The Winter King

  “All I ask is that you swear fealty to me and that you follow me now, into battle, as you followed my brother and King Verdan. Do this, and your crimes against Wintercraig’s crown will be forgiven. Do it not, and every last one of you will perish in fire and blood. This I swear on the sword of my ancestor, Roland Soldeus.”

  Wynter lay on his cot, staring up at the roof of his tent. The material was a blank slate of uninteresting tan canvas, unlike the soothing, tattooed beauty of the tent he’d used throughout the three long years of his war with Summerlea. But the very blankness of the canvas was almost hypnotic in its own right.

  His eyes unfocused, and his mind wandered through the various scenarios that might unfold in the coming days. He thought about Wintercraig, his childhood, about Garrick. He thought about the day he’d looked up and seen Khamsin watching him from the oriel in the King’s Keep, and about their wedding day, the moment when her Rose had first touched his Wolf, and awareness had struck him like a lightning bolt.

  Had she gone to her brother willingly? Surrendered to him the greatest weapon the world had ever seen? Or, as Tildy suggested, had she been taken against her will?

  He knew what he wanted to believe. His heart ached for Tildy to be right.

  Yet some little voice in the back of his mind kept whispering, Falcon is her brother. The one she loved as much as you loved Garrick. She would never betray him. Not even for you.

  What had he done to ever win her love or loyalty? He’d wed her against her will, all but raped her on their wedding night thanks to that cursed arras leaf, then taken her from everything she’d ever known and everyone she’d ever loved. Yes, he’d made her his queen, but he’d practically abandoned her on his own doorstep, using her body at his convenience, while leaving her alone to face the mockery and derision of his court for weeks on end.

  He’d tried to make amends these last months, tried to give her a measure of the care and happiness any wife of his deserved. But how could a few weeks of kindness and attention outweigh a lifetime of love?

  Falcon was as much her hero as Roland Soldeus. And with Roland’s sword in their possession, the two of them could reclaim Summerlea—or even conquer Wintercraig for that matter. She didn’t need Wynter. And considering that she’d incinerated two garm even without the added power of Roland’s sword, she didn’t need to fear Wynter’s Gaze either.

  Why would she ever choose him over Falcon?

  He’d asked the wolves watching her brother’s camp, but if any of them had seen her, they’d been slain before they could pass on the knowledge to their pack.

  The more he thought about it, the more likely it seemed that Khamsin had gone with Falcon of her own accord. A deep chill rippled through him, sending tremors shuddering through his body. Wynter sat up and swung his legs over the side of his cot.

  Just the thought of Khamsin’s choosing her Falcon over him made the blood in his veins turn to ice. The cold mass of anger and hate in his chest throbbed like a bass drum made from his living skin stretched over a barrel carved from his bones. If she betrayed him . . .

  He leapt to his feet. Tension coiled inside him. He clenched his jaw so tight his teeth ached, and his fists so tight the knuckles cracked.

  Shake it off, Wyn. Get hold of yourself.

  He ducked through the tent flaps. The fire outside was mostly embers now. Except for a handful of White Guard standing watch, the camp was empty, everyone having sought their cots for the night. Overhead, the sky was dark and moonless, the stars shining bright in the clear blackness of the winter night. The forest was silent. Perfectly still. The trees shadowy sentinels standing watch in a star-silvered sea of snow.

  Wynter skirted the tent stakes and walked into the dark welcome of the forest.

  The night was cold. Even a Winterman might call it bitter. Wyn did not feel it. He just knew that it was so. Cold as snow. Cold as ice.

  Cold as death.

  His breath did not fog. His feet made no sound as he walked through the powdery snow. No birds in the trees called out as he passed. No creature scurried in the brush.

  All around, the moonless dark of the night, the shadows of the forest, the pale silver of the snow enveloped him in still silence. As if he walked alone in a world in which all other life had ceased.

  He walked without conscious thought or direction. Putting one foot in front of the other. Breathing in a slow, unhurried fashion.

