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The wild simplicity of the night was fading into endless complications. She had never imagined that he’d set his realm and his freedom at hazard purely for love of her. Part of her had wondered anyway, but of course he was king of a hidden kingdom, and he could not make his decision so. It was the power in her blood he’d wanted.
She was tired and cold and she ached.
She felt more alone than before.
Then she was angry at her own self-pity. For cold there was a remedy, and damn this new awkwardness between them. She slid again beneath the heavy, heaped-up blankets, turned her back to him. He did not move. She balled her body up on itself, trying to get warm alone.
A hand, light as a snowflake, brushed her shoulder. Tears had gathered in her eyes; she tried to blink them away. It was too much: his presence, cold and quiet, the reasonable and practical explanations, to contrast with the overwhelming memory of passion.
“No,” he said. “Do not grieve tonight, Vasya.”
“You would never have done it,” she said, not looking at him. “This—” A vague gesture took in the bathhouse, them. “If you had been able to remember who I was. You would never have saved my life if I hadn’t been—if I hadn’t been—”
His hand left her shoulder. “I tried to let you go,” he said. “Again and again I tried. Because every time I touched you—even looked at you—it drew me nearer to mortality. I was afraid. And yet, I could not.” He broke off, continued. “Perhaps if you hadn’t been what you are, I would have found it in myself to let you die. But—I heard you scream. Through all the mists of my weakness, after the fire in Moscow, I heard you. I told myself I was being practical, I told myself you were our last hope. I told myself that. But I thought of you in the fire.”
Vasya turned to face him. He shut his lips tight, as though he’d said more than he wished.
“And now?” she asked.
“We are here,” he said simply.
“I am sorry,” she said. “I didn’t know how else to bring you back.”
“There was no other way. Why do you think my brother had such faith in his prison? He knew of no tie strong enough to draw me back to myself. Nor did I.”
Morozko didn’t sound happy about it. It occurred to Vasya that he might feel just as she did: raw. She put out a hand. He did not look at her, but his fingers closed about hers.
“I am still afraid,” he said. It was a truth, baldly offered. “I am glad you are alive. I am glad to see you again, against all hope. But I do not know what to do.”
“I am afraid too,” she said.
His fingertips found her wrist, where the blood surged against her skin. “Are you cold?”
She was. But…
“I think,” he said wryly, “all things considered, we should be able to share the same blankets a few hours more.”
“We must go,” said Vasya. “There is too much to do; there is not time.”
“An hour or three won’t make a great difference, in this country of Midnight,” said Morozko. “You are all worn to shadows, Vasya.”
“It will make a difference,” she said. “I can’t fall asleep, here.”
“You can now,” he said. “I will keep you in Midnight.”
To sleep—to really sleep…Mother of God, she was weary. She was already beneath the blankets; after a moment, he slid beneath them too. Her breath came short; she clenched her fists on an impulse to touch him.
They watched each other, warily. He moved first. His hand stole up to her face, traced the sharp line of her jaw, brushed the thick line of the scab from the stone. She shut her eyes.
“I can heal this for you,” he said.
She nodded once, vain enough to be glad that at least there would be only a white scar instead of a scarlet one. He cupped his hand, trickled water onto her cheek, while she set her teeth against the flare of agony.
“Tell me,” he said, after.
“It is a long story.”
“I assure you,” he said. “I will not grow old in the telling of it.”
She told him. She started with the moment he’d left her in the snowstorm in Moscow and finished with Pozhar, Vladimir, her journey into Midnight. She was wrung out at the end, but calmer too. As though she’d laid the skeins of her life out neatly, and there was less of a tangle in her soul.
When she fell silent, he sighed. “I am sorry,” he said. “For Solovey. I could only watch.”
“And send me your mad brother,” she pointed out. “And a token. I could have done without your brother, but the carving—comforted me.”
“Did you keep it?”
“Yes,” she said. “It brings him back when I—” She trailed off; it was too fresh, still.
He tucked a short curl behind her ear, but said nothing.
“Why are you afraid?” she asked him.
His hand dropped. She did not think he would answer. When he did, it was so low she barely caught the words. “Love is for those who know the griefs of time, for it goes hand in hand with loss. An eternity, so burdened, would be a torment. And yet—” He broke off, drew breath. “Yet what else to call it, this terror and this joy?”
It was harder this time, to move close to him. Before, it was—uncomplicated, reckless, joyful. But now emotion freighted the air between them.
His skin had warmed with hers, beneath the blankets; he might have been a man except for his eyes, ancient and troubled. It was her turn to push his hair back where it fell over his brow; it curled coarse and cold beneath her fingers. She touched the warm place behind his jaw, and the hollow of his throat, laid her spread fingers on his chest.
He covered her hand with his, traced her fingers, her arm, then her shoulder, slid his hand from spine to waist, as though he meant to learn her body by touch.
She made a sound in her throat. The coolness of his breathing touched her lips. She did not know if he had moved, or if she had, to bring them close together. And still his hand moved, gently, coaxing suppleness from her. She couldn’t breathe. Now that they were no longer talking, she could feel the tension gathering in him—shoulder to hand—where his fingers dug into her skin.
One thing to take the wild stranger to herself. Another to look into the face of an adversary-ally-friend and…
She wound her fingers in his hair. “Come here,” she said. “No—closer.”
He smiled then: the slow, unknowable smile of the winter-king. But there was a hint of laughter in it she’d never seen. “Be patient,” he murmured into her mouth.
