Amid the Winter Snow

  She shouldn’t have needed to tell me. I should have left sooner. As soon as we recovered Stella. But I hadn’t been able to make myself go. Would it have been easier then? I’d been braced for it, but then one thing had led to the next, and she hadn’t sent me away. I’d maybe begun to nurse a spot of hope that she never would, despite practicing daily for this moment.

  “I’m sorry,” I told her, though for my pain or her distress, I wasn’t sure. “I should have gone then.”

  She nodded, sniffling. “It would have been better.” Her voice caught on a little sob and Stella caught a whiff of her misery—a miracle it had taken that long—looked up at her, wrinkling her face in a mirror of her mother’s, the toddler’s tears welling up, too.

  “Don’t cry, Mommy!”

  Astar looked over and his own face crumpled, not out of the same magically fueled empathy as Stella’s, but through the nearly as magical connection to his twin. He sent up a wail, reaching so suddenly for his mother that I barely caught him before he tumbled from the saddle. Fortunately, though I couldn’t shapeshift—far too late for me to learn, if I ever even could have—I possessed enough shapeshifter speed to match his. His cries turned furious, and he fought my grip, turning into a black bear cub, raking my wrists and hands with his claws. I hissed at the sting, red blood running as if from the wound in my heart.

  Stella, not to be outdone, screeched like an owl. Driven by her mother’s emotions, which she felt but couldn’t understand, she became a golden-furred mountain lion cub and leapt from the saddle, bounding off into the snow. Astar tried to follow, growing ever more furious at being restrained.

  “Let him go.” Ami threw up her hands. “We won’t get them settled again until they’ve blown off some steam.”

  I did as commanded, letting Astar run off after his sister. Their Tala nurses, who’d been flying above in bird form, darted after them, keeping them in sight. Ami watched them go, her face determinedly averted.

  “Let’s move off the road,” I said. “Might as well take a break.”

  She nodded. “I’ll bind up your scratches for you.”

  “Thank you,” I answered, knowing I sounded stiff. Better, though, than asking how she planned to bandage my mortally wounded heart.

  ~ 2 ~

  “I never intended to cause you pain, Ami,” I told the top of her head as she worked to clean the cuts. Brutally insufficient words to describe the depth of what I’d never intended. Beginning with laying a finger on her royal, unblemished skin. Even with her tending me out of simple sympathy, in broad view of the travelers on the main highway, the least brush of her fingers on my skin brought up the insatiable lust for her, hard and hot.

  She looked up at me and creaked out a smile through still damp eyes. “I know that. And you’ve made me so happy.” She took a deep breath. “I always understood, though, that this was temporary.”

  “We both understood that, from the first night by the lake.”

  Her smile went tremulous. “When I seduced you, despite your better judgement.”

  I laughed, though it never comes out right. It always sounds more like a groan scraping out of my scarred throat. “Everything with you has been against my better judgement, Ami. And I’ve never been able to help myself. You burn so bright.”

  “Like staring into the sun,” she said, an oddly sorrowful crease at the corners of her eyes. Her innate magic made her beautiful even in tears and other extremes of emotion—and my passionate queen ranged through many extremes—so rarely did she look as she did now, smudged with unhappiness, dented by my careless handling of her. “Do you remember when you said that to me? You said you were afraid you’d come away burned and blinded.”

  “I remember,” I allowed. I did so much better with silence. I should never have broken my vow. If I hadn’t, we wouldn’t have come to this pass.

  “You said that if you stared into the sun too long, you’d be immolated, and the only freedom for you would be to stay far, far away.”

  Never mistake that a mind sharp as a sword lies behind that pretty face. She likely remembered every word I’d ever said to her, both the wise and the incautious.

  “When we said goodbye back then,” she continued softly, giving me a sharp look to point out that she noticed I hadn’t replied, “I thought I would never see you again.”

  I found my voice to answer. “I thought so, too.”

  “There, all better.” She patted the bandages and stepped back. I flexed my fingers, as if checking the tightness, but truly to keep myself from reaching for her, from dragging her against me and begging her to let me stay forever. “When you first said that to me,” she continued, “I told you not to look. If you don’t look at the sun, you won’t be burned and blinded. Remember?”

