The Winter King

CHAPTER 17

The Frozen Heart of Winter

On silent feet, Khamsin crept across Gildenheim’s marble floors. The hour was late. All of Gildenheim was sleeping save the guards who patrolled the outer defenses and the handful who prowled the hallways of the castle in search of mischief-makers and spies. Kham had dodged three of those while making her way from her rooms to the mysterious, forbidden Atrium that only Wynter ever entered.

His predilection for secrecy had actually been a boon to her. If not for those times when she’d followed him from his room to the Atrium, she would not have known the schedule of the guards or the back-stairs path least likely to result in an encounter with some wandering servant or dallying courtier.

The Atrium’s twelve-foot-tall doors were fashioned from carved and gilded white wood inset with large panes of frosted glass. Etched snowflakes and curling lines swirled across the glass’s translucent surface. The doorknobs were shaped like two great silver wolves rearing up on hind legs, their bushy tails the cunningly disguised lever door handles. Each wolf held a gold ball between its diamond teeth. The ball on the right sported a keyhole.

Kham knelt by the right door, pulled the lockpicks from her skirt pocket, and went to work. Krysti had taught her well. In less than a minute, the lock clicked open. Kham pulled down on the wolves’ tails, and the doors opened. She slipped inside, careful to close the doors behind her, and pulled the shade from her lamp. Light spilled out in a bright circle around her.

“Now, Wynter of the Craig, let’s see what you’ve been hiding.” Lifting her lamp high, Khamsin turned to investigate her husband’s private sanctum.

She wasn’t sure what she expected to find. Private military secrets, perhaps. Treasures vast enough to buy entire kingdoms. Sacred antiquities. Possibly even some dread, terrible evil Wynter hid behind his handsome face and winning smile. (Although despite her best, angriest efforts to paint him a foul, blackhearted villain, she honestly didn’t believe that last one.)

But when the light from her lamp spilled out across the Atrium’s shadowy secrets, she didn’t find dazzling treasure. She didn’t find a secret vault of sensitive military or political documents. She didn’t find war plans, or holy relics, or a bloody altar to the dark gods.

What she found, instead, was beauty. Breathtaking beauty.

Her mouth open in a soundless gasp of wonder, Khamsin stepped forward into a glorious, ghostly white forest carved entirely from ice. Moonlight, spilling through the leaded-glass dome overhead, sparkled on the delicate, ice-carved leaves and needled boughs, making the entire room shimmer like diamonds in soft silver light.

“Summer Sun.” The shocked, reverent whisper echoed in the total silence of the room. She tilted her head back. The life-sized ice trees soared seventy feet high. The Atrium roof soared higher still, and in the space between the tops of the trees and the sheltering glass panes of the glass roof, flocks of carved ice birds were frozen in flight, wings outstretched as they wheeled and dipped through an imaginary sky.

Glittering snow covered the Atrium floor, and as she approached the first few trees of the ice forest, she discovered an astonishingly lifelike baby deer carved from frosted ice standing on spindly legs beneath the watchful eyes of his mother. Just beyond, in a small clearing beside a tiny brook carved of clear ice, a family of Winterfolk were having a picnic.

Snow crunched beneath her slippers as she moved closer and brought her lantern up to illuminate the family. There were four figures: a man, a woman, a young boy, and an infant lying on a blanket between his parents. The sculptures were astonishingly lifelike, right down to the expressions of doting, parental love on the adult faces and the beaming, mischievous exuberance on the face of the boy as he cupped a tiny bird in his hands.

Who had made this place? Why was it here?

She moved deeper into the ice forest. The snow on the ground was packed in places, providing trails that let her walk through the trees without worrying that she might damage them. With each step, she discovered new statues and scenes hidden amongst the ghostly tree trunks. Squirrels, wolves, foxes, bears, birds, flowers, waterfalls, frozen ponds. And everywhere, life-sized ice sculptures of happy families hiked through forest paths, danced among the trees, skated on frozen ponds, climbed frosted rocks and trees.

