The Winter King

CHAPTER 8

A Flame in Snow

Four days later, Wynter paced outside Khamsin’s carriage, his body humming with pent-up energy. Valik stood rock still a few feet behind him, no less agitated than Wynter but better able to hide it. Inside the carriage, the Wintercraig army’s most experienced surgeon, Jorgun Magnusson, was examining Khamsin, whose health had taken an alarming turn for the worse.

She hadn’t complained. Not even once. The stubborn little weatherwitch just suffered her misery in silence and soldiered on. That near-heroic stoicism was not what Wynter had come to expect from Summerlanders, and it would have won his grudging admiration if not for the way she and her maid had conspired to hide her worsening condition from him.

Wynter had slowed his army’s pace to a crawl, hoping that would lessen Khamsin’s travel sickness. He’d stopped frequently so she could rest, hoping that would bolster her strength, but she’d grown so thin and wan she was near transparent. He’d even drawn back the snow clouds that had blanketed Summerlea skies for so long, hoping direct sunlight would provide her a measure of healing that the growing lamps had not.

This morning, though, she’d been so quiet and withdrawn that he’d paid a surprise visit to check on her himself during their midmorning stop. And he’d caught the maid trying to dispose of the breakfast Khamsin had supposedly eaten three hours earlier! After threatening to freeze the maid with a cold so deep she would never thaw, the truth came tumbling out.

Two days! For two days now, Khamsin had not been able to keep more than a cup of broth in her stomach. And she’d hidden that from him!

His fury at her deception was stronger than any emotion he’d felt since the day he’d learned of his brother’s death. He wanted to roar and gnash his teeth. He wanted to stomp so hard the earth would shake and rip trees up out of the ground in a violent rage that would do a wounded giant proud.

Behind him, the carriage door opened, and Wynter spun around to watch Jorgun alight from the conveyance.

“Well?” His jaw clenched as he waited for the surgeon’s answer, but he knew, even before Jorgun slowly shook his head, what that answer would be.

“She’s much worse, Your Grace. Fever’s set in, and her wounds are going septic. If we don’t stop long enough to cure the infection and let her fully heal, I doubt she’ll reach the borders of Wintercraig alive.

The prognosis left Wynter stunned. Like Valik, Jorgun was no exaggerator. His grave concern meant she was all but knocking on death’s door.

“We’ll stop here then,” Wynter decided abruptly. “And you will do everything in your power to heal her.” He turned to his second-in-command. “Valik, ask for volunteers—fifty men, no more—to stay with me and the queen until Jorgun says she’s well enough to travel. You and the rest of the men continue on to the Craig. You’ve been gone from home long enough. There’s no need for you to delay your return.”

Valik’s spine went stiff and a stubborn, all-too-familiar light entered his eyes. “I won’t leave my king in the middle of enemy territory with a sick woman. Especially not when that woman is the daughter of your enemy. Not with five hundred men to guard you.”

Wynter arched a brow. “You think I can’t protect myself without you?”

“I think you’ll be distracted. Whether you like it or not, she’s gotten under your skin. She’s been there since that first day in the tower, and you know it. And I don’t trust it. I’ll handpick those men—a hundred, not fifty—and we will stay with you. The others can go on ahead.”

Wynter’s eyes narrowed. “You’re an impudent get, Valik Stone-skull.”

“Take after my friend, the king of rock-headedness.” Valik saluted briskly, then turned his mount around to charge down the line.

They set up camp by the road’s edge, in the remains of what had been a wheat field. The rest of the army marched north at a brisk pace, carrying Khamsin’s young maid with them. She’d protested the dismissal at first until Wynter near froze her with a look. She’d known her mistress’s condition was worsening and not only had she not alerted Valik or Wynter to the truth, but she’d helped Khamsin mask the true depth of her illness until it was almost too late.

Valik set up a perimeter around the encampment and appointed shifts of men to stand sentry. A dozen soldiers rode out to hunt for game, while a dozen more headed east along a narrow road to see what they might scavenge from local farmhouses and villages.

Wynter carried Khamsin from the fetid stuffiness of the coach to his tent. Shame and fear battled inside him. She’d lost so much weight, she seemed little more than bones wrapped in a thin casing of flesh.

