Amid the Winter Snow

  “Mostly I’ve been sleeping in that chair next to the bed. But last night, once your fever broke, yes, I came in here, so I wouldn’t disturb you.”

  “I’ll sleep in here tonight. You should have your own bed back.”

  She gave me an opaque look, but didn’t reply directly. She simply turned around, lifted her hair and presented me with her back. “Laces, please.”

  It wasn’t easy, one-handed, but she stood patiently as I plucked at them. Though I’d just had her, emptied myself in her in spectacular fashion, the familiar sight of her flawless skin through the parting velvet affected me as always. Perhaps because she’d torn down some of the walls between us, or because I’d lost some essential strength of will battling the nightmares and fever, this time I gave in to the crippling need to touch her.

  I traced the line of her spine from the nape of her neck down between her winged shoulder blades, into the valley of the small of her back, and just to the top of her sweetly curved buttocks. Then yanked my hand away, lest I be tempted to do more. She looked over her shoulder at me, just as she had at Lianore. “I’ve missed you, Ash,” she said, her voice throaty.

  “I’ve been right here.”

  She shook her head. “No, you haven’t. You were physically here, but you withdrew deep inside. You’ve been pulling further and further away from me since we left Annfwn. Do you miss it that much?”

  “It’s not that.”

  “Then what is it?”

  I shook my head. “We’ve talked this to death already.”

  I expected a flare of anger, but she only studied me. “That’s the thing. You think we have, but we’ve only talked around it.”

  “Well, we’re not having some heart-to-heart conversation now. I’m going to assess the situation in the tunnels.”

  “Fine, fine.” She dropped the gown, leaving it in a puddle on the floor, and stretched, gloriously naked. Then bent over to pull on the leather pants, knowing full well what the sight would do to me. Cursing her and Glorianna both, I turned away to at least get my own pants on without her help, lest she see the evidence of my helpless need for her, and use it to distract me again.

  We went through the silent kitchens, lit only by the fires under the baking ovens, the air warm and full of sugary spices. Cakes and other delights were arrayed on the counters, in various stages of assembly and decoration.

  “Are you expecting an army for the Feast of Moranu?” I asked Ami.

  She rolled her eyes at me. “When I say Windroven is virtually empty, that means only a hundred or so people are on the mountain. So, yes, we’ll need a lot of cakes for the party tomorrow night. I invited everyone.”

  “Everyone?” I lifted a brow at her.

  “Everyone,” she repeated firmly. “The Three belong to us all equally, queen or milkmaid.” She gave me an arch look. “Or Tala part-blood ex-convict.”

  I didn’t rise to her bait, simply allowed her to lead the way through the cellar storerooms and into the labyrinth of tunnels beneath the castle. She hadn’t worn her fighting leathers, acquired for our journey to rescue Stella from her abductors, since we’d left Annfwn. Besides the fact that they hugged her figure adorably, highlighting the sway of her hips and the play of muscle in her curving thighs and tight ass, they brought back a wealth of memories of those weeks together. Riding and camping. Me teaching her to use a knife. Ami in the firelight. Fierce. Exhausted. Weeping over her injured sister but working to save her life with practiced determination.

  A lot of that time we’d been alone but for Astar, and he’d been much younger, a sleeping infant. It seemed so long ago in a strange way. So much had happened since. But we’d been united in our mission, newly reunited and flush with the joy of it. With her dusty from riding, wearing her leathers with her knife on her hip, none of us bathing for days on end, she’d become only a woman to me. My woman.

  For long stretches of time, I’d forgotten entirely that she was a princess, daughter of the High King and soon to be queen in her own right. Then we’d left Annfwn and returned to the world—her world of castles, elaborate gowns, and holding court—and it had all come crashing back.

  She said I’d withdrawn, and perhaps I had. Some of it, yes, had been to prepare myself for when we’d part again. The rest—

  Something howled in me, scraping over my nerves, hollowing my heart. Though it still sounded like my own pleas, begging for a mercy that never came—enough that I nearly staggered from the onslaught of memories—I could separate it this time. Not me. Not my thoughts and pained memories. The dragon.

