The Winter King (24 page)

He spat out a mouthful of hair and bowed to her as temple protocol demanded. “Thank you for the warnings, Lady Frey, and the advice.” And because they had once been friends, and there would always be a part of him that wished they still were, he added, “If it comes to it, Laci, there’s none I’d rather have hold the spear than you.”

As he walked away, Galacia remained standing in the temple entrance, watching him make his way down the rocky path back towards Gildenheim and his Summerlea bride.

“You are wrong, Wyn,” she murmured, knowing the wind would whisk her words far away from his ears. If he’d turned at this moment, he would have been surprised by the regret in her pale eyes. “I would not slay you easily. I’d do it, but never easily.”

Khamsin scowled as Bella and two Wintercraig maids fussed and muttered around her as they tried to ready her for her first dinner with the Wintercraig court. Summer Sun! Why had she ever thought she
wanted
to take part in the pomp and ceremony of court life? Just preparing for dinner was a production that sapped her patience to a bare thread.

Although there’d been no time in Summerlea to prepare a wardrobe suitable for her role as the new Winter Queen (assuming her father would even go to such expense on her behalf), her sisters had each donated several gowns from their own court wardrobes. Gildenheim’s seamstresses had spent several hours “winterizing” one of Spring’s gowns with a new, padded silk underdress and a fitted, ermine-trimmed overdress.

“There now, my lady,” Bella murmured. She tied off the last stitch to repair some damaged beadwork and snipped the thread, then stood back and ran a critical eye over everything. “All done, and presentable enough for a dinner in any court, I’d say.”

Kham’s head jerked on a sudden, wincing pain, and she scowled at the Wintercraig maid dressing her hair. “Good, then perhaps you can finish my hair. While I still have some of it left.”

“Of course, my lady.” Bella dismissed the remaining Winterfolk and set to work finishing Khamsin’s hair.

When they were gone, some of the tension drained from Kham’s shoulders. She closed her eyes and let the silence wash over her. It was quiet here. Elsewhere in the palace, stone walls and marble floors let sound echo, but here the hardwood floors and the profusion of rugs and hangings helped muffle unwanted noise. And for once, Bella wasn’t chattering like a magpie.

Khamsin frowned. Chatter. Magpie.

Birds.

Her eyes opened. She sat up straight. “Bella, where are my birds? The tanagers Spring gave me.” In the mirror, Kham saw a strange stillness come over her maid’s face. “Bella?”

“I’m sorry, Your Majesty,” the girl said. “They didn’t survive the journey.”

“What? But when did they die? How?”

“I think the cold killed them. It happened the day you were so ill, and the Winter King sent me away. I buried them by the side of the road, back in Summerlea.”

Khamsin’s shoulders slumped. Poor little things. She’d tried to keep them warm, but apparently it hadn’t been enough. The thought of the tiny songbirds with their greenish yellow winter coats lying dead in the snow, their cheerful song forever silenced, made her want to cry.

“I’m sorry, ma’am,” Bella murmured.

“No, it’s not your fault. Some things just weren’t meant for this place.” Kham closed her eyes and fought back the burning press of tears. It was so foolish to cry, but they’d been such sweet, darling little things. And they’d sung so cheerfully together as the coach had carried Khamsin farther and farther from the only home she’d ever known.

By the time Bella finished fixing the last curl in place, Khamsin had her emotions in check. Her eyes were dry, her face composed. Tildy would have been proud.

Kham stood and regarded her reflection with a critical eye. Her gown was silvery white satin, with a heavily beaded bodice, long, unadorned skirts gracefully behind her. Ice blue satin slippers, embroidered with silver thread and crystal beads, peeped out beneath the gown’s hem. The ice blue velvet overdress nipped in at the waist and fastened with a row of three diamond and aquamarine buttons. The collar of thick, soft ermine covered her shoulders and framed her bronze face and dark, upswept hair. Wynter’s ring, the Wintercraig Star, was her only jewelry.

A knock sounded on the doors in the outer chamber. Bella hurried to answer it. As Khamsin picked up her skirts to follow, a flash of white in the mirror made her spin around in alarm.

Wynter stood inside her bedroom, near her dressing room door. He was clad in white from head to toe. His inscrutable gaze swept over her.

She pressed a hand to her rapidly beating heart. “How did you get in here?”

