#daddy winter

Kallias could have forgiven Rhysand if he’d done what Beron Vanserra was attempting to do—seem mildly pleased with Amarantha’s cruelty, without outright joining her. But Rhysand had sold them all out and for what? Kallias heard half his court had been wiped out the morning after Amarantha’s coup. Perhaps he truly did thrive in darkness, and it didn’t matter who wielded it, so long as he got to have his fun. 

Kallias also didn’t bother to mention that this was merely three fourths of his army. The rest were with Viviane at the border. Not enough to challenge Hybern and still better than nothing at all. He knew what Amarantha meant to do the moment she raised her hands. Rhysand stepped forward, her little puppet given Amarantha couldn’t actually utilize their magic. She was merely a rather ugly box, holding it until someone managed to steal it all back. 

Kallias didn’t dare close his eyes. Standing beneath a bright morning sun in snow that came to his knees, he watched that entire army collapse to the ground row by row like falling dominoes. It was all a miserable waste of life. Kallias meant to send a letter to every family, to offer them a warrior's burial even if Amarantha mangled their corpses, too. As if that offered their families any peace. 

“Anything else?” Amarantha asked, eyes sliding to Rhysand. Kallias refused to speak, furious when that claw slid itself over his own mind. It was a warning of what Rhys could do to him should he choose, a violation of everything Kallias was.

“Just his hatred.”

Amarantha mockingly pouted. “You hate me? Perhaps some time at court will fix that.”

Her cursed court in their sacred mountain. Kallias waited for Amarantha to turn her back before he spat at Rhysand’s boots. Rhys merely smiled, rolling his eyes. As if it was all some hilarious joke. He was too busy obeying Amarantha’s every whim to truly look into Kallias’s mind, which was a blessing.

Kallias knew what he’d find. Viviane and Wegen and everything he loved and held dear, laid out for a mad woman to wreck and ruin. He had no doubt she wouldn’t torture Viviane just to see Kallias submit. 

He pushed all thoughts of Viviane from his mind until Amarantha and Rhys departed. Off to harass another court–Spring, if he had to guess. He still had his spies, just like everyone else. Only Tamlin refused to submit. Kallias wondered if he’d choose the same fate had Amarantha wanted him to be her consort. 

Kira came out of the palace, dressed like a courtier and not a warrior. She’d wanted to join and Kallias had told her no. He needed someone. Nikolai was gone—all that was left was Kira. It was odd to see her dressed in a pine green, fur lined gown and yet it was better than staring down at her dead body.

“Want help?” she whispered. 

Kallias swallowed. He wanted to fall to the ground and scream at the gods. There were so many bodies that the only true way to dispose of them all was to burn them. It was still a warrior's death and yet Kallias thought the snow would never fall white again. The stain of Amarantha’s cruelty, the ash of the dead, would linger for centuries after her inevitable death. 

It wasn’t just him and Kira. Anyone who could, came to help stack pyres and bodies. To lay coins and offer prayers and light torches. It was utter misery, writing the names in the journal Viviane had sent for his birthday. He’d meant to use it to write her love letters, not remember the seemingly endless dead. 

He couldn’t stop thinking about her. There had been no response from Viviane, though his fox had returned. She’d read his letter, had taken the ring, and done exactly what he wanted. To send a response risked everyone now in her care—and yet, Kallias was so deeply, unearthly afraid of what she made of it. 

He needed to get Viviane out of his mind or he’d never survive. Regardless of her personal feelings, Viviane would never abandon Winter—or him, for that matter. Swallowing a deluge of tears, Kallias scanned the horizon. Not out of love—he willed himself to be made of ice. To pretend he felt nothing at all. 

He knew he wasn’t the only High Lord with a culled army. With a populace now suffering for Hybern’s continued success. Everything Winter was capable of producing had now been doubled, only to route all of it to Hybern. If he wanted to ensure his people didn’t starve, Kallias had to demand a triple output. 

While acrid smoke curled towards an icy sky, Kallias turned his back to all of it. He was a leashed High Lord, worse than the male before him. He’d get everyone killed through simple inaction. It was a choice to do nothing and Kallias couldn't abide by it. Wouldn’t. He’d rather die than see his home reduced to an enslaved territory. 

“What are you thinking?” Kira whispered, eyes scanning his face. Telling her was a death sentence.

The whole damn thing was a death sentence. She’d been spared because she was a member of his court before she was his captain. She could have fled—he’d given tacit permission the very night he’d lost his powers. Some of his court already had, packed up for the continent before the dust had even settled.

If they ever managed to get free, Kallias would be executing traitors. 

“I’m thinking she can’t rule us all unless we’re complacent,” he all but whispered, yanking Kira into his bed-chamber—away from prying ears. 

“They won’t all fight back,” Kira whispered, her voice so, so soft. And Kallias knew that. Beron would wait it out to see if they had a shot before he ever entertained the thought. Rhysand was an obvious no—he’d been so quick to align himself with Amarantha that Kallias couldn’t fathom his motivations. Thesan, too, was unlikely to join unless he knew they had a clear path to victory and Tamlin was too busy trying to break the curse (at least, he hoped) to consider war.

That left Summer and Day. Atticus and Phoebus. He didn’t know them at all. 

Nothing forbade Kallias from reaching out. From writing twin letters asking the High Lords if they’d like to have a meal and discussing how they might redesign long established trade and taxes in an effort to keep their collective people from starving. 

“Kallias,” Kira all but pleaded, reading over his shoulder. “Kallias, she will kill you.”

“She’s going to anyway. Once she’s gotten whatever she’s after, she’ll kill us all,” he replied, well aware his words were only angering Kira further. He knew it, though. Knew in his bones that none of them would be allowed to live. Even Rhysand, for all his calculated treachery, would die in the end. He wouldn’t go groveling—wouldn’t leave the world a coward on his knees. 

“Viviane will kill you, Kal,” Kira hissed, grabbing him by the arm when he tried to walk past her. It was enough to stop him, to force him to think about her again. What was she doing? 

Did she miss him?

“Viviane would understand,” Kallias decided, turning to look at Kira. He felt resigned to this fate, to always wondering without ever knowing. “She would never love me if I rolled over like a traitor.”

“She would want you to survive.”

Kallias held out a hand, unable to draw up even the barest frost. Everything he had, he’d given to Viv. Surely she understood the implications. He was wholly leashed–he had nothing to defend himself with. The once endless river that flowed through him wasn’t even a drip. It was a poisoned sludge he couldn’t touch, lest he betray Viviane and the rest of his home. 

“If I’m successful, we will survive,” he said, careful with his framing. “She’ll survive, and so will I.”She had his heart, after all. Kallias didn’t want it back—she could keep it even when he died. Kira only shook her head, as pale as Kallias so often was. 

“You’re stupid,” she whispered. 

“The alternative is doing nothing. I would rather…” Kallias took a gulping breath, swallowing his anger. It wasn’t right, directing it at Kira. She should have been with Viviane and they both knew it. It should have been Nikolai with him. Nikolai would have understood what was necessary, that duty always came first. Kallias was half glad Viviane had him—Nikolai would temper some of her impulsivity. 