  I nodded, remembering everything about that night with crystalline clarity. The moment she offered herself to me, she who’d always been as far beyond my reach as Glorianna Herself, all that is both softly and fiercely bright in the world.

  I’d been in prison when I heard the first bard sing her praises. They’d thought to soothe us savage beasts with pretty songs. Unwise musician, however, to instill in us images of a nubile young maiden, beautiful beyond mortal comprehension. Not what you offer the hearts and minds of men little better than animals. They’d thought the minstrel well-protected, set above and apart from the mass of crippled shapeshifters and mossback criminals.

  Always underestimating the depths to which men can sink. Those who only appear to be men, anyway.

  I’d held back—not because I exercised more self-discipline than the others. As a boy of only fifteen who’d never so much as held a girl’s hand, I’d been a seething, feral mass of longing. I hadn’t even been sure what I wanted, only that the dark needs drove me beyond rational thought. Along with the others, I’d lunged for the source of the fantasy, but I’d been too scrawny, too weak compared to the rest, trampled and pushed to the back.

  One of many stories I’d never told Ami.

  Remembering, I flexed my hands again, surprised to see them clean and bandaged, rather than covered in blood. Impossible that I’d come from that and now shared a bed with the object of my obsessive and tainted lust. Though I tried to resist her, I never could. And that inability brought me to her bed, time and again.

  And every bruise I left on her fair flesh in my coarse impatience felt like yet another scar on my twisted soul.

  “Ash—where did you go?” Ami asked softly, and I focused on her face.

  “I was remembering,” I said, hoarse with need and self-loathing.

  “I don’t regret that night,” she said. “Or anything since, but I think I was wrong to say that to you. It was never a permanent solution.”

  “It wasn’t?” I wanted so badly to touch her, to at least hold her one last time. The Tala nurses emerged from the woods, back in human form and carrying the twins, still in their animal shapes but apparently more docile.

  Ami shook her head, hair catching the light like living flame. “I’ve really tried to give up feeling sorry for myself, as I know I’m blessed and should be grateful, but sometimes this beauty feels more like a curse, like people only see the pretty exterior and don’t see me.” She glared at me, defying me to argue with her.

  I didn’t know what to say, so I said nothing and she huffed out an exasperated sound.

  “The point is, Ash, that it’s not enough for you to close your eyes. I need you to see me.”

  “I see you,” I replied, my whisper harsh as the ravens calling in the trees.

  Her face crumpled a little and she looked down, worrying her fingers together, pale with chill as she’d taken off her gloves to tend me. “Do you? Sometimes I don’t think you do. I know it’s… difficult for you to be with me, even though you love me.”

  “I do love you, Amelia. I love you more than my own life.”

  She glanced up at me again, her face wet with renewed tears, and she smiled through them. “I know you do. And I love you—but i
t’s not enough, is it? I know you’re not happy.”

  “Maybe I’m just not a happy person,” I offered.

  “Is that all?” She searched my face. “Be honest with me, because I know there’s a lot of stuff that goes on in your head that you don’t share with me and that’s fine—” She held up a hand when I tried to speak, then pulled her gloves from her pocket and yanked them on. “Really, I’m fine with that. I’ve reconciled myself to it because if you wanted to let me in, you would. The thing is, you clearly don’t want to. For a while I thought, well that will change, but it hasn’t. If anything, you’re more closed off than ever. And… this isn’t enough for me anymore. Ironically enough, you were the one to open my eyes and make me want more than the fairytale. My marriage with Hugh was a lovely fantasy, and maybe if he’d lived, we would have found something real there once the shine wore off. All I know is that I loved him, and I love you, but love doesn’t solve everything. It doesn’t make us good for each other.” She wiped her face and pulled up the hood of her cloak, taking refuge in the deep cowl.

