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It took her embarrassingly long to strip away the rest of her pants. The wind slammed into the thin glass windows, and her breath billowed out of her chapped lips into the chill air of the room.
Her skin looked gray against the pale fabric of her undergarments. She shouldn’t be so cold anymore after removing her wettest clothes, right?
Blood and murky water stained her plain cotton drawers, and while she shouldn’t care that her husband would lay eyes on her body for the first time in this manner, it was enough to light a new fire within her. She needed to get underneath the heavy wool blanket—not only to get warm, but to hide her figure from him.
The task proved difficult with her dwindling energy and the pain that pulsed up her leg. Steady and unyielding, she pulled the fabric from underneath herself. Worry pricked the back of her mind as she took a deep breath to stay awake. She hadn’t been lying to Gavin when she’d said this was not her first time being injured. Violet had been cut plenty of times—had been cold before too—but never like this.
This felt different, like her energy was being drawn from her like a vampire drew blood; her limbs were heavy, and her fingers felt sluggish. She rasped a breath past stiff lips and tried to sit up, draping the wool blanket over her shoulders. The blanket itched against her skin, but she welcomed the small warmth it gave her. Gavin entered the room. The steaming pitcher of water he held in one of his hands sloshed over the floor. Had he been gone for a minute or an hour?
“Why did you get under the covers?” His harsh tone wasn’t one she’d heard before. He was by her side in the blink of an eye, dropping to his knees and placing the pitcher of water on the floor. His pewter shirt strained over his wide shoulders, marking just how fit he truly was underneath his unassuming healer clothes.
Violet opened her lips to explain but nothing came out. A line wrinkled Gavin’s brow while his wide hand pulled the covers off her body. “Stay still.”
“I’m cold,” she forced past chattering teeth, swatting his hand away. It wasn’t even about her idiotic worries of nudity. Her body needed to stay warm and awake. She needed the blanket. Why couldn’t he see that?
“I want you to keep it on.” His eyes dug into hers, and the silhouette of his body blurred around the edges. He allowed her to push his hand away from the blanket. “But your drawers are wet. You need to take those off as well.”
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” Violet lay back, and wrapped the blanket over her torso like a cocoon that smelled of dust and wet hair. She closed her eyes, but her body wouldn’t stop shivering. She just needed to rest for a while, regain her energy, and then she could cast a spell and dry her clothes. No problem.
“Not like this. Not while you dread my touch,” he whispered. “I will start stitching your leg, then we can talk about the wet clothes. Violet? Are you awake?”
She was so tired and heavy. Her body seemed to keep sinking into the mattress like an anchor dropped in the ocean.
“Don’t fall asleep.”
The prick of a needle cut through the layers of her torn flesh. His blazing fingers seared her icy skin. She breathed past the grogginess of her thoughts. “D-don’t tell me what to do.”
“Stay awake, and I won’t have to.”
Was she imagining the panic behind his words? Was she really dying from a stupid knife cut, and her lack of proper winter attire? The edges of her vision blackened around the halo of the burning lantern, and she was pulled under the dark blanket of sleep.
5
VIOLET
Three weeks ago
It was the beginning of the end, and she’d run out of time. The bell clanged in the background, making the building tremble with each beat. Dust fell around her. One, two, three chimes left her ears ringing with a high-pitched screech which lingered.
It was the signal that a ceremony was about to start down at City Hall. It could have been a sentencing, a commemoration—but in this case, it was her wedding. Today, Violet would be forced to marry a man she couldn’t have. Not that she wanted to.
She was only in this mess because she had entrusted her intentions to her chamber-mates, all of whom she had considered friends a week ago. She wouldn’t make that idiotic mistake again.
The tight curls of her hair bounced as she tried but failed to tuck a section behind her ear. She reached for the edge of the ornate mirror in front of her before taking a deep breath to calm her rattled nerves.
The silver pins she held fell to the tabletop, bouncing with a click before rolling off onto the shaggy fur beneath her feet. Making herself presentable for her nuptials felt a lot like giving up, and she wasn’t ready to do that yet.
Her body sank into the uneven cushion of her stool, and she slumped forward, burying her face in her sweaty palms. The scent of lavender oil clung to her skin, worsening the steady throbbing in her skull.
When Violet straightened again, she met the cool, calculating gaze of her chaperone in the mirror.
Vera Rosenest was the Society of Crows member who had come to collect her a week ago. Vera had kicked the door of Violet’s chambers from its hinges and issued her with a binding letter condemning her to her fate. She had also forced her into this room, where she would have to wait, alone, until she was married.
Violet cleared her throat and continued fixing her hair, hating the cold, watchful gaze of her guard as she pressed a flower-shaped pearl pin into the puff of her curls.
“You have a visitor.” The corners of Vera’s lips tilted downward, and she moved aside to allow a man into the room. At nearly six and a half feet tall, Terrance Horn was rumored to be the son of shifters. It wasn’t uncommon to hear of a child born from a union of human and werewolves or other shape-shifting beasts, although many people denied they took place.
A lie surely spun by the Society of Crows to prevent sorcerers from wedding other species, since shifters from Caztian followed their own set of rules.