After the fourth or fifth family tableau, she realized that the people in each exquisitely rendered family scene were all the same. A mother, a father, and two sons—one at least ten years older than the other. The people aged from scene to scene—most notably, the youngest child grew from infant to toddler, and the boy went from youth to young man—but they were the same people, the same family, carved over and over again.

And then she noticed a scene or two that featured only the boys when they were much older. A handsome teenaged boy with hair that tumbled in his eyes. A towering older brother now grown to manhood, with a face she recognized better than her own.

The truth froze Khamsin where she stood. The statues in this room weren’t just beautifully sculpted art. They were carefully rendered scenes from Wynter’s life.

These statues were memories. Wynter’s memories.

Scenes of his family, his brother, sculpted in ice and hidden here, away from the world. Frozen proof of the love and happiness he’d known before her brother had slain his.

Khamsin tried to stay away from the Atrium. Once she realized the room was a shrine to the family Wynter had loved and lost, going there seemed like an intrusion, a trespass in a sacred space. But the more she tried to stay away, the stronger the place pulled at her.

She told herself not to be driven by her emotions, to keep focused. What was in that room would do nothing to help her survive the coming year. There was no secret, no treasure she could use to bribe her way to safety. No military or political information that might buy her asylum in another kingdom.

And yet, several times a day, she found herself standing before those locked, frosted-glass doors, aching to open them and slip back inside the secret world of happy memories Wynter had created for himself. She’d never known the joy of a close, loving family. Since birth, she’d been reviled, feared, isolated from the warmth her sisters and brother shared, from the love Verdan Coruscate had unstintingly showered upon them. Wynter had grown up with everything that she had been denied: a mother and a father who loved him, laughter, happiness. Belonging.

On the third morning, she gave up her attempts to respect the privacy of his memories. She wanted what she’d never had. Even if she could only vicariously enjoy someone else’s frozen memories of what a loving family felt like.

She sent Krysti away on an errand, made her way to the Atrium, and waited until the coast was clear. Picking the lock was easier the second time. She pulled down on the wolves’ tails and slipped inside Wynter’s frozen wonderland.

In full daylight, the extent of ice forest built inside the Atrium was even more impressive—and more breathtakingly beautiful. With bright sunlight streaming through the glass dome, the frozen forest blazed to pure, radiant, diamondine life. It felt like Halla on earth. Pristine and perfect. And for now, at least, all hers.

She wandered slowly amongst the trees, inspecting and savoring every detail, every leaf, every branch, every delicately etched bird wing, life-sized animal and carved wildflower hidden amongst the trees. Whoever had created these sculptures for Wynter was an incredible artist. What a gift, to be able to form such perfect re-creations of life from blocks of frozen water.

When it came to the scenes of Wynter’s family, she slowed even more, committing each face and expression to memory, as if by doing so she could make those memories her own. The soft curve of his mother’s lips. The warmth of her smile. The pride in his father’s handsome, regal face. The love so plain between them as they watched their children and basked in each other’s company.

What was it like to be surrounded by such love and belonging?

She couldn’t keep her hands to herself. She found herself stroking frozen flower petals, laying her hand on the cold face of the carved toddler, brushing fingertips across the lips of Wynter, the young man, careful not to let her hand linger, for fear that her Summer-born gifts might melt the ice. Even so, with each brush of her hand, she could almost imagine she was there, enjoying a cool spring day in the forest with a family who loved her.

She closed her eyes and imagined that the ice forest was real, that there was a cool breeze blowing through the frozen treetops, fragrant with pine and spruce and loamy soil damp with snowmelt. And when she opened her eyes again, she could hear the birds singing in the trees, the rustle of squirrels and foxes darting through the shrubs and skittering across the bracken on the forest floor. She could hear the low, manly rumble of Wynter’s laughter as he and his brother walked through the woods on a hunt, bows slung across their backs, smiles on their faces as they shared a funny tale. She could hear his mother’s voice, calling her children back to her side, telling them to watch their balance by the stream, and his father telling her not to worry so, that their boys would be fine. They were Craig-born, after all.

