The Winter King (35 page)

When she reached the heavy wooden door leading to the cellar, however, she found it closed and locked. With a scream of frustration, she yanked on the door and pounded the unyielding wooden planks.

“Your Grace? May I be of assistance?”

She whirled around so fast the Steward of Wines, who must have followed her into the cellars, jumped back in fright.

“Forgive me, ma’am. I didn’t mean to startle you.” His voice shook. He was afraid of her.

He should be.

“Open this door.”

“I beg your par—”

“Open it!”

He jumped again. “Of course.” He drew the ring of keys from his side. They rattled noisily in his shaking hands. The man skirted gingerly around her and bent to put the key in the lock. Finally, after dropping the keys twice, the steward successfully inserted the right key in the lock and turned. The tumblers clicked. The door opened.

“Give me the keys.” She held out an imperious hand.

The steward hesitated. “Madam, if you’ll just tell me what you’re looking for—”

“Give . . . me . . . the keys. Now.”

He handed them over.

“Leave me.” Kham didn’t wait to see if he obeyed. She snatched the torch off the wall and ran down the long corridor, deep into the cold, shadowy recesses of the wine cellar.

The air was damp, chill, and musty. The flame of her torch was the only light. As she ran, her connection to the storm finally began to wane. She kept running, deeper and deeper into the gloom of the cellar hewn from solid rock, down another set of stairs and back into the deepest, coolest part of the cellar until there was no place left to run. There, before the dark stone wall covered with enormous shelves of dusty wine bottles, she let the torch fall to the stone floor and sank down beside it, pulling her legs up to her chest and wrapping her arms around them.

She could no longer feel the storm outside, only the storm within. The great, wild hurricane of anger and pain that threatened to tear her apart. Her chest was so tight she could hardly draw breath. She gasped for air, and the gasps turned to sobs. The dry, burning pain in her eyes became a flood of tears that could no longer be contained.

Kham buried her face in her arms and cried until her throat was sore and she had no tears left. And when the storm had passed and her tears were spent, she lay on the dusty floor of the wine cellar and stared up at the rocky ceiling overhead.

What was wrong with her that no one wanted her?

She was aware of her shortcomings: her short temper, the violent nature of her weathergift, her need to rebel against authority. But despite those drawbacks, she had always tried to live a good life, be a good person. A person Roland Soldeus would have been proud to call friend. Honorable, loyal, trustworthy, brave.

Maybe she
was
the abomination her father had called her. Maybe everyone else could see the evil in her and
that’s
why they reviled her.

Kham gave a harsh laugh and flung an arm over her eyes. Or maybe she was simply stupid and naïve and had spent her whole life trusting the wrong people. Maybe the only person she could trust was herself.

Tired of feeling sorry for herself, scrubbed the dampness from her cheeks and sat up. Time to regroup. She would not let Wynter Atrialan or any other person decide her fate. She was a survivor. She always had been. And she wasn’t going to be a pawn in other people’s games anymore.

And Wynter Atrialan wouldn’t honor his oaths to her, there was no reason she should honor hers to him.

She was done being the docile, agreeable wife. She was going to do what she should have been doing from the very beginning: whatever it took to look out for her own interests. No matter what happened between now and the end of her year as Wintercraig’s queen, she was going to find a way to survive and to thrive. And she was going to secure that survival independent of whether she bore Wynter’s child or won over the hearts and minds of his people.

With that goal in mind, Khamsin was going to dedicate herself to discovering all the things Wynter didn’t want her to know. Starting with whatever he was hiding in the one place in the palace she’d been forbidden to enter. The room he visited in secret when he thought all the rest of the palace was asleep.

Gildenheim’s Atrium.

C
HAPTER 17

The Frozen Heart of Winter

On silent feet, Khamsin crept across Gildenheim’s marble floors. The hour was late. All of Gildenheim was sleeping save the guards who patrolled the outer defenses and the handful who prowled the hallways of the castle in search of mischief-makers and spies. Kham had dodged three of those while making her way from her rooms to the mysterious, forbidden Atrium that only Wynter ever entered.