“Light a fire in the stove, and set out those lamps around the pallet.” His men had prepared the surgeon’s cot in the center of the tent, closest to the iron stove and farthest from the snowy chill that seeped through the edges of the canvas. Gently, he laid his bride facedown upon the prepared bedding. He turned her head to one side so she could breathe without restriction and smoothed the soft ringlets of white-streaked hair back from her face. Her skin was burning to the touch.

“Stubborn, damned-fool woman,” he muttered. “Were you trying to kill yourself?”

He hadn’t thought her that sort. She’d struck him as the kind more likely to fry him with lightning than suffer in silence.

Not that she’d been in any shape to summon lightning lately. He’d almost begun wishing for a thundercloud on the horizon and the misery of torrential rain.

He unlaced the back of her gown and parted the loose-fitting fabric. His jaw clenched at the sight of her back. The skin was red and inflamed around the wounds, and infection—quite a bit of it—had most definitely set in. Red streaks radiated out from several of the deeper lacerations, and underlying the scent of blood and pus was the first hint of a smell that made Wynter’s blood run cold.

Jorgun, standing near Wynter’s elbow, handed him a small, capped pot.

“What’s this?” Wynter growled, removing the lid and sniffing the gooey contents within.

“The herbalist’s salve. For her wounds.”

Wynter recapped the pot and tossed it aside. “What good has it done her? I’ll be damned if we waste another second on failed remedies. Don’t you have a better solution?”

“I’m a surgeon, not an herbalist.”

“But you’ve treated enough battle wounds to know a few basic healing aids for festering wounds. Tell me what you need. I’ll send men to find it.”

The surgeon didn’t waste time arguing. “I need pine needles boiled in snowmelt for a wound wash to clear out the worst of the infection. Send some men to see if they can find fresh chickweed. If they can’t find fresh, then boil some of our dried supply along with chamomile and comfrey for a poultice. I’ll need honey to dress the wounds when I’m done, and willowbark tea to bring down the fever. And my king?”

Wynter paused at the outer doorway and glanced back.

Jorgun met his eyes with grim urgency. “If you want her to live, tell the men to hurry.”

Wynter gave a curt nod and ducked through the tent flaps.

Within minutes, a cookfire had been built just outside the tent, and several kettles were boiling away, one containing pine needles gathered from a nearby stand of trees, another filled with willowbark for fever. A dozen men were scouring the snow-covered countryside for fresh chickweed, but Wynter wasn’t waiting on them. A third kettle filled with dried chickweed, comfrey, and chamomile was boiling alongside the others.

When the pine-needle concoction was ready, Wynter grabbed an old wineskin, packed a funnel with snow, and ladled the steaming wound wash into the funnel. The snow melted and cooled the mixture slightly. He repeated the process, testing the wash against his own skin as Jorgun had instructed, until the wineskin was full of hot, but not scorching, liquid.

Grabbing up a stack of cloths used to bind soldiers’ wounds, he carried the pine-needle infusion into the tent and handed it to Jorgun. Jorgun’s assistant, Frig, was tucking bolsters of cloth around Khamsin.

“I’ll need you both to hold her down,” the surgeon said. “She isn’t going to like this very much.” Jorgun waited for Wynter to grasp his wife’s shoulders and Frig to pin her ankles, then he uncorked the wineskin.

The instant the hot, pungent liquid poured over her infected back, Khamsin reared up, writhing and screaming. She would have thrown herself off the cot had Wynter and Frig not held her fast. Runnels of steaming liquid washed over Khamsin’s skin and ran in streamers down her sides into the absorbent towels Frig had arranged around her.

The wineskin emptied quickly, but a second was already waiting. As Jorgun aimed the spout of hot liquid directly into the worst of her lacerations to irrigate the inflamed flesh, a stream of filthy invectives poured out of her mouth.

In the distance, thunder began to rumble.

Wynter grinned, teeth clenched. “That’s it, little flower. Get angry.” But her supply of energy depleted quickly, and before the surgeon emptied the second wineskin, her slender body went limp. Wynter’s savage grin faded, and he shared a brief, grim look with Jorgun.