The game of pretend felt so real she was loath to leave. She managed only because she knew she would be back the next day, and the next.

Krysti grew suspicious of all the errands she was sending him on, so she had to shorten her visits, but each morning she woke up eager to visit again. And each day, she counted down the minutes until she could. She became quite adept at giving would-be spies the slip, traversing up and down the maze of corridors and stairways in Gildenheim only to circle back around to the Atrium once she’d lost her followers.

And when she stepped inside the Atrium’s secret world, it was as if every wound and burden she’d ever suffered dropped away.

As strange as it sounded, she’d never been happier. And she never wanted the feeling to end. The days turned into a week. The week turned into a second.

And then, inevitably, Wynter returned.

The familiar, ice-and-snow-capped towers of Gildenheim were a welcome sight.

“Home, at last, Hodri,” Wynter murmured. The last two weeks had been long, cold, exhausting, and frustrating. The western defenses were nowhere close to being complete. If Coruscate and his Calbernan friends invaded anytime soon, they would be on Gildenheim’s doorstep before Wynter’s people managed to rally a defense.

Angry that he’d had to replace three of the garrison commanders and send another two thousand men to defend that dangerously undermanned coast, and weary to his bones because he’d forgone sleep for the last four days in his rush to return to Gildenheim, Wynter wanted nothing more than to enjoy a long soak in a steaming-hot tub and fall into his bed for a full day and night of undisturbed slumber. Maybe then he’d be close to feeling human again.

He touched his heels to his mount’s side, and the stallion cantered the remaining distance up the switchback road and through the palace portcullis. Hooves clattered on the courtyard cobbles. The tower lookout had already sent up the cry calling servants to help with the horses and baggage, so as Wynter drew Hodri to a halt, the Steward of the Keep was already standing on the palace steps, waiting to greet him.

“Your Grace.” Deervyn Fjall bowed and motioned to a footman to fetch the king’s saddlebags.

“Fjall.” Wyn tossed Hodri’s reins to a stableboy. “Give him an extra ration of oats and a good rubdown. We rode hard the last three days.”

“Yes, Sire. We’ll take good care of him.” The stableboy patted Hodri’s strong neck and led him away.

Turning his attention to the Steward, Wyn said, “Tell Vinca I want a hot bath and a hot meal.” He started up the stone steps.

“Yes, sir. Of course.” Deervyn Fjall jogged up the steps beside him. “Your Grace, you asked me to keep an eye out in your absence.” He pitched his voice low so it would not carry.

Wyn paused. “There were more falcons? How many?”

“Three sighted, my lord. We only managed to bring one of them down.” Fjall handed Wynter a tiny, curled slip of paper. “We didn’t catch the person the birds were intended for. Each time, the falcon flew to a different part of the palace.”

Wyn uncurled the message and read the tiny script intended for someone in Gildenheim. His fist closed around the paper, crumpling it, and thrust the wadded slip of paper in his vest pocket. “Thank you, Fjall. Lord Valik and I will take it from here.”

“Of course, Your Grace.” The Steward of the Keep bowed again.

Courtiers who’d heard the call announcing Wynter’s return were lined up along the steps three deep. The lines of them dipped low in a rolling wave of bows and curtsies as he passed. He scanned the crowd, automatically seeking the one face that had been in his mind since the day of his departure. The dark, silver-shot locks in a sea of blonds.

She wasn’t there.

Anger and disappointment flared with equal intensity. What now? His queen could not be bothered to welcome him home? There was something more pressing that demanded her attention? Like sending coded messages to her brother, perhaps?

“Where is the queen?”

Fjall blanched white beneath his golden skin. “You said to watch but not to interfere—and not to let her know she was being watching.”

“I know what I said,” Wyn snapped. “You don’t need to remind me of my own orders. Where is she?”

“She’s been going there every day since last week. There’s no sign that she’s done any harm, my lord, but—”

“Where is she?” Ice cracked in his voice.

The Steward swallowed. “The queen is in the Atrium, Your Grace.”