“The alternative is Rhysand,” he finally told her. “Doing nothing is still a choice—it helps her. I can’t…how could I ever look Viviane in the eye and ask her to love me when I sat aside and let a foreign despot destroy our home?”

Kira wrapped her arms around the blue coat she wore. “This is why you’re High Lord, Kal. I don’t think you’ll succeed, but I’m with you until the end.”

He took a breath. “Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

Kallias needed hope. 

He had nothing else. 

VIVIANE:

[40 years before Feyre]

Refugees had been trickling into Wegen over the last decade from more than just Winter. Whatever was happening in Autumn sent people scrambling for the mountains, hoping for safety in Winter. A border Viviane had once been tasked with defending was now wide open. She and Nikolai had decided if someone survived, they deserved to be let in.

No one was allowed to leave. No letters could be sent out, warded impossibly tight by the remainder of Kallias’s magic. It was the only way she could justify letting people in at all—once they knew, even if they hadn’t realized or meant to come, they were not allowed to leave. Viviane and Nikolai locked the city down at sunset, patrolling heavily at every exit. She had bears and wolves trained in the woods and though no one had ever tried to escape, Viviane could imagine a scenario some fifty years in the future where someone got desperate.

You could argue with soldiers, at least. Plead for mercy.

The bears would merely shred someone to pieces. 

Most days, Viviane could pretend nothing had changed. Kallias was High Lord, which meant he was too busy to visit. She had that ring hidden in one of her drawers, his letter stuffed between the pages of a book. Viviane could go a full week without digging either of them out for her inspection. It had taken her a decade to manage. 

And though she had his last letter committed to memory, Viviane was still no closer to a decision regarding her own feelings. Of course she loved him. Kallias had been her best friend for the duration of her life. He always would be. He’d never given her even an inkling that he loved her, and she’d never once considered it. 

Considered him. Kallias was off-limits, and why want something you knew wasn’t for you? She could be practical. Rational, even. 

And if Viviane was honest, she was so, so angry with him. He’d made yet another decision without consulting her. He’d been in love with her since he was ten years old and never, in the centuries they’d been alive, had he ever thought to involve her in that. To tell her. He’d instead sent her far, far away from him and part of Viviane wondered if he hadn’t done that to keep anyone else from taking her from him. 

If he hadn’t done it to keep her from distracting him. 

Fingers snapped in front of her face. Viviane looked up from the dining table and her rapidly cooling porridge. Nikolai was the only thing keeping her from saying fuck it, and going back to the palace to demand he answer for himself. 

“Are you going to eat today?” he asked. She needed to. She couldn’t fall apart, not when so many people were counting on her. It was another spartan meal. Everything in Wegen was self-contained. They could no longer count on the support of the rest of the realm, and Viviane wasn’t going to be the reason someone went hungry. She took a bite, and then another, silently scarfing down the food in response to Nikolai’s watchful gaze. 

“Sentries think there are refugees from the capitol coming.”

Viviane knew what that meant. Kallias had personally sent her someone. She nodded, mentally calculating all the things she needed to do. They’d been drafting anyone willing to serve into the only standing military left in Winter. It had once been open only to High Fae—Viviane had very quickly abolished that, which saw a surge in membership, and had created what she thought was a rather vibrant, almost terrifying army in all of Prythian, assuming the rumors about the winged monsters Rhysand supposedly commanded wasn’t true. 

“Let's go check,” she agreed with a heavy sigh. 

They were quick to button themselves into warm coats and fur-lined boots before heading out into the cold. Viviane jammed her hands into her pockets, her thoughts were more restless than usual. Dawn had broken a brilliant pink over the city, throwing blinding light over freshly fallen snow. In some ways, everything seemed normal—she could hear the sounds of the bustling market and children screaming. A calendar of the week's events was tacked to a light pole. Now that travel was banned and no one could leave, a group of upbeat citizens worked each week to create activities that brought everyone together. Viviane noted cooking classes, quilting circles, and combat lessons in regular intervals.

She’d gone on ice skating excursions on more than one occasion if only to continue the charade that everything was normal. Kallias was just busy.

Kallias was coming back. 

She and Nikolai made their way to the now gated entrance of the city. A group of ten lesser fae sentries waited, shifting nervously as they always did. Winter, like all of Prythian, was divided among the High and Lesser—Viviane couldn’t undo millennia of injustice over the course of a decade. 

“Riyan,” she said with a smile instead, looking up at the ice-coated male. He was the perfect supervisor of the guard, given he stood nearly nine feet tall and his face had never once broken anything but a frown.

Today, he offered her a grim smile. Viviane’s heart stuttered in her chest as fear coated her tongue. Nikolai, scenting it on the icy wind, took half a step forward to peer around the males. 

“Oh,” he whispered, pushing open the opalescent gate quickly. Viviane half hoped it would be the High Lord waiting on the other end, come to tell her the ordeal was over. 

It was her mother. Only her mother, bundled in warm furs. Her hands laid protectively over a sling on her chest, and as Viviane came closer, she realized it was a child sleeping, tucked away from the cold. 

“Where is dad?” she asked, her stomach splattering at her feet.

Her mother blinked her jewel-bright eyes. “There was—” she stopped herself, her voice cracking. No one moved as they waited, the first news they’d head of the rest of Prythian in over a decade.

“Rebellion,” her mother finally whispered. “Your father is dead.”

Nikolai joined Viviane on the edge of their border, dark eyes searching her mother’s face as if there was some clue he might uncover.. “What do you mean there was rebellion?”

She swallowed hard, rubbing the white, fur-lined fabric that held the child. Viviane’s only sibling. 

“The High Lord allied with Day and Summer,” she all but whispered, a tear slipping down her cheek. Viviane rubbed a hand rough against her face, drinking in her mother's elegant silver hair pulled off her lovely face. She hadn’t seen her in so long, had forgotten just how much she missed her family. “They tried to bring an end to her rule.”

“What happened?” Nikolai demanded. Viviane came forward, reaching into the sling to pull out the baby. A little pink and silver bow was pinned against pretty, snow-white hair. The child flung out chubby little arms, her mouth pulling in a tiny frown but ultimately she settled against Viviane’s body. As if she knew she was safe. 

“The High Lords are dead,” her mother said. Viviane was grateful she held the baby—she might have winnowed to the capitol on the spot. “Day and Summer lost their High Lords.”

“And us? Did we lose ours?” Nikolai pressed, his olive skin ashen with fear. She shook her head.

“I don’t know,” she admitted. Viviane turned plaintive eyes to Nikolai. 

Please, she silently begged, holding her sister so tightly she threatened to wake her. Her legs shook with fear, the wound in her chest opening until she was certain she must be bleeding all over the dark cobblestone.

“I left because the High Lord told me to go. And I heard—” her mother's voice broke a second time, eyes shifting to the child Viviane held. “I heard she punished us by killing the children at court.”

Nikolai shook his head back and forth. Behind him, every sentry turned their faces away, struck by the sheer cruelty of such an act.

“She wouldn’t dare,” Nikolai breathed. 

“Please,” Viviane whispered.

“I’ll go,” Nikolai agreed. “Because my High Lady is ordering me to, and I obey.”