His predilection for secrecy had actually been a boon to her. If not for those times when she’d followed him from his room to the Atrium, she would not have known the schedule of the guards or the back-stairs path least likely to result in an encounter with some wandering servant or dallying courtier.

The Atrium’s twelve-foot-tall doors were fashioned from carved and gilded white wood inset with large panes of frosted glass. Etched snowflakes and curling lines swirled across the glass’s translucent surface. The doorknobs were shaped like two great silver wolves rearing up on hind legs, their bushy tails the cunningly disguised lever door handles. Each wolf held a gold ball between its diamond teeth. The ball on the right sported a keyhole.

Kham knelt by the right door, pulled the lockpicks from her skirt pocket, and went to work. Krysti had taught her well. In less than a minute, the lock clicked open. Kham pulled down on the wolves’ tails, and the doors opened. She slipped inside, careful to close the doors behind her, and pulled the shade from her lamp. Light spilled out in a bright circle around her.

“Now, Wynter of the Craig, let’s see what you’ve been hiding.” Lifting her lamp high, Khamsin turned to investigate her husband’s private sanctum.

She wasn’t sure what she expected to find. Private military secrets, perhaps. Treasures vast enough to buy entire kingdoms. Sacred antiquities. Possibly even some dread, terrible evil Wynter hid behind his handsome face and winning smile. (Although despite her best, angriest efforts to paint him a foul, blackhearted villain, she honestly didn’t believe that last one.)

But when the light from her lamp spilled out across the Atrium’s shadowy secrets, she didn’t find dazzling treasure. She didn’t find a secret vault of sensitive military or political documents. She didn’t find war plans, or holy relics, or a bloody altar to the dark gods.

What she found, instead, was beauty. Breathtaking beauty.

Her mouth open in a soundless gasp of wonder, Khamsin stepped forward into a glorious, ghostly white forest carved entirely from ice. Moonlight, spilling through the leaded-glass dome overhead, sparkled on the delicate, ice-carved leaves and needled boughs, making the entire room shimmer like diamonds in soft silver light.

“Summer Sun.” The shocked, reverent whisper echoed in the total silence of the room. She tilted her head back. The life-sized ice trees soared seventy feet high. The Atrium roof soared higher still, and in the space between the tops of the trees and the sheltering glass panes of the glass roof, flocks of carved ice birds were frozen in flight, wings outstretched as they wheeled and dipped through an imaginary sky.

Glittering snow covered the Atrium floor, and as she approached the first few trees of the ice forest, she discovered an astonishingly lifelike baby deer carved from frosted ice standing on spindly legs beneath the watchful eyes of his mother. Just beyond, in a small clearing beside a tiny brook carved of clear ice, a family of Winterfolk were having a picnic.

Snow crunched beneath her slippers as she moved closer and brought her lantern up to illuminate the family. There were four figures: a man, a woman, a young boy, and an infant lying on a blanket between his parents. The sculptures were astonishingly lifelike, right down to the expressions of doting, parental love on the adult faces and the beaming, mischievous exuberance on the face of the boy as he cupped a tiny bird in his hands.

Who had made this place? Why was it here?

She moved deeper into the ice forest. The snow on the ground was packed in places, providing trails that let her walk through the trees without worrying that she might damage them. With each step, she discovered new statues and scenes hidden amongst the ghostly tree trunks. Squirrels, wolves, foxes, bears, birds, flowers, waterfalls, frozen ponds. And everywhere, life-sized ice sculptures of happy families hiked through forest paths, danced among the trees, skated on frozen ponds, climbed frosted rocks and trees.

After the fourth or fifth family tableau, she realized that the people in each exquisitely rendered family scene were all the same. A mother, a father, and two sons—one at least ten years older than the other. The people aged from scene to scene—most notably, the youngest child grew from infant to toddler, and the boy went from youth to young man—but they were the same people, the same family, carved over and over again.