“What are you doing here?”

The guttural bark ripped through the still serenity of the Atrium.

Khamsin, who had been sitting in the icy meadow where the sculptures of Wynter and his family were picnicking, jumped to her feet. She turned in a flurry of skirts to find Wynter standing at the edge of the meadow, practically vibrating with fury.

The temperature in the room plunged. The small meal she’d brought to eat with Wynter’s family went white with frost.

“What are you doing in here?” He advanced upon her, each foot falling heavily upon the ground, all but making the earth shake with each stride. “You knew this room was forbidden. You gave me your oath you would not trespass.”

Kham found herself retreating two steps for every one long stride Wynter advanced. She hadn’t seen him in such a state since the day he’d discovered his bride was not the auburn-haired princess he’d been expecting. No—not even then. She’d never seen him this enraged.

His fingers were clenched in heavy, rock-hard fists. His eyes had gone completely white, and if she hadn’t instantly reached for the power of the sun, his Gaze would have frozen her solid where she stood.

She held out her hands in supplication, truly afraid of him for the first time in a long while. There was no hint of the passionate lover or tender husband in the ice-carved lines of his face. He was all ice, cold and harsh and implacable. “Wynter—I—”

“You what? Thought you’d find some valuable military secrets here that you could send to your brother?”

“No!” Her voice cracked. He suspected she was spying for her brother? She ignored the slight twinge of guilt that reminded her she had come here looking for secrets she could use to ensure her survival. “Of course not! I haven’t spoken to my brother in years! I don’t even know where he is.”

“Then what are you doing here? Is this how you honor your oaths? Valik was right. I’ve been too soft, allowed you too much freedom. And you’ve interpreted my indulgence as a sign of weakness.”

“Valik is an idiot!”

“We’re not talking about Valik!” His roar blasted out with such force that icy leaves in the tree above Khamsin shivered, cracked and fell from the limbs, showering down in a hail of broken ice. “Valik isn’t the one who betrayed my trust, broke my law, and invaded a room he was expressly forbidden to enter! Valik isn’t the one who broke his oath! I should have known better than to ever trust a Summerlander. You come from a long line of liars, murderers, thieves, and cheats. Why should I think you would be any different?”

Fire swept through her veins. Anger, fed by the weeks of Wynter’s abandonment and her own defensive rage at having been caught intruding, burst to life. Lightning whipped through her veins, heating her blood. Overhead, visible through the Atrium’s glass roof, the sky grew dark as clouds gathered.

“You call my family murderers? Ha! You have more blood on your hands than Summerlea’s last three kings combined! How many of our villages did you raze? How many innocent women and children froze to death or starved in the wake of your conquest? And for what? Because your bride preferred my brother’s company to yours! Frankly, after having been wed to you these last months now, I don’t blame her!”

His brows shot up, and the temperature dropped commensurately. The sky overhead went white as the gathered clouds began pouring out ice and snow. “You complain of the care I have shown you?”

“ ‘Care’?” She all but screeched the word. “To what ‘care’ exactly do you refer? You mean the way you ignore me for weeks on end? That care? Or the way you have made it clear to every member of your court that I am to be ostracized and treated as a source of pathetic amusement?”

“You blame me because you haven’t managed to win my people’s regard?”

“Of course you’re to blame! You’ve done everything but posted a written edict instructing your people to revile me. You and your precious Valik and that vile cousin of his.”

Wind howled through the palace turrets and rattled the Atrium’s glass panes. Her anger had started as a defensive response to Wynter’s own fury, but as the accusations poured from her lips, Kham began to realize just how much rage and resentment she’d bottled up inside her. And considering that she’d spent a lifetime fighting to keep her temper in check—and usually failing with disastrous results—she could scarcely believe that she’d kept so much emotion contained for so long.

“I made you my queen!” Wynter bellowed. His eyes had gone pure white, and a cloud enveloped the pair of them, shifting back and forth between frost and steam as they both unleashed pent-up anger.

“Queen of what?” she shouted back. “Your indifference? You brought me to this iceberg and abandoned me here!”