The surgeon continued working in silence, probing Khamsin’s wounds, lancing several areas where the infection had gone deep, irrigating everything with fresh pine wash. When he was finally satisfied the wounds were clean, he stepped back and gestured to Wynter.

“Hold her, Your Grace. And get as much of this willowbark tea down her throat as you can.”

Wyn nodded and cradled her against his chest, pouring dribbles of tea into her mouth while Frig and Jorgun replaced the pine-wash-soaked blankets with fresh, dry bedding. When they were done, he laid her back down on the fresh, clean blankets.

One of the men carried in the kettle that smelled of comfrey, chamomile, and chickweed. It was already swimming with soaked linen squares. Wynter fished them out with a stick, wrung them gently—hissing a little at the burn of hot liquid on his palms—and handed them to Jorgun, who placed the steaming, herb-soaked cloths over Khamsin’s back.

When the poultices cooled, Jorgun removed them and smeared a generous layer of honey over the open lacerations to help prevent additional infection from entering the wounds.

An hour later, the process started over again. Throughout the afternoon and deep into the night, Jorgun, Wynter, and Frig worked to defeat the feverish infection that held Khamsin in its grip. The battle continued through the next day, and the next, but despite their efforts, the infection would not give up its hold. The poison had settled deep, and no matter what sort of progress they made, a few hours later the battle would rage again.

Close to midnight on the third day, her temperature spiked, and she began rambling in delirium and thrashing about. Electricity crackled along her fingertips as wild energy sought an outlet. A tempest gathered in the sky. The tent walls shuddered in howling gusts of wind. Rain sluiced down in sheets, falling so fast and furious, it was as if a river were pouring from the sky. Lightning shattered the darkness in merciless barrages, illuminating the tent walls like shades over a candle and turning cloud-blackened night as bright as day. Concussive thunderclaps shook the earth and left Wynter’s ears ringing.

“Winter’s Frost!” The tent flaps flung open, and Valik, who had been standing guard with the men, leapt inside. “That lightning struck so close, it damned near singed my eyebrows!” He scowled at Khamsin’s thrashing body. “It’s her, isn’t it? She’s feeding this storm. You’ve got to knock her out before she kills us all.”

Wynter scowled at his friend. “I will not hit a woman, and especially not my wife.”

“Wyn, those clouds will spawn a cyclone if she keeps feeding them energy.”

“No! She suffers now because of what her father did to her. I will not hurt her more.”

“Well, you’d best do something! A few more minutes of this storm, and we’ll all die, including your precious Summerlander bride.”

As if to prove his point, the whole tent suddenly went bright as day, and a thunderous boom nearly knocked them all off their feet.

Wynter swore beneath his breath. Valik was right. The storm outside was deadly. It had to be stopped. He laid a hand on his wife’s burning forehead. Khamsin’s fever was driving her delirium, and her delirium was driving the storm. If he could bring down her fever, the storm should calm. Since none of the surgeon’s remedies had worked, there was only one other way Wyn knew to lower Khamsin’s temperature.

He closed his eyes and drew on the coldness within him, summoning the power of the Ice Heart. Not much. He wanted to cool her fever, not freeze her to death. Even so, just that tiny summoning ate away at the small reserve of warmth inside him.

That was the insidious price of the Ice Heart. Each use of its power, no matter how minute, robbed him of some irretrievable portion of his humanity. After three years of war and death, so little of his former self remained, he felt even the tiniest additional loss like a hammer to the heart. He could literally feel himself growing more distant, more unfeeling, more like the dread, soulless monster of legend.

When the backs of his eyes began to burn, he opened them and stared down at Khamsin, releasing the cold in a long, sweeping Gaze that traveled up and down the length of her body. The temperature around them dropped, becoming brisk. Her breath puffed out in small clouds of steam. His did not. What lived inside him was so much colder than even the frozen wastelands of the north that each exhaled breath grew warmer rather than colder when it hit the air.

He smoothed his hands across her flesh, rubbing the skin so his Gaze chilled but did not freeze and bending close to breathe cool air upon her in its wake. The burning heat in her skin began to cool. Her thrashing stilled.

Outside, lightning still crashed and boomed as strong as ever.

