The Winter King

CHAPTER 9

A Fragile Truce

She’d been outmaneuvered.

She knew it, and the brief flash of triumph that lit his pale eyes when she rose to her feet confirmed it.

But what was a woman of honor to do? He’d used the one weapon against which she had no defense. She’d sworn an oath. He demanded she fulfill it. Even Roland would have laid down his weapons and accepted defeat under such circumstances.

Her chin came up. Very well, then. She’d known this time would come. She’d known from the moment he had not slain her for her deception, that he would demand she fulfill the obligations of their marriage. And by agreeing to wed him, she had accepted his right to claim and use her body for his pleasure and the conception of his heirs.

He’d not been an unkind lover that first night. Driven, yes, but except for that first, wild coupling, he hadn’t just leapt on her, shoved her legs apart, and stabbed. Even burning with arras, he’d taken the time to ensure her pleasure her first.

Of course, he’d still believed she was Autumn then.

She walked towards the copper tub with its swirling cloud of jasmine-scented steam, towards the man she had accepted as her husband and king. The pelt still clutched in her hand covered her from breast to knee, shielding her from his view but leaving her back bare. Chill air whispered across naked skin, underscoring her vulnerability.

He watched her approach, his unblinking stare cold as ice yet, paradoxically, where it touched her body, her skin felt hot and tingling.

At the tub, she stopped and gathered her courage. His gaze never wavered. He was waiting to see if she was a woman of her word, all but challenging her to prove her cowardice. Her chin lifted and she met his fixed stare with a haughty, defiant one of her own.

She had come. She would obey. But she was neither cowed nor coward.

Khamsin forced her fingers to open and her hands to fall to her sides. The fur slid down her body. It whispered with tormenting friction across the tips of her breasts, then spilled down in a puddle at her feet. Cool air swirled around bare flesh. Already-tight nipples drew even tighter. Her muscles began to shiver, tiny uncontrollable tremors that had less to do with the cold of the air than the sudden flare of heat in Wynter’s eyes.

His gaze swept over her with near-tangible intensity, and she was glad she’d waited until she’d reached the tub before releasing the pelt. He had a clear view of her breasts, but little else. Still, that was enough in its own right. The touch of those bright, piercing eyes felt like physical hands skimming across her flesh.

“Your bath, my queen.” His voice had gone low, and a raspy edge had further deepened it so that his words came out on a rumbling growl.

Her shivers intensified. Summer Sun, what was it about him that drove all reason from her?

Bath, Khamsin, some tiny, still lucid part of her mind urged her. Get in the bath.

With some effort, she tore her gaze from Wynter and glanced down, then frowned in consternation. The copper tub had been made to fit Wynter’s near-giant height. The edge of the rim reached higher than her waist, and there were no chairs or stools for her to use as stepping blocks.

“Come here,” he commanded in that soft, low growl of a voice, “and I will help you in.”

“Come nearer, and I will help you,” said the wolf to the foolish little lamb. The words from one of the old fairy fables Tildy used to read to her when she was a child popped into Khamsin’s head, the story of a headstrong little lamb who had so wanted to be free of her belled collar that she’d trusted a wolf’s offer of assistance rather than heeding her instincts and fleeing to the safety of the flock.

Feeling very like the little lamb, Kham silenced the inner alarms clanging their desperate warning and walked with slow deliberation around the perimeter of the tub. As she rounded the curved corner, she lost the last veil of protection hiding her body from Wynter’s gaze.

He examined her with slow deliberation. Pride kept her arms at her side when what she really wanted to do was cover herself and run for shelter. She was slight and had always been. After the last week of illness, she was even thinner now than she’d ever been, but if he found her wanting, he did not show it.

His broad hands slid round her middle, spanning her waist with inches to spare. He lifted her with the barest flex of the heavy muscles bunched beneath his skin, and she rose. When her feet lost contact with the ground, she instinctively clutched his wrists for balance.

Gunterfys. Giant killer. So, he’d named his sword. Feeling the rock-hard bone and unyielding muscle beneath his golden skin, she had no trouble imagining him battling toe to toe, fist to fist, with those ferocious monsters of the high mountains.

He lifted her higher, up over his head. Her breasts brushed against his chin. Wickedly, he held her there for a moment, letting her breasts dangle the merest breath from his lips, watching her with eyes of ice blue flame.

“Lift your feet, little flower,” he growled. His breath was not hot but cold, yet it swirled around her nipples like a breath of fire, making them leap to aching attention.