“You expected love sonnets and roses? You are here to bear my heir, nothing more.”

Lightning ripped across the sky. Thunder boomed, deafeningly close. If she’d ever had any doubt that he considered her anything more than a convenient womb, he’d just cleared that up.

“Winter’s Frost! You could drive a saint to murder.” Wynter dragged his hands through his hair. “None of this justifies your presence here. This room is off-limits.”

“Oh, right! Because this room is just full of secrets that could imperil the kingdom! My gods! Just imagine what horrors would ensue if I told my brother that the Winter King once had a family he loved!”

“This is my place. Mine! I don’t want you here! What part of that don’t you understand?”

The rejection drove into her like a knife, parting her ribs and ripping into her heart.

Lightning struck the Atrium’s roof. The glass shattered.

Wynter dove for Khamsin, catching her around the waist with one big arm and sweeping her off her feet, carrying her clear of the lethal rain of razor-sharp glass. They landed in the snowdrift near one of the statues of Wynter and his family.

But instead of earning Kham’s gratitude, Wyn’s rescue only enraged her further. She closed her hands into fists and beat them on his chest. It was like beating a marble statue. He didn’t move and her hands throbbed. She shoved against him, writhing and pushing to free herself.

“Get off me! Get off, damn you! Don’t pretend concern for my safety. It’s just another form of lying, and I’m sick of it! Do you hear me? You’re no different than my father!”

Snow fell through the broken Atrium roof in thick sheets, swirling about on fierce gusts of winds, until the entire room looked like a child’s blown-glass globe filled with oil and bits of white crystal that, when shaken, would “snow” over some tiny carved scene inside the globe.

“I am nothing like your father.” He caught her wrists and pinned her to the snow-covered floor, holding her easily as she struggled and bucked against him.

“No, you’re worse. He’s at least always been honest about wanting me dead.” Her chest heaved. Her whole body was hot and flushed. “There never really was any hope I’d come out of this year alive, was there? You just held out the possibility of mercy to keep me docile and compliant, all the while ensuring none of your people would speak for me when the time came.”

He gave a bark of mocking laughter. “You call this docile?”

The laughter made her temper flare like water poured on hot oil. She began to struggle in earnest, writhing and thrashing about in an attempt to break free. During her struggles, her skull whacked into his jaw with a loud crack. Pain exploded across her forehead. She fell back, dizzy and moaning as stars danced before her eyes.

Wynter, barely fazed, flexed his jaw from side to side and glared at her.

“Damn it, Khamsin, stop before you hurt yourself.”

“I’m fine.” She tugged her arm until he released one wrist, and she laid the free hand against her forehead, massaging the flesh gingerly. “Besides, what do you care?” She gave him a dark look.

“I’ve told you before. You are my wife and my queen. Your well-being is my responsibility.”

“Right up to the time you have me put to death, you mean?” She jerked away from his hand. “I told you I’m fine. And I don’t want to be your ‘responsibility.’ ”

His teeth clenched. He gripped her jaw and forced her to look at him. “Just shut up and let me look at that.”

She glared up at him. “A little whack on the head isn’t going to affect my ability to bear your heir. Of course, how, exactly, I’m supposed to conceive that heir when you avoid my bed like the plague is a complete mystery.”

The minute the words left her mouth, she knew she’d made a mistake. Wynter went completely still, and his gaze suddenly went sharp as a blade.

“Is that what this is all about? My recent absence from your bed upsets you?” His voice was silky smooth, his eyes searingly intent.

Not for all the world was she going to dignify that with an answer. “No, your lying to me upset me. If you won’t keep your oaths, then I won’t keep mine either.”

“When have I ever lied to you?”

Her mouth curled. “Don’t take me for an idiot. I know you took your harlot with you when you left. Did you think I would just sit here playing the sweet, long-suffering wife while you and Reika Villani fornicated your way across the kingdom?”

His eyes narrowed. “You think Reika and I . . . ?”