He waved a careless hand behind him. “There is a connecting door from your dressing room to mine.” One would think white would make him seem softer, kinder, less threatening even, but it only made him look taller, broader, and more dangerous. A wolf in lamb’s clothing. The hair at his temples had been drawn back again and braided in three thin, silver-ringed plaits that framed his face.

“Wintercraig colors suit you,” he said. Before she could do more than blink in surprise at the compliment, he held out a small box. “Here. I meant to return these to you.”

Curious, Kham opened the box and looked inside. “My mother’s things!” Kham set the box on her bed and pulled them out—her mother’s gardening journal, her jeweled brush, comb, and mirror. Kham ran her fingers over the familiar, beloved objects. Emotion welled up so suddenly, she nearly humiliated herself by bursting into tears.

“Thank you.” Kham busied herself setting her mother’s thing out on her dresser. “These are very dear to me. They’re all I have left of my mother.” She turned back to find Wynter regarding her with an inscrutable gaze.

“You must have loved her very much.”

She’d revealed too much. Not wanting him to use her vulnerability against her, she said, “I’m told I did. She died when I was three.” She lifted her chin and added bluntly, “I summoned the storm that killed her.”

She’d meant to shock him. And to warn him not to underestimate her or her magic. But instead of responding with wariness or concern or even surprise, his gaze softened, and his voice, when he spoke, brushed across the broken parts of her soul like warm velvet. “I’m so sorry,
min ros.
I can only image the pain you’ve carried all these years.” He stepped closer and slid a hand through her hair, cupping her head in his palm, stroking her temple with his thumb. “But you were a child, Khamsin. A baby. Even if you summoned the storm, no one in their right mind could ever blame you for what happened.”

She ached to lean into him, to let the guilt fall away, but she moved away instead, rejecting his comfort and offer of absolution. “You weren’t there. You don’t know anything about it.”

“No, but I
was
there when you awakened in my tent and realized you’d called a fierce storm in your delirium. I saw how alarmed you were by the mere thought that you might have injured someone with your magic. And those were my men you worried about. Soldiers who’d been your enemies only days before.” He shook his head. “You aren’t a killer, Khamsin. You aren’t a monster or a curse on anyone’s House. And you didn’t kill your mother.”

Her throat grew so tight, she couldn’t speak. She could only stand there, blinking and trying desperately not to cry.

He didn’t try to hold or comfort her again. He merely waited for her to recover her composure, then held out an arm. “Come, Summerlass. The court is waiting, and they will not thank us if we let their food grow cold.”

She took his arm in silence and walked beside him as he led her out of their private wing and down to the banquet hall on the palace’s second level. She snuck surreptitious glances at him as they walked.

She did not understand this man she’d married. Every time she thought she’d figured him out, he surprised her. How could he be so cold one minute, yet so passionate the next? How could he offer her such disarming kindness and compassion, while planning to execute her at year’s end if she didn’t bear him a child? Was one aspect merely a show he put on? And if so, which side of him was the mask and which was the true Wynter Atrialan?

Within minutes of entering the banquet hall, Khamsin felt lost and alone, surrounded by cool-eyed men and women who laughed with tinkling little shivers of sound behind fans of snowy-egret plumes. No one was openly rude. In fact, they were all coolly polite. But she was conscious of their eyes upon her, and conscious of her relative smallness, her foreign darkness. She found herself wishing that she’d worn rich, bold, Summerlea colors tonight—wine, scarlet, emerald green, imperial purple, anything but the pale white and ice blue that made her look like a stranger trying desperately to fit in.

The feeling of alienation was intensified by the presence of Valik’s dinner companion, his cousin Reika Villani. Khamsin remembered the sleek, tall beauty from earlier in the day. She was the woman who had gripped Wynter’s hands with such fervor at the reception. As it turned out, Reika was actually Valik’s cousin by marriage, the daughter of his uncle’s second wife. Apparently, she had become a close friend of Wynter’s years ago, when he and Valik would hunt on the old man’s abundant acreage.

Seated between Valik and Wynter at the dinner table, the golden-haired beauty spent the entire meal entertaining everyone with humorous anecdotes and prompting them to share their own adventures. She did it in a way that seemed so innocuous on the surface yet had the effect of drawing a distinct circle of friendship in which Khamsin clearly did not belong. “Oh, Valik, tell the queen about the time you wrestled that boar to its knees,” or “My king, tell her about the time you found the ice dragon’s nest.”

