by Erica Ridley
Despite the frigid air, nothing about her was cold, nothing was frozen. Everything was molten hot.
She ran her fingers over his hair, down his neck, across his hard muscles. She pressed her hips into his and gasped in pleasure as the proof of his desire rubbed against her belly. He wasn’t just humoring her, kissing for the sake of a curse and nothing more. He wanted her as a man wanted a woman. Carnally. As she was beginning to suspect she wanted him. What would it feel like to wrap her legs around him? To feel that long, hard ridge press not against her belly, but against—
He thrust her an arm’s length away, panting. “A kiss. Just a kiss. Lord help me.”
A wave of naked yearning swept through her body at the loss of contact.
His fingers still clutched her shoulders, neither pulling her close nor pushing her away. His eyes looked as tempestuous as the gale raging within her, swirling and rising as her body demanded his touch. This time, she did not blush. She was not ashamed of her desire. She felt empowered. Beautiful. Wanted.
“Now I may give you thanks,” she whispered softly.
“No,” he groaned. “Thank you.”
He drew her to him and kissed her again.
’Twas she who at last pulled her lips from his, her heart racing and her body aching for more. “Should we not check the door?”
“Oh, shit.” He stumbled backward, startled. “I actually forgot the stupid curse for a second there. Come on, let’s go see if it worked!”
This time when he offered her his hand, she placed her fingers in his.
Hand in hand, they ran down the corridor toward the great hall. Although she knew—she knew—there was no such thing as magic lips and she was doomed to pass this night just as lonely as any other, still her foolish heart thundered against her ribs with the force of a thousand drummers. What if he were right?
Magic had gotten her into this grief, and so perchance magic could get her out. And what could be more magical than the moment the two of them had just shared? For a few minutes, she hadn’t been a girl in a scullery or even a princess in a castle. Her whole world had been his arms, his scent, his taste. And if they did get out of here—if she could have her freedom and Lance, too—
The door came into view the second they reached the end of the corridor. Solid ice. All hope abruptly died. They were confined within the same amount of impenetrable ice as before. Mayhap even more.
Lance dropped her hand. She let him walk ahead, to approach the relentless proof of their imprisonment alone. She had no wish to draw closer. Every glimpse of the outside world through the transparent ice was another dagger to her soul. Her heart had bled so much over the years, she was surprised it even had the strength to give another painful twist in her chest.
When she saw that Lance wasn’t headed to the impassable door, but rather kneeling to retrieve the broken bits of the cylindrical devices he’d used earlier, she forced herself to cross the wide empty chamber to halt him.
She placed her hand on his shoulder. “Leave it be.”
“Why? Are the servants going to get it?” He raised an eyebrow to show he was teasing. She only wished he were.
“Aye. Something like that.” As she pulled him to his feet, she tried not to think about how soon the bells would toll midnight. The littered shards of his strange devices would disappear as if they’d never existed, and Lance…
She’d remember him for millennia.
“Well,” he said with forced cheerfulness. “Plan A didn’t work out, so it’s back to Plan B.”
“What is a Plan B?”
“Celebrating your birthday. It’s all about you, birthday girl. What would you like to do today?”
She stared at him blankly for a moment before her gaze slid around him to the impassable door. It was hard to feel festive when she hadn’t had a reason to celebrate in over six hundred years.
He nudged her chin so she was facing him again. “None of that. Don’t think about possible and impossible. It’s your birthday. We’re going to celebrate. Close your eyes. Don’t think about the ice or even the castle. Tell me some of your favorite things, and I’ll make all your birthday wishes come true.”
She let her eyes flutter closed. Not because she had any expectation of a joyous Yule, but because she couldn’t stand looking at reality anymore. She could scarce believe that a younger her had ever stomped her feet before all and sundry and declared she was never leaving her home, and that was final.
It had been final, all right.
What had she liked to do, back when entertainment seemed her right, rather than her privilege?