  Gradually, he became aware of something stalking through the trees on either side of him. Furry white shapes, slipping through the silhouetted trees of the forest, their paws as soundless on the snow as his feet. The white wolf on his wrist burned in recognition. The wolves had come to give him escort.

  He took comfort from their presence and wished Khamsin had not left. Her absence made him ache, as if some invisible but necessary part of him had stopped working or had gone missing entirely.

  When he faced the armies of Calberna and Summerlea, would he find his wife there, on the side of the enemy, taking up arms against him?

  His heart wanted to believe she would never betray him after saving his life. His mind, however, kept whispering that he should remember her Summerlea roots, the falseness of her father and brother. Summerlanders weren’t to be trusted.

  Whether Khamsin had gone to her brother willingly or not, she was still gone. And he was struggling with the idea that he would die without ever seeing her again, without having the chance to tell her—

  A twig snapped to his left, yanking Wyn out of his thoughts.

  “Who’s there?” he called. He scanned the forest, looking for movement, but the night was perfectly still and quiet.

  “She has betrayed you,” the voice whispered through the trees.

  He turned to the right, seeking the source of the voice.

  “What you feared has come true.”

  Wyn spun around. This time the sound seemed to come from his left.

  “You gave her kindness, warmth, friendship she did not deserve. You gave her trust. You made her your queen. And in return, she conspires with the enemy.”

  “Reika.” Wyn’s lips flattened. “Show yourself, woman. And silence your poisonous words. Do you think I don’t know how you hate her? How you plotted to kill her during the Great Hunt? You nearly succeeded in killing us both.”

  “Is that what she told you? And you believed her?”

  Now he could see her, her tall figure shrouded in a hooded cloak, watching from a stand of trees on a rise a hundred yards in front of him.

  “You lured her out of the palace. You attacked her and left her wounded and bleeding. You knew the scent of fresh blood would draw the garm to finish off what you started. I’m only alive now because she saved my life. Why would she do that if she meant to play me false?”

  “Do you think Valik would have let her take another breath if you had died? Of course she saved you. It was the only way to throw off suspicion until she could attempt another escape.” Reika kept her distance. Each step he took towards her, she glided farther back through black-and-white hardwood trunks. “That’s the same reason I didn’t come to you myself. I knew you would not believe me without proof, so I hid in the forest and waited. I knew she would find a way to escape and go to her brother, and I was right. I followed her to his camp.”

  Ice stabbed Wyn’s chest. “You lie.” But even as he protested, a little voice in the back of his mind whispered, Does she? Reika was many things, but not stupid. She wouldn’t make such claims without some sort of proof.

  “Ask the wolves if you don’t believe me. She rides now, at the head of her brother’s army. She leads the invaders against you.”

  Wynter didn’t want to believe it. Khamsin had risked her life to save him. He remembered the sight of her rushing out, barehanded, to save him from the garm. Why would she do that if she meant to betray him? It made no sense.

 
And yet the little, niggling doubt was there. The chilly, whispering voice in his mind that warned him Summerlanders were not to be trusted, women were not to be trusted. Khamsin was not to be trusted.

  He pushed back hard against the terrible suspicions of betrayal. Khamsin was headstrong, stubborn, and temperamental, but she wasn’t false.

  She has lied from the day she first met you, the voice whispered again.

  No. She’d never claimed to be anyone other than who she was. She might have passed herself off as a maid—and yes, she’d hidden her identity at their wedding—but she’d never lied. At the most, she’d encouraged him to make wrong assumptions. But she’d never actually lied. She was too direct, too honorable, for that. Her idol was Roland Soldeus, for Halla’s sake—the most unswervingly honorable king Summerlea had ever known.

  Roland is a legend. Falcon is flesh and blood—her brother—and she has idolized him every bit as much as she idolizes Roland—probably more so because he protected her from her father. He gave her love when she had none. Do you honestly think there’s anything she wouldn’t do to help her brother find Roland’s sword and reclaim his kingdom?

  “Talk to the wolves,” Reika insisted. “Open your eyes to the truth before it’s too late.”