  ~ 14 ~

  “Do you hear that?” I asked Ami.

  She cocked her head, listening intently. “I hear the surf beyond the walls, and the howl of the Mornai winds. But nothing from the volcano. Did you feel it move?”

  “No. It’s a sound on another level. I thought you might sense it, like you did the shadow guardians on the pass to Annfwn.”

  She shook her head, the tail she’d tied her hair into bouncing. “I lost pretty much all of that once Stella was born. The only pieces I have left seem to be tied to her. What does it sound like?”

  “Like when I hear what the horses are feeling.” I studied the branching tunnels. This far down they weren’t as even, not neatly carved out for human use. These were made by the flows of lava and venting of steam. Sweat beaded at my temples and ran down my back. At the edges of my senses, the dragon roared, flaming through nightmares. “You go on back up,” I told her.

  “Sure!” she said brightly. “If you’re coming, too.”

  I growled in frustration and she only beamed at me, all innocent amiability. “Fine, but pull your knife. Torch in the other hand. Stay behind me.”

  “Yes, sir.” Snippy, but she complied.

  I drew my sword, sorely wishing I could have a blade in each hand. Following the siren call of the dragon’s pain, I led us through a series of tunnels, descending through air that grew more sere, stinking of gases from beneath the earth, and of decay on a psychic level. It stung my nostrils, burned in my brain, and heated my lungs, making me want to breathe out the fire again.

  Or that was the dragon, muttering in my mind.

  More than once I started to say we should turn back, if only for Ami’s sake. Her face was flushed, sheened with sweat, but every time I looked back to check on her, she returned my gaze with fierce determination. She wouldn’t go back without me. And I couldn’t make myself stop.

  The dragon drew me onwards, a compulsion below thought. I could no more resist than I could if this were one of the nightmares. I had no idea what I hoped to find, what I expected to do about the dragon, but I had to go on.

  Something lunged at me out of the dark tunnel ahead, launching from some ledge above. My sword met it, spearing it through the chest with its own momentum. Though I’d cleaved it cleanly through the heart, it continued to flail, swiping and scrabbling with its claws, fangs snapping. I stomped a booted foot on its lower jaw, shoving its head back, then cleaved the head from the body in one clean stroke.

  I took a moment to listen, to survey the shadows ahead for movement, then checked Ami. She’d crouched behind a rock outcropping, but straightened when I nodded all clear. Gripping her knife, she held out the torch, studying the creature which still scrabbled about aimlessly, teeth snapping at nothing.

  “That’s like those wolf things that attacked us,” she said.

  “I thought so, too. Not exactly a wolf. Some kind of cross with a reptile. The fur is nearly like the armor plating of scales.”

  “It’s not alive, is it?” she whispered.

  “No. No more than any of Deyrr’s creatures are.” Its presence here explained some of the psychic stink.

  “We have to burn it.”

  “Easily enough done, down here.” I sheathed my sword and grabbed one of the flailing hind legs. “Watch my back, would you?”

  “Always,” she replied as if it were a vow, with a smile that warmed my heart.

  Kicki
ng the slavering head ahead of me, I dragged the carcass back to a rent in the tunnel that opened onto a pit with a radiant pool of lava below. I kicked the head into it, watching it sink with some satisfaction, then pushed the carcass after it. I’d have liked to hurl it in there, but a one-armed man had to take what he could. If only I could destroy the demons of my past as easily.

  “Ash!”

  I pulled my sword and put Ami behind me. Two more of the creatures charged us. One took a stroke to the throat but kept coming, latching onto my leg. I cleaved the head off the other, then did the same to the one biting me.

  “Foul creatures,” I swore. “Good thing they’re slow.”

  “Slow? It bit you!”

  “Not badly. Nothing like the one that got my arm. The leathers took most of the damage, so I’m glad you helped me get them on.” Ami didn’t smile back this time, looking furious and afraid.