“I spend most of my days reading. Not much else to do,” she said, her eyes still closed tight. His fingers laced with hers. “Once upon a time, I loved spending time with my friends. I loved music, art, dancing, playing games… And feast days. Sweets were my greatest weakness,” she confessed. She opened her eyes and forced a melancholy smile. “I suppose I can show you the library. I’ve every one of the books memorized, but ’twould be a different experience to have someone reading beside me.”
“Nope,” he said with an arrogant smile. “We’re not doing anything that’s part of your routine. New adventures only.”
“Adventure?” she repeated dryly. “In here?”
But he was already pulling her across the great hall as if they were late for an important engagement.
Chuckling despite herself, she hurried to keep up. “Where are we going?”
He came to a dead stop. Wide-eyed, he put a finger to his lips. “Shhh. We’re in a museum.”
“Are we?” Amused, she decided to play along. “What sort of museum?”
His spine straightened and his deep voice rang out like a town crier. “Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Cavanaugh Museum of Modern Art. Today, I will guide your journey through contemporary legends. No tips until after the tour, and remember—no flash photography.” He swept an arm in the direction of the interior walls. “We begin right here, with the first commissioned work of a modern master. This piece is titled Interlocking Stones, by Andy Warhol. The soup cans were a later phase.”
Marigold pretended to inspect the wall. “Looks like limestone to me.”
“You, dear lady, have clearly never been to a museum of modern art before. Come this way, and prepare to be amazed at”—he leapt back from an open interior chamber door with a flourish—“Shadows in a Darkened Room by Francis Bacon. Marvel at the use of gray upon gray, to imply, rather than delineate, the existence of a three-dimensional room beyond the murky black shadows of the soul.”
She peered into the darkness. Without a torch, it was impossible to see much of anything. “I don’t get it.”
“Nobody gets it,” he whispered. “It’s modern art.”
Before she could open her mouth to ask what he meant by that, he whisked her farther down the corridor, coming to a patch of empty stone wall, lit by the sun streaming down through the ice.
“Ahh,” he said with satisfaction. “This traveling exhibit is on loan to us from Medieval Europe. Note the ground gold leaf, accenting the tempera on wood. This is called The Adoration of the Magi, done by an Italian named Giotto di Bondone around the year—”
“I’ve seen that!” she exclaimed in delight. “There are four angels flying overhead whilst the three magi come to kneel before the tiny Christ child, with his perfect golden halo.”
Happiness flooded her with the remembrance. She hadn’t thought about her childhood visit to Florence in… well, at least six hundred years. That summer, her father had indulged her wish to see every work of art the city had to offer. She and her parents spent a whirlwind holiday visiting churches and private collections between routs and courts and markets. No man said nay to a king.
A Magis Adoratur had been one of several pieces she’d visited again and again before ’twas time to turn the wagons back toward home.
“Thank you.” She rose to her toes to give Lance a soft kiss on the cheek. “You cannot fathom how grat
eful I am that you have brought me to this museum.”
“Hold your thank-yous, sister. That’s just the first item from your list. You can thank me when I’ve managed to give you all of them.”
“’Tis two,” she corrected gently. He’d given her art… and friendship.
The most dangerous gift of all.
Chapter 5
Lance’s brain ached from lack of sleep, and his fractured shoulder stung something vicious, but he was determined to make three more things happen in the next twenty-four hours.
First, he intended for Princess Marigold to have a happy birthday and decent Yuletide memories for once. Anyone stuck in solitary confinement for over half a millennium deserved at least that much.
Second, he intended to get the hell out, stat. He might spend the solstice in Castle Cavanaugh, but he planned to break out by New Years Day. He had to make it back to Sancho. Even if it took weeks. The necklace needed to be returned to its rightful owner before Sancho lost everything.
Third, Lance was bringing the princess back with him. The Pawn & Potion wasn’t much, but it would be paradise compared to six hundred years of… this. And then they’d figure out where to go from there.