  Wyn didn’t want to hear anymore. He didn’t want the wolves to confirm Reika’s accusations. If they did, Khamsin’s betrayal would break him as he’d never been broken before.

  He had tried to keep an emotional distance from his wife all these months to protect himself from such a possibility. When he’d been just a man, the heartbreak would be difficult enough. But he was a man who’d drunk the essence of a god—a dark, soulless god who thrived on rage and pain the way an infant thrived on mother’s milk.

  He knew he shouldn’t look. A little more rage, a little more pain and hate, and Rorjak would have all the fuel he needed to overpower Wynter’s will, take control of his body, and unleash his evil upon the world.

  But when he tried to turn away, he found he couldn’t. Perhaps Rorjak had already subsumed Wyn’s will to his own. Or perhaps Wyn couldn’t deny his own need to know the truth.

  He reached out to the wolves.

  The invaders broke camp hours before dawn. Falcon rode by Khamsin’s side.

  “I would never have killed you, Storm,” he said as they rode. “I never would have done that. If I’d wanted you dead, I would have killed you at the temple.”

  “You let our father throw me to the garm, then you left me there to die.”

  “I didn’t leave you there to die. I went to get my bow. By the time I came back, you were already gone.”

  “Even if that’s true, you still tried to burn me with Blazing’s fire.”

  He grimaced and bowed his head. “I was out of my mind. I think I’ve been out of my mind for a long time. If I’d actually hurt you—really hurt you—I could never have lived with myself.” He looked at her with solemn sincerity, his eyes so earnest, pleading for understanding. “All I wanted was the sword, Storm. That’s all I’ve ever wanted.”

  “I know.” Finding it impossible to steel herself against Falcon’s eyes, she turned her attention back to the road ahead. “All I ever wanted was to be loved.”

  “I do love you, Storm. I always have.”

  “No,” she said. “You never loved me. Not really. You loved my adoration. You loved the way I idolized you and hung on your every word.”

  She looked at the man who had been her childhood idol. The handsome, adventurous older brother—she’d thought him so perfect in every way. It hurt so much to realize how wrong she’d been about him. How blind she’d been to the truth.

  “But I did love you. I loved you so much I cried myself to sleep every time you went away. You were everything to me. My father, my brother, my friend, my hero. I loved Roland because you did. I wanted to be like Roland, because I thought you were. I tried to be everything you admired because I wanted you to love me and to keep loving me. I even used to tell myself if I was as good and noble and courageous as you, maybe one day our father would love me the way he loved you. I loved you so much I refused to see a single weakness or shortcoming in your character.”

  “Storm—”

  “I didn’t even believe Wynter when he told me what you’d done to start the war. I tried to make excuses for you, the way I always made excuses every time you did something selfish or cruel. But no longer. When this is over, you’re going to leave Wintercraig and Summerlea. You’re going to sail back to Calberna or whatever other land will have you and never come back. If you do that, you can live out the rest of your life in peace, without fear of Wintercraig retaliation for your crimes.” She leaned towards him and let her eyes and the diamond in Blazing’s hilt spark with deadly power. “But I swear to you, brother, if you ever again threaten my people, my kingdom, or the ones I love, there is no corner of this earth where you will be safe from my wrath. And you know that is no idle threat.”

  The army of the invaders rode through the predawn forest. Brown-skinned Summerlanders. Iridescent-blue-tattooed islanders in their loincloths, armbands, and protective armor plates, as oblivious to the cold as a pack of Frost Giants. At their head, riding between a massive Calbernan and Falcon Coruscate, unbound and clearly not a prisoner, was Khamsin.

  She had gone to her brother.

  Something squeezed Wynter’s lungs tight. He was choking, unable to catch his breath. Terrible pressure gripped his heart as well, tight, burning cold, painful in the extreme. He fell to one knee, clutching his chest. The pain spread out across his chest, down his arms and torso.

  He reached out to grab a nearby tree trunk to stop himself from falling over.

