Lips Like Ice

XV

He carries her like a bride, and Lydia can't help thinking of the comparison when he steps over the threshold. The scar-spell doesn't hurt going back in.

He sets her down on the bed, and Lydia doesn't waste any time huddling in the pillows. She's too flushed for the duvet, though, and she sits with her chin on her bruised knees, pressing her calves against her entrance, ashamed and embarrassed.

The Prince takes a moment to pet her hair down, to straighten the shoulders of her dress, to finger the tear in the fabric by her knee that Elder Brother must have ripped when he'd tugged her ankle. Distaste crawls over his face and Lydia is torn.

She thinks maybe she should do something submissive, something to reassure the Prince that she still belongs to him, encourage him to kiss the taste of her own blood and his brother's hand out of her mouth, to lick away the place on her ear and neck where his brother scent marked her with his spit and his horrible words.

But then... that would mean she is submitting herself to him, that she is accepting her place as pet and... no. Just no.

When Lydia does nothing, does not lean into his petting touches, neither purrs nor bats him away, the Prince punches the pillow beside her arm viciously and pushes himself to his feet. He pours himself a tumbler of what always reminds Lydia of brandy from the collection on the credenza, and offers none to Lydia.

She thinks she'd quite like a drink, actually. Getting drunk sounds like a fabulous idea.

But that would mean getting up, clambering off the bed, crossing the room, climbing a chair like a toddler to get at the decanter that is just too large for her to maneuver easily one-handed... that would attract far more attention than she wants, and she's not even certain if it would be worth the effort in the end. Whatever it is that the Prince drinks to get drunk might not work on her at all. Or it might kill her. She has no idea what their biology is like.

So she just sits, trapped between yearning and fear, anger and relief, the dull ache in her ankle and the spear in her heart.

He saved her, yes.

But only for this.

The Prince begins to pace the length of the bedroom, running his other hand though his hair and snarling under his breath. He is furious, upset, with no outlet. Lydia wants to sink into the mattress, unseen, terrified to end up its target.

He pours and downs a second, and then a third tumbler. Lydia doesn't know much about ice elves and alcohol tolerance, but he must be approaching drunk by now. Each step, each sip makes her more scared, and the extra adrenaline surge on top of the terror she already experienced in the hall, with—no, under his brother— well, Lydia thinks she may well die of fear very soon.

People get heart attacks from too much terror, don't they? She presses the heel of her hand between her breasts, closes her eyes and tries to take deep breaths.

A hand on her aching ankle startles her so badly that Lydia shrieks. The Prince slaps his other hand over her mouth, grimacing, and Lydia stops, trying to suck in air through the cracks between his fingers. He lets go when she goes silent, out of air, and settles on the bed between her legs.

"You scared the shit outta me!" Lydia growls when he leans back, lets her breathe. "Wait, what are you doing?"

When the pads of his fingers, just this side of too cool to be comfortable or human, slip over the tingling lips of her entrance, she seizes his wrist in fear-strong fingers and whimpers, "What are you doing?"

"Let go," he commands. He arches over her, his breath cool against the hinge of her jaw, sweet with the fog of brandy.

Instead of obeying, she curls herself around his arm, a terrified comma, in an effort to both impede him and to pull her flesh away from his chest, the smooth curve of his thigh.