She ignored the way her mother’s eyes widened, or how the wind carried his silent words to the city behind them. It was well-known, to Wegen, at any rate, that Viviane was the seat of power.

Nikolai stepped away from her, inclining his head respectfully. She watched him start down the road, certain that he would wait until he was far from the city to winnow. She knew Nikolai would die to protect their secrets.

She knew he’d come back.

“Come on, mama,” Viviane whispered, her chest aching. Father was dead.

Kallias was too.

“Let's get out of the cold.”

KALLIAS:

[40 years before Feyre]

He was being summoned beneath the mountain. He, Helion and Tarquin would not be allowed to return to their homes. Kallias had sent away anyone he could reasonably spare that was willing to go. Many of his courtiers had opted to remain in a show of silent support he didn’t deserve. 

Twenty dead younglings. Every child in his court had been slaughtered in the cruelest way imaginable. Rhysand’s power, though the High Lord had been too cowardly to show his face, had ripped through the children in the night. Waking them from the pain, forcing frantic parents out of bed while their children endured a slow, painful death.

Kallias had been spared. He couldn’t fathom why.

No one had presented him with the option. Amarantha had merely delighted that he remained alive and Kallias privately wondered if she held the older High Lords of Day and Summer more accountable than him.

Or, perhaps she had grown bored with the killing, with the not knowing which new High Lord’s would arise after slaughtering the families of Summer and Day. Helion had been merely a scholar, and Tarquin the prince of Adriata, so far removed from the High Lord’s family by marriage and birth that, had they not all been murdered, he never would have been more than a prince. 

He had no family to kill. No parents left alive, no wife, no children. Only his court, now left in crumbling ruins. He’d been given a week to bury his dead, but his palace was in shambles, wrecked and crumbling. Five sets of parents had chosen to follow after their children, and Kallias couldn’t bring himself to look at the rest of them. 

So he sat on that throne of ice, alone in his throne room. Immovable, drowning in his guilt. Trapped under the sacred mountain was a fitting punishment for the High Lord who had sent twenty children to their death. He couldn’t contain his grief, couldn’t squash his misery. 

Footsteps echoed on marble. Somewhere in that dim room, Kira stood as she always did. She’d send the interloper away.

“Nik,” her voice breathed. Kallias looked up, stunned to see his friend striding through the cracked columns of the once magnificent throne room. Kira, his mirror image ever since the atrocity, seemed to crumble at the sight of him. Nikolai looked well. His cheeks were pink from the cold, but his brown eyes were bright, his hair neat, his spine straight. He looked as if he’d been eating well—like he slept at night.

He adjusted his blue jacket, catching Kira against his chest mere seconds before she might have slid to the ground at his feet. He held her, pressing his face into her dark hair. Kallias felt new fear sweep over him, forcing him to his feet. 

“Viviane is–”

“Alive,” Nikolai assured him, not releasing Kira. “And I can’t stay long. I swore I’d come and see if you survived.”

Alive. Kallias descended those steps numbly. She’d sent Nikolai to check on him? Kallias blinked away the urge to fall to his knees, to give in to the sobs he’d been suppressing. He had no right to cry. No right to do anything but accept his punishment silently. Gratefully.

No right to Viviane’s concern. No right to her at all. “How is she?” he whispered, needing to know despite everything. 

Nikolai pressed his lips together. “You should have told her before you did. She’s trying to pretend she doesn’t miss you.”

His heart jumped in his chest. “Is it working?”

A smile tugged at Nikolai’s lips. He released Kira with the softest kiss to her scalp, the only admission he felt anything for Kallias’s Captain. Kira didn’t react at all, though her brown eyes were glassy. Nikolai crossed the marble, clapping Kallias on the shoulder.

“It’s not.” His smile faded and Kallias knew what was coming. Felt utter dread knowing Nikolai would take back his answer to Viviane. Would she still miss him then? “The children–”

“Gone,” Kallias said, turning back for his throne. “Their minds were shattered, they—” They suffered. 

Oppressive silence rang around them. “A…another High Lord slaughtered children?” Nikolai asked, as if he couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

“Yes,” Kira answered, the word dripping with condemnation. “He’s a traitor. He could have allied with us, could have spared us and instead he stands beside her and delights in the cruelty he inflicts in her name. Not even Hellas herself would have him and I hope he rots.”

“How…” Nikolai shook his head, pressing his hand to his mouth. “Even Beron Vanserra wouldn’t…”

“We’re being sent to her court,” Kira told Nikolai, reaching for his arm. “You and Viviane will be all that’s left of us.”

“There’s no more fight,” Kallias added, squashing the hatred he felt. Not at Amarantha—he couldn’t sustain his anger for her any longer. He’d merely turned inwards, had directed it fully to himself. Trying again was unthinkable. What else could he risk losing? 

“For you, maybe,” Nikolai disagreed. “Not for us.”

Kallias didn’t respond, didn’t dare ask what he and Viviane were up to. “The only thing that matters to me is her life,” he told his friend, holding Nikolai’s gaze. Nikolai understood what Kallias couldn’t say well enough—she was to be protected at all costs. 

“Don’t.”

Nikolai’s jaw set in a hard line. “You made her High Lord in your stead. I obey her.”

Kallias shivered without meaning to. The thought of a whole city bowing to Viviane’s rule made his body tight and hot all at once. For a moment, Kallias indulged himself in a daydream—one where Viviane amassed an army strong enough to challenge Amarantha. Where she liberated him. Came for him.

Wanted him.

And Kallias swallowed it, because he knew how it ended. It wasn’t just Amarantha, but Rhysand and whatever armies he was hiding, too. Rhysand, who had more power left at his disposal than any of them. Amarantha, who could draw on the full might of Hybern to crush them.

He’d watch her torture Viviane.

Kill her.

“Don’t,” he whispered, unable to force anyone to do his bidding anymore. He had no authority other than the useless crown atop his head. Nikolai shook his head back and forth.

“You would do it for us.”“Look what it cost me,” Kallias replied, his anguish coloring his words. “What are you willing to lose?” 

The unspoken hung between the three of them.

“I can’t—I won’t—risk her.”

Nikolai inclined his head. He took a step back, his regret plain. “I will see you again.”

Even Kira winced at his words. To have their hope, their belief they could do something to save their home. Each other. Kira and Kallias no longer believed there was anything left to do. Any hope left to them was centered on Tamlin and the loophole Amarantha had offered. Kallias would do nothing else to draw Amarantha’s attention to Winter or what he’d hidden high in the mountains. 

Nikolai turned, leaving Kallias and Kira alone in that emptied throne room,

Surrounded by nothing but their grief. 

VIVIANE:

[an endless eternity]

Viviane stepped from the palace just as she always did. Dressed in well-fitted, fur trimmed white pants and a blue coat dress, she’d come to appreciate an unfussy wardrobe. It was practically a uniform, both practical and a sign of the unchanging times. Dyes were hard to create and blue was one of the few still available with what they could get from the landscape around them. 

The color was lovely, warm and somehow icy all at the same time. They were still in the brutal season still, though spring wasn’t far off. Viviane was looking forward to seeing the ice melt and children back in the street.

Beside her, Nikolai crunched into the snow. Hands crossed over the white military jacket on his chest, she knew he intended to go to the barracks first thing. He’d run drills until the sun set, leaving him exhausted and wrung out enough to sleep.

