But just like every other time, nothing surfaces. I touch my necklace, cool and hard between my breasts. I’ve pushed aside what happened in the lake because the memory is too painful, but now, I can’t help but wonder if there’s something to my pendant beyond the stored memory.
Setting the photo on the windowsill, I press my hands over the glass, the pane startlingly cold. Outside, snow drizzles the air, but there’s something almost peaceful about it. In the distance, the half-moon glints off the frozen surface of the lake.
I can’t see the main campus building from here, but it’s out there. And in a few short hours, I’ll be inside the academy’s walls.
The familiar nervous pang begins in my gut as I start mulling over what my first day will be like. All the usual worries flash through my mind.
Will I know anyone in my classes? What if I’m still too far behind to understand what they teach? How will I find my way around?
Then my thoughts take a dark turn. What if I see the Winter Prince? We’ve been holed up inside our dorm for two days, long enough to nearly forget the possessive way he claimed me.
But now . . . well now the thought of being near him fills me with anxiety. The scrape of his sword from its scabbard when he nearly executed me echoes inside my skull. The way he looked at me earlier, the way he pervades my mind . . .
All at once, a dizziness washes over me. My thoughts go blank. My vision dark. I blink and suddenly I’m in someone else’s room. A huge, opulent chamber ten times the size of my dorm room.
I’m not actually there, I realize. I’m in someone else’s mind. A male someone. Seeing what they’re seeing. Feeling what they’re feeling.
Speaking of feeling . . . oh my God . . . he, whoever he is, is sitting in bed without a shred of clothes.
He looks to his right, and I recognize the royal blue hair spilled over the pillow. The blue lips, smeared slightly and swollen, like they’ve been kissed hard.
Inara.
She looks up at him, her big dewy white eyes full of adoration. But all he feels is disgust. I can sense the dark emotion swirling around him. Whoever this is, he’s awash in darkness. Beyond that, there’s a cold indifference inside him.
Layers and layers of it, like a shield.
He slips from bed, still fully naked, and saunters over to the fireplace. I can feel the warmth of the flames kissing his bare skin. Can feel the cold lurking beneath his flesh.
“I don’t know why you insist on that stupid fire,” Inara says. “Doesn’t the heat bother you?”
“I like looking at it,” he answers in a distorted voice. Being inside his head, his words sound like they come from underwater.
“You like looking at it?” The derision in her tone annoys him, but she sounds oblivious. “You’re so weird sometimes.”
“Get out.”
“Excuse me?”
“Leave.”
Inara huffs as she hunts around the bed for her clothes. When she’s zipped back into her dress—a silver, sequined thing that looks gorgeous on her—she glides over to him, making sure he notices the way the slippery fabric hugs her hips.
He does. I can feel his desire rise along with his disgust.
“Didn’t you like what we did earlier?” she purrs, stroking a hand down his shoulder.
“I did,” he admits coldly. “And now I would like for you to leave.”
Anger flashes in her eyes, and she bares her teeth at him. “You’re a dick.”
He turns and stares into the fire as she leaves. I can feel his mind calm as he watches the flames dance and shiver, even as the heat repulses him. There’s a mirror just above the mantle, and I desperately try to will him to move into a position where I can make out who’s head I’m in.
Instead, he reaches up and retrieves something hidden inside a silver heart-shaped box. Little foxes and deer are engraved on the sides, the inside red velvet.
As he peers down at what he took, I see it’s a picture. Of a girl . . .
I gasp when I make out the long, wavy blonde-white hair tumbling over one shoulder. The hazel eyes that can’t quite hide their sadness. The wide nose I hate and lips one might call kissable. A little scar indents the skin just above my mouth.
Me. He’s looking at a picture of me. A school portrait taken my sophomore year. My heart spikes into my throat as I recall how it just went missing one day. I looked everywhere for it because my hair actually cooperated, for once, and my skin was clear. Making it my best school photo ever.
That was over two years ago.
My suspicions are further confirmed when I see the condition of the photo. It looks worn. Fingerprints dull the surface. The edges are curled, the lacquer from one side peeling back.
Whoever this is, he’s looked at my picture a lot. I stare at the two hands he uses to hold the photo, careful to only touch the edges. Soft white half-moons ridge his slender, neat fingernails.
Emotions slam through him as he stares at me. Darkness. Confusion. Rage. Despair. And something else. Something so powerful it eats at him. But I can’t decipher the emotion.
What the hell?
Then he calmly tilts the photo toward the fire until one of the edges erupts in flames. A surge of loss rises up inside him, followed by relief as my face burns away to nothing.
Only when the heat blisters his thumb does he finally release my photo. The moment my image disappears inside the licking orange flames, a ragged sigh escapes his lips.
Flicking his hand toward the fire, he sends a howling wind of ice and snow to snuff out the flames.
When he glances at himself in the mirror, I nearly scream.
The Winter Prince stares back at me, and it feels like those mournful eyes are looking straight into my soul.
It feels like he can see me.
I don’t know if it’s the pure terror hurtling through my veins, but whatever connection I have to him severs. I’m no longer in his room, but back in mine. Standing right where I was before, by the window, my hands pressed against the cold pane.
Only now it’s freezing inside our room, and when I turn around to flee back to my bed and its mound of covers, I see why.
The magical fire that never extinguishes has died.
18
I’m a bundle of nervous energy as Mack and I walk to class through a wooded path, shadowed by one very angry sprite. Her name is Ruby, but I’ve learned little else about her. It’s hard to make conversation when she’s continuously rattling off what have to be curses in a totally different language while darting around our heads.
I also watched her chug a tiny thimbleful of brambleberry liquor earlier and then give the world’s largest belch.
Mack’s sprite, on the other hand, is actually helpful. Thornilia delivered Mack a flaky raspberry tart this morning, and she must have hustled because it was still warm, steam curling from the paper sleeve around it. Then Thornilia helped Mack pick out an outfit, steamed it, and braided her hair, weaving tiny winter roses through her dark strands.
She even did some cleaning spell on my hoodie and jeans.
Of course, she got the go-getting, hair-braiding, sober sprite while I got the tiny trash-talking lush.
A large group of human shadows from the second Seelie dorm walk up ahead. When Mack and her sprite hurry to join them, I slow down, enjoying the moment to myself.