“Well, that didn’t work,” Valik shouted over the din.

Wynter swore under his breath. “The storm has already gathered enough energy to sustain itself.” It was a fearsome storm, far, far worse than the little thundershower she’d summoned last week in Vera Sola. “I’ll need to bleed some of it off before things will settle down.” Wyn cast a glance back at his friend, and his eyes widened. Valik’s hair had begun to lift in a pale halo around his face. The air around him had begun to glow an eerie shade of violet. “Valik!” he cried, “Move!”

Only swift reflexes honed by years of battle saved him. Valik leapt a scant instant before lightning struck the spot he’d been standing. The tent flashed with blinding light, and thunder cracked with earsplitting fury. The canvas caught fire, but pelting rain extinguished it almost as soon as the first flame flickered. Electricity jumped and sparked along the metal binding of the tent pole, then leapt in frenetic arcs towards Khamsin’s body.

Her eyes flew open, shifting silver, glowing as the wild energy surged through her. Her back arched; her hands splayed out, fingertips sparking with flashes of light. The curling, white-streaked strands in her midnight hair began to move, rising as Valik’s had done on invisible bands of energy while a violet glow surrounded her. She wasn’t controlling or feeding the storm any longer, but she was still a lodestone for its energy.

Wynter lunged towards her, but the lightning reached her first. The explosion of it flung him backward with such force that it drove the breath from his lungs. He lay on the tent floor, stunned and gasping as the lightning speared her, filling her slight body with shining light. Another bolt struck, its white-hot charge seeking her out with unerring accuracy.

He lurched to his feet and stumbled out of the tent, summoning his power as he went. He could not control lightning or storms, but by the Frozen Gates of Hel, he could certainly summon enough cold, dry winter to rob this tempest of its fuel. He reached deep into the bottomless well of power that was the Ice Heart, shouting with a mix of pain and defiance as the devastating fury of it ripped through him. His head flung back, his eyes flew open. Power erupted in a shining column, shooting high into the atmosphere. Rain froze and shattered. Water vapor flash-froze to tiny flakes of snow and ice.

He dug deeper into the icy depths of his power, plunging into the abyss, gathering the bitter cold and driving it into the sky like a sword thrust to the storm’s heart. Magic and nature exploded in a collision of power. But a storm—even a great storm—could not sustain itself when robbed of its warmth and moisture. The clouds shrank, bleeding their strength out in showers of brittle snowflakes.

Wynter held the Ice Heart’s dread power with unflinching determination, until the wild, roiling storm transformed to clear, cloudless sky, filled with stars so bright they dazzled the eye and a cold so bitter it sent every man and beast in the encampment running for shelter and the warmth of campfires and huddled bodies. Only then did he release his hold on the magic.

His body felt stiff and hollow. As if there were a terrible, empty void within. Some elusive memory niggled at his mind, some faint alarm whose meaning he could not remember. He turned and stepped back into his tent.

Valik had beat out what flames the rain had not extinguished. Now, shivering violently, he was crouched over Khamsin’s still form. His hands were shaking with cold as he dragged furs and blankets over her to protect her from the dangerous drop in temperature.

“Does she live?” Wynter asked in a voice bereft of emotion. Some part of his brain remembered that Valik was his beloved friend and that the woman lying on the heap of furs was his wife, whom he was pledged to protect. But the memory felt coldly detached, as if the concept of emotion was little more than alien words on a page. He felt . . . dead inside . . . frozen.

Valik turned to look at him, concern etched across his face. “Wyn? Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.” His vision had changed. Everything seemed paler. Whiter. A red glow emanated from Valik’s chest and radiated outward through his body, down his arms and legs, growing fainter as it extended. Heat bloom. Wynter was seeing the heat of life in Valik’s body.

He glanced down at his own hands and saw white with the barest hint of pink. The girl . . . Khamsin . . . his wife . . . looked white, too, but there was something different about her that he couldn’t define. “Is she dead?”