She bent her knees and lifted her feet clear of the tub’s edge. A moment later, she was immersed, tingling from neck to toe where the heat of the water penetrated the chill of her skin. Jasmine steam filled her nostrils with heady scent.

He reached for the bar of soap and a scrap of linen, ducking both into the water and rubbing them together. Her eyes widened when he set the soap aside and began to run the foamy cloth over her arm.

“There’s no need for you to bathe me. I can do it myself, or Bella can.”

He gripped her wrist, refusing to let her pull away, and continued to scrub. Hand, fingers, up her forearm. “Bella is gone.”

Kham’s breath stalled. “Gone?” She hardly knew Bella, they’d only been together those few awful first days of travel, but the little maid was all Kham had of Summerlea. A face from home.

“I sent her on ahead to the Craig.” His lips thinned. “I should have sent her packing back to Vera Sola. She was worse than useless. Hiding your illness.”

“On my command.”

His eyes shot up, pinning her with sudden, burning cold. “You think I don’t know that?” He finished with her arm and quickly soaped the other. “If she’d acted on her own to deceive me, she wouldn’t be headed for the Craig. Or still drawing breath.”

He rubbed more soap into the cloth and reached for her breasts. Her hands shot out, one closing around his wrist, the other reaching for the washcloth. “I can do it.”

He pushed past her resistance with effortless strength. “Be silent and be still.” The cloth touched her breast and began scrubbing in small, brisk circles. “I’ve already done more than touch every inch of your body and will do so again. This false modesty has no place between us.” The cloth scrubbing her breasts slowed. His fingers toyed in the slick, foaming suds, sliding over her skin, cupping her breasts. The pads of his thumbs brushed across her nipples, then lingered to tease the small beads that formed in response. “You have beautiful breasts.”

Her brows drew together. “If there’s no room for false modesty, there’s no room for false compliments either,” she snapped. “I know I’m not beautiful.”

His gaze lifted. “No,” he agreed. “Beauty is too tame a word to describe you.” He held her gaze for a long moment, and it wasn’t until he turned his attention back to her breasts that she realized she’d forgotten to breathe. “But these,” he murmured, filling his palms with the weight of her breasts, “are indeed beautiful. Perfect. You don’t know how much I’ve thought about them. About the way they fit in my hands.” Her nipples tightened to tiny pebbles. He smiled a little before coolness shuttered his expression once more. “Stand.”

Forcing her hands to remain at her side, she obeyed. Her chin lifted and she refused to look at him as he soaped her abdomen, her hips, her legs. Think of him as a servant, Kham. A woman servant. His hands slid up the backs of her legs and stroked her inner thighs. An old, wrinkled woman servant, she added frantically.

But the broad hand that slipped between her legs was so large and strong and masculine, she couldn’t hold the other images no matter how hard she tried.

Summer Sun! The cloth stroked back and forth between her legs, and there was nothing impersonal or servile about it. Each pass was a languid caress, slow, teasing. Testing. The cloth shifted, and then it was his fingers that stroked her, skin to skin, slick with soap and the warm, feminine cream that betrayed her will.

She sat down with a splash and glared at him.

His lips curved. “As I said, I’ve touched you before and will again. And you aren’t half so indifferent to me as you’d like to pretend, eldi-kona.” He shifted from a kneel to a half crouch. The muscles in his thighs and belly rippled with fluid, powerful grace as he moved behind her.

His brief humor faded, replaced by a sudden, icy chill. The bathwater dropped several noticeable degrees.

“Stop,” she complained. “You’re freezing my bath.”

“You should have told me what he’d done to you.” She heard the scowl in his voice. “On our wedding night, you should have told me.” His hands touched her back. She felt the slight tremble in his fingers as he traced the path of her father’s cane. “You made a brute of me, when I would not have been one if I’d known.”

She turned her head and glanced over her shoulder at him. “You would not have consummated the marriage.”

“No.”

“That’s why I didn’t tell you.” She turned back around. “You would have found out I wasn’t Autumn, and you would have annulled the marriage. You wanted a Season for a wife, not me.”

He didn’t say anything. He merely began scrubbing her back in silence.

What had she expected? For him to claim that, no, he was happy with the wife he’d gotten? Her jaw firmed. Her chin lifted. “Besides,” she declared, “why would you care if you hurt me or not? From what I heard, you’ve vowed to turn me out into the mountains unless I bear you an heir in a year’s time. That’s not exactly the claim of a caring man.”

“Did your father tell you that?”

“What does it matter who told me? Is it true?”