She knew that feeling all too well. Most nights they ended up in the same bed, backs facing the other, pretending they weren’t wallowing in their combined misery. That after nearly half a century, they were used to this. Used to life as it was. No High Lord—Kallias had been banished beneath the mountain decades ago. No one had heard from him and rumors swirled that he was dead.

Viviane couldn’t prove they weren’t true. A new High Lord might not even realize Kallias had bound the remaining magic to her. A new High Lord might have decided not to say anything and take his chances. She’d never know.

Viviane had nothing but her regrets and that fucking ring she half hated, half worshipped. She’d never been able to put it on.

He could do it himself. Could tell her properly. 

In her imagination, she pictured telling him she loved him, too. She imagined what it would be like to press her mouth against his own, to feel him hold her as he whispered everything in that letter against her cheek.

And sometimes she imagined hitting him across the face so hard it left a mark. She imagined what it would be like to see him sink to his knees while she told him she hated him and would never forgive him for what he’d done. For sacrificing himself. 

For leaving her.

Fifty years, and Viviane had no more clarity than she had when she’d gotten that letter. She’d always loved him.

She didn’t know if she was in love with him. Viviane could barely take care of the remainder of Winter's people, let alone herself and her own feelings. At night she tortured herself with it, tossing and turning until she went looking for Nikolai—assuming he hadn’t found her first. 

Viviane was their General. Their Lady. 

Hilarious. 

“The air smells different today,” Nikolai noted. Viviane inhaled sharply, letting the icy air flood her lungs. Ice and pine invaded her senses–just like always.

“If you say so,” she replied with a shrug. Still, her stomach tumbled at the thought that maybe the world had shifted. Good or bad, at least it was something. She didn’t dare hope, not after so much time, but she did let herself imagine his face when she’d last seen him.

Happy.

Alive.

Brutally handsome in a way that made her ache. 

Gods, she wanted to see him smile at her. Wanted to see his pale blue eyes crinkle at the corners in amusement. She wanted him sprawled over a chair, his lips tugged upwards as he tried—and failed—to pretend he wasn’t interested in every word coming out of her mouth. 

While Nikolai went to run himself ragged, Viviane threw herself into the mindless activities that came with running a city. Mostly, Viviane worked on settling petty disputes and maintaining their existing infrastructure. She collected no taxes in an attempt to alleviate everyone's burden given they were all struggling together. It didn’t stop people from the endless bickering over property and goods and sometimes just each other. 

And sometimes when things erupted unforgivably, the very structures Viviane was trying to preserve were damaged. She wouldn’t pretend that there was no tension. People were restless and exhausted and angry. They vented their rage on everyone around them—the lesser fae, people who disagreed with them, and most often, her. 

A decade earlier, a group had decided to leave and Viviane had slaughtered them all without mercy or regret. It wouldn’t be all for nothing. She vowed that if nothing else. Alive or dead, Kallias’s sacrifice would not be wasted on the restless and the weak. 

She wondered if people would forgive her when it was all over. A good third of the city still resented her for that choice. She’d warned them, and everyone else, what would happen if they tried to cross the border. Maybe it would have been better to leave the slaughter to the sentries.

It was an impossible situation. 

Not just the decisions she had to make, but all of it. Every choice felt weighty, like something terrible would happen no matter what she chose. Fixing a roof or barring people from leaving provoked the same panicked reaction. If she lived a thousand years, Viviane didn’t think it would ever truly leave her.

She met Nikolai in the city square. They dined there every night now, just like everyone else. He had two bowls in his hand and when he saw her, he offered up the stew. His face was battered and bloodied and she wondered if he let the recruits vent their rage on him because he couldn’t do it himself. 

“Anything interesting happen?” he asked with a wet cough. Viviane could smell the blood in the air. 

She buried her face in the stew, inhaling the meat. 

“The mountain pass is snowed in again,” she told him, sighing heavily. “And there’s a crack in the schoolhouse.”

“Could be worse,” Nikolai told her, just like he always did. Viviane titled her head upwards towards the dark sky overhead. Twinkling stars peered back against, bright in the violet night. Her breath clung just ahead of her face, creating delicate clouds all around her. She’d once found such a thing fascinating.

Now she found it tiring. Viviane plowed forward until they reached the arching doors of the mountainside palace. Her chest ached more than usual that night, and when her feet clipped on the floor, she turned to face Nikolai so quickly her stew sloshed over her dress.

“I miss him.”

Nikolai nodded his head with glazed over eyes, his jaw tight with emotion.

“I’m afraid he’s dead.”

Viviane hadn’t dared to ever actually say it. “I’m afraid he’s dead and I didn’t…”

Gods, but she couldn’t even admit it to herself. It was too painful to acknowledge the truth. Furious, angry, burning with hatred—and she still loved him, too. Loved him so much. And if he was dead, it didn’t matter. She felt doomed to miss him until she faded into ice. 

“I know,” was all he said. She knew he did. He’d lost people to that cursed mountain. Had people he was afraid were dead. That he loved. In the scheme of things, Viviane had so much. Her sister was an adult, her mother was alive, and she was bound to Winter as its Lady and Steward as long as there was a High Lord to sit on the throne.

“Come eat.”

One day, Nikolai would stop speaking entirely. Viviane wasn’t sure what would happen to her then. They ate in almost near silence and when it came time to part ways, she looped her arm through his.

“Why pretend tonight?” 

“Your room,” Nikolai agreed, his voice gentle. “Your room is nicer.”

He vanished just long enough to change, giving Viviane a moment to pull out that letter and reread it. 

I love you. Did I tell you that? Well, just in case.

I love you.

She could hear the words with that rich, deep voice. How his lips would be tugged into a playful smile but his eyes would be tight with worry. Kallias never did like not knowing how things might turn out. 

Pulling out that amethyst ring, Viviane slid it on her finger despite swearing she never would. Nikolai stepped in, dressed in his night clothes, and offered an appreciative chuckle. “Feeling optimistic?”

“Maybe it's good luck,” she replied, immediately embarrassed she’d been caught. 

“It looks good on you,” Nikolai offered, taking her hand to admire and silver on her hand. “You should keep it.”

She twisted the band, intending to take it off. “I think—”

Her knees slammed to the floor before she could finish her sentence. Palm stinging against the hard floor, Viviane took a gasping breath. Something in her chest ripped, unwinding decades of magic. Viviane was going to be sick. Distantly, she could hear Nikolai calling her name, his hands gripping her shoulders.

How foolish, to think Kallias had ever died without her noticing. She pushed Nikolai off her, stumbling for the window. The shimmering wards that had long shielded the city were gone. 

“Vivi–”

“He’s dead,” she whispered. “Kallias is dead.”

KALLIAS: 

[an eternity and a day]

I’ve come to claim the one I love. 

Three months. That was how long the filthy, underfed human named Feyre had managed to last. Kallias was still as breathless at the sight of her as he had been the first day she’d said those words. 

I’ve come to claim the one I love. 

He’d stopped dreaming about the sky. Of fresh fallen snow blanketing bright green pine. Of the smell of the cold, the sound of cracking ice.