  “They’re slow,” I repeated, shoving the carcasses into the pit to follow their comrade. “That’s what Deyrr’s magic does. It animates them, but nothing like a self-willed creature has. They don’t have the intelligence to fight together. I noticed that when they attacked the sleighs.”

  “Oh, you noticed that, did you?” She sounded coolly incredulous. Better annoyed than afraid though.

  I tossed her a grin, wiping my hands off on my thighs. The bite wound oozed a little blood, but was solidly in the meat of the muscle. It hadn’t had time to chew down to the bone. “I don’t know how or why these creatures are here. They stink of Deyrr, but don’t have a clear mission.”

  She gazed down the tunnel. “Except maybe to keep us away from the dragon.”

  “Maybe that, yes.”

  “Then how are we going to let it out?”

  The dragon wasn’t much farther down, but I’d come close enough to learn all I needed to. It thrashed in nightmares, no closer to escaping them than I was to mine. Getting closer to it wouldn’t do any good and would only put Ami at risk. “I don’t think we can.”

  “What do you mean? Dafne let the one at Nahanau out.”

  “Yes—through the top of the volcano. Castle Windroven is in the way here. Like a cork in a bottle. I thought maybe if the dragon was awake enough, we could coax it out a side vent. But I can feel it in my head. It needs someone else to fully waken it, to show it the way.”

  “How awful.” Ami’s gaze searched the passage behind me, glimmering with her natural compassion. A sensitive and generous heart in my Ami.

  “I’ve sent it some healing energy, to soothe it.”

  “I didn’t know you could do that.”

  “Our secret.” I smiled at her wearily. That effort had taken the last of my remaining energy. I might heal faster than non-Tala, but not that fast. Especially not with what I’d given the dragon. I had to admit that I couldn’t fight off many more of the creatures.

  “Then have you seen enough—can we go back?”

  “Yes.” Shadows smudged the hollows under her cheekbones and around her eyes.

  Ami led the way and I followed, sword drawn and walking backwards to keep an eye on any attackers from behind. “I’ll write to Andi and Ursula about it. Dafne, too,” she said. “Maybe they can send someone to help the dragon.”

  “Good. In the meanwhile, I want to wake some of the men to close off access to these tunnels. We’ve been lucky so far, but I don’t want to risk it.”

  “Agreed,” Ami said with some fervency. “I don’t want those creatures getting into the castle proper.”

  I grunted agreement. Slow as they were, they could do considerable damage, especially to the children.

  “I still have the building schematics Dafne found in the library here,” she said when we reached the kitchens. “We can use those to direct the men where to close everything off. I’ll get those while you rouse the men.”

  “You should go to—”

  “Not until you do,” she cut me off crisply. “And I’m queen here. This is my castle. I’ll oversee the work, see to your wounds, and then we will go to bed. If we’re lucky, we’ll sleep for an hour or two before Willy and Nilly start getting into trouble.”

  ~ 15 ~

  Neither of us stayed to oversee the work. Graves persuaded us that he could follow the plans as well as anyone, and that it would be an insult to hover. He also really wanted his queen out of the lower tunnels as fast as he could move her along without giving offense. While I sympathized with the man’s difficulties, I figured he could handle her himself.

  I’d proven I had no ability to do so.

  Just as well, as I passed out while Ami was still cleaning my leg wound. I hadn’t lost that much blood, but—as she informed me—I’d lost plenty to begin with and hadn’t had the opportunity to make more.

  At least it saved the argument about sleeping arrangements. Or rather, my losing consciousness so precipitously had resolved the argument in Ami’s favor. I awoke in her bed, feeling as if a sound had brought me alert. High above, a clear blue winter sky showed searingly bright through the clerestory windows. The storm had finally abated. No more howling wind. Even the sea had quieted to a muted, regular crashing of waves.

  And somewhere beneath it all, the dragon slept.