“What? No. Far from it. I don’t know how she did it, but damned if your Summerlea bride didn’t just use that lightning storm to heal every wound on her body. Here, see for yourself.” Valik moved aside so Wynter could come closer, then hissed in sudden surprise as Wyn drew near. “Thorgyll’s freezing spears! You’re cold as ice!” His body went stiff. His hand fell to the hilt of the sword still strapped to his waist. “Wyn?” he asked again in a cautious, clipped voice. “You all right?”

Wynter ignored him. He crouched down beside the pallet and reached out his hands towards the unconscious woman. Now he understood the difference in her whiteness. It wasn’t the chill of death. It was heat. A concentrated, simmering well of it. So much stronger than what lived in Valik that it glowed bright as day. Not the white of ice, but the white of a blazing summer sun. He could feel it tingling across his palms, thawing his frozen skin. Nerve ends prickled with returning sensation.

He leaned closer and drew a deep breath. His eyes closed as her warmth infused his lungs and drove back the frozen hollowness inside him. “Yes,” he murmured, suddenly weary. “I’m fine, Valik.” He rose to his feet and turned to clap a hand on Valik’s shoulder. “I know what you fear, but for now, at least, there’s no need. Go,” he urged, “get some rest. I’ll stay here with her.”

Valik reached up to cover Wynter’s hand with his own, and enough human warmth must have returned to Wyn’s fingers to reassure him because he nodded, and the rigid, battle-ready tension of his muscles relaxed slightly. “I’ll send someone to repair the tent.”

Wynter glanced up at the scorched holes in the canvas roof where the lightning bolts had shot through. Stars twinkled in the crystalline night sky. The air was still now, with no hint of a breeze. He hadn’t been able to feel the cold in three years, and with the heat radiating from Khamsin’s body, he doubted she would be able to feel it either.

“Leave it ’til morning. We’ll be fine.”

“They can clear up the mess, at least,” Valik insisted. He poked his head outside the tent flap and shouted a series of quick commands. Moments later, half a dozen shivering men gathered up the twisted, melted remains of the growing lamps and everything else that had been damaged in Khamsin’s delirium-induced storm and carted the wreckage out. When they left, much of the tent had been stripped bare.

Wyn waited until they were gone, then arched a brow. “Satisfied?”

“No. But it’ll do for now.” After a last, brief hesitation, Valik bowed and left.

When he was gone, Wynter moved back to the pallet and lay down on the furs beside Khamsin, moving close to the waves of heat emanating from her. The pleasure of that warmth sinking into his flesh was sublime, and so sensual it was nearly erotic. He curled and arm around her waist, threw a leg over hers, and snuggled closer.

Once she was healed, he decided, he would find out exactly how much of the shattering pleasure they’d shared on their wedding night had been real rather than arras-induced.

Khamsin woke to the nip of frost in the air and the heavy, warm weight of furs draped over her. She opened her eyes and glanced around to gain her bearings. She was in a tent. Wynter’s tent, she realized. Only most of the furnishings were gone, and there was a fine layer of frost lying over everything that remained. The tiny ice crystals sparkled in shafts of bright sunlight like the sugar coating of Tildy’s favorite pastry.

Frost? Sunlight?

She sniffed the air and caught the acrid remnants of char. Something had burned, and the scorched smell was familiar. She looked up with burgeoning dread and found bright morning sunlight streaming through dozens of holes in the canvas roof overhead. There were three large, gaping rents, and at least two dozen smaller, coin-sized punctures, all surrounded by a sprinkling of tiny pinpricks. The edges of all the holes were blackened, scorched.

It was as if someone had upended a pail of embers on the roof of the tent. Only she knew no one had. In the way that Wynter could detect the faintest of scents, she could feel the electric echo of lightning. Her lightning.

She’d called a lightning storm down upon this tent. Upon the encampment.

How many men had she killed?

She sat up with a sudden, graceless jolt. The furs covering her body fell away, and she gasped at the slap of freezing air against her naked skin. Naked? She stared down at her bare breasts, the nipples hardened to small, dark points by the cold. Her mind scrambled for the fragments of memories. She’d not felt well. Her back had begun to fester. The last thing she remembered, she’d been riding in the coach, praying for death to end her torment.

