Page 111 of A Bride for the Winter King
The brown-haired healer slips past the angry Spring Queen and lays her hands on my chest, but her calm expression twists into a grimace almost immediately. She glances over her shoulder at Elio. “I can’t do anything for her, Your Majesty. Her heart…is frozen.”
The light emanating from Sara swells and condenses in her small, trembling hands, confirming the healer’s prognosis. I realize with a jolt that my heart is indeed still and quiet. It isn’t beating, even though my eyes are open. My consciousness is trapped in a cold, fading body.
Irene wails, “By Eros, not my girl. Please!” She turns to Elio. “You pushed her, didn’t you?”
Elio shakes his head in denial. “I didn’t.”
“You coward—” She lunges to shove Elio, but two guards intervene, and she struggles helplessly against their hold. “Do something! Anything!”
“Elio… Her soul. It’s calling to me—” Sara stammers.
“Give me a minute, Sara. I need a moment with my wife before you do your duty.” A sob quakes in his throat as he sits down beside me and squeezes my hand. “Gods… I never meant for this to happen.”
My breaths are soft and sparse, wheezing in and out of my lungs in faint rasps. Blue veins frost in and out of view along my arms as magic sparks nefariously through the air. “You’re going to let her take me?” I croak. “You’re the King of Death. You can stop this.”
Tears glisten in Elio’s eyes, but he remains silent.
And in his cold, frozen eyes, hidden beneath the shock and horror, I see a glimmer of light. A hint of relief.
I grip his hand. Hard. “Elio Hades Lightbringer, you’ll regret this. Your heart shall remain emptier than your promises, and your next bride will wither at your indifference. Mark my words, Winter King, for you shall never love again.”
Chapter 45
A Curse that Devours
LORI
Air fills my lungs, expanding my chest almost painfully, a sensation reminiscent of a newborn baby drawing her very first breath. After a second, more fluid gasp, I sit up straight.
The fresh sheets Elio used to make the bed after our journey back to the castle are drenched with sweat beneath my palms.
“Hey… are you alright?” Elio pats my back with a cool hand. “You were thrashing around in your sleep.”
Darkness still reigns over the tower. The large window, through which I had fallen in the vision, is now a black void, the moon no longer brightening the night sky. I open my mouth to comfort Elio, but a strange pressure between my ribs prevents me from speaking.
“Did you dream? Is that something a Shadow huntress can do?” Elio asks patiently, rubbing my spine up and down.
I shake all over, my abs coiled in pain, and my knuckles turn white as they grip the sheets. Moving my tongue is in itself a spartan task, my lips and mouth clamped shut by some invisible force.
“Look at him. So ignorant. So…pathetic.”
Wait. That voice… The same voice I’ve been hearing for a while now. First in the maze, then at the carnival, in the mountains, and inside the pit of Ayaan’s prison… The voice that just condemned Elio to a cruel, lonely fate.
My voice, but different.
Iris’s voice.
“Lori? Are you okay?” Elio repeats.
“Yes,” I croak.
An insidious force compels me to relax my stiff muscles one by one, until I melt back into the pillows.
No! It’s all wrong. It’s my first night with him. You don’t get to come in and ruin it.
“What are you going to do about it?”Iris answers.“You came to me, over and over again. A bridge goes both ways.”
My eyes are glued to the dark window, my breaths steady as if I’m about to drift back to sleep, but inside, an all-out war is raging. Iris’s soul stretches within me, her presence as vivid as if she were actually here, her twin form curling around my body.
