The Winter King
Page 72

“Barsul told me about the men sent to face the mercy of the mountains. Is that because of the growing power of the Ice Heart, too?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “It’s possible.”
“Then why not kill me now and have done with it? You had your chance. Why didn’t you take it?”
“All hope is not yet lost. Besides, I know Barsul told you of Calberna and the Summer Prince. If you are slain, invasion is a certainty, and from more than just Calberna. The only thing that’s kept the foreign kings at bay these last years has been the fear that you would turn the power of the Ice Heart on their own kingdoms and lay them waste.”
“I suppose I should thank Falcon, then. If not for his efforts to raise a Calbernan army, I would have been greeted with spears instead of wreaths.”
The blue-tinted nails idly scraped the ice altar, and the tower of frozen curls tilted slightly to one side. Galacia’s pale eyes remained cool and steady.
Wyn scowled at her, recognizing that look. She’d already said all she would. “So the garm have come, but I should stay here and do nothing? That is your advice?”
“You should stay here and impregnate your little weatherwitch. That is my advice. Your idea in wedding her was a good one. Hold your child in your arms while there’s still warmth enough in you to feel the love you need to melt the Ice Heart. The surest way to drive back the garm is to rob their masters of hope for victory.”
Wynter snorted. “Between you, Barsul, and my queen’s own father, I’ve never had so many friends urging me to bed a woman.” Not that the idea of spending the next year in bed plowing Khamsin every chance he got was unappealing.
“It’s never been so important. Too much is at stake, and time is a luxury you don’t have.”
“How long do I have?”
“Not long. Probably less than a year if you continue to use the power. A weaker man would have succumbed long before now.”
Wynter absorbed the information without flinching. He’d known how high the price of the Ice Heart could be, but after holding Garrick’s body in his arms, no amount of wise counsel could have swayed him from charting his course of vengeance.
“If the garm have come,” he said, “I will not leave my people unprotected. They must be warned, no matter the cost to me.”
“Then send outriders to the remote farms and villages,” Galacia replied—quickly enough that Wyn realized she’d already decided what he should do before he’d stepped foot inside the temple. “Claim rumors of marauding darkwolves. Have the villagers form town watches to patrol the woods and report anything suspicious. Warn them to keep their livestock penned close and avoid traveling through the woods in parties smaller than three. If the garm do venture down from the mountains, I doubt they will be bold enough at first to do more than prey on the alone and unwary.”
“The moment the villagers find the first tracks, they’ll know the truth.”
“Yes, but by then, your bride could be pregnant. That may provide hope enough to hold potential assassins at bay. Regicide is not a crime Winterfolk easily embrace.”
“Only priestesses of Wyrn, eh, Laci?”
She bowed her head slightly in acknowledgment, her face a cool, expressionless mask.
He shrugged his shoulders to release the gathered tension in them. “Was there anything else, or are we done?”
“We’re done,” she said. “I’ll show you out.”
After one last, brief glance at the ice spears and the carved, frozen face of Wyrn behind the altar, Wynter fell into step beside the severe, stately woman who’d once been his friend and intended bride. At the temple entrance, the wind of the high reaches rushed over them, blowing Wynter’s hair all around his face. Galacia’s stood impervious to it. Like the goddess she served, she was a tower of ice, untouched by the elements.
He spat out a mouthful of hair and bowed to her as temple protocol demanded. “Thank you for the warnings, Lady Frey, and the advice.” And because they had once been friends, and there would always be a part of him that wished they still were, he added, “If it comes to it, Laci, there’s none I’d rather have hold the spear than you.”
As he walked away, Galacia remained standing in the temple entrance, watching him make his way down the rocky path back towards Gildenheim and his Summerlea bride.
“You are wrong, Wyn,” she murmured, knowing the wind would whisk her words far away from his ears. If he’d turned at this moment, he would have been surprised by the regret in her pale eyes. “I would not slay you easily. I’d do it, but never easily.”
Khamsin scowled as Bella and two Wintercraig maids fussed and muttered around her as they tried to ready her for her first dinner with the Wintercraig court. Summer Sun! Why had she ever thought she wanted to take part in the pomp and ceremony of court life? Just preparing for dinner was a production that sapped her patience to a bare thread.
Although there’d been no time in Summerlea to prepare a wardrobe suitable for her role as the new Winter Queen (assuming her father would even go to such expense on her behalf), her sisters had each donated several gowns from their own court wardrobes. Gildenheim’s seamstresses had spent several hours “winterizing” one of Spring’s gowns with a new, padded silk underdress and a fitted, ermine-trimmed overdress.
“There now, my lady,” Bella murmured. She tied off the last stitch to repair some damaged beadwork and snipped the thread, then stood back and ran a critical eye over everything. “All done, and presentable enough for a dinner in any court, I’d say.”