Kham reached a hand behind her towards her spine. Fingers fluttered over smooth skin, feeling the small raised ridges of scars but no torn flesh or scabs. She stretched her arms and twisted her back experimentally. There was no pain, not even the twinge of bruised flesh. Her wounds had healed. Completely.

But at what price?

Without warning, the tent flaps parted. Cold air swirled in. Khamsin gasped and slapped her hands over her breasts just as Wynter ducked into the tent, a steaming kettle in one hand and a cloth-covered pot of something that smelled delicious in the other.

All worry over what she might have done evaporated in an instant. Her mind went blank. Her mouth went dry. She couldn’t have moved if her life depended on it.

He was nearly naked. Bare-armed, bare-chested, with shoulders so broad and arms so powerful, he looked like he could bear the weight of the world. Over seven feet of impressive golden muscle, clad in nothing but a grayish white, animal-pelt loincloth and a pair of furred boots strapped to rock-hard calves. Silvery white hair spilled down his back and over his shoulders like a snowfall. The air outside was frigid, but he seemed not to notice it at all. His vivid eyes, pale and piercing, fixed on her with breathtaking intensity.

“You’re awake.” The look in those eyes made Khamsin shiver and squirm. She’d always thought herself immune to the intense sensual passions that afflicted most Summerlanders. Until now. Just the sight of him made her body melt as if she’d eaten arras straight from the tree.

The flare of his nostrils and the faint, satisfied curve that lifted one corner of his mouth told her he knew it.

Damn him for finding it so amusing. And damn her for not being able to look away.

“Where are we?” she asked, forcing a coolness she was far from feeling.

“About two hundred miles south of the Rill. We set up camp here when you fell ill.”

The Rill was the border river that separated Wintercraig from Summerlea. If they were still two hundred miles away, they’d barely traveled ninety miles north of Vera Sola. “How long have we been here?”

“This is the fifth day. The night before last, your fever came to a head. You’ve been sleeping ever since.”

He walked towards her. She stared, fascinated, at the ripple of muscle in his legs and the hard, carved definition of his chest and flat abdomen. The front of his loincloth bore a very distinctive, very large bulge. She licked her suddenly dry lips. The bulge twitched and grew visibly more pronounced. Oh. My.

“Have a care, woman.” His voice was a low, throbbing growl. It vibrated across her skin and raised the fine hairs on the back of her neck. “If you didn’t need food more than I need a good fucking, I’d flip you over right now and fill you ’til you scream and beg for mercy.”

She should have been shocked by his raw coarseness. Spring and Summer would have gasped in outrage. Autumn would have slapped his face. But she, wild, mannerless heathen that she was, only shuddered with helpless lust. Images from her wedding night flashed across her mind on a hazy rush. Silken skin, unexpectedly soft and fragrant, sliding against hers. Broad hands skimming across her, touching her in ways that made her gasp and quake. A burning mouth, raining fire upon her flesh.

She wrenched her thoughts to the present and her eyes away from all that dangerous, seductive skin and that impressive jut of flesh straining against his loincloth. She forced her gaze back up to his face.

Then wished she hadn’t. The look in his eyes was stark and stunning, as powerful and elemental as any storm she’d ever conjured from the skies.

His gaze dropped lower, and she could have sworn blue flames leaped to life in the center of his eyes. She glanced down and realized her hands had slipped from their protective clasps over her breasts. The burnished bronze of one nipple was peeking out between her fingers.

She gasped and snatched a fur, bringing it up to cover herself.

“Don’t.”

The simple command made her freeze. Then scowl. She cast him a defiant glance and pulled the fur higher.

“We both know I’m only going to take it from you before you leave this tent.”

She’d never backed down from a challenge in her life. Not even when retreat served her best interests. Her fingers tightened around the pelt, and she arched one dark brow in return. “You can try, Winterman.”

“I’ll do more than that, Summerlass.” He drew closer and sank to his knees beside her in a single, fluid motion, setting pot and kettle on the ground before him. The long, thick muscles in his thighs bunched and flexed as they absorbed his weight. He smelled of wind and snow, fresh and clean and brisk. Power, a mix of magic and male, swirled around him with dark mystery, deepening his scent with an underlying core of danger. Even without his magic, he would be a formidable man. One to be wary of.

