Chapter 3
She quickly closed her fist, tucking her hand into the folds of her dark cloak.
“Nothing,” she said, her voice sharp to mask the sudden flutter of unease in her chest. “Move, Prince. Your seventy-two hours have already begun.”
The mist in the borderlands did not rise from the soil; it crawled out of the graves of forgotten wars, thick and tasting of zinc.
Phaedra kept her pace steady, three strides ahead. The ethereal tether between her left bracer and Kaelith’s right wrist hummed with a low, violet vibrato, swaying like a spider’s silk in the damp night air. Every time Kaelith’s boot caught on a gnarl of blackthorn roots, the line went taut, sending an electric prickle through the bones of her arm.
With every jerk of the cord came a muffled hitch in his breathing.
He didn't complain. That annoyed her far more than groaning would have. An arrogant prince brought low should have whined; he should have cursed the cold or demanded rest. Instead, Kaelith endured the march in grim, stubborn silence, dragging his bruised frame through the mire with an eerie, rhythmic determination.
“If you tear that joint any further,” Phaedra remarked without turning her head, “I will have to carry your carcass. And I assure you, my divine mandate does not include pack-mule duties.”
Behind her, a dry, ragged chuckle broke the rhythm of his labored breathing. “Such tender bedside manner. Did they teach you that in the novitiate cloisters, or does natural charm simply flow from your every pore?”
“They taught us how to amputate a necrotic limb in six seconds with a dull chisel,” she countered. “Would you like a demonstration?”
“I shall defer to your expertise, O merciful executioner. Though if you sever my arm, you’ll have to find another limb to leash.”
Phaedra paused at the crest of a ridge, glancing back over her shoulder.
Kaelith stood four paces below her, surrounded by the swirling grey skirts of the fog. He looked terrible. The iridescence in his royal blood had dried into dark, crusty scabs across his torn sleeve and chest. His soot-black hair was plastered to his forehead with cold sweat, and his jaw was clenched so hard the tendons in his neck looked like wire. Yet when he met her eyes, the twilight-violet of his gaze held that same unnerving, incandescent spark.
“You’re limping,” she observed flatly.
“Merely an aristocratic affectation,” he rasped, leaning against a petrified birch. “I find symmetry terribly pedestrian.”
She rolled her eyes beneath the cowl and stepped off the path, finding a dry shelf of slate beneath the overhang of a hollowed stone dolmen. “Sit. We rest for twenty minutes.”
Kaelith didn't argue. He practically fell against the stone, sliding down the wet granite with an involuntary hiss that exposed his teeth. He pressed the heel of his good hand into his left shoulder, shuddering as a wave of agony rippled across his features.
Phaedra stood over him, her arms crossed, the silver crescent rune on her palm throbbing with a dull, unnatural itch. She had spent the last three hours trying to ignore it. The scythe’s brand—the divine anchor connecting her soul to the great reservoir of the Pale Veil—was supposed to be a point of absolute, frozen stillness. It was the eye of the winter storm, the silence of the vault.
It was not supposed to itch. It was not supposed to feel warm, like a sunbaked pebble pressed into flesh.
*It’s just residual resonance from his fae blood,* she told herself. *He is ancient, untamed magic. The proximity is contaminating my focus.*
“Do you always hover like an owl waiting for a field mouse to expire?” Kaelith asked. He had closed his eyes, his head tilted back against the rock.
“I am observing my captive.”
“You are fretting.”
“Reapers do not fret.”
“Ah, forgive me. You are *contemplating the impermanence of mortal flesh with aloof detachment*.” He cracked open one violet eye, looking her up and down. “It looks remarkably like fretting from down here.”
“You are insufferable.”
“And you are fascinated.”
Phaedra let out a sharp breath of disgust and knelt before him before she could stop herself. The movement was crisp, violent in its sudden efficiency. She reached into her kit, retrieving a small earthen jar of tallow and ground silverleaf—a battlefield analgesic used to keep dying recruits coherent long enough to deliver last rites.
“Strip the collar,” she ordered.
Kaelith’s brow arched. Even battered and caked in mud, the tilt of his mouth retained a devastating, rakish elegance. “Phaedra. We haven't even had breakfast.”
“Strip the collar, or I will cut the tunic off your back with a flaying hook.”
“The romance never stops with you, does it?”
With agonizing slowness, Kaelith used his good hand to work loose the leather lacings at his throat. His tunic fell open, revealing broad, sculpted collarbones and a pale chest mapped with old, faded silver scars—the ledger of a warrior prince who had survived centuries of courtly treachery and skirmishes on the wild borders.
Near his left shoulder, the flesh was blackened and swollen, the joint clearly forced out of its socket by whatever violent force had driven him into the belltower.
Phaedra’s fingers hovered above the bruise. Her hands were clad in supple, fingerless leather, leaving her pale skin bare to the chill. She felt the radiant, furnace heat rolling off him. Fae were beings of fire and marrow, of seasonal tides and weeping earth. To her cold, ascetic senses, being this close to him felt like leaning toward an open hearth in midwinter. Dangerous. Enticing.
“This will hurt,” she warned.
“I’m an exiled royal, darling. Everything hurts.”
She caught his bicep with one hand and placed her palm firmly against his collarbone. At the first press of her skin against his, Kaelith’s breath hitched—not in pain, but in a sudden, sharp intake of air that made the muscle under her fingers jump.
His skin was so hot it almost scalded.
“Brace,” she commanded.
With a swift, calculated levering of her body, she wrenched his arm upward and drove her heel of her palm inward.
A sickening *pop* echoed through the stone hollow.
Kaelith threw his head back against the granite, his teeth sinking into his bottom lip until a bead of bright scarlet welled up. He didn't scream, but the Stygian tether between them flared with a brilliant, agonized violet light, vibrating with such intensity that Phaedra felt the phantom blow right in her own shoulder joint. Her breath left her in a sharp gasp.
For three seconds, neither of them moved.
Kaelith’s chest rose and fell in heavy, shuddering heaves. Phaedra remained kneeling between his spread knees, her hands still pinned to his chest and arm, her hood having slipped back an inch to reveal the sharp, pale curve of her cheek and the storm-grey of her eyes.
He slowly lowered his head. His eyes were dark, dilated with pain and something much heavier, much more intoxicating.
“Your hands,” he whispered, his voice vibrating deep in his ribcage beneath her palm. “They aren't cold anymore.”
Phaedra froze.
Beneath her bare fingers, his heart was hammering—a wild, thumping drumbeat that seemed to defy the quiet finality of the grave. And her hands—usually numb, usually chilled like freshly carved marble—were prickling with circulation. She could feel his sweat, the roughness of his skin, the sharp ridge of his collarbone.