To Khamsin’s right, Lord Chancellor Firkin and his wife, Lady Melle, listened to Reika’s conversation with indulgent smiles and murmured occasional asides to Khamsin to explain some of the customs and terms that might be unfamiliar to her. Whether they were blind to their countrywoman’s actions, approving of them, or merely trying to smooth over a potentially awkward situation, Khamsin didn’t know. But she had been raised in the shadows of the Summer court, where Summerlea courtiers regularly spoke of passion and desires through subtle and not-so-subtle body language, and she understood the woman’s meaning all too easily. Reika Villani was staking her claim.

Khamsin was no fool and no starry-eyed romantic either. Sex in Summerlea was pleasurable entertainment shared by most courtiers without regard for marital status. Fidelity was rare, and in arranged marriages, virtually nonexistent. Logically, she knew she should not expect Wynter to be faithful to her, but after sharing such deep intimacy and shattering pleasure with him, the idea of another woman in his bed made Khamsin grip her eating utensils with unnecessary force.

Reika was also the sister of Wynter’s former betrothed. That came out during the course of the meal, too, in another anecdotal tale that ended with, “Who knew you were going to fall so deeply in love with my sister Elka?” At the mention of Elka’s name, dead silence fell across Wynter’s end of the banquet table. And in a truly gifted performance of tearful remorse, Reika cast Wynter a fluttering, fragile, sorrow-filled glance—complete with two perfect, crystalline tears shimmering in her limpid blue eyes—and said, “Oh, Wyn, I’m so sorry.”

He covered her hand with his, and gave her long, thin fingers a squeeze. “It’s all right, Reika. The past is gone.”

Khamsin stared at Wynter’s hand touching the Villani woman’s, and something very dark and very unpleasant swelled inside her. She reached for her silver water goblet and drank, hoping the icy snowmelt would cool her temper.

Wynter removed his hand, and that helped more than the ice water. But then Reika launched into another series of humorous tales about their adventures, and she seemed to take Wynter’s brief, conciliatory handclasp as an invitation to touch him freely. She started brushing the back of his hand with her fingertips, squeezing his arm as she laughed, leaning towards him and bumping shoulders in a way only intimates had a right to.

So much for Khamsin’s earlier plans of learning the lay of the land and befriending the locals. This woman was the enemy. And the rest of the court, eyeing her with such indulgence and laughing their approval of her behavior, were enemies, too. Khamsin clutched her goblet tightly. Outside, the clouds gathered, and the banquet-hall windows began to rattle.

“Oh dear,” Lady Melle murmured. “It sounds like we’ve got a bit of a storm brewing.”

Wynter and Valik glanced out the darkened windows then, in unison, turned to Khamsin. Wynter’s brows drew sharply together. She knew her eyes were pure silver now and swirling with magic.

“Khamsin?” Wynter half rose from his chair and leaned towards her.

Crystalline laughter pealed out. “Oh, Wyn,” Lady Reika grabbed his arm as if to pull him back, “remember the time when we—”

BOOM!

Lightning split the sky, so close, the banquet hall went blinding white. A deafening crack of thunder made ladies scream in fright, then burst out in peals of nervous laughter.

Khamsin set down her silver water goblet, which now bore the distinct impression of her fingers melted into the metal. All the ice in the goblet was gone, and the water was steaming. She pushed back her chair to stand. “I’m sorry. It’s been a long day. Please excuse me.”

“Khamsin!” Wynter growled, reaching for her. She skirted his outstretched hand and walked swiftly for the door.

Behind her, the silence exploded in a sudden buzz of conversation, and she heard Lady Reika’s voice asking, “Wyn? What just happened? Did
she
do that?”

Bella was sitting at the secretary, scratching an ink-dipped quill rapidly over a scrap of paper, when Khamsin burst in. The little maid leapt to her feet and whirled towards the door, one hand clutching at her throat. The other swept out, knocking over the inkpot and spilling black ink across the paper. “Oh, Your Majesty!” she exclaimed. “You gave me such a start.” She started mopping up the inky mess with the ruined remains of her letter and several other sheets of paper. “Is dinner over so quickly?”