He tossed the soapy cloth aside, snatched up the small wooden pail, and filled it with warm bathwater. “Close your eyes,” he warned the barest instant before he upended the pail over her head. He doused her again two more times.

“Is it true?” she asked again.

He reached for the flagon of gelled hair soap, poured a thick stream of the fragrant, viscous liquid into his palm and worked it into her curls. “I need an heir. I cannot afford unnecessary delay in getting one. Too much is at stake.”

She knew ensuring a clear succession to the throne was no small matter. The stability of entire countries depended on it. History books were filled with tales of kingdoms torn apart by civil wars sparked by kings who died without leaving an undisputed heir.

She twisted around to see his face. “And if I don’t provide one within the year, you will turn me out into the mountains to die?” she prodded.

He didn’t say yes straight out. All he said was, “If you don’t provide me an heir, I must take another wife,” but she knew what he meant.

She turned away so swiftly, the bathwater sloshed over the rim of the copper tub. She stared, unseeing, at the miniature tempest of waves crashing against her kneecaps.

It was true then. She dragged in a shallow breath and let it out. She had wedded and bedded an enemy king. And if for some reason she did not or could not bear him a child within the next twelve months, he would slay her.

“Well,” she said. Thoughts spun in a dizzying whirl, all of them moving too quickly to grasp except for one: If you don’t provide me an heir, I must take another wife. Her mind supplied the unspoken meaning: If you don’t provide me an heir, you must die so I can take another wife.

She slid down beneath the surface of the water, submerging herself completely. The lather in her hair streamed out in frothy currents. She ran her fingers through the tangle of floating curls to rinse out the hair soap, then grabbed hold of the tub rim and stood. Water sluiced down in sheets, splashing into the tub in a dozen noisy streams. She scarcely noticed it.

“Well,” she said again, turning to him and tipping back her head to meet his gaze. “As the begetting of an heir holds such dire import, I suggest we get to it.”

His eyes narrowed, surprise warring with suspicion.

She lifted her arms and made her meaning more clear. “Help me from the bath.” The motion lifted her breasts as well, and that caught his eye. His nostrils flared, quivering slightly as he drew in her scent, then his gaze rose back to her.

“Grown bold?”

“Bold, I’ve ever been,” she corrected. “It’s practical I sometimes lack.”

His hands reached out to clasp her waist, and he lifted her high as he’d done before, over his head. Beads of water dripped from her hair and breasts onto his face like a light rain.

“Put me down. I’m getting you wet.”

He grinned with unexpected humor. “Aye, you are, and you’ll get me wetter still before we’re done, Summerlass.” The grin turned slow and lazy and full of simmering heat that made her heart skip. He opened his mouth to catch a falling drop of water, then he tilted his chin up and licked the moisture directly from her breasts.

The sensation was indescribable. The chill of the air, the hot rasp of his tongue, followed by a deeper, more erotic chill as he blew cold across her mouth-warmed flesh, making her nipples pucker tight. Then heat again as he closed his mouth over her skin and drew the tight bud deep into his mouth. Tongue and teeth and heat and cold worked sensual magic on her skin until her entire body drew as tight and aching as the breast he held claim in his mouth.

“Wrap your legs ’round my waist,” he growled against her damp skin, as his tongue drew a burning line from one breast to the other.

Mindlessly, instinctively, she obeyed. Her legs hitched up and locked around his waist, heels pressing through the soft fur of his loincloth to the hard, rounded buttocks beneath. Free of her weight, one of his hands splayed against her back, the broad fingers spread wide, holding her pressed against him. The other wandered lower, curving down the deep valley of her bottom to the petals of her hottest flesh opened to him by the position of her legs. His fingers curved up, skimming the slick moisture, stroking.

She gasped and arched her back, the motion thrusting her breasts closer to his mouth. Her legs clenched tight around his waist. Enemy king or no, in this at least, she bowed to his conquest, and at the moment, it felt nothing like defeat.

She rode his hand, instinct making her thighs and buttocks clench and unclench, lifting and lowering her in an undulating rhythm that was as natural as the roll of clouds across the sky. Her heart beat faster. Her breath came in panting gasps. Heat rolled off her in waves. The tightness in her wound tighter and tighter until she thought the fire inside would burst from her skin like flames from wind-fed embers.

There was no arras in her veins, no Summerlea herb to heighten her sensations. This was pure, natural magic. Almost as powerful a force as weather magic. His north wind meeting her southern heat, the storm building in intensity. Against her closed eyelids, she could see the first white flashes, lightning gathering in black clouds.