  No, I wasn’t good for her. And love was never enough. It hadn’t been enough to save my parents. They’d loved each other, and so my father had stopped looking for Annfwn, and stayed with her, they’d had a baby and raised me together. Then the priests had come for him and burned him at the stake for being a shapeshifting demon. At thirteen, I’d gone to prison. And my mother had died, alone and undefended.

  Love never saved anyone, and it couldn’t make me into someone I wasn’t.

  “You’re right,” I told her. “It’s time for us to say goodbye.” It came out well enough. Glorianna knew I’d practiced the line enough times.

  “I think so,” Ami finally said. When she faced me again, she’d composed herself and stopped actively weeping, though her eyes seemed even larger and bluer with the glow of unshed tears. “Delaying this has only brought us both pain.”

  I nodded slowly. For once we understood each other perfectly well.

  Our entourage was reassembling, the Tala nurses back in human form and taking the twins into the carriage, hopefully to coax them into a nap. Ami followed the direction of my gaze. “Maybe I’ll go ride with the kids.”

  “All right. I’ll take care of your horse.”

  She took a step. Turned back. “Are you—are you leaving now?”

  It would be easier. Though I’d have to choose—through the mountains to Annfwn or east, to the temple of the White Monks. Neither held appeal. I also had a responsibility to fulfill. I might be prison scum who’d battered the heart of the only woman—maybe the only person—I’d ever loved, but I wouldn’t take a chance on her safety just to make things easier on myself.

  I cleared my throat. “No. I’ll see you safely to Windroven.” I tried for a smile. “Since you’re so determined to go.” Odd where this argument had begun and how it exploded from there. But then, this moment had been inevitable all along. All those problems between us we’d ignored, drowning them in kisses while they grew in the shadows we shoved them into. Showed how nicely fermented shit can make the smallest seeds grow into an impenetrable hedge of thorns, slicing you no matter how you tried to extract yourself.

  Ami didn’t smile back. Instead she simply nodded. Then walked away.

  ~ 3 ~

  Echoing the blackness of my mood, the clouds drew in dark and forbidding by late afternoon, a biting wind whipping up to slap my face. Much as Ami had wanted to do. Upon reflection, I wished she had. The chill formality of our fight hadn’t been like either of us. Better if she had raged at me.

  But perhaps it made sense. Always we’d been easiest with each other when flush with passion, caught up and not overthinking anything—whether it was sex or the battle to save Stella. Perhaps an affair born in fire inevitably died in the grip of ice.

  Ami had stayed in the carriage all day, making me wonder how they kept the twins occupied. Sleeping, most likely, which boded ill for any inn we stayed at. And we would have to stop for the night. The impending storm and our slow progress demanded it. Even if we pressed on, we wouldn’t make Windroven before the early hours before dawn at our current rate.

  “By the look of those clouds, we should be looking for a place to stay the night,” Lieutenant Graves remarked, pulling his steed up behind mine. He nodded unnecessarily at the storm building on the southwest horizon, obviously steaming in our direction. “Those aren’t Mornai clouds to my eye, but that’ll be a decent enough blow that we don’t want to be caught out in it, if you want this Avonlidgh farmboy’s opinion, sir.”

  I glanced at him wryly for the sir, and for his diffidence. Graves and his men had served Amelia from the beginning, at her father-in-law’s behest, and they all knew exactly who I was. Graves had probably recognized it in me even before he saw the scarring from the prison lash, long before Ami ever knew the truth about me. Why he hadn’t called me on it back then—or reported my escaped prisoner status to anyone—I didn’t know. I’d appreciated the courtesy, as well as getting to keep my head attached to my neck. And now with the High Queen granting pardons for Tala prisoners, I didn’t have to worry about that aspect anymore. Still, calling me “sir” went a step too far.

  But then Graves and his men were so intimately involved in their queen’s protection and in her daily life that there were some things they couldn’t pretend not to see. Ami and I had never been good at keeping our hands off each other, even when we tried to maintain proper decorum. I’d muddied the waters considerably for these good men, who’d shown me the greatest kindness by not turning me in, by allowing me to linger in their mistress’s presence with such unclear status. They deferred to me as they would a prince, an affront to them as men of honor.

