@AyaWhiose
“I don’t want to go.” I choke with emotion. “I don’t want to return to Edgewood.” I haven’t wanted that in weeks.
His throat bobs, and he lifts his hand, cupping the scarred side of my
face gently. “Then what do you want?”
Why do the simplest questions have the most trying answers? I have
given the North Wind every part of myself save my heart, and now I give
him one more thing. “You,” I whisper hoarsely. “I want you.”
“You haven’t commented on my outfit.” Indeed, it took days for Orla
to stitch the dress, not to mention the hours spent on my hair and makeup.
The only indication of my husband’s pleasure was how his pupils dilated
when he saw me enter the room. Aside from that, nothing.
“That’s because I fear the consequences of overstepping your
boundaries.”
Boreas is warm beneath my hands, sturdy. “A god, fear me?” My
mouth curves at the sheer ridiculousness of it.
“You underestimate your wrath, Wife.”
His cheek brushes mine, and my eyes flutter shut at the acute
pleasure of skin on skin contact. “Perhaps I just like to torture you.”
My breath hitches as his mouth touches the line of my neck. “You
are quite good at that,” he concedes.
“You don’t have to do that,” I protest. Grabbing Boreas’ arm, I wait
until he looks down at me. “It’s my punishment. Let me bear it.”
“And you are mine to protect, so let me shield you from this.”
My mouth parts, yet the sound travels no farther than my cinched
throat. A heartbeat later, I ask, “Even though it’s my fault?”
He brushes my chin with his thumb. “Even then.”
“So what do friends do?”
He sounds like a nervous child. It’s rather endearing. “They talk.
Listen to one another. Spend time together.”
“You’re saying you’d willingly listen to me?” The creases around his
eyes have deepened, and I realize he is laughing at me, in his own way.
I cross my arms. “I can try.”
He looks uncomfortable by the idea, but— “Then I suppose I can try
as well.”
And that is how I leave him.
Not friends.
But perhaps no longer enemies.
His footsteps slow and come to a standstill. My knees wobble. I cling
to the back of a chair so I don’t collapse. “Why did you kiss me?”
Boreas turns his head so that I’m given a view of his face in profile.
“I, too, know what it’s like to be alone.” His eyes lift, the blue so pure and
unguarded I feel as though I am seeing him for the first time. “Maybe we
can be alone together.”
“I am alone in here,” I say, pressing a hand to my heart.
The creases around Boreas’ eyes smooth with unexpected solemnity.
I wince. I can’t believe I dumped that emotional baggage onto him. He does not care. And I am a fool.
Except the king doesn’t leave. Rather, he lowers his head, and my
hand lifts to rest over his heart. To push him back, I tell myself, even as my fingers curl into the front of his bedclothes, the fabric warmed from his body. His palm—wide, calloused—shapes the curve of my hip before
slipping to my back, and my pulse rises, it leaps upward and climbs.
“Please,” he whispers. His scent floods my senses, crisp and clean.
My tongue refuses to cooperate. My heart careens toward an
unknown destination. The space between our bodies shrinks to nothing. His thighs brush mine, the hand on my lower spine hot as a brand. “Please...what?”
“Please don’t stab me for this.”
That is the last I see of his eyes, for the Frost King closes the distance, fitting his mouth seamlessly to mine.
"Why won't you look at me?" The scars at the corner of my mouth tug painfully. I've lived with this blemish long enough that it no longer defines me. But sometimes I am weak. Sometimes I am human. "Is it my face? You can't stand to look at it?"
The frost king does not turn around as he says lowly, "There are many things ugly in this world, Wife. But I do not think you are one of them."