His thumb was stroking the small, hard bead of flesh nestled in the folds of her sex. Her body wept from the pleasure of it.

“Wynter.” His name was a gasp of air. “Husband!” An acknowledgment of his claim. A cry of both surrender and triumph. Her eyes flew open as the storm consumed her, battering her with shivering streaks of cold and heat. She shuddered and flew apart in his arms.

He held her firm, a rock in the tempest, steady and unwavering. His heavy muscles bunched tight beneath her clenched hands and shaking legs. He wasn’t done. He’d fed the storm, let first the cloudburst pour out its strength against him, but even before she could catch her breath, he’d begun to feed the storm again.

She wasn’t even aware of how or when he’d stripped his loincloth away. She only knew the moment that he pierced her core. He filled her, stretched her body wide, set her flesh afire from the inside out. His legendary strength held her fast, arms as broad and strong as the branches of the mighty oak, his legs the unyielding granite of the mountain crags. His mouth tracked lines of icy fire across her skin.

“Put your arms ’round my neck, eldi-kona.” The growl skated across her sensitive flesh like a hand, leaving dancing sparks of lightning in its wake. “Hold tight.”

She obeyed without conscious thought. Her arms wound up, around the powerful column of his neck, fingers clasping behind it.

His hands fell to her hips and held her fast, his grip firm yet surprisingly delicate. He could have easily bruised her, and she would hardly have noticed, but when this storm broke, and passion faded back into stillness, her body would bear nary a mark.

Then his hands gripped her tighter, lifted her up, and plunged her back down on his shaft, filling her utterly. Her eyes rolled back in near-fainting pleasure, and every last rational thought flew from her mind. There was no later, there was no before. There was only now. There was only this: the heat, the ice, the consuming, desperate need for more . . . more . . . his mouth, his hands, his tongue. His strength wrapped around her, holding her fast. His sex plunged so deep, she thought she might die. His teeth closed around one nipple, tugging with unbearable torment as he raised and lowered her on the thick column of his flesh again and again.

All the while her fingers dug deep into his shoulders. Her nails raked him. Her passion had far less care than his, more savagery. She was a child of the elements, a mage of storms. Rarely gentle. And never well behaved.

He endured it without flinching, and only growled deep in his throat when her nails broke the surface of his skin. The sound vibrated against her breast and drove her over the edge. Consciousness shattered. Electric threads of lightning shot from her fingertips and raced across his skin, into his veins. Her inner muscles clenched around his sex in wave after wave of powerful, shuddering ripples.

Wynter’s back arched. His teeth tugged free of her breast as his head flung back on a shout of triumph and ecstasy. Her musky, feminine scent swirled around him in heady waves, infusing his senses, driving him wild. His hips pumped with urgent, near-violent thrusts. Once. Twice. Inside her clenching heat, his flesh expanded. On the third driving thrust, he exploded. “Winter’s Frost!” he cried, and his seed erupted into her dark heat with such force it was as if his own life were pouring from his body into hers.

Shaking, he dropped to his knees and bore her down to the furs. Her eyes, pure silver only now beginning to shift back to gray, stared up at him in dazed silence. He took her mouth in a brief, conquering kiss, then rolled away onto his back, his lungs heaving like bellows.

Khamsin lay on the furs beside him, shaken and trembling. Not even a whiff of arras had touched her senses, yet this coupling had been even more devastating and passionate than their fierce, herb-enhanced matings.

She drew air into her lungs, forcing herself to breathe deep and even, to gather her shattered wits and calm her racing heart. With effort, she lifted her hands, her arms. Her fingers dragged across the flat surface of her stomach and over her breasts. Still-tingling sparks of sensual energy followed in their wake. The muscles of her thighs and sex continued to tremble, but the earlier, more violent spasms had subsided.

She threw an arm over her eyes. The Rose burned at her wrist, as hot as an ember in her flesh, throbbing in time with her pounding heart. The smell of sex and Wynter washed over her, bringing with it a flood of completeness and a strange, exhausted satisfaction. Her eyes fluttered shut. Just for a moment, she told herself. No more than a minute or two.

How long she slept, she didn’t know, but she woke to shadows and lamplight and the feeling of Wynter’s hands playing across her body. Blue flame flickering in the depths of his eyes and the silvery whiteness of his hair slid across her skin like falls of snow.