  Yes, I’d let this go on far too long, steeped in dithering and inaction.

  “There’s a good inn up ahead that we stayed at before,” Graves continued after a pause, making me realize I’d failed to answer. The habits of silence ran deep. “But with Willy and Nilly, I don’t know…”

  “Definitely not a good idea,” I agreed, smiling a bit that the men had picked up on our nicknames for the twins, calling them Willy and Nilly for their reckless and unpredictable behavior. It made for a good code, too, since not everyone needed to know the location of Princess Stella and Prince Astar, heirs to three thrones and counting, including the High Throne of the Thirteen Kingdoms. Traveling with Ami, however, made all such precautions moot. She was unmistakable under any circumstances, her face better known than the High Queen’s, thanks to all the artists who vied to make their fame with her face.

  “I don’t like going to an inn, either,” I continued. “Though the Thirteen are slowly learning not to hate shapeshifters on sight, the more rural we go, the more likely we are to encounter old prejudices, I’d think.”

  I posed it as a question, and Graves nodded. “Ayup. There’s knowing your prince and heir to the Avonlidgh throne has shapeshifter blood, and there’s seeing him tearing up the curtains as a black bear cub, breaking everything in sight looking for sweets.”

  We shared a grin for that—as that very thing had happened more than once—and it helped lighten my morose mood. “Other suggestions?” I asked.

  Graves squinched an eye at the clouds, pursing his mouth. “Her Highness has stopped on other occasions at the Duchess of Lianore’s manse. She’s a good lady and loyal. Tolerant,” he added with a grimace.

  “All right,” I agreed, “I’ll speak to the queen about it.”

  He saluted—which he shouldn’t, but it would have been churlish to say so. Removing myself from this equation would solve a great deal for everyone. I guided my steed alongside the carriage, rapping the back of my knuckles on the window frame.

  The curtains whisked open and Ami glared at me, then set her expression in impassive lines. When she spoke, she used regal tones. “What do you need?”

  She’d been weeping—again or still—her eyes uncharacteristically puffy with it. When I’d first met her, she’d been paralyz
ed with grief for Hugh and hadn’t been able to cry. I supposed it said something that she was able to shed tears for our imminent parting. Better and healthier for her. No reason the sight should make me angry.

  “Graves suggests that we ask the Duchess of Lianore to let us stay the night, Your Highness,” I told her, submerging the anger under icy formality. Two could play that game. “There’s a storm coming and with Willy—the twins, it would be best to avoid inns.”

  “Lady Veronica?” She brightened a little. “An excellent idea. I’d love to see her.”

  “All right, I’ll send ahead to let her know of our arrival.”

  “Fine,” she replied. Then raised her brows. “Anything else?”

  I looked past her to Stella, asleep with her two smallest fingers in her mouth, draped over her mother’s lap. I couldn’t see Astar, but the lack of ruckus indicated he was also sleeping. “We’ll never get them to sleep tonight if you let them nap all day.”

  It was the wrong thing to say. One of many reasons I took refuge in saying nothing. Ami’s cheeks flushed and her eyes flashed almost luminescent, like the toxic violet gases in the marshes of Biah. “That strikes me as something that is not your problem,” she answered, voice colder and more biting than the wind that tried to snatch at my cloak.

  I blew out a breath. “Ami, I only meant—”

  “I don’t care what you meant.” She rubbed her eyes and looked away. “I’m tired and I’m willing to face a long night for a few hours of peace right now, all right? It’s not like I’ll be doing anything else with my time. At least I won’t be distracted by you.”

  I stiffened at the well-aimed jab. Finding time alone together had become a challenge, even with the Tala nurses and other retainers. The twins loved being with their mother best, especially Stella, who seemed to understand she’d been unfairly deprived of Ami’s loving care for that first month she’d been in her abductor’s hands and was determined to make up for it. If they couldn’t have Ami, they wanted to be climbing on me, showering me with affection that warmed even the burned-out coal of my heart. It struck me then that I’d be losing Astar and Stella, too, when I left.