Of blue eyes set beneath a cascade of silver hair. Kallias had stopped thinking about Viviane long before Feyre ever arrived, though she had a starring role in all his dreams. He indulged because he had no other reprieve from the endless horror of forty years beneath a mountain. 

All Feyre had to do was kill three of them. The crowd shifted anxiously, awash with a mixture of anticipation and hope. She was too pale, blue eyes wide with horror. No one held it against her. No one from his court, a small mercy given how few were even left to pick through. He saw another Summer court denizen, stolen with eyes squeezed shut tight. Across the room, Tarquin’s lips moved silently in prayer. 

The next was from Day. Helion set his jaw grimly, looking at the female with unguarded pride. Her life for everyone. For her home, her High Lord. She murmured encouragement to the trembling human. If anyone breathed, Kallias couldn’t tell. His own heart was still in his chest, his hand numb from how tight Kira squeezed it. 

Feyre hesitated.

Please, he prayed. His first since Amarantha had stolen everything from him. Please do this.

A second ash dagger stole a second life. All was left was one, was—

Kira dropped Kallias’s hand at the reveal. Of Tamlin, still in the horrible golden mask, staring back with such open defiance. Kallia turned his head, blood rushing in his ears. He’d been too hopeful. Had forgotten the little tricks of their kind. With knee wobbling fear, he forced himself to suffer through Amarantha’s taunting, of the shaking hands of the human who loved one of them. Love them enough to risk the almost certain death Kallias was certain Amarantha would foist upon her.

Feyre might survive this, but she’d never survive the humiliation of besting Amarantha. He didn’t care if it meant he could leave. It wasn’t the love of his life up there, after all. She was safe. Protected and secure.

Happy, he hoped. 

Feyre raised the dagger, blinking away rushing tears. Kallias knew what Tamlin did—what every High Lord in the room knew. Their hearts were stone, held by Amarantha and her unusual magic. Tamlin would survive, but the attempt would satisfy the deal. 

Please let her succeed, he prayed, unable to take his eyes off her.

The ash tip pierced Tamlin’s chest. Blood sprayed against Feyre’s too place face, throwing the scent of metal in the air. Across the room, the Vanserra siblings all shifted anxiously, eyes darting toward the door. She’d done it. Spring was free. Kallias didn’t know what he expected at that moment. Tamlin, perhaps, to shed the immortal skin for the famed claws and fur. Kallias wanted to see blood dripping from the High Lord's fangs. Wanted to see Amarantha ripped to pieces and eaten, so there was nothing left of her.

Not even her awful, ugly hair. 

“Oh, Mother save us,” Kira whispered when Amarantha barked out one of her awful laughs. He turned to Helion, to Tarquin when the human began screaming. What did it matter, his eyes silently pleaded. She’d free them on her deathbed ten thousand years from then. 

What did it matter? 

“Kal–”

Rhysand rushed forward, a knife in hand. Kallias couldn’t make sense of any of it. Bracketed between Helion and Tarquin, open mouthed like the other two, he merely stared in open mouthed horror. 

Rhysand bleeding against the wall.

Tamlin pleading on the floor.

“Love,” Feyre choked out wetly. The room went utterly still again. Horror and revulsion sharpened into unmistakable blood lust. “The answer is love.”

Her spine snapped loudly, but the words had been said. Beron Vanserra barred his teeth in a cruel, hungry grin. Thesan angled his body closer to that dais, eyes narrowed with unmistakable want. Kallias, too, wanted to paint himself in Amarantha’s blood. Anticipation flooded the room as Tamlin stood. His mask clattered to the floor along with the rest of his court, though it didn’t seemed to have registered for the High Lord.

Sharpened fangs erupted from Tamlin's gums, his fingers elongating into razor-sharp talons. The evisceration that followed was art, was every fantasy Kallias had harbored come to life. He delighted in Amaranthas terror, that her final moments were consumed knowing she lost to a human. That everyone she’d harmed clamored for more, would have stood there for a month to watch it drawn out. 

Though, it was smart to finish her quickly. Her last breath wooshed into the room, slamming into Kallias so hard that he, along with Helion, both nearly tumbled to the floor. Helion and Tarquin had never felt the full breadth of magic but for Kallias, it was like waking up again. He felt the soft snapping of that little pulse he’d sent to Viviane, cracking like fragile ice beneath the weight of his might. She’d feel it too.

He’d need to go to her before she panicked. 

Bring her back, a voice whispered in his mind. For her sacrifice, give her immortality. 

Whether it was his own thought or not, Kallias was too numb, too shocked and keyed up to do anything but step forward. Tarquin and Helion came with him, joining the remaining four. Kallias added his own wisp of magic to the bleeding, broken body cradled against Tamlin’s chest. 

He would have given far more than one immortal existence if it meant he could see Viviane again. It was all he could think about, even as he stood witness to the most remarkable thing he’d likely ever see in his life. Color flooded Feyre’s once hollow cheeks as life wormed its way back into her ravaged body. The bloodied wounds knitted themselves, her bones cracking and snapping back to where they belonged. 

She took a breath, and then another. It was enough to send Kallias scattering. He wasn’t the only one. The Vanserras were practically running from beneath the mountain, while both Helion and

Tarquin were gesturing for their new court, scrambling with their new power. Kallias needed to do the same.

But they wouldn’t remain. He was following just behind the Vanserra’s just as soon as he got the words from his mouth.

“We meet in Wegen,” he said, looking over the brutalized remains of his court. Amarantha had destroyed the capitol, and after forty years lying in ruins, Kallias wasn’t inclined to rebuild. Viviane was there.

And Viviane was home. 

“Collect whatever it is you need from this place. Leave everything else.”

A sea of faces stared back with disbelief, a feeling well echoed in Kallias’s chest. Decades of despair had taken their toll. The thought of going outside filled him with anxiety.

“I’ll meet you there,” he told them. Kallias didn’t want anything. Not his clothes, his crowns, his jewels. Just her. Gods, Kallias wanted to see her so badly that he, too, almost ran out of the room. He wasn’t the only one. Kira, as she had been since everything went to shit, grabbed his elbow. She squeezed when they climbed the steps to the tunnel leading out—leading to Autumn.

There wasn’t one directly into Winter, an impractical undertaking given all doors tended to freeze. 

“Can you winnow?” Kira whispered, glancing over her shoulder. Kallias was tempted to look back, too. He kept waiting for Amarantha to pop back up, to drag them all back by their throats. His whole body trembled when he stepped into Spring, his lungs filling with the first free breath he’d taken in five decades.

“Yes,” he replied, swallowing the knot in his throat. 

“What are you going to do first?” she asked, lacing her fingers with his own.

His letter had been short—formal. He wanted to know what she required to keep the border well-defended. She had no doubt he’d give her everything she asked and more. Money and supplies for the barracks Nikolai had suggested. More sentries—warriors for a small, faux army. Roads and bridges and everything except for him.

Kallias would remain and Viviane would leave. She was merely his steward in a city he had no intention of ever presiding over. Beside her, Nikolai surveyed the palace with dispassionate eyes. In the split second it took to crown Kallias High Lord, he’d made Kira his general—snubbing over a century of camaraderie between him and Nikolai. She could feel Nikolai’s frustration beside her—banished, just as she was.