If he possessed even a hint of modesty, he did not show it. He knelt before her naked and unashamed, and held her fast when she would have shied away from the lips that sought out the damp flesh between her legs. What he did with his mouth left her fainting, but even as her body folded, he drew her down upon him and set her afire once more. She’d heard her father’s courtiers speculating that the Winter King would be a cold, dispassionate lover at best, but he proved them all wrong. As he had on their wedding night, he demonstrated with breathtaking, mind-shattering mastery that even ice could burn.

Four times more he came to her. Four times more, he drove her beyond reason, beyond thought. Four more times he rode her, his touch like lightning on the wind.

The fifth time, she came to him.

When she did, kneeling naked beside him and reaching out to run a curious finger down the resting length of flesh that now lay limp against his thigh, he gave a wry, weary grunt of laughter. “The mind is willing, min ros, but the body, I think, is done.”

She glanced up at him, but his eyes were closed, and the small smile that played at the corners of his mouth made her butterflies take flight in her stomach. Careful, Khamsin. He is the Winter King, not some summer lover. And not Roland either. She had to guard herself. It would be all too easy with him to forget why she was here, forget that the pleasure he’d just poured out upon her like water from a fountain was but a means to an end.

Bear an heir within the year or face the deadly judgment of the mountains.

Even knowing that, and even knowing he would have shared this same shattering pleasure with whichever Summerlea princess he had wed, she couldn’t keep away. For now, at least, he was hers. Besides, if this really was to be her last year of life, she might as well live it large. What had she to lose?

For the first time, she was free of the cage of her father’s making, free of his rules and his demands for obedience. She would not willingly step into another. If the Winter King thought to control her, he would find caging the wind an easier task.

Her fingers curved around him, curious, testing. What had earlier been a long, rock-hard column of flesh, was slightly smaller now and soft to the touch. Beneath the flesh ran several long, thick blue veins. He was still damp and sticky from their last coupling, and that stickiness smelled pungent and musky, a mingling of her scent and his. The hair at his groin was thick and short, as silvery white as the hair on his head. Not wiry, and not curly as her own was, but straight and rather soft. Like a wolf’s pelt, but not quite so densely furred. Beneath his penis, the large, twin globes of his testicles hung heavy in a sac of flesh.

She cupped them in her hand, scraped fingernail lightly on the underside. A muscle in his thigh leapt. His sex twitched, growing straighter and fuller, starting to rise.

“Does it hurt when it does that?” She’d heard her father’s courtiers sometimes cursing the ache in their loins.

She knew the instant his eyes opened, felt the tingling energy of his gaze like sunlight on her skin. She glanced up and, sure enough, found him watching her from beneath the thick lashes of his half-shuttered eyes. “Only if you don’t finish what you’ve started.” His voice was a low growl again, and the deep, raspy sound of it sent shivers racing across her body.

“Ah. I’ll be sure to finish, then.” She turned her attention back to the intriguing mysteries of his sex. She stroked him, traced one long blue vein running the length of his shaft with the rounded edge of a nail, and smiled to herself when, despite his claims of exhaustion, his flesh strained upwards, as if rising to meet her hand. His body was a marvel. So different from her own, yet fascinating and beautiful in its own right.

She curled her fingers around him. The flesh that had only moments ago been soft and malleable was now a thick, rapidly hardening shaft. Her fingers spanned little more than halfway around the base.

She jumped a little when his hand stroked her bare bottom and slid between her heels to caress her inner thighs. One broad finger curved up, found her damp heat, and thrust up while a second finger slid up between her folds and began stroking the tiny nub of flesh that sent flares of electric heat shooting throughout her body. Her inner muscles clenched tight around him.

“Does it hurt when it does that?” he asked with a slow smile.

Her eyes fluttered down, and she swallowed thickly. “Only if you don’t finish what you’ve started.” His finger moved up and down inside her, a pale mimicry of what was to come but dizzying in its own right.

He shook his head slightly. “Nay, Summerlass,” he denied. “This time you finish it.”

“How?” She was willing. The ache was there and building. She wanted more than his finger inside her. Her hand clenched tighter around his shaft, moving up and down in a rhythm that instinctively matched his own strokes.

“Mount me. As you would a horse.”

“I don’t know how. I’ve never ridden a horse.” Oh. She caught her lower lip between her teeth and shuddered on a delicious wave of pleasure. She felt her inner muscles ripple and clench around his finger. It was only the beginning. He’d already taught her to expect much more.

“Then today is a good day to start.”

She gasped and nodded. Her eyes fluttered closed. “How?”