And then she noticed a scene or two that featured only the boys when they were much older. A handsome teenaged boy with hair that tumbled in his eyes. A towering older brother now grown to manhood, with a face she recognized better than her own.

The truth froze Khamsin where she stood. The statues in this room weren’t just beautifully sculpted art. They were carefully rendered scenes from Wynter’s life.

These statues were memories. Wynter’s memories.

Scenes of his family, his brother, sculpted in ice and hidden here, away from the world. Frozen proof of the love and happiness he’d known before her brother had slain his.

Khamsin tried to stay away from the Atrium. Once she realized the room was a shrine to the family Wynter had loved and lost, going there seemed like an intrusion, a trespass in a sacred space. But the more she tried to stay away, the stronger the place pulled at her.

She told herself not to be driven by her emotions, to keep focused. What was in that room would do nothing to help her survive the coming year. There was no secret, no treasure she could use to bribe her way to safety. No military or political information that might buy her asylum in another kingdom.

And yet, several times a day, she found herself standing before those locked, frosted-glass doors, aching to open them and slip back inside the secret world of happy memories Wynter had created for himself. She’d never known the joy of a close, loving family. Since birth, she’d been reviled, feared, isolated from the warmth her sisters and brother shared, from the love Verdan Coruscate had unstintingly showered upon them. Wynter had grown up with everything that she had been denied: a mother and a father who loved him, laughter, happiness. Belonging.

On the third morning, she gave up her attempts to respect the privacy of his memories. She wanted what she’d never had. Even if she could only vicariously enjoy someone else’s frozen memories of what a loving family felt like.

She sent Krysti away on an errand, made her way to the Atrium, and waited until the coast was clear. Picking the lock was easier the second time. She pulled down on the wolves’ tails and slipped inside Wynter’s frozen wonderland.

In full daylight, the extent of ice forest built inside the Atrium was even more impressive—and more breathtakingly beautiful. With bright sunlight streaming through the glass dome, the frozen forest blazed to pure, radiant, diamondine life. It felt like Halla on earth. Pristine and perfect. And for now, at least, all hers.

She wandered slowly amongst the trees, inspecting and savoring every detail, every leaf, every branch, every delicately etched bird wing, life-sized animal and carved wildflower hidden amongst the trees. Whoever had created these sculptures for Wynter was an incredible artist. What a gift, to be able to form such perfect re-creations of life from blocks of frozen water.

When it came to the scenes of Wynter’s family, she slowed even more, committing each face and expression to memory, as if by doing so she could make those memories her own. The soft curve of his mother’s lips. The warmth of her smile. The pride in his father’s handsome, regal face. The love so plain between them as they watched their children and basked in each other’s company.

What was it like to be surrounded by such love and belonging?

She couldn’t keep her hands to herself. She found herself stroking frozen flower petals, laying her hand on the cold face of the carved toddler, brushing fingertips across the lips of Wynter, the young man, careful not to let her hand linger, for fear that her Summer-born gifts might melt the ice. Even so, with each brush of her hand, she could almost imagine she was there, enjoying a cool spring day in the forest with a family who loved her.

She closed her eyes and imagined that the ice forest was real, that there was a cool breeze blowing through the frozen treetops, fragrant with pine and spruce and loamy soil damp with snowmelt. And when she opened her eyes again, she could hear the birds singing in the trees, the rustle of squirrels and foxes darting through the shrubs and skittering across the bracken on the forest floor. She could hear the low, manly rumble of Wynter’s laughter as he and his brother walked through the woods on a hunt, bows slung across their backs, smiles on their faces as they shared a funny tale. She could hear his mother’s voice, calling her children back to her side, telling them to watch their balance by the stream, and his father telling her not to worry so, that their boys would be fine. They were Craig-born, after all.

The game of pretend felt so real she was loath to leave. She managed only because she knew she would be back the next day, and the next.

Krysti grew suspicious of all the errands she was sending him on, so she had to shorten her visits, but each morning she woke up eager to visit again. And each day, she counted down the minutes until she could. She became quite adept at giving would-be spies the slip, traversing up and down the maze of corridors and stairways in Gildenheim only to circle back around to the Atrium once she’d lost her followers.

