Followed by Fros(66)

My mouth tasted strange. I turned my head, my neck stiff, and tried to sit up. A dull pain thudded in my back. I reached behind me and touched the layers of bandages wrapped around my ribs. I realized I was naked.

And I was warm.

I gasped and pulled my hand away, staring at its peachy flesh and pale nail beds, the faint pink scar running across my palm. No hard veins beneath the flesh. No shivering. No cold. No sign of frost.

Ignoring the pain in my back, I sat upright and touched my face. Warm. My neck, warm. My chest and stomach were hot from the blankets, the skin soft. Strands of blond hair swept into my eyes.

I shrieked, and I cried, warm tears filling my eyes and falling down my face, running smoothly along my cheeks without freezing. I threw back my covers and looked over my hips and legs, warm and healthy and smooth. I pressed a hand to my mouth and laughed and sobbed, warm tears gushing from my eyes and falling in wet droplets onto my breasts and covers.

The door opened. I pulled up the covers, but it was only Aamina, gasping and rushing into the room.

“Lay down, child!” she hissed, pushing my bare shoulders back to the mattress. It was the first time in years another human had touched me without so much as a wince. “You’ll pull a stitch!”

I threw my arms around her and laughed into her neck. How wonderful she felt! How warm, how soft! “I’m warm, Aamina!” I shouted. “It’s gone, look at me!” That spot in my back protested with dull pain as I sat up and leaned against her. “Look at me!”

Instead of scolding me, she smiled. “I forgot that you didn’t know. You look as fresh as a Northlander should look. How do you feel?”

“Amazing!” I shouted, touching my cheeks, my arms, my hair, which seemed a little longer than I remembered it being. “Amazing . . .”

I stiffened as more memories flooded me. “Imad? Imad, is he . . . ?”

“Imad is fine, thanks to you,” she said, eyes wrinkling with her grin. “But that was three weeks ago, Smeesa. We’ve kept you asleep to help you heal.”

I tried to process her words. That explained the strange taste in my mouth. What herbs had they given me?

But I didn’t care. I. Felt. So. Warm. Like the very sun radiated inside me, its rays spreading from crown to toes.

I hugged Aamina again, and she pushed me back onto my pillows.

“I’m glad you’re so well,” she said, suddenly maternal, “but they had to cut pieces of you out and sew pieces of you up, so you have to be careful until you’re fully healed, hear me?”

I nodded and laughed, eager as a child on winter solstice. Warm. So warm!

“I’ll get you something proper to wear. Stay put.” She shook her index finger at me and stepped into the hall, shutting the door silently behind her.

Despite her warnings, I sat up again, shaking my head in wonderment. I touched my feet, the cracks in my heels already mending. I wiggled my toes and giggled like a little girl. I touched my bandages, carefully prodding that sore spot to the left of my spine. It ached like a deep bruise.

“I don’t understand,” I murmured, pulling locks of my hair in front of my face. There was not a white strand among them. How had my curse broken? How could I have woken up my old self? Why had I been freed?

“It looked different,” a faint voice crooned.

Tugging up my blankets, I searched the room but found it empty. “Sadriel?” I whispered.

“Your curse,” he said, somewhere to my right. “I told you it was different.”

I scanned the room, the carpet and the ceiling. Still there was no sign of him. “Where are you?”

“Always amusing,” he chirped. “You of all people should know mortals can’t see me.”

My lips parted. Mortal. Normal. I really had broken the curse.

I swallowed, though my throat was dry. “How was it different?”

“Cursed to be as cold as your heart,” Sadriel said, his voice moving toward the end of the bed. “It seems the warmth of the truly selfless broke it.” He sighed. “Yet another one lost.”

I shook my head. “But I’m not . . . The things I’ve done—”

“Your hair,” he said, closer. Right beside me. A cool finger brushed the side of my head. “That’s when I noticed it. Giving up beauty, I suppose. And that savage soldier of yours. You let him go rather easily, hmm?”

Lo. The thought of him made my heart wring. “Love,” I whispered. Giving up love. Had I done that? What had Aamina said? Three weeks? He must be married by now. A new pain ached beneath my bandages, growing until it pressed against my ribs. Had he yet returned to Mac’Hliah?

“And the prince,” Sadriel said. “I had come for him, not for you. I almost had you in my realm once again, Smitha.”

I reached my hand out, but it met only open air. “Thank you,” I said, blinking away tears. “Thank you, for warning me. Thank you, with all my heart.”

He scoffed. “I did nothing of the sort.”

I smiled.

I heard a rustling of fabric, perhaps a flourishing of a cape, or an exaggerated tipping of a wide-brimmed hat.

“We would have been grand, you and I,” he said, voice fainter. “Till we meet again.”

I waited for a last quip, a last promise, but only silence settled over the room, impenetrable.