She bit back a cry of protest as his hands ceased their erotic magic and slid towards her waist. Damp fingers stroked her thigh. “Put this leg across me and kneel over my body.”

She shifted her weight and rose on her knees. He helped her, lifting her by the waist as she flung a leg across his hips and straddled him. Cool air mixed with warm swirled across the hot, damp skin between her legs. The dark, earthy scent of sex wafted around her like a dizzying cloud of incense. She saw Wynter’s nostrils flare as the wolf tasted the scent on the breeze. The hands at her waist slid down to her hips and squeezed briefly before sliding between their bodies.

“Now, fill yourself with me and ride.” He guided his shaft to the entrance of her body and held it there while she impaled herself slowly on him. Inch by devastating inch, she took him, feeling the burning pull as her body stretched to accommodate him. He watched her with eyes of blue flame and his hands slid up her waist to cup the weight of her breasts in his palms and roll her nipples between his thumb and index finger.

Her body clenched. Her hips bucked.

“Gently, eldi-kona. Find your rhythm.” His hips rose and fell, showing her the tempo.

She rode. Slowly at first, rocking against him, feeling the tug and burn where her flesh had stretched to accommodate him, then slowly increasing as she grew in confidence, and the heat coiled within her. He rose on his elbows to capture the tips of her bobbing breasts with his mouth. Teeth closed gently around one nipple and held fast, so that every time she rocked, she felt the tug at her breast like a spear of lightning shooting from chest to womb.

“Wynter.” She speared her fingers into his hair and gripped his head. He would not let her end the torment. His tongue flicked out in teasing touches, flickering across the tight bead of her nipple in concert with each thrust of her hips.

Her hips rose and fell. The hard, wide shaft worked in and out of her body, in a slow, incinerating slide. “Wynter!” Heat coiled inside her, winding tight.

He grabbed her hips, broad fingers sank into soft flesh and gripped her tight. He lifted her hips and brought her down hard, forcing his body deeper inside her. Up. Down. Up. Down. Up. Slow, burning strokes, each one robbing her lungs of breath, each pulse making her heart race. Down. His own hips bucked up to greet her.

“Wynter!” Sensation exploded inside her, radiating out from her womb in jolting electric spikes. Sparks burst in a million dizzying flashes behind her closed eyes. Dimly, she felt the last, pounding thrusts of his hips. Her body exploded again, and she rode the waves of shattering senses into darkness.

When she woke again, sunlight was shining through the holes in the tent roof, and Wynter, fully dressed, was slipping on the last of his armor plate. The wolf’s head helm gleamed white and silver in the hands of a young soldier whose battle-aged eyes didn’t fit a face that couldn’t have seen its first shave more than a year past.

She sat up in surprise and barely caught the covering pelt before it fell away. She was naked beneath the furs, her skin still tingling from the long hours of their coupling.

“This is Stoli.” Wynter jerked a chin at the boy. “He’ll ride beside you. If you need aught, let him know. Get dressed now. Your clothes are there.” A woolen dress, fur-lined cloak, and warm boots had been draped across one of the camp chairs. “You have twenty minutes before my men take down this tent.”

He spared a last look at her naked shoulders rising from the furs, long enough for her skin to heat beneath this gaze. Then his eyes shuttered, and she felt the deliberate, distant chill fall between them. What tenderness they’d shared was gone. He took his helm from the boy, ducked out of the tent, and was gone.

Stoli followed seconds later. He didn’t look at her, but his bitterness was plain in the stiff, prideful line of his back. He didn’t like playing nursemaid to a woman any more than she liked having some downy-faced boy-soldier assigned as her jailer.

Khamsin threw off the pelts and rose. Dizziness made her sway, and she stood still, eyes closed, hands to her head, until it passed. She would dress, and she would eat. She would be in enemy territory soon and would need all her strength and all her wits about her.

Someone had removed the copper bathing tub, but they’d replaced it with a bucket of still-warm, jasmine-scented water, a bar of sweet soap, and a fresh cloth. It had to have been Wynter who’d ordered it, but such thoughtfulness in light of his coolness just now left her puzzled, unsure what to make of him. Was he the enemy king she’d wed or the caring husband seeing to his wife’s comfort?

Both, she decided. Use the care to your advantage, Khamsin, but never lose sight of the enemy.

She dipped the cloth and soap in the water and hastily bathed as best she could. He’d told her she had twenty minutes, and didn’t doubt his men would start pulling up the tent stakes the second that time was up.