“Not just me. The whole court. You weren’t the slightest bit discreet. Did you think we all were blind and deaf? Did you think you could just ride off with her for a fortnight, and no one would put two and two together?” When he didn’t answer, she slapped at his hands and shoved at him in irritation. “Let me up, Wynter. You’re squashing me.”

“No,” he said slowly. “No, I don’t think I will.” He caught the wrist he’d freed earlier and pinned her back to the ground. The white Wolf on his wrist brushed against her Summer Rose.

Khamsin gasped. The throbbing pain in her temple evaporated as another, far more powerful and irresistible sensation swept over her. “Stop that.”

“Stop what?” His voice had gone low and throaty.

“You know what. You think you can manipulate me with your . . . your wiles.”

“You think I have wiles?” He brushed his lips against the soft skin behind her ear, making her shiver violently. “So you are wroth with me for being absent so long from your bed? Is that the real reason you came here? Because you wanted to get my attention?” He blew a soft, icy breeze down her throat. The chill against superheated flesh made her shudder with delicious sensation. Her nipples tightened to hard points, and her mouth went dry.

“I—I—” She couldn’t put two coherent words together. She settled for one. “Stop.”

His tongue touched her ear lightly in a swift, teasing caress. “I thought you would appreciate my husbandly consideration. Lady Frey said you needed time to heal, so I gave it to you.”

“That was weeks ago.” His skin smelled so good. Rich and seductive, the scents multilayered: cool crisp winter freshness, underlain with a darker, earthier, masculine scent, and something else she couldn’t name that made her body throb every time she smelled it. She told herself she would resist seduction, but she couldn’t resist that. She pressed her face to the skin of his neck, breathing him in. Her eyes rolled back in pleasure.

“If you hungered for my touch, you need only have asked.” His teeth grazed her skin. Her eyes closed as his mouth found her breast and he bit down lightly, through the crushed velvet of her overdress.

She moaned, her breath starting to come faster. It wasn’t fair, the effect he had on her. He pressed his wrist to hers, lowered his voice to that sultry, seductive growl, and every cell in her body started screaming in need.

“How was I supposed to do that when you avoided me at every turn?” She fixed her eyes on the pulse in his strong throat. A blush rose in her cheeks. She’d admitted her weakness . . . confessed that she’d wanted him . . . that she yearned for him. “And then you left. With Reika Villani.” The last popped out of its own volition, the tone hurt, wounded. Ah, gods, she was all but weeping.

He pulled back, his gaze searching her face. “You are jealous?”

“Not jealous. Betrayed.” She tried to cling to some measure of dignity. “You swore an oath of fidelity.”

“And I kept it. Reika Villani’s father is dying. I gave her escort to her father’s estate, nothing more. Or did you think I was lying in my note when I vowed to remain your faithful husband?”

“Note? What note?” He was nibbling at her ear now, and her thoughts began to scatter like autumn leaves.

“The one I left on your dressing table.”

“There was no note—ah!” His hips moved against hers. Even through the thick layers of her skirts, she could feel the hard ridge of his flesh. Her hips bucked involuntarily, issuing a wordless demand. Big hands slid beneath her skirts, skating up her stocking thighs to the soft heat between her legs. Fingers stroked across hot, slippery flesh, driving her wild.

“Do you hunger for my touch?”

She hadn’t even realized he’d undone her laces until her bodice parted, and he used his teeth to lower the front of her chemise, baring her breasts. His tongue swirled around first one nipple, then the other, bathing each in icy fire.

Her hands roved across his back and chest, pulling impatiently at fur and cloth to reach the silky skin beneath. She groaned as the hard, velvety head of his sex pressed teasingly against hers. She reached down to grab his buttocks to pull him closer, wanting him inside her.

His hips didn’t budge. And the mouth doing such dizzyingly seductive things to her breasts stopped, too.

She opened her eyes to scowl at him, and found him pushed back on his hands, watching her.

“Do you, wife? Do you want this?” He gave a little buck of his hips. The tip of his sex pushed just inside her, then retreated, leaving the inner muscles of her channel clenching at unsatisfying emptiness. “Do you hunger for it? For me?”