She looked over at her friend, noting his hair was starting to curl at the nape of his neck. Perhaps it was a rebuke of the court he’d spent his life defending, or some new fashion in Wegen she wasn’t privy to. Viviane didn’t dare ask.

She inhaled the sharp, dry air before pushing into the palace. Warm air assaulted, followed by the familiar scent of woodsy pine and cinnamon. It had once been home. Now it felt foreign to her and she was an outsider. She didn’t want to be there, didn’t want to kneel at Kallias’s feet. Viviane wiped nervous palms on the side of her wintergreen dress, wishing she’d sent her best wishes over a letter and refused his invitation to come back to court. It would be short lived—a goodbye. Kallias couldn’t honor his promises to her any longer and Viviane’s stomach churned miserably with the thought.

Still, she propelled forward until a nervous servant gestured for her to follow not to the throne room, but the High Lords personal suite. Nikolai’s jaw tightened when he was asked to remain outside, though he nodded encouragement to her all the same. 

Viviane turned the cool, silver knob and nearly vomited at the sight standing just beyond. It was Kallias—and it wasn’t. He radiated a cool, silvery glow as if he’d been bathed in snowy moonlight. His white hair was adorned with the glimmery ice crown that belonged to the High Lord. Everything about Kallias screamed power.

Her heart stilled in her breast. He stood in the sitting chamber, his tall, muscular frame leaned up against the wall. 

“Viv,” he murmured with that familiar, deep voice. If she closed her eyes, she could pretend nothing had happened at all. That she’d merely come home to celebrate his birthday with a gift she’d left at home, certain her pathetic attempt at proving she knew him half as well as he knew her wouldn’t impress him.

She didn’t move. Viviane held the doorknob like a lifeline, her eyes blurring with tears. His expression softened, which only made her feel worse. She turned the handle, suddenly too cowardly to face him. Kallias lunged, one hand outstretched.

“Please don’t,” he breathed, stopping her as he came closer and closer. His fingers closed around her wrist, prying her from the metal and wood and into his very careful embrace. “Not yet.”

She felt him inhale the scent of her hair, pressing his face into the carefully braided strands. 

Viviane slid her arms around him, hands sliding up his back until she found the cool edges of his crown. Kallias went still and she wondered what he expected.

Certainly not for her to sling it across the room where it shattered into thousands of fragments. Easily replaced should he choose. Kallias huffed a soft, warm laugh against her hair.

“All the other females are rather fond of that, you know.”

“I hate it,” she whispered, pressing her cheek against the silken white jacket he wore. 

Kallias reached for her face, holding it between his strong hands. “Nothing is going to change between us. You know that, right?”

“So you’re still coming to Wegen at the end of the year?” she asked.

Kallias winced. She tried to pull back but Kallias held tight.

“You’ll come here—”

“Will I?” she whispered. “Are you asking me as my friend if I want to come back, or are you ordering me to as my High Lord?”

It was unfair and she knew it. Pain lanced across his expression. “I’m asking as your friend, Viv. Come back.”

Viviane trembled, the words thick on her tongue. He was looking at her with such unguarded hope that instead of telling him the truth, she hedged her feelings. “I love it there.”

Kallias held just a little tighter. “You loved it here once, too.”

But that wasn’t quite true. She’d loved him—and Viviane could love him anywhere. Would have to, because he didn’t wholly belong to her anymore. Not that he ever had, but as his best friend, she’d always had the best claim on him and his time. And now he belonged to all of Winter. She let herself drink in the masculine slant of his skin, to revel in the warmth of his body. 

“If you’re not ordering me to return then I’m going to stay, Kal.”

He went still beneath her. It wasn’t the answer he’d wanted to hear and yet Viviane wouldn’t abandon the mountain pass—or the people who lived in the city built just beneath—to watch him govern. Kallias might value her opinion, might care for her, but he’d be bound to duty.

And Viviane didn’t want to watch it consume him. She wouldn’t stick around and watch him slip through her fingers. He’d sent her to Wegen to fix it and Viviane intended to stay until the job was done. 

“And if I ordered you?”

She sucked in a breath. “I’d curse your name the whole way home,” she whispered, not daring to look up at him. “And turn every marriageable female against you until you sent me back.”

She swore she felt him kiss the top of her head. “Did you bring me a list of what you need?”

“Nikolai has it,” she told him, holding just a little tighter. 

“I didn’t want this,” he told her.

“I know,” she replied, because she did. Viviane knew Kallias hadn’t wanted the burden of ruling, would have been content to play courtier until he died. “You…Gods, Kal, but you’ll be such a good High Lord.”

He shuddered, and she wondered if Kallias wasn’t terrified of what he’d been saddled with. The Cauldron had decided, blessing him in a way only few could ever dream of being. 

His fingers threaded through her hair. “I saw you,” he whispered, “on that bloodied floor. Your body, not hers. I saw it and…” he trailed off, his whole body taut around her. Kallias took a breath.

“If you ever need to leave your marriage, you come to me. Not whatever male you end up with,” he finished hoarsely. 

Viviane didn’t know what to say to that. The thought of marriage seemed so abhorrent to her at that moment.

Viviane pulled from Kallias’s embrace, noting how his eyes slid towards his closed bedroom door. Was he tired? She imagined he was—exhausted, even. 

“Will you stay for my birthday?” he asked, his voice so uncharacteristically sad. 

Viviane bit at the skin of her bottom lip. “I left your present back home.” She’d just assumed he wouldn’t want it. Viviane kept waiting for Kallias to end their friendship, to tell her it was time to put childhood things to bed. He shook his head.

“Your presence is enough. After the circling sharks…I could use some peace.” Viviane reached up and caressed his cheek. Kallias leaned into the touch, eyes fluttering shut. 

“Poor, sad High Lord,” she teased. His eyes lit up and all at once Kallias was back. Viviane could breathe at the sight of his slow smile.

“I should make you grovel.”

She smiled, too. “In your dreams, Kal.”

“What do you know about my dreams, Viv?” he murmured, his eyes shining with some emotion she didn’t recognize. Viviane felt untethered—nervous again.

“I know you’d love to see me bow and scrape like all the rest of your simpering court.”

“Wrong again,” he teased. 

“Tell me, then.”

Kallias only smiled. “Soon enough, Viv.”

KALLIAS:

[Day 0]

Kallias took a deep breath as he surveyed his court. At his side stood Kira, who, assuming everything went well, would be relieved of her position as early as the next morning. He knew she was thinking it too. She didn’t like the constant court maneuverings, the endless bowing and scraping. She liked training warriors—problem solving, often with the blade strapped to her back. She wanted to rejoin Viviane at the border, wanted to trade places with Nikolai. 

Kallias wanted that too.

He wanted a lot of things. He wanted to put the ring currently languishing in his pocket on Viviane’s finger. He wanted to put a crown of ice atop her head, wanted to declare her Lady of Winter and then, the cauldron willing, wanted to put her in his bed for the next four straight days. There was, of course, the small matter of her love of Wegen.