Laid across the camp chair beneath the woolen gown was a full white chemise of soft cotton. She tugged it on over her head, and let the billows of fabric drape her still-damp body from neck to toe and shoulder to wrist. Soft, blue lamb’s wool skirts followed, then a separate, formfitting bodice that fastened up the front with two rows of gleaming gold buttons, each bearing the raised stamp of a rose in bloom. The outfit had been Summer’s. Khamsin had never owned a gown so fine except for what came from her sisters’ wardrobes when the Summer King wasn’t looking. The boots were soft kid, with a small, stacked heel, the cloak velvet-lined gray wool, trimmed with the plush, soft fur of a snow lynx around the generous hood. A matching fur muff dangled on a string from one of the cloak’s buttons.

She fastened up her boots, ran a brush through her wild curls. She had just picked up the cloak when a youthful voice called coolly, “It’s time, my lady.”

That brief call was the only warning she received before the tent flaps parted, and Stoli poked his head through.

“Good,” he said. “You are ready. The king says you must eat before we leave. Bjork, the king’s cook, has prepared a plate for you. Follow me.” He ducked back out before she could answer.

Scowling a little over the boy’s high-handedness, she flung her cape over her shoulders and followed him outside. With the exception of Wynter’s tent, which a dozen men were already swiftly disassembling, the trampled snow of what had been the army’s encampment was barren, smoky tendrils of mist rising up from snow-doused cook fires. Less than a tenth of the original force had remained behind, and they were already packed and waiting on the road, ready to march. The cook wagon was packed also, save a single plate of bread, cheese, and borgan and a cup of steaming broth which a large, scarred Winterman who introduced himself as Bjork handed to her.

She thanked him and ate quickly, aware of all the eyes upon her. By the time she was finished, Wynter’s tent had been disassembled and loaded for travel, and Stoli returned to escort her to the waiting carriage.

Just the sight of the four-wheeled torture chamber stopped her in her tracks. The meal she’d just consumed churned in her belly.

“Hurry, please, my lady,” Stoli urged impatiently. “The day’s already half-gone.”

Kham swallowed the sick queasy knot in her throat. If she knew how to ride a horse, she would have asked for one. Nodding, she gathered her skirts. You can bear it, Khamsin. You can bear anything if you put your mind to it. Just open the windows.

The air of stale perfume and sickness still clung to the velvet-lined interior. She opened the window, turned her face towards the fresh outside air, and breathed through her mouth, praying the gods would be merciful and spare her the travel sickness this time. But with the first lurching jolt of the carriage, she knew no mercy was in the offing.

Khamsin threw open the door on the far side and leapt to the ground. Her boots sank knee deep in snow, and the dark blue of her skirts and yards of cloak billowed out around her. She stumbled, slapped a hand on an icy tree trunk to steady herself, and took off running for the privacy of the forest.

Shouts rose up behind her, followed by the clatter of horse hooves pounding frozen ground, but she ignored them and plunged into the snow-covered shadows of the trees. She ran until she could no longer see the road or the Wintermen, and then fell to her knees and emptied her stomach into the snow.

When the nausea passed, she staggered back and fell against the trunk of an aged oak tree, sliding down the rough, broad trunk until she was sitting on the ground. She scrubbed her face with fistfuls of clean, cold snow and dragged breaths of cold air into her lungs.

That was how Wynter found her. Her wild, white-streaked curls tangled about her shoulders, snowflakes glittering in the dark of her lashes and skin, her breathing shallow and skin wan. She glanced up at the sound of Hodri’s belled bridle, then closed her eyes wearily and let her head loll back against the trunk of the tree.

The acrid scent of sickness curled on the winter wind, and the tension that had gripped Wynter’s chest in icy claws began to fade. She’d not been fleeing him. She’d only been seeking privacy to hide her weakness, as all wild things did.

He drew a breath, released it slowly. His fury went with it on a long, chill exhale.

He’d seen her leap from the carriage and race for the cover of the trees, and all he’d been able to think was that she was trying to escape, that she’d sworn to honor her vows and betrayed them at first chance. His fury at the prospect was surprisingly strong and violent. He didn’t know why. He’d been expecting deceit from the moment he’d ridden into Vera Sola, and she’d already been party to one lie.

He swung his leg over Hodri’s hindquarters and dismounted. The snow came halfway up his calves as he walked to her side.

“I can’t go back in that carriage,” she said, her eyes still closed. “I just can’t.”

“No,” he agreed. “I can see that.”

“If I could ride, I’d ask for a horse.”

