in the hall mirror, who seemed skeptical about the idea.

  “What’re you doing up there, Luc?” Eloise yelled. “Is the mirror talking to you?”

  “That’s right, I’m the prettiest of them all!” Luc yelled back. He carefully arranged his wet hair to cover the small scars along his hairline. “Has your goggle tan faded yet?”

  He grinned when Eloise let out a squawk of protest. Eloise had returned in spring with an obvious tan line delineating where she’d worn ski goggles for months. She was embarrassed but justifiably smug, considering she spent the winter in a ski resort and Luc spent it folding T-shirts at H&M.

  Luc eyed his reflection. He’d look much better with a tan. Slowly, as the seed of an idea took root in his brain, he smoothed down his long-sleeved shirt and tugged it over his cuffs. He pictured himself in his ski gear and thought about the cold Alpine air. He weighed the idea against nights in Birmingham spent winding himself ever more tightly into a knot of frustration. He didn’t need help staying out of trouble, sure, but he did need a change.

  Luc needed to take an exit from the motorway of his shitty life. With the idea firmly germinated in his brain, he leaned over the banister. Eloise stood at the bottom of the staircase, battered rucksack by her feet and phone in hand. Tall and fair-haired, Eloise took after their British father, where Luc—lean and olive skinned, with thick dark hair—was a copy of their French mother and barely any taller. As children Eloise drew friends and admirers without a thought, while Luc kept his own company.

  Luc had dearly wanted an excuse to hate Eloise as a teenager. As they grew, he moved on to merely resenting the four inches of height she had
on him.

  “Eloise? Can I borrow you?” he asked.

  Eloise grinned up at him. “You forgot I was visiting, didn’t you? Or were you distracted by your latest—”

  “Hilarious, I’m sure, but seriously. A minute, please?”

  “Of course, hang on.” Pocketing her phone, Eloise came upstairs and grabbed Luc into a hug before releasing him and leaning against the banister. “What’s wrong?”

  Luc hesitated, second-guessing his decision. But at least it would be his decision. He’d made so few of them.

  “I want to come to France with you.”

  Though Luc had braced for dismissal, none came. Instead Eloise angled a considering look at him. Luc shifted in place. The five years between them seemed enormous when Eloise looked at him like that.

  “I think that’s a great idea,” she said. No mention of the curse at all.

  Relief washed through Luc, and he slumped against the wall. To his embarrassment, his eyes pricked with tears, and Luc wiped at them, rolling his eyes self-deprecatingly. Eloise grabbed him into another hug, resting her chin on top of his head until he lightly pinched her side.

  “Hey! We were having a moment. And your hair’s soaking, so you know I meant it.”

  “I’m allergic to emotions, you know that,” Luc said, extricating himself from her hug. He rubbed his arms. He couldn’t always handle physical closeness.

  Eloise huffed a laugh. “Sorry, I got excited. You know, like—”

  “Luc! Come and help me in the kitchen. Your father will get Eloise settled,” Maman bellowed from downstairs, saving Luc from whatever teasing Eloise had in store. He jabbed Eloise in the ribs and stuck out his tongue when she squawked.

  He joined Maman in the kitchen, where she gestured to the kettle. “Fix the tea, darling.”

  Luc filled the kettle, set it to boil, and leaned against the counter, shivering as water from his hair dripped down his neck. There were hair-drying charms available in Boots by the fistful, but of course he couldn’t make them work; he’d lost most of an eyebrow to a malfunctioning charm when he was a kid and far less vain, and hadn’t dared try one since.

  Therefore Luc’s hair continued to drip while Maman bustled around him, fixing food as conversation struck up in the living room. From what Luc could hear, Eloise was telling one of her seasonaire anecdotes. Luc grinned, wondering if he’d have his own stories soon.

  “I didn’t realize Eloise was visiting, sorry,” Luc said as Maman shooed him to the end of the counter. He started arranging biscuits on a plate.

  “She called yesterday. While you were out,” Maman said pointedly.

  Luc pulled a face where Maman couldn’t see. He tried not to be an ungrateful brat, aware he lived rent free by the loving grace of his parents, but he struggled after the independence of university.

  “It’s good she came by, though. She’s given me an idea,” he said, opting to change the subject.

  “What idea is that, darling?”

  “I’m going to France with her.”

  Maman dropped the bread knife. The chatter in the living room stopped, only to start again in furious whispers. Luc wished himself in there with Eloise and their father.

  “Before you say anything—”

  Too late. Maman surged to life. “But what about your condition? If anything happens—the village is quite old, you know, and mountain crafters can cling to old-fashioned ideas.” Maman spoke quickly, as if she could change Luc’s mind with speed alone. “And you’ve never been interested in the chalets before, darling. I thought you wanted to write. What’s brought this on?”

  Luc waited a beat to check his mother had finished. Then he drummed his black fingernails on the counter. Maman caught the movement, and her mouth twisted. Some cursebearers had heightened senses, or speed, or strength; Luc had a permanent manicure. His “hooves.”

  “That’s just it,” Luc said. He stuck his hand in his pocket. “I’m tired of everyone seeing the curse when they look at me—or not the curse, thanks to the cuffs, but they know something. I’ve seen it. And even non-craft kids would know if they spent five minutes thinking about it, thanks to those bloody craftumentaries. I want to start new somewhere, even for a little bit.”

