Yet as their initial frantic touches faded, in their place something deeper unfurled, a tenderness that Ellery had never known, had never thought to dream of. His every touch felt laden with intention, as if trying not just to savor her but to memorize her. Each kiss was reverent and raptured; his lips trailed down her jaw while his fingers traced her spine, taking full advantage of her dress’s daring silhouette. She buried a hand in his hair, mussing it from its sleek part into the disheveled style that better suited him. They sank blissfully into the rhythm of their mouths, their hands, their bodies. Until Ellery forgot why she’d ever denied this of herself, of either of them.
When something was right, it wasn’t a distraction. It couldn’t be. And nothing and no one had ever felt more right to her than Domenic Barrow. For all she’d wanted, for all she’d wished, she’d never wanted anything the way she wanted this.
XXIIIDOMENICWINTER
Their Order vehicle jostled over the pocked, neglected pavement of Alderland’s northbound highways. Each time, Domenic relished it—his knee knocking into Ellery’s, her shoulder bumping his arm. Every touch they let linger a moment too long. Every look bore the exhilarating weight of a secret.
“How much farther?” Ellery asked the driver anxiously.
“As soon as we clear the trees, you’ll see it.”
That left only a few precious minutes more of distraction. Since obtaining the next prophecy piece last night, they’d stolen such minutes whenever they could: in the elevator after their strategy meeting with the Council, in a phone booth near the Citadel’s gate, in an empty compartment on the train here. Every instance had been so surreptitiously hurried, so deliriously giddy that Domenic couldn’t be sure he hadn’t fantasized them.
Subtly, he hooked his pointer around hers. The electric chill of her magic shuddered through him. He locked his shoulders to withhold a shiver.
Ellery hitched her breath, then bit down a grin.
Fuck, he was happy.
As their car emerged from the forest, a darkness loomed in the distance, vast as a city skyline. Domenic smeared away the fog on his window and tensed.
Ahead, a great wall swallowed the evening horizon from east to west, from land to sky. It resembled a storm in slow motion, snow eddying in lazy, ominous currents. And though Domenic could vaguely distinguish shapes beyond it—the jagged silhouettes ofbarren trees, the ghostly outlines of abandoned buildings—none of it had any color, not even when he grasped Valmordion. The wall divided two seemingly opposite worlds of Winter: one of life, even if that life meant a fight for survival, and one submerged entirely in silence, in shadow.
Domenic had seen pictures of the border before, in newspaper photographs and mission dockets. Yet those images had failed to capture how truly menacing the fallen territory was.
“It’s worse than I remembered,” Ellery murmured. He couldn’t imagine how it felt to have once called that land home.
He squeezed his finger around hers. She squeezed back, almost painfully tight.
Ten minutes later, they pulled into a large Nature Defense Corps compound, all steel warehouses fortified with glimmering warming spells and guarded by barbed wire. Peak awaited them in its central courtyard, flanked by a retinue of officers. A lush golden alban tree swayed behind them in the frigid wind. It all would’ve made a more impressive sight if Peak hadn’t been wearing shorts and a plain white T-shirt.
“Well, look who’s hiked up North to pay us a visit!” Peak clapped Domenic’s shoulder as he slid out from the backseat. “Looking good, Dom.”
“Feeling good,” he answered, resisting the urge to wink at Ellery.
“Good to see you, too, El,” Peak told her.
Her mouth slanted into a bemused smile. Apparently she and Peak had also achieved nickname status. “Thanks.”
While several officers unloaded their bags, Peak led them into the compound’s largest facility.
“I’m sorry it’s not much to look at,” Peak said. “These bases are only active during Winter, so we don’t go out of our way to make them cozy. But take it from someone who’s been stationed here every Winter for forty-four years—you get used to it.”
“I’m sure we’ll find it more than satisfactory,” Ellery quipped.
Domenic cocked a brow.
They entered a command center of the sort Domenic had only seen in movies: maps splayed across corkboards and thirty different telephones and a table of stern-faced magicians with medals spangling their jackets, one for each Winter they’d served. Beyond the reinforced glass, the border’s roiling haze gleamed crimson from the setting sun.
Peak gestured at the empty seats. “Please, make yourselves comfortable. Can we getcha anything? We know you had a long trip up here, but we’ve got a lotta ground to cover over the next few days.”
“I’ll take a coffee,” said Domenic. “Just black, please.”
“Same, but with sugar,” Ellery said.
“You got it,” Peak told them.
A corporal scurried away to fetch their orders, and Domenic and Ellery sank into their adjacent chairs while Peak claimed the head of the table.