“If you could ride, I’d give you one.” He reached down to take her hand and pulled her to her feet. “Come. Hodri’s strong enough to bear the both of us. You’ll ride with me.”

She gave him such a startled, hopeful look he almost smiled.

“It’s no favor,” he assured her. “We’ll ride hard, and we won’t stop often. And you won’t find the front of my saddle the kindest seat.”

“I won’t complain.” She wouldn’t. Even if the saddle bruised her so badly she could barely walk, she wouldn’t make a peep.

He led her back to Hodri, mounted first, then leaned over to grasp her hand and lift her into the saddle before him. Together, they rode back to the rest of the men, and after a brief hour’s rest, they were back in the saddle and once more heading north at a punishing pace. Wynter, with Khamsin seated before him, rode in the lead.

It wasn’t comfortable. He’d spoken the truth about that. The saddle was crowded, his armor plate against her back was hard as granite, but she didn’t care. Anything was better than the closed, miasmic imprisonment of that carriage.

She leaned her head against Wynter’s armored chest, tilted her chin into the wind, and smiled for the first time in days.

They rode for eight days. The pace was grueling, the saddle unforgiving, but Khamsin kept her vow not to complain. Despite his outward coldness, Wynter did everything he could to make her comfortable.

The first day of riding sideways across the saddle left her thighs and buttocks black-and-blue from bouncing, and when they stopped for the night, Khamsin remained standing during dinner and barely managed to hobble the short distance to Wynter’s tent. He made her lift her skirts to show him the damage. He let out what sounded like a stream of muttered curses in his language, rubbed a healing liniment into her abused posterior, and slept curled tight around her throughout the night. She woke the next morning to find that someone had slit the skirt and the bottom half of her chemise and sewn them back together into wide, loose-fitting trousers. Wynter wouldn’t tell her who had done it; he just told her gruffly to put them on and be silent. She rode astride after that.

He drew back the clouds to help her body’s sun-fed healing powers regenerate more quickly, and despite the snow on the ground, the warming air and her own hot Summerlea blood soon had her throwing off her cloak. The crisp, cool wind on her face was refreshing, and she loved the free, unfettered feel of it. Even if her hair did keep getting blown into the joints of Wynter’s plate mail and ripping out by the roots.

The third morning, ignoring the fierce objections of his men and Valik, in particular, Wynter left off his armor. He claimed it was easier on Hodri—that the armor weighed more than Khamsin, and without it, Hodri would not feel the added burden of a second rider. That made a certain sense, and Khamsin would have believed him without question had she not overheard Valik hissing at Wynter after breakfast that his soft-hearted foolishness was going to get him bloody killed.

“We may have crossed the Rill, but we’re nowhere near out of danger. One arrow in your unprotected back is all it takes, Wyn! Put your damned armor back on, and don’t give me that blather about weights and double riders! I saw you plucking her hair from your mail last night and scowling like you’d torn it from her scalp with your own two hands. Your mail could rub her skin bloody, and I’d still tell you to wear it.”

But he didn’t, and from that day on, Khamsin rode snuggled close against Wynter’s body, without the wall of cold steel between them. When they made camp, he came to their tent after dinner, rubbed healing liniment on her thighs and buttocks, then curled his body around hers with exquisite care. She slept each night spooned against his large, muscled form, and woke each morn to the dizzying sensation of hard, erect flesh sliding into her body while his hands stroked her breasts and teased the bud of flesh between her legs until she cried out and shattered with pleasure.

On the eighth day, Khamsin caught sight of silvery white shapes darting amongst the trees on either side. Wolves.

“They give escort,” Wynter murmured against her ear. “It’s not much farther now. We’ll reach the Craig by tomorrow midday.”

“The Craig? But . . . aren’t we already there? We crossed the river days ago.” And much to her surprise, the snow that had blanketed Summerlea for the past three years was conspicuously absent on the Wintercraig side of the river. Instead, the land was in full, brilliant autumn bloom, and the only snow she’d seen yet was gathered on the very tops of the mountains.

She felt his smile. “The kingdom of Wintercraig starts at the Rill, it’s true; but ask any Winterman, and he’ll tell you, these are the Hills. That”—he pointed—“is the Craig.”

Khamsin’s breath caught in her throat. They’d crested the summit of a small mountain pass, and the trees broke enough to offer up a dazzling view of a wide, forested valley, filled with vibrant autumn color and towering evergreens. In the distance, great, jagged, snow-covered peaks rose up from the ground like ancient walls of stone and ice, filling the horizon as far as her eyes could see.