He wasn’t sure yet how to achieve steps two or three of his three-part mission, so for the moment, he focused on step one: Operation Happy Holidays. Which was why he was seated at a long wooden table with a handful of intricate playing cards and a mug of room-temperature ale, getting his ass thoroughly kicked at some crazy Irish card game he’d never heard of until ten minutes ago.
It was the best Christmas he’d had in years.
“Are you sure you’re not cheating?” he asked for the twentieth time. “It’s okay if you are. I mean, I’ll still have to kill you in order to avenge my honor, but I’ll do the gentlemanly thing and wait until after your birthday.” He shook his head as she trumped his card yet again. “Unbelievable. You can’t possibly take every trick, every single time. Not unless you’re psychic. You’re not psychic, are you? I’d be more pissed if you’ve been reading my mind this whole time without telling me, so you’re probably better off just fessing up to being a cheater.”
Princess Marigold raked in the cards—and the pile of spiced almonds they’d been using as betting chips—with her hallmark I-don’t-understand-the-words-coming-out-of-your-mouth serenity… but something was off. Maybe it was the microsecond quirk to her lower lip, or the wide-eyed innocence in her stare, but he almost felt as though—
Cards and betting chips slipped from her fingers as Marigold burst out laughing.
“You really are cheating?” he said in disbelief. “Seriously? How? You have to teach me. That was flawless. I honestly just thought I sucked. Were you counting cards somehow? But we shuffled after every hand! I already checked for marks, too. The cards are clean, and the pattern is identical from every angle. There’s no possible way.”
Still grinning, she leaned forward and propped her elbows on the table. “Here’s the secret. All you have to do is play the same pack of cards every day of your life for two or three centuries, and you’ll discover each one is as unique as a fingerprint.”
He snorted. “I can’t recognize individual fingerprints, either.”
“You could after a few hundred years of staring at the same ones.”
“Humph.” He slumped back in his chair in disappointment, then bolted right back upright. “I know! We’ll take the cards with us.”
“With us where?”
“Everywhere! We’ll start with the local pubs and when they wise up, we’ll just move on to—” He broke off when the laughter faded from her eyes. She brushed the almonds from her lap and turned her gaze away. He leaned forward. “Don’t be such a quitter, Princess. We’re getting out of this dump. I promise.”
She shook her head. “You cannot keep such a promise.”
“I can and I will. You’ll see. I know it seems difficult right now, but nothing is impossible.”
Her eyes met his. “Escape is impossible.”
“It can’t be. If trapping you in here in the first place was possible, then so is getting you back out. It’s already been easier than I anticipated. No mazes, no monsters, no Jigsaw death traps. The only challenge is the curse itself.”
She stared at him in disbelief. “You don’t find that hard enough?”
“I’m just saying it could be worse. What if you were locked in a panic room with rabid skunks? Or buried alive in a casket made of stinky cheese? Then we wouldn’t be drinking beer and playing cards, would we?”
“You’d probably be eating the cheese,” she muttered.
“You know what? I think you’re grumpy because you’re hungry. It’s your birthday and you didn’t get any cake. Luckily, Sancho hooked us up with the perfect remedy.” Lance unzipped one of his cargo pockets and pulled out the Snickers bar. “Here. Eat this. I’ll even sing, if you want.”
Marigold didn’t reply. She was looking at the candy bar as if she had no idea what to do with it. Belatedly, Lance realized she probably didn’t. He picked it up, tore open the wrapper, and bit off one corner with an exaggerated Mmm. He held the bar back out to her.
She hesitated before accepting it. She lifted the bar to her nose and gave a cautious sniff before touching her tongue to the chocolate. She took a tiny nibble and froze. Her jaw stopped moving. Her eyes widened. Her throat convulsed.