  So did Ami, curled up against my side, her back to me like a cat, only her bright hair showing on the pillow. I put a hand on her waist, finding her warm and naked. So was I, and my morning erection ached in a counterpoint with my healing arm and leg, all somehow equally painful. Along with my heart—or whatever facsimile remained of the shriveled, scarred thing.

  Somehow revisiting those nightmares, making myself walk away from Ami over and over, all had conspired to rip the scar tissue off the oozing, pus-filled well of my psyche. I thought I’d healed. In those silent days of manual tasks and fervent prayer, I’d immersed myself in the routine of the White Monks. Glorianna’s light and love had filled me, chasing away the shadows.

  But that had been no more than a bandage. Underneath the white robes, I’d been a mess of broken bones too scattered to mend, the ichor of the prison left to fester and turn me into one of them. A monster.

  I’d been a fool to love Ami, to let myself have her—not because she was so far above me, but because I wasn’t whole enough to love anyone. Didn’t trust myself, I supposed.

  “Ash?” Ami whispered. I pulled my gaze from the intense blue of the sky out the windows to find the same clarity in her eyes, watching me with caution and concern.

  “I didn’t remember these windows, from before,” I told her, in lieu of asking what she’d seen to make her worry. “Or this bed, for that matter.”

  “I had them put in. So you could see the sky even with the shutters closed. And I thought you’d like this bed better, because it kind of looks like the forest.”

  I studied her, impossibly moved. “You planned for me to come back here all along?”

  “Of course,” she said simply. “I always wanted you here with me, if I could be enough for you. I know you’d be giving up other things. Maybe more important things.”

  “Nothing is more important to me than you are. I’m sorry if I made it seem otherwise.” I reached up and smoothed the hair out of her face. “My sun.”

  A line formed between her brows. “I wish you wouldn’t call me that.”

  “My love,” I amended, and pressed a kiss to that line, smoothing it away. “But you should know—it was never you. You never blinded or burned me. It was always me, too afraid of what I wanted. I wanted you more than anything, and that wanting terrified me.”

  She pulled back a little, laying a hand on my stubbled cheek. “Are you talking to me?”

  “I’m trying. I’m not good at it. Silence is… easier.” And it always had been, I realized. The White Monks, the vow of silence, that had been the tourniquet. It stopped the life-threatening loss of blood, but keeping it tight for too long had nearly made me lose what mattered most in my life.

  “I think I understand that,” she answered. “I try to, anyway. But s
ometimes… sometimes your silence hurts me. I feel like you don’t trust me.”

  A sound came out of me, involuntary, pain to match hers. And maybe an acknowledgment of that truth. “I don’t want you to think less of me,” I admitted.

  “Oh, Ash,” she breathed. “You are the strongest, bravest, most amazing person I’ve ever met. You lived through horrible things that would break most people.”

  “I think they did break me.” My voice, always hoarse, choked up, and wetness touched my lashes. I tried to turn my face away, so she wouldn’t see, but Ami’s hand tightened, holding me while she levered up to kiss my eyelids.

  “You’re not broken,” she whispered against me. “You’re loving and kind. You embody patience, with me and the bratlings. You love me even when I’m being impossible and emotional.”

  “I like that you rage and weep. It’s who you are—a vivid and passionate person who’s fully alive. Your way is better. You so freely express what I can’t. Sometimes…” I took a breath, focused on the sky. “Sometimes I think I’m like the volcano, with a cork in it. All this feeling inside me, it’s the lava that will explode out and burn everything around me to ash.”

  “That’s not you.” Ami kissed me, heating it, stirring the passion between us until I groaned. “You do express it—during sex.”

  “I… what?”

  “During sex. You show me everything then. It’s the one time you’re not all guarded. That’s part of why I like everything you do to me, no matter what. Because it’s really you, showing me what’s really inside.”

  I didn’t know what to think of that. Those seemed to be the times I lost control, when I lost sight of the man I’d tried so hard to craft from the shards left of that imprisoned boy. “I don’t like that idea, that who I truly am is someone who hurts you.”

  “You never hurt me, not really. That’s the thing. Not during sex, anyway. You only hurt me when you pull away.”