Page 31 of Reaper’s Curse

The chattering of my teeth was a constant hammering through my skull, the freezing temperature of my skin and blood akin to a throng of needles constantly pecking my body…everywhere.

I crushed a thick wool blanket firmly to the underside of my chin, attempting to stave off the chill. An impossible attainment, given the chill came from within me. I was the source. The generator. Or, more accurately, Winter’s magic working within me.

I hadn’t moved in so long…aside from the incessant chattering of my teeth…that I was slightly fearful I had, quite literally, frozen in place.

When daylight shone brightly beyond the ice-laced windows, Valen came to retrieve me for the day. Unable to call for assistance, much less actually move, I didn’t answer his door-knock-turned-pounding.

When I failed to respond, he had the guards grant him entrance. His footfalls marked his path across the receiving room. One step inside the bedchamber doors, he paused, rubbed his arms, and stormed back out.

Winter arrived moments after Valen’s departure and now sat on the edge of the bed.

He pressed his hands to my shoulders, attempting to pull the frosty magic from my system. “I’ll fix this. I’ll heal you. And I plan to do so before Valen returns with my grandmother in tow.”

The queen would see me as a frosty, teeth-chattering mess?

Thank merciful death I had managed to stash Chace’s note in the safest place I could think of—folded against my skin, beneath my corset. Of course, in my current state, the message could permanently freeze to my body.

In no mood for conversation, I allowed Winter to do all the talking, whereas I merely…mostly…listened. Words were sometimes lost to the cracking and crashing of ice in my skull. And honestly, thinking was something I presently felt wholly inept at.

When I tried to pluck any words from my thoughts, all I heard was cold, cold, cold; ouch. Cold, cold, cold; hurt. Cold, cold, cold, cold.

“Blimey.” The queen’s voice rose from the outer chamber, my receiving room. “This certainly won’t do.”

Winter’s grandmother stepped into the bedroom, paused, and tossed a raised-brow stink eye toward me, where I remained huddled and shivering on the bed.

“Do not think for one moment this thing”―she twirled a finger, indicating the icy condition of both me and the surrounding room―“will somehow nullify our arrangement.”

“As. If.” My words were curt, clipped, and rocked with unending shudders.

Winter leaned close, his lips at my ear, for only me to hear. “If you wanted to get out of working with Valen, you should have come to me. We could have devised a better plan than this.”

No doubt he meant to cut some of the tension in the moment, but when he smiled against my skin, his lips brushing against my earlobe, some of the frost plaguing my system expelled with his touch.

An involuntary gasp escaped my lips as warmth spread across my cheek and down my neck. When he pulled away, the chill of ice quickly returned.

Don’t go. Stay here and do that some more, I wanted to say, but my teeth remained ground shut.

“Move, boy.” The queen motioned Winter from my side with a wave of her hand. “I don’t want you around her.”

Winter’s back jolted straight. “This is my magic. It cannot harm me.”

“The magic is not the reason I wish you to be removed from her presence. Like your brother, you have a weakness for pretty curiosities. Consider this pretty curiosity unhealthy and ill advised.”

“I am not my brother. And I am more than old enough…and then some…to decide upon my own actions.”

The queen scoffed. “Need I remind you who holds the authority here?”

While maintaining her gaze upon Winter, she extended her hand to Valen. He dropped a vial into her awaiting palm. A vial the same as, or similar to, the one the queen had used the first time she pulled the cold from my skin.

Winter glared, his hands curled into tight fists at his sides.

“Now go,” the queen said to him, then she downed the liquid. She returned the empty vial to Valen and grabbed my hand, yanking it free from my hold upon the wool blanket. “Go!”

A rage-filled sigh seethed through Winter’s clenched jaw as he spun and stalked from the room.

My gaze drifted from the queen’s firm grip to Winter, tracking his retreat from the side of the bed until…

Icy fire slammed into my hand and raced up my arm, straight to my skull. My head kicked back, my eyes slamming shut. I might have convulsed. Possibly screamed.