Lance’s heart kicked into overdrive. Crap. She wasn’t allergic to peanuts, was she? He vaulted out of his chair, intent on tossing the candy away from her and giving her the Heimlich maneuver and anything else it took to keep her alive. Terrified, he reached out to save her.
She blocked him with an elbow to the solar plexus.
By the time he could breathe again, half the Snickers was history. No sign of anaphylaxis. He hobbled back to his stool and sat back down to watch her eat. Probably it was okay if he didn’t sing her the birthday song. The candy would be long gone before he could finish. He half expected her to lick the wrapper. Or eat it, too.
When the last of the candy had disappeared, she stared at the empty wrapper with a dreamy-eyed smile, then lifted her gaze to him. “Minerva! That was most splendid.”
He grinned back at her. He wished he had an entire quiver full of Snickers bars.
“Have you any other foodstuffs?” she asked eagerly.
“I wish. I had some Slim Jims, but I already ate them.” He glanced around the room. “Do you have any other two-person games you’ve been dying to play?”
“I haven’t any other games at all.” Her eyes lit up. “Can you not teach me the Candy Crush?”
“Oh, now you think everything with candy in it has to be good.” He pulled his smartphone from his pocket and swung his stool next to hers. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you. This game is addictive, and level sixty-two is impossible.”
He switched into airship mode to conserve battery life, then opened the application. She leaned closer for a better view. He explained the concept of match-three puzzles and demonstrated the basic strategy for swapping candy positions and avoiding obstacles, then let her try her hand. He had five “lives” built up, which meant she had plenty of room to play before it would need to reset.
Marigold burned through the first of the lives faster than he’d ever imagined possible. Lance was actually kind of impressed by how terrible she was. It was almost as if she’d ignored all of his instructions and was determined to play the game by rules she invented herself.
It obviously didn’t work.
She surprised him again during the second life by not only following all of his initial instructions to the letter, but also implementing strategies and avoiding pitfalls he hadn’t mentioned during his abridged introduction to the game, out of a desire for her to spend less time listening, more time playing.
As he watched her connect four colors to collect a special candy—a trick she’d discovered on her own during her disastrous first round—he suspected she’d actually failed on purpose, a
s an experiment to learn everything she should not do all at once, in order to play smarter thereafter.
Now he was definitely impressed.
The third round was better than the second, the fourth even better than the third, and just when he was certain her fifth and final life was on its last gasp, the familiar Wizard Up chime came from the speaker and she passed to the next level.
Un. Freaking. Believable. He stared at her in speechless amazement. He’d been on that level for weeks.
She handed back the phone. “Can it do anything else?”
“Uh, yeah. There’s an app that can…” What could his phone possibly do that would impress her? If there was cell service in Castle Cavanaugh, he could show off the internet and Google Street View, but the only things that worked without wifi were—Ah. Perfect. He closed the game and swiped to the next screen. In seconds, he had another app open. “Can you guess what these are?”
Her eyes lit in delight. “Miniature paintings?”
“Nope.” He savored the moment. “They’re book covers.”
“Book… covers?” She frowned in confusion.
He tapped one at random and words filled the screen.
She squinted at what, to her, was probably an illegible typeface. After a moment, her forehead cleared, and she read the words aloud. “‘Blood Sport… Rain of stones reported.’”
“It’s Carrie,” he explained. “By Stephen King. That chick’s definitely got it worse than you.” He closed that book and opened another. “This is the latest Patterson. Except not really. I think whoever’s name is in the tiniest font is the main writer. And here, this one’s Wuthering Heights, by Emily Bronte. Boring as crap if you ask me, but I went on a public domain binge when I first got the phone. And this one is… Huh. I have no idea. I download a lot of freebies while I’m waiting for the metro. That’s why the title is in Comic Sans. Oh, and look! I got this one from the library just last week. Sandman Slim, by Richard Kadrey. Epic. The hero’s a hit man from Hell who wakes up in a pile of garbage after he—”