“Here.” The rounded top of the kettle was a removable bowl. He plucked it free and poured a stream of steaming liquid into it, then offered it to her. “Drink. You’ve been too long without food. And be careful. It’s hot.”

The liquid was a rich brown broth of some kind, and the scent of it made Khamsin’s stomach growl. Suddenly, she realized how famished she truly was. Securing the pelt beneath her armpits, she reached for the bowl and brought it to her lips. The first sip nearly scalded her, but pride wouldn’t let her gasp and fan her mouth to cool the sting.

He removed a cloth from the pot to reveal a deliciously scented, stewed meat of some kind. “This is borgan,” he said. “A mix of venison, wild boar, and fowl, flavored with basil, wild onion, and sweetberry and stewed until the flesh falls apart.” A small spoon hung from the edge of the pot. He freed it and handed it to her. “It’s flavorful, but easy to digest. Try a bite.”

She was too hungry to refuse. She dipped the spoon into the borgan and brought it to her mouth. The meat was meltingly tender and slightly sweet. “It’s delicious,” she said, dipping her spoon a second time.

Wynter sat back and watched her eat. He missed nothing. Not the graceful play of her slender fingers. Not the way her pretty lips closed around the spoon or her fluttering pleasure as the sweet flavors of the borgan burst on her tongue.

The sight of her made his cock twitch. Ah, gods, he lusted. The need so fierce it was a living thing inside him, a hunger like nothing he’d ever felt before. Not for just any woman. His hunger had a name: Khamsin Coruscate Atrialan, his wife.

Her hair spilled in unkempt ringlets down her back, threaded with those shots of white that fascinated him so. The warm brown skin of her bare shoulders and neck was creamy smooth, the delicate bones more pronounced after her days of illness, lending her a frail air.

She was fragile. He knew she didn’t think so. Many fools might agree with her, because her spirit was so fierce she seemed more formidable than she was. But he could crush her bones to dust with one glancing blow.

He remembered the cold fury that had filled him the morning after their wedding, when he’d seen the state of her back and realized the crime her father had done against her. He could still feel the icy rage that made him want to flay the skin from Verdan’s bones in retribution and freeze his bloodied corpse in a block of ice so thick he would never thaw, so he would remain an eternal warning to corrupt cowards who would turn their gods-given strength against the women and children they were born to protect.

“How many men died?”

The sound of Khamsin’s voice ripped him out of his dark thoughts. He realized he was still kneeling there beside her, his hands gripped in bloodless fists against his thighs, his muscles bunched tight with suppressed fury. A distinct chill was emanating from him. “What did you say?” he asked.

“When I summoned the storm that caused that”—she jerked her chin up, towards the tattered canvas roof overhead—“how many of your men did I kill?”

He glanced up, then back at her. Perhaps if he had never swallowed the Ice Heart, he would not have recognized the look in her eyes. But he had, and he’d lost count of the times he’d come back from battle with that same bitter dread in his eyes, wondering how many friends his power had slain, how many innocent lives were extinguished because of him.

“None, Khamsin. All live.”

Her eyes widened. “None? But how is that possible? I know what my storms can do, and judging by the state of this tent, the storm I summoned was a bad one.”

“It was a bad one,” he agreed, “but I stopped it.”

“You—” Her voice broke off, then she whispered in astonishment, “How?”

“I starved it into submission.” Her brow furrowed, her gray eyes filled with disbelief and suspicion. “I use the Ice Heart to steal its heat and moisture,” he explained, “so it had nothing to feed on. It died away before it could harm anyone.”

“You . . .” She closed her mouth. He saw her absorb what was obviously an astonishing possibility, saw wary disbelief battle the fragile bloom of hope in her eyes. “No one’s dead? No one’s even harmed? You’re sure?”

“I’m sure.”

“I—” She dropped her head, lashes shuttering down to veil her gaze. Her jaw worked. When she finally spoke, her voice was a low, strained whisper. “Thank you.” She looked up suddenly, her eyes fierce. “Thank you,” she said again. This time her voice was firm and fervent. “You don’t know how much that means to me.”