  Wyrn have mercy. Khamsin’s betrayal struck deeper and hurt more than any wound he’d ever known. It twisted and writhed inside him, burned and froze, broke him from the inside out.

  A low, keening moan ripped from his throat, the cry of a wounded wolf. Tears, freezing into chips of ice as they fell, tumbled down his cheeks, and he slammed his forehead repeatedly into the tree’s rough bark, welcoming the physical pain, hoping it would alleviate the other.

  “No. No! Nooooo!” His head flung back, and he loosed the howl into the night sky. A flurry of startled birds took flight.

  “She has betrayed you.” Each word was like a needle, burrowing under his skin and digging deep into his bones. “There’s only one way to stop her. Only one way to make her pay for what she has done.”

  “No,” he whispered.

  Reika continued as if he hadn’t spoken. “Embrace your power, my king—”

  “No.”

  “Claim what is yours by right—”

  “No . . .”

  “Punish her for the wound she has dealt you. Punish them all! Make them suffer! Make your enemies cower before you! You are no weakling! You are the Winter King, and you carry inside you the strength of a god! Use it! Unleash your wrath! Wipe your enemies from the face of this earth!”

  The words that had started as sharp needles digging into his skin had now become spikes, each one hammering home with brutal accuracy. Anger built inside his heart, pressing outward against the crushing pain of betrayal. He squeezed his eyes shut and flung an arm over his face to stop the wild winter fury raging inside him from breaking free.

  “No, damn you! No!”

  “She has found the Sword of Roland. She has brought it to her brother, so that they might slay the forces of Wintercraig with its great power!”

  If every other claim was a knife driven into his body, that one was the death blow.

  Roland’s sword. The sword Khamsin coveted as much as her brother. The sword that was the source of all his pain.

  Khamsin had taken that sword to her brother.

  His head lifted. His arm shielding his face dropped to his side.

  He had gone completely numb. The hurt over Khamsin’s
betrayal was gone, as were the tenderer emotions she roused in him. He couldn’t feel anything except a freezing, ice-powered fury that spread rapidly to every cell of his body. Everything left of his humanity—his consciousness, his emotions, his memories—seemed to shrink, concentrated into a tiny speck of life buried deep inside a vast, impenetrable ocean of ice.

  Like an observer trapped inside a body not his own, he felt the form he occupied push off the tree, felt its spine straighten and stand tall. He opened his eyes. The world had taken on a pale blue tint, as if he saw through colored glass. He glanced down at his hands. A coating of clear ice covered his skin. He flexed his fingers, and the ice cracked and fell away, only to re-form an instant later.

  He was frozen, inside and out.

  Reika stepped out of the shadows of the trees and pushed back the hood of her cloak. Her lips had gone blue, her eyes the color of Wyrn’s sacred, heatless flame, and when she smiled, he heard the faint sound of ice breaking. To her left and right, an army of garm emerged from the depths of the snow-covered forest, and behind them, moving with surprising silence in spite of their size, came a company of fearsome, blue-skinned Frost Giants. In unison, Reika, garm, and Frost Giant alike bowed down before him.

  “Welcome back, my lord Rorjak,” Reika Villani greeted. “Long have we awaited your return.”

  CHAPTER 27

  Carnak

  “Summer Sun,” Khamsin breathed. Dismay and dread poured through her as she looked out across the battlefield. “Krysti, give me that spyglass.”

  The boy handed it over without a word. She put the glass to her eye.

  The Ice King’s army covered the entire breadth of the field. Frozen ice thralls—including humans, wolves, and bears—mingled packs of white, all but invisible garm, and at least eighty colossal blue monsters that stood close to twenty feet tall.

  She’d never seen a Frost Giant and only wished that was still true.

  They were fearsome, hideous beasts. Manlike in build, but with bulging hairless blue-white bodies, six-inch claws, and wicked, garmlike teeth filling their blue maws. In their enormous fists, they clutched great, serrated swords that looked sharp enough to slice a man in two with a single blow. Correction, sharp enough to slice an entire line of men in two.