I didn’t have a bride, of course. But I did have one human female in my grasp who was just desperate enough to strike a bargain with me.

“There is one way we might find your friends,” I said, my words fast and tight. I lowered my head to speak directly against her hair. “I will require something of you first. But if you do it, and we succeed, I will not only assist you in finding them but also give you your freedom.”

Her spine went hard and straight against me. Her hands, which had been in her lap until now, curled around my forearm, her short blunt claws pressing into my skin.

“What do you want me to do?” she asked, her breath quickening, and once again I detected that battling mixture of wariness and hope.

I expected that the wariness would win out this time, but I answered her without hesitation anyway, my words at once a question and a statement and a vow.

A question with only one answer.

A statement of fact.

And a vow that I would not be denied.

“Marry me.”

OceanofPDF.com

OceanofPDF.com

CHAPTER THIRTY Torrance

“Marry me.”

Everything went still. Even though the sontanna kept plodding along, and Wylfrael continued creating a path ahead for her, all movement seemed to cease. Even my own breathing stopped for a moment, which brought an irritated question of, “What is wrong with you now?” from behind me.

“What’s wrong...” I stammered, staring at the snow ahead. “What’s wrong is that you just... you just...”

“Told you to marry me. Yes.”

“Told me to!” Anger at his arrogance helped burn away the numbing shock. “Where I come from, you’re supposed to ask. You get down on one knee with a ring and you ask. You don’t tell someone to! God, why am I even trying to explain this? Let me off this horse – shit – sontanna right now!”

“The snow is deep here,” Wylfrael said, a deep rumble from his chest penetrating the thick fur of the cloak. “You cannot run.”

“I won’t try to run,” I snapped, pushing ineffectually at his forearm. “Just let me down!”

My body shook with anxious fury, and right now what I really wanted was to hit something, or maybe a certain winged someone, rather than run. But ultimately, I needed to have some distance from him. I couldn’t keep sitting here, in the solid embrace of his body, unable to see his face.

Wylfrael urged the sontanna to stop with a word. He dismounted easily, using the strength of his wings to lift himself down with savage grace. Then he turned and reached for me.

I resisted. I swung my leg around the sontanna’s other side so that my back was to Wylfrael. My stomach sank when I saw just how high up I was, but the bank of snow beside the sontanna created by Wylfrael’s telekinetic ploughing would provide a soft enough landing. I used to jump into snow piles all the time as a kid. It’s fine.

It turned out it was very much not fine. I didn’t hurt myself, but I did get fucking stuck. The sontanna was even taller than I’d realized from up here, and the snow much deeper than anticipated. I sank into it with the full force of my weight, completely stuck from ribcage to boots.

Thoughts of Wylfrael, and the absurd thing he’d just said, vanished. So did my childhood love for the snow, replaced with something urgent and animal and hunted. My heart pounded erratically as I tried to free myself. My vision narrowed into an unseeing tunnel of darkness, nausea rising at the memory I tried so hard not to think of. The memory of being trapped and terrified and –

The snow around me peeled away in thick sheets, like wool sheered from a sheep. The sudden lack of support made my watery knees buckle, but two hands caught me, hauling me upright. Wylfrael’s chest was at my back, warm and solid. I wanted to scratch him, pull away from him, but my body had other ideas. He was so warm, so much warmer than the snow. I trembled violently and slumped backwards against him.

“I could have let you fall just now, you know,” he murmured, deadly quiet, beside my ear. “Let you see just what would become of you without me.”

The only sound I made in response was the clattering of my teeth.

Wylfrael turned me in his arms, sliding his hands up to cup my face.

“You’re shaking,” he said. “Why?”

“C-c-cold,” I stuttered. It was at least partly true. My cloak was caked in snow from my jump into the bank, and it seemed like winter had entered my very bones. But I wouldn’t tell him that most of the shaking was from fear at the feeling of being trapped, suffocating in all that white.

Wylfrael observed me with grim silence. His thumbs brushed upwards on my cheeks, a roughly calloused but gentle heated stripe along my cold skin. Out here, the blue dots along his chest, arms, and wings glowed brighter, as did his eyes. There was an azure cast over everything. His hair was no longer white but the colour of cloud-washed Earth sky, his wings not simple black but charcoal and cobalt and ash. The shimmering blue glow dusted over his face just as the starlight spilled down, illuminating the harshly elegant lines of his bone structure, regal cheekbones and rugged jaw, all sterling and sapphire.

I tried to think of more violent words to describe him – gunmetal and the colour of drowning seas – but with something close to despair I realized that no matter what words I used, no matter what I thought of him, I could not escape the fact that he was beautiful. Beautiful and alien, powerful and cruel – the kind of male who would let me fall to my knees just to see what would become of me without him.

But he didn’t let you fall.

Even now, he held my face like he was worried he might break it.

One weak and reedy word crawled out of my throat.

“Why?”

There were many questions inside that single word. Why am I here with you? Why do you want to marry me? Why is your touch on my face nearly tender when this would all be so much easier if it hurt?

“I’ll get you warm,” he finally said, his hands withdrawing from the skimming exploration of my cheeks and jaw, “and then I’ll explain.”

I was too rattled and exhausted to protest when he scooped me up into his arms. I did manage a squeak when he launched into the air, though, holding me cradled against his chest as he soared through the sky. Beneath us, the sontanna ambled along the path back to its enclosure, looking like a toy on a white blanket. I squeezed my eyes shut, stomach rolling at the unexpected flight.

It was an efficient mode of transportation, I had to give Wylfrael that. Before I knew it, he’d landed. He didn’t lower me down to the ground, though, instead striding back into the kitchen with me in his arms.

“I can walk,” I said, forcing some strength into my limbs to push against him. He merely quirked a white brow at me in response and dryly replied that I was just as likely to crack my skull on the crystal as I was to take a proper step.

Instead, he used his unseen power to slide what looked like a leather-cushioned stool to a spot in front of the crackling fire. Once it was in place, he walked to it and deposited me without ceremony onto the cushion. I leaned forward, elbows on my knees, head spinning. The ghostly feeling of fingers at my throat made me stiffen, but before I could react, my wet cloak had been whipped away, replaced by some sort of woolly brown fabric. I clutched it around myself, watching Wylfrael as he moved through the kitchen. I realized he was cooking – pouring something into a small pot that he then placed on a spot above the fire. It was a starkly unnatural sight. Like some magnificent predator had stalked in out of the woods and started performing domestic chores. Something strange, from a fairy tale. Bears with porridge and beds. A wolf in its prey’s house, wearing human clothing.