She was done with trying to pretend indifference. He knew it for the lie it was. She wrapped her legs around his waist, her arms around his chest, and surged up against him.

“Yes! Yes, damn you, yes!”

He smiled, and it dazzled her. Then he drove into her, and all coherent thought splintered. She gasped with the sharp ache of pleasure. Her arms tightened around him. Her nails clawed at the layers of fabric still separating her hands from his flesh. Her hips tilted up to meet each of his thrusts, taking him as deep inside her as she could.

Gods, help her. She’d missed this. Missed it more than she had ever let herself admit.

Kham shivered under him—not from the cold ice against her back, but from the heat that boiled inside her with each devastatingly erotic, slow-motion thrust of his body against hers.

“Take this off.” She yanked at his vest. “Take it off. Now.” He pulled back to shed the furred vest, but she was too impatient to wait for him. She reached for the soft, woven-silk shirt beneath, gripped the sides of the reinforced yoke in her hands, and yanked. The silk ripped with a satisfying noise, baring a broad expanse of silky-smooth golden skin stretched across temptingly well-defined muscle.

Her mouth found his skin. She licked the salty-sweet flavor of his flesh, bit at him, found the hard, tightly gathered coin of his male nipple, and drew it into her mouth. He groaned, and the sound rippled inside her. Her muscles clenched and released and clenched again. She bit down on the pointed tip of his nipple. He gave a guttural roar, and his hips slammed forward, driving her up and back. Stars exploded, bright, blinding flashes of light, and she screamed as wave after wave of sensation crashed over her. Her hands clutched at his shoulders. Her legs locked around his waist, shaking in helpless abandon.

Wynter held his wife on his chest, his clothes wrapped around her. He’d longed for a long, hot soak in a steaming tub, but this was so much better. The weariness, the irritability, the anger and frustration had all melted away from him the instant he’d buried himself in his little Summerlass.

He ran a hand across her hair, marveling at its soft texture, the way the ringlets curled around his finger, loving the little threads of white shot through all that darkness. Midnight Storm.

“Why did you come here, after promising you wouldn’t?”

She glanced up, her gray eyes still touched by passionate silver, looking like shining moons against her dusky skin. “I wanted to know what you were hiding. And I thought you’d broken your own oath, so I saw no reason to keep mine.”

“I don’t break my oaths. At least until this year is up, the only woman to share my bed will be you and you alone.” He could have reassured her again that there was nothing between Reika and him, nor ever likely to be, but he found he liked that hint of jealousy in his hot-tempered wife. No woman had ever felt the need to warn other women away. Elka had known he would never stray and taken his fidelity as her due. He had assumed she was just as faithful, and he’d grown . . . complacent.

“So why did you keep coming when you knew the Atrium contained nothing of value to anyone but me? Oh, yes,” he admitted in answer to her look of surprise. “I know you’ve been here every day for at least the last week.”

“You have someone spying on me?” She rolled her eyes. “Of course you have someone spying on me. Probably every person in the palace.”

Of course he did. He’d given his foreign bride all the freedom she could desire, or rather, all the rope in the world with which to hang herself. He’d been a blind fool for a woman once before. That was a mistake he would never make again.

“Why did you keep coming back?” he pressed. “What were you expecting to find?” If she was the one sending messages to her brother, she’d had an entire palace to search, places with far more valuable caches of information. According to Fjall, she’d never gone near any of them. She’d come here and kept coming here.

“What was I looking for?” Khamsin’s curling black lashes swept down over her eyes, as she surrendered the truth. “The same thing you were looking for when you had this place created, I imagine.”

Wyn frowned in bemusement. “What do you mean?”

Her slender fingers trailed across his chest, stroking his skin and stopping over his heart.

He waited, but when no answer was forthcoming, he rolled to one side. She slid off his chest and into his waiting arms. He covered her body with his, bearing his weight on his forearms. The long, unbound strands of his hair fell around his face and hers, secluding them in a veil of silvery white.

“What do you think I look for when I come here?”