  Maman didn’t get it. None of them did. The Dufour curse took one male in every generation, and the last cursebearer—Maman’s brother, Oncle Thierry—couldn’t share his experience; a few years after Luc was born, Thierry disappeared. No one explicitly blamed the curse for Thierry vanishing, but no one spoke about him. The only parts of him remaining were the magical cuffs he had discovered, which prevented the nightly shift and which Maman received in the mail not long after he disappeared. When he got older and learned where the cuffs came from, Luc figured Thierry was dead, even if no one would admit it.

  If it weren’t for the strange inheritance of his cuffs, Luc would likely have been lost years ago. Among other things, the cuffs helped Luc retain his mind when switching forms, not that he changed often. Big shifters were rare, according to his research and Curses Anonymous, and no one had agreed if they were metas or something different. Luc kept to human shape, as he didn’t fancy being an academic curiosity, to say nothing of the value he’d fetch on the black magic market.

  And lately he didn’t change because he feared he wouldn’t be able to change back.

  On the positive side, the latest studies put craft users at around one in five, which meant the majority of the population didn’t give a shit about cursebearers. Or at least they hadn’t until Ava Gloss appeared on Curses Anonymous. Even if half the stories on the television show were straight-up fictional and two-thirds were craft-gone-wrong rather than true curses, viewers didn’t care. Old-school “fairy tale” curses like Luc’s were increasingly rare thanks to the passage of time and the greed of hunters, but the show had interviewed the Lentowiczs about their cursebreak on Ava Gloss and showed people how to look for things that didn’t fit either mundane or meta. And thanks to the cursed singer’s high profile, the episode seemed to be permanently on repeat.

  It might be fine for Ava Gloss to talk about her former curse, but people like Luc would be vulnerable if discovered. He hoped they didn’t get the same shows on French Netflix.

  And he hoped the fading symbols on his cuffs were due to his soap and not anything more sinister.

  As if reading his worries, Maman sighed and smoothed back Luc’s hair like she’d done when he was a kid. “Promise me you’ll be careful, Luc. You know your father and I worry about you.”

  “I’m old enough to worry about myself.”

  “You’ll never be too old for us not to worry about you, darling.”

  Luc’s cheeks warmed, and he mumbled something even he didn’t understand. Maman seemed to, if her soft expression meant anything. She smoothed his hair again and turned away to finish dinner, speaking as she worked.

  “If you wish to go, of course I wish that for you as well. The mountain sun will be good for you. You’re looking pale. And you can finally work on that book you keep telling us about. We’re all looking forward to it, you know.” She glanced over her shoulder. “Could you please get the plates?”

  Crouching down to go through the cupboard, Luc gathered the crockery and narrowly avoided bashing his head against the shelves. He mentioned wanting to write a book once—okay, maybe twice—and his mother had never let him forget it. But if Maman distracted herself with Luc’s Great Unwritten Novel, she wouldn’t be thinking about his curse, or cuffs, or that Solstice would happen while he worked in France. Magic went strange around then, and Luc had always spent high magical days with his family. Not to mention if his cuffs ever broke, he’d be stuck changing every damn night, with the corresponding vulnerability.

  Luc’s literary pursuits were definitely a better place for his mother to direct her concerns.

  Luc rose to his feet and stacked the plates on the counter. “Do you need anything else?”

  “Only for you to be happy.”

 
; Luc leveled a look at his mother. Maman kept the solemn expression for a heartbeat before giggling and waving her hands at him.

  “Go on and tell your father the news. And maybe you will finally meet a nice girl, yes?”

  “Maman. I’m still gay.”

  She waved her hands again. “Very well. A nice boy, then.”

  Luc firmed his smile. Nice boys weren’t interested in people like him. He didn’t see how living up a mountain would change that.

  “Sure, maybe I’ll meet someone,” he said to keep the peace. He brushed a kiss to his mother’s cheek and grabbed the plates to carry them into the living room. His thumbnails were dark against the porcelain.

  “Here he is!” Eloise announced. She shuffled over on the sofa. “We were just talking about you.”

  Their father helped Luc arrange the plates, then leaned back on his armchair. The movement dislodged one of the journals on the arm of his chair, causing a paper avalanche. Everyone ignored it; Father had been researching craft for decades, and they’d grown used to finding articles and magazines everywhere in the house.

  “Eloise says you’re going with her this time?” he asked.

  “That’s right.” Luc paused in the doorway on the way back to the kitchen. “I suppose I should find my passport.”

  “And you’ll be careful, son? No more fighting?”

  Luc resisted the urge to sigh. The question was valid. Fifteen and heartbroken, Luc had taken the end of his first relationship—too many secrets, Matthew said—as a sign to avoid connections altogether. He distracted himself with fighting until university and bars made casual sex easy to find.

  He nodded. “I’m over that stuff.”

  “And I’ll be there,” Eloise added. “Don’t worry.”

  Luc raised his eyebrows at Eloise and grinned. “Well. Maybe worry a little bit.”

  He returned to the kitchen before his exit could be ruined, and he nearly collided with Maman. Steadying her grip on the tray, he took it from her and tilted his head for her to go into the living room first. As she passed, Maman cupped his cheek. Luc remembered the gesture from after a group of hunters had tried to grab him before he had Thierry’s cuffs, when he was small and frightened and knew only that his mother loved him no matter what.