Kallias was hoping she loved him more than she loved that city. He’d find out, he supposed. Just as soon as he and the other High Lord’s met with Amarantha. It would be his first time at an official gathering representing Winter and Kallias was nervous. They’d worked hard to keep the details of the death of the former lord as quiet as possible but rumor spread. 

The gathering was being held in Dawn, as close to neutral territory as any of them could get. Kallias could have offered up Winter, but he was far too nervous to let all six High Lords and Amarantha into his territory when he’d only been High Lord for three months. Thesan’s rule was better established and his court often hosted when the other six couldn’t agree. Kallias was grateful for it.

“You’ll stay out here,” Kallias told Kira with apologetic eyes as he stepped into Thesan’s dreamy, mountaintop city. The sun was setting, bathing the marble infrastructure in a dreamy pink and orange glow. The warm breeze smelled faintly of cherry blossoms and the soft path leading to Thesan’s palace was littered with pink blossoms. 

“Are you sure?” Kira asked, eyes sweeping the isolated streets nervously. Kallias nodded. Bringing an armed guard into a meeting of peace was hardly the right optics. He was far more powerful than she—and he wasn’t the only one who had opted to leave a guard stationed just outside. Several Day Court sentries loitered, kicking the fallen petals with gold sandals as they talked among themselves. He noted Autumn Court warriors as well, mingling with a few bored looking Spring Court males. 

No Night, no Summer. That was just as well, though those courts were the ones Kallias might have counted on to send female warriors. Kira edged her way nervously, dressed in white and blue. Kallias didn’t let himself feel guilty for strong arming her into the position. It was nearly over.

He climbed the steps into Thesan’s palace, greeted by the winged fae that made up a portion of the Dawn Court. Massive, white feathered wings were tucked tight against formal tunics of white and gold. They nodded their heads as a show of respect, eyes lowered to the ground as Kallias passed.

He kept his chin raised, his eyes fixated on the horizon. This is normal.

Only, it wasn’t, and he didn’t think he’d ever be used to the deference he was now afforded. Sometimes, when he walked into a room and everyone bowed, he was tempted to look over his shoulder to see who, exactly, everyone was paying their respects to. It took him a minute to remember it was him. He was High Lord, now.

He slid his hands into his pockets, his finger sliding in and out of the intricate silver band hidden in his pocket. Just one last night. He could go to Viviane right after, if he wanted. Could sleep under the same roof as her, could wake her up in the middle of the night as he’d done a million times before.

With a kiss, even. 

“High Lord,” a familiar voice murmured. Just outside closed double doors stood the High Lord of Night—Rhysand. He looked troubled, though his expression smoothed into careful amusement as Kallias came closer. Guards flanked the doors, carved in gold leaf and painted white, their eyes tracking the two. 

“I heard of your courts unfortunate loss.”

Kallias dipped his head in agreement. 

“And here you are,” Rhysand added, looking towards the evenly spaced pillars that lined either side of the hall. It was otherwise open, allowing the last remnants of daylight to filter in. Kallias bet it was a sight to behold in the early morning hours, though he had no intention of finding out. 

“How is Winter?” Rhysand pressed. Kallias hesitated. The former High Lord never spoke of Rhysand. He was far too preoccupied with crafty Beron Vanserra to pay any of the others any mind. 

“Cold.”

Rhysand smiled. “I suppose in Winter, that’s the best you can ever hope for.”

“Indeed,” Kallias agreed. “Is there a reason you’re lingering in the hall?”

Rhysand shook his head of dark hair, jamming his own hands into his pockets. “I like the view.”

Liar.

“Enjoy it.” Kallias had no intention of lingering with the Lord of Darkness. He wanted to get the entire thing over with. Nodding towards the guards, he stepped forward. The doors were pulled open, revealing a rather lovely gathering room set with a long oak table. Eight chairs, with Amarantha dead in the center. Faelights gleamed against his polished boots, the sound of his steps muffled by the light music coming from some place he could not see. 

Amarantha stood when he stepped in, her ruby hair curled around a wicked looking black diadem. She might have been a High Lady for how she carried herself in her sharply cut black dress. Miles of moon pale skin was on display, so translucent Kallias could see the pumping blue of the veins just beneath. 

The Never Fading Flower. 

That was what the former High Lord of Winter—along with many others—called her. The sight of her vicious smile made the hair on Kallias’s body stand on edge. She could not soften what she was, though it was clearly she was trying. Her eyes crinkled just at the corners as she beheld him, hands outstretched. He forced himself to relax. She’d been in Prythian for a century. If she hadn’t acted by then, she never would.

“I heard the terrible news,” she purred, pressing blood red lips against either side of his face. “A tragedy, to learn of such gruesome deaths.”

Amarantha looked at Kallias expectantly. He merely nodded.

She continued, undeterred. “How wonderful to have you, though. A fresh faced High Lord. Why, you can’t be older than seventy.”

He almost snorted. Kallias was one hundred and fifty years old. A child, he supposed, compared to the eight hundred Amarantha had lived. He wondered if it hadn’t softened her. His eyes found Beron Vanserra at the far end of the room, a sneer on his face and a golden goblet of wine in hand. That male was eight hundred, give or take, and no one would ever accuse him of being soft. The years only served to make him crueler. 

He offered Amarantha a half smile.

“So stoic,” she purred, running a long nail over the bottom of his jaw. “Your High Lord used to say you were his favorite advisor because you were so careful. Were you as quiet with him, too?”

“Only when I had nothing to say, lady,” Kallias agreed. 

Amarantha grinned. It did little for her. No one would ever accuse her of being beautiful. The Never Fading Flower—not for her loveliness, but because she hadn’t wilted. Kallias thought if he’d lost a war to humans, he might have folded. Taken up beekeeping on some private country estate and been grateful no one tried to hang him for his crimes. 

“Well, we’ll see if we can’t loosen you up a little, hm?” she teased. Kallias wasn’t asked to respond. Rhysand finally left his post in the hall to swan into the room and Amarantha went to greet him with what Kallias could only describe as a predatory smile. Better Rhysand than him, he decided. His own eyes swept over the room. 

Tamlin was half hidden in a corner, arms crossed over his chest, eyes fixated on the door. On the opposite end, Beron and his wife spoke in hushed whispers, a smile curving over the lady’s face. Phoebus of Day and Thesan of Dawn

Atticus from Summer had his son with him, the pair staring out the curtained window as the sun set. It left Kallias to wander towards the table, still set for only eight. Where the other guests would go—or if more chairs would be summoned for them, he couldn’t say. 

He edged closer, wishing there was food or something to occupy his hands with. He felt so strangely out of place. Distrustful, too, of the other High Lords, who looked at him the same way he imagined he looked at them. Sizing the other up, wondering if he was stronger than them. 

“I am so grateful you all came,” Amarantha began, finally done toying with Rhysand. The High Lord of Night came to stand by Kallias, hands casual in his pockets. All eyes rested on Amarantha, smiling at each of them with genuine delight. 

“Can you believe it’s been a century?” she teased, earning no smiles. Not even Beron Vanserra’s cheerful wife was willing to pretend. Amarantha had spent time in all their courts—surely she understood how much they disliked each other. If her hope was to bring them altogether, she’d need several centuries more.