She looked up at him. She had only to lift her head a few inches to cover his lips with her own. For a moment, he thought she might try to distract him with a kiss, but instead she only lifted a hand to his face and ran a thumb across his lower lip.

“Love.” Her voice was so low, he had to strain to hear it.

He caught her thumb between his teeth and touched his tongue to its tip. “You think I come here looking for love?”

“For the memory of it, yes.” She met his gaze directly, and the clear, unwavering honesty in her gray eyes stilled him. “I’ve been coming here to imagine what it must have been like.”

“To love?”

“To be part of a family. To belong.”

It had been a very long time since Wynter wanted to gather another person up in his arms and offer them comfort. But the wistful sadness in that hoarsely whispered confession tore at the gentleness he didn’t realize still existed in his heart.

As if regretting the vulnerability she’d just revealed, Khamsin pushed against him and tried to wriggle free. He didn’t budge.

“You have a family.”

“Do I?” Her lips curved in a sad smile. “My mother died when I was three. My father hated me from the day I was born. My sisters and brother harbor some measure of affection for me, but that doesn’t mean I’ve ever been part of a family. Not really. Not like what you’ve preserved here in this room.” Her voice grew husky. She clamped her lips closed and turned her head away, but not before he saw the shimmer of tears spangling her lashes.

The sight of those tiny, glittering drops filled him with both icy rage and terrible, consuming sadness. What miserable excuse for a man would deny his own child, as Verdan Coruscate had denied his fourth daughter?

Wynter brushed his wife’s tears from her lashes. She could not be the traitor Valik suspected. No one could be so convincing. He’d been blind to Elka’s perfidy because he loved and trusted her. But Khamsin was and had always been the daughter of an enemy king. She’d deliberately deceived him into wedding her when he thought he was marrying her sister. He wasn’t blinded by love or trust this time. And when she said she’d come here because she wanted to know what it was to belong to a family—a loving family—he believed her.

He rolled off her and got to his feet, pulling her up with him. He took a few minutes to help her rearrange her clothing and draped his furred vest around her shoulders.

“I made this place for my brother,” he admitted. “He was only five when the Frost Giant killed our parents. I didn’t want him to grow up not knowing who they were or how much they loved him. It started as just a single sculpture of our parents, but Garrick liked it so much I made more.”

He had succeeded in surprising her. “You made this place? You’re the sculptor?”

He shrugged. “Ice carving is something of a national pastime in Wintercraig. I started when I was very young and got fairly good at it.”

“Fairly? Wynter, there are famed artists in the Summer Court who couldn’t match what you’ve created here.”

He flushed a little at her praise, then corrected her misconception that he alone was responsible for the Atrium’s sculptures. “They aren’t all mine. Garrick did his own carving when he was old enough. It was something the two of us did together.”

She gazed around the crystalline world of ice and snow. “Would you . . . tell me about them? Your family?”

A hand squeezed his heart, and Wynter found himself wishing Verdan Coruscate was standing here before him now, so he could choke the life out of him.

He was careful to keep his voice calm as he said, “It would be my pleasure, min ros.”

He walked his wife through the numerous trails of the extensive ice forest that he and his brother had created, pausing often to point out a particular piece, or tell her about the memory that had inspired a particular scene. He’d brought Elka here once. She’d admired the beauty of the place, the skill of his and Garrick’s sculpting, but she’d never felt the love. She’d never drunk in the memories with eyes that shone like silver moons, or paused so often to laugh over funny little details. Nor had she ever come here on her own to enjoy what he and Garrick had spent so many years sculpting. But Khamsin’s enthusiasm and her obvious appreciation for their work was too honest, too compelling, to be false.

What would Garrick have said about Wynter’s Summerlander queen?

Khamsin stopped by a sculpture of his laughing father holding an infant Garrick over his head. Young Wynter and his mother were holding hands nearby, dancing in the grass.

“Tell me about this day,” she begged. “What was it like? You all look so happy.”

Garrick would have liked her, Wynter decided. He would have liked her very much.