His lips crash against mine. I lose myself, pushing everything I have back into him. His name dances upon my lips as I part them ever so slightly, savoring the sweetness of his kiss. A spark flares within me as he holds me tightly against his heart.
He whispers my name back in reverent devotion. “Rosalina, my rose.” Coarse stubble scrapes against my cheek as his lips move to my ear. “This way is closed to you forevermore.”
Then I’m falling, crashing through vines and brambles and red roses. I see Kel’s face distantly through the tangle of thorns.
He let me go.
I crash to the hard ground and let out a desperate cry of rage and sorrow. “Keldarion!” Without wasting a moment, I push myself to my feet, surging back to the brambles. But a stinging cold pricks my finger: a frost spreading over the vines, the roses. They crystalize and die.
Kel’s killing the rosebush. The one way to the Enchanted Vale. Wild panic fills me, and I rush back as the frost spreads faster and faster. I trip over a root and roll until my face lands in a pile of mulchy leaves.
I brace my hands on the muddy ground and look up. The last of the rosebush freezes over before disappearing into a mist of ice and snow. Around me is the familiar wood, suddenly void of all the color I had learned how to see.
I am back in Orca Cove.
But I’m not home.
59
The Prince of Thorns
Pathetic.That’stheonlyword I can think of as I stare down at the miserable creature slumped in the corner.
He barely even raises his head as I enter through the window.
Either I’m losing my touch, or he’s even worse than I realized.
“What?” I smirk. “Not even a hello for an old friend?”
A deep rumble echoes through the large white wolf, and it shakes its body, chips of ice and snow falling to the ground like twinkling chimes. But there are other parts still attached to him: jagged spikes of ice jutting out from the back of his legs and fluorescent blue scars etching around his face. All reminders that this is no mere wolf, but signs of the Enchantress’s curse. The only thing the spell left untouched were his eyes, blue as the winter sky.
Well, his eyes and his temper. That’s always been a problem.
I force myself to look away and onto the utter destruction of the room. Torn curtains, broken furniture, and winter creeping its icy claws across every inch of this place. Frost covers even the dark thorns crawling along the chamber’s walls. It’s utterly covered in my handiwork.It has to be.Keldarion’s uncontrollable winter keeps destroying them.
It’s beyond irritating to upkeep.
I give an exaggerated shake and look down at the wolf. “I know you prefer the cold, but this is getting ridiculous.”
“Get out,” the beast snarls, pawing forward. Even in this form, he’s taller than me, the giant maw in line with my face.
“You can’t expect me to missthis,could you now?” The black ends of my cape drag in the ice as I walk in a circle around him. “How far you’ve fallen, Prince.”
He doesn’t answer and I continue to pace, trailing a hand over the soft white fur of his back. “What a pathetic creature you’ve become. The sun is up, yet you’re still a beast.” I gesture to the window. “Not to mention your realm is on the brink of open rebellion. What are you going to do if they storm the door? The castle doesn’t have enough magic to keep it shut for much longer.”
“Leave now.”
“I always thought I was going to have the honor of doing you in,” I say. “But it looks like your own people will do that for you.”
Nothing. His body shudders, more chips of ice falling off his massive frame, and his eyes cast downward.
“She’s been gone, what, a month?” I shake my head and run my hand through my hair. “She has broken you, hasn’t she?”
He roars loud enough to shake the castle. Daggers of ice fall from the ceiling, and jagged spikes jut from the floor.Here we go.
“Rosalina.” I speak her name like a poem, and I can see the reaction of his body like a physical blow. “Your—”
“Don’t.”