He smiled sadly because he’d only just realized what similar creatures they truly were. “Yes, min ros, I think I do.” Like him, she despised the destruction she wreaked. The difference was, he’d chosen to wield his deadly magic. She’d possessed hers since birth.

He rose to his feet. He wanted to comfort her but knew enough about wild things not to be so foolish. “No doubt you’d like a bath.” He didn’t give her a chance to refuse. He simply stepped outside and motioned to his men. She’d been asleep for one full day, out of her mind with fever for three days before that. He’d never met a noblewoman yet who could stand to go so long without the feel of warm water and soap against her skin.

Khamsin, still sitting on the pallet of furs and clutching several of the pelts to her chest, scuttled back when four soldiers entered carrying in a large, beaten-copper tub. They set it near the fire burning in the iron stove and left. Another four men entered, carrying pails of steaming water. They formed a line leading out through the tent flap. Outside a longer line wound all the way to the large cookfires burning in the center of the camp. Pail after pail of water passed down the line until the tub was well filled. The last of them handed Wynter a stack of linens and a small wooden pail filled with soap, a bottle of fragrant oil, and a washcloth.

Wynter found himself fighting back flares of aggression as he waited for them to finish. The wolf in him was getting snarly about having so many men near his female.

When he was finally alone once more with his wife, the tension of Wynter’s protective, territorial instincts faded, but a new tension, sultry and simmering, rose to take its place. He reached for the bottle of oil, unstoppered it, and poured a thin stream into the bath. The scent of mountain jasmine rose up on wisps of curling steam.

“Come, wife.” He stretched out a hand towards her. “To your bath.”

She didn’t move. She continued to clutch the pelt to her chest as if she truly thought he would let her leave this tent before he reacquainted himself with every inch of her skin, every intimate detail of her body, and every breathless nuance of her pleasure. He had an heir to sire, both to ensure the continuation of his line and to free him from the Ice Heart, but even without that, from the moment he’d realized his wife was the intriguing little firebrand he’d not been able to erase from his mind, he’d known he would spend every day of the next year learning her pleasure and teaching her his.

It began now.

“Come,” he said again. “I’ve already acquainted myself with everything you’re trying to hide. I’ve spent the last several days nursing you back from the brink of death, tending every need of your body. There is no part of you I have not seen.”

“That is different,” she snapped. “I wasn’t aware of what you were doing.”

“And what of our wedding night? You were aware then. I drank the same arras you did, but I still remember everything. I remembered learning the taste of your skin on my tongue, the weight of your breasts in my hands, the feel of your sex gripping mine. I know you remember it, too. There is no place between us for false modesty.”

She still didn’t move. “I am not bathing with you here, and that is final.”

“You will,” he corrected. “If I have to strip those pelts from you and drop you kicking and screaming into the tub, you will.”

Her eyes narrowed, beginning to swirl with silver. “You. Wouldn’t. Dare.”

“Oh, min ros, I would.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “Wrestling a beautiful, naked woman out of her furs and into her bath? What Winterman worth his stones would pass up a chance like that?”

“I’ll fry you before you lay a finger on me.”

It was all he could do not to laugh at her outraged expression. She was so fierce for such a tiny woman. Rebellious, headstrong, and so sure of her own power. She probably thought she could take on Frost Giants single-handedly. She definitely thought she could best him.

She couldn’t. Her power, no matter how impressive, was no match for the Ice Heart. Trouble was, he didn’t want to force her. Her father had already brutalized her enough for two lifetimes. Besides, he wanted her bathed, yes, but afterwards he wanted a warm, sweet-smelling, willing woman in his arms, not an angry firebrand determined to shoot a lightning bolt up his tender bits.

“I hadn’t thought you such a faithless coward. You are a princess of the Summer Throne, wedded Queen of the Craig, and my wife. You swore an oath, before a priest and your father’s court, to accept my counsel and my care. You swore to offer me all the fruits of your life. And now, you would deny me that which you swore to offer? Do you have so little honor?”

The accusation stole the silver from her eyes, leaving them pure, plain gray filled with shock and dismay. “I . . . No! Of course not! I’m no oathbreaker.”

“Then come to your bath. Accept my care, as you swore you would. Offer me the fruits of your life, that I may dine once more on peace instead of war.”