Frostblood (Frostblood Saga #1)(20)

“A bit of heat for you,” I said, pushing some out carefully the way I had with Kaitryn. It seemed to revive her, though it left me shaky and weak. We hobbled side by side for another eternity through the rising snow.

I could no longer feel my feet. The wind had calmed, but the snow kept falling. It looked like a flurry of feathers to me now. I wanted to reach up and grab some and rub them against my face. I felt strange. And so tired. It would be nice to sit and rest, just for a little while.

No sooner had the thought crossed my mind than I sank down, my back against the trunk of a tree.

“Just for a moment,” I said, realizing that I could barely feel my lips. Perhaps I had been wrong. Perhaps a Fireblood could die in the snow, if she were cold and tired enough and without food for fuel. The thought was distant, though, and was more curious than alarming. I closed my eyes.

Dimly, I heard Butter nicker and felt her nudge my cheek with her cold, cold nose.





A golden-haired woman was staring at me with an urgent expression, a crease marring the gold-dusted skin between her brows, amber eyes sparking.

“Wake,” she said. “Your time hasn’t come yet.” She looked behind her fearfully. A shadow fell over her face. “You must save yourself.”

“Fors tried to kill me,” I whispered. “He sent a storm to freeze me.”

“Get up, child. He needs you.”

“Fors?” I asked, my brain muddled by a strange lethargy. “Why would the Frostblood god need me?”

My muscles twitched as if trying to pull me up in spite of myself. I moaned as I became aware of the wicked cold biting at me like gnawing teeth.

A sinuous black shape took the golden woman’s place, hovering over me. I had a sense of malevolent eyes fixed on me, though the shape was faceless. My skin seemed to grow painfully tight. A dark tendril reached out, and I knew in some deep part of my soul that if it touched me, I would never be the same again.





I woke with a jolt. It was still daylight. I still sat against the tree. The drifts were higher now, halfway up my chest.

With a fierce effort, I broke free of the snow and pushed up, groaning as feeling returned to my limbs like tiny, stabbing knives. Searching the trees, I saw no sign of Butter. I was torn between anger at her desertion and relief that she might still be alive.

Cursing, muscles burning, I pushed through the heavy drifts, step after aching step. I still didn’t know if I was going in the right direction.

“Butter!” I called over and over, my voice ragged. As if she even knew a name I had just given her and was biddable enough to obey me, a stranger who had stolen her in the night. Still, she was my only hope of finding my way out of the woods. I looked for tracks, but they must have been covered under snow. “Butter, if you don’t come back here right now, I’ll make sure you eat stale oats for the rest of your life!”

Suddenly, there was an answer: a distinctly horsey snort from a distance to my left.

“Butter, here!” I cried, hope surging into my chest.

But it wasn’t Butter who emerged from the whitewashed trees. It was a stallion made of snow, with sapphires for eyes, and a rider cloaked in black.

The captain had found me.

I turned and ran, but the drifts caught at my feet. I tried to find fire inside myself, but I was too cold. I could barely warm myself.

A hand came to the back of my cloak, lifting me bodily onto the horse, the front of the saddle pressing into my stomach. I lashed out with my elbows. The stallion danced in agitation.

“Stop it!” a voice said.

I looked up. He wore a hood pulled low and underneath that a mask that covered the top half of his face. But I knew those well-formed lips, twisted with anger.

“Arcus.”

“So pleased you remember me. Now, stop struggling before I dump you in the nearest snowbank. I’ve been on horseback for five days trying to find you, and I’m not at all sure you’re worth the trouble.”

His anger came off him in waves colder than the north wind. I threw a benumbed leg over the stallion’s side and gripped the pommel.

“How did you find me?”

He unclenched his jaw to answer. “When Wheatgerm returned to the stables, I followed her tracks until they disappeared. And then I heard someone bellowing nonsense, and I knew it must be you.”

“Who the blazes is Wheatgerm?”

“The horse you stole from the abbey,” he said as if talking to a simpleton.

“You mean Butter. And I didn’t steal her. I borrowed her. I take it she’s safe?”

“Cold and tired, but safe in the stables eating like she’s half starved. Which she probably is, thanks to you. And her name isn’t Butter.”

“It is now.”

“She’s not yours to name.”

“She’s mine in spirit now that we’ve had an adventure together. And her name suits her. She’s soft and yellow, like butter.”

He made a disgusted sound. “If we all had names to suit us, you’d be called Thorn in My Backside. Or Plague of the Gods.”

I prickled at his scathing tone. “And you’d be Miserable Blockhead.”

“Is that the best you can do?”

“Give me time. I’m half frozen.”

Now that I was out of the snowdrifts, feeling returned to my legs, warmth flowing back into my chest. The only part of me that wouldn’t warm was my back, pressed against Arcus. With each movement of the horse, I became more aware of the unfamiliar sensation of being so close to a male body for this long, his upright posture unyielding as I swayed, braced on either side by the rigid confines of his arms.