And when she stepped inside the Atrium’s secret world, it was as if every wound and burden she’d ever suffered dropped away.

As strange as it sounded, she’d never been happier. And she never wanted the feeling to end. The days turned into a week. The week turned into a second.

And then, inevitably, Wynter returned.

The familiar, ice-and-snow-capped towers of Gildenheim were a welcome sight.

“Home, at last, Hodri,” Wynter murmured. The last two weeks had been long, cold, exhausting, and frustrating. The western defenses were nowhere close to being complete. If Coruscate and his Calbernan friends invaded anytime soon, they would be on Gildenheim’s doorstep before Wynter’s people managed to rally a defense.

Angry that he’d had to replace three of the garrison commanders and send another two thousand men to defend that dangerously undermanned coast, and weary to his bones because he’d forgone sleep for the last four days in his rush to return to Gildenheim, Wynter wanted nothing more than to enjoy a long soak in a steaming-hot tub and fall into his bed for a full day and night of undisturbed slumber. Maybe then he’d be close to feeling human again.

He touched his heels to his mount’s side, and the stallion cantered the remaining distance up the switchback road and through the palace portcullis. Hooves clattered on the courtyard cobbles. The tower lookout had already sent up the cry calling servants to help with the horses and baggage, so as Wynter drew Hodri to a halt, the Steward of the Keep was already standing on the palace steps, waiting to greet him.

“Your Grace.” Deervyn Fjall bowed and motioned to a footman to fetch the king’s saddlebags.

“Fjall.” Wyn tossed Hodri’s reins to a stableboy. “Give him an extra ration of oats and a good rubdown. We rode hard the last three days.”

“Yes, Sire. We’ll take good care of him.” The stableboy patted Hodri’s strong neck and led him away.

Turning his attention to the Steward, Wyn said, “Tell Vinca I want a hot bath and a hot meal.” He started up the stone steps.

“Yes, sir. Of course.” Deervyn Fjall jogged up the steps beside him. “Your Grace, you asked me to keep an eye out in your absence.” He pitched his voice low so it would not carry.

Wyn paused. “There were more falcons? How many?”

“Three sighted, my lord. We only managed to bring one of them down.” Fjall handed Wynter a tiny, curled slip of paper. “We didn’t catch the person the birds were intended for. Each time, the falcon flew to a different part of the palace.”

Wyn uncurled the message and read the tiny script intended for someone in Gildenheim. His fist closed around the paper, crumpling it, and thrust the wadded slip of paper in his vest pocket. “Thank you, Fjall. Lord Valik and I will take it from here.”

“Of course, Your Grace.” The Steward of the Keep bowed again.

Courtiers who’d heard the call announcing Wynter’s return were lined up along the steps three deep. The lines of them dipped low in a rolling wave of bows and curtsies as he passed. He scanned the crowd, automatically seeking the one face that had been in his mind since the day of his departure. The dark, silver-shot locks in a sea of blonds.

She wasn’t there.

Anger and disappointment flared with equal intensity. What now? His queen could not be bothered to welcome him home? There was something more pressing that demanded her attention? Like sending coded messages to her brother, perhaps?

“Where is the queen?”

Fjall blanched white beneath his golden skin. “You said to watch but not to interfere—and not to let her know she was being watching.”

“I know what I said,” Wyn snapped. “You don’t need to remind me of my own orders. Where is she?”

“She’s been going there every day since last week. There’s no sign that she’s done any harm, my lord, but—”

“Where is she?” Ice cracked in his voice.

The Steward swallowed. “The queen is in the Atrium, Your Grace.”

“What are you doing here?”

The guttural bark ripped through the still serenity of the Atrium.

Khamsin, who had been sitting in the icy meadow where the sculptures of Wynter and his family were picnicking, jumped to her feet. She turned in a flurry of skirts to find Wynter standing at the edge of the meadow, practically vibrating with fury.