She continued, undeterred. With a wave of her hand, eight glasses of champagne appeared on her table. Kallias reached for one at the same time Rhysand did, the pair stepping away so the others could take a sparkling flute without getting too close. 

“After all this time, it’s my hope our two lands can function more as one. We’ve been so isolated, despite being neighbors. These last one hundred years is proof of my kings deep regret over how we left things. We only ever wished to rectify our mistakes. Let this be our official new beginning.”

She raised her glass to her lips. Kallias, too, raised his glass before pouring the bubbling liquid down his throat. There would be food—and then he could go to Viviane. Perhaps he’d make some platitudes about playing nice, about treaties and other tax incentives for Hybern as he half ran out the door. 

Perhaps…Kallias frowned as his chest constricted. Across the room, Beron Vanserra’s emptied glass slipped from his hands, crashing viciously to the ground. His magic was gathering in his chest, frigid and powerful…and slipping. As if something were physically sucking it from his body. His eyes swept over the room, his panic threatening to cloud his good judgment.

Amarantha was grinning.

“Something wrong, boys?” she teased.

Fuck fuck fuck—

Act first, apologize later. As his magic slipped from his grasp, Kallias flung out the last remnants still within his control. If Amarantha controlled the seven of them, it meant nowhere and no one was safe. She’d seen the maps of Prythian, knew their roads, their trade routes, their cities and villages and people. She’d spent a century gathering the information necessary to wage war.

Kallias had kept Wegen hidden. It wasn’t worth counting at first, so small and destitute the former lord hadn’t bothered to denote it on a map. Kallias hadn’t changed that, though he’d always meant to.

He bound the protection of Wegen to Viviane, warding the city from anyone that didn’t already know. As long as Viviane remained within the borders Kallias set, the city would remain protected.  She’d kill him for it. The moment she realized, she would kill him and Kallias might let her, assuming they both survived.

He didn’t think he would. Something about the way Amarantha was looking at the seven of them told him as much. 

“You fucking cunt,” Beron Vanserra snarled. “What have you done?”

“I realized, fairly early on, that if I wished to fix the mistakes of the past, I’d need to do something about the High Lords,” Amarantha replied, as if Beron had merely asked some polite question about Hybern’s exports. “Consider this me righting that wrong. I want to be allies…but I can be your enemy just as easily.”

She wasn’t looking at the High Lord of Autumn, but Tamlin at the far end of the room. He shook his head back and forth, his lip curling upwards with disgust. 

“You’re a bitch,” Tamlin informed her.

Amarantha laughed. 

“So dramatic. I’ll tell you what. Why don’t the seven of you scurry home and get a good night's sleep. And in the morning, we’ll meet in my court and discuss the terms of your surrender.”

No one said a word. 

“Where do you intend to hold court, lady?” Rhysand asked, his voice careful—even.

Her lip curled upwards. “You’ll see. I expect all seven of you to answer my morning summons. Don’t try to be cute—no armies,” she warned, her voice obnoxiously sing-song. “I will punish you if you show up at my doorstep with weapons and I promise it won’t be with your life. Maybe I’ll take your pretty little wife. Or your children. Or every youngling in your territory. Who knows how I’ll feel.”

Not one of them moved, their faces a mask of boredom as they considered the treat. Kallias knew he wasn’t the only one reaching for the once depthless well of power now rendered a shallow pool. It was hardly enough to take her on and jealously, he wondered if she couldn’t use his ice. 

“Do we understand each other?” she asked.

No one spoke.

“I said,” she tried again, reaching out a hand. The Lady of Autumn screamed, her knees buckling from some unseen force. Her lovely face was twisted with pain, her skin a burning red. Beron reached for her, looking up at Amarantha with nothing but hatred. “Do we understand each other?”

Rhysand was the first to bow. Beron was just behind. All seven of them bent a knee, heads inclined. 

The Lady of Autumn stopped screaming, her voice tapering into a whimpering sob. Her husband reached for her, holding her against his chest. 

“That’s better,” Amarantha purred. “Oh, what fun.”

Kallias forced himself to take a breath. Beron was the first one out of those doors, hauling his trembling wife into his arms as he went. That could have been Viviane. It could have been Viviane contorted with fear, a means to control him so Amarantha could get what she wanted. He knew, much like Beron, he would have done anything she demanded. Would have gone willingly to his death to see her safe.

He half ran out of that room, the weight of her ring taunting him from his pocket. He’d never see her wear it, never put that crown of ice atop her head—never make her his wife. Kallias forced himself to think. He was a puppet High Lord, bound to the whims of a despot from another territory.

He was no use to the people of Winter any longer.

But Viviane could be. She was unbound by Amaratha. Unknown. Free. He could crown her in his own way—make her Lady of Winter. His General. The true ruler of Winter for anyone who could get to Wegen. If he was forced to bow before Amarantha, than his people would have to turn to someone else. 

“What happened?” Kira demanded as he jogged down the stairs. He reached for her hand.

“I need to send a message and I need to do it quickly,” he told her.

Kallias might be marching to his death.

He accepted that. Embraced it, even.

But he wouldn’t go without telling his best friend everything. 

VIVIANE:

[50 years before Feyre]

Viviane woke with a vicious gasp. Her body had gone taut, pulled upwards by invisible chains. Spells, she realized, binding her in place. She kicked off her blankets to race to the window. She wasn’t the only one out of bed. Others felt the disturbance, though perhaps not to the same degree Viviane did. She tried to shake out her limbs, but the heaviness remained, coursing through her until her very blood hummed with new life.

For a moment, the sky ignited in vibrant greens, purples, and blues. It might have been the northern lights had they been in the middle of the brutal season. Viviane realized, after a moment of breathless wonder, that what she was looking at was a ward. And the cool heat tingling over her spine was magic. Potent, raw, unlike her own. 

A knock at her door pulled Viviane from her confusion. Nikolai didn’t wait for her response before pushing it open. At his feet, a silver furred fox scuttled forward, a message tucked into the side of his blue vest. 

“Something’s wrong,” Nikolai told her, rubbing his eyes. “The city is warded.”

“I know,” she whispered, retrieving the letter. It was Kallias’s hurried writing on the outside. She brushed her fingers over the smudged ink as dread pooled in her gut. Nikolai gave her enough space to read the letter, though he didn’t leave her. 

She slid her finger beneath the wax. 

Viv,

Do you remember the day on the lake when the ice cracked? It was my fault—I was experimenting with my magic though mother had told me over and over not to. You were skating far enough away I didn’t think it would matter if I pulled the ice apart. Just a little, remember? And it was enough that you slipped in, and I panicked, closing the ice over you. 

I think about that day all the time, because it was the moment I realized I was in love with you. We were kids, no older than ten, and all I could think about was what I’d do if I lost you. I would have torn apart the whole world to get you back. My Viviane. 

I’ve never stopped. I’ve thought about you every day—when I wake up in the morning and when  I fall asleep at night. You’re the only thing I dream about, the only person I want to talk to. My life means nothing to me without you. 

I need you to know that because we will never see each other again. The General from Hybern–Amarantha–has stolen my power. She has all seven High Lords in her thrall. What little I have left I have given to you. I’ve bound you to Wegen. As long as you remain within the city, the city will remain safe. No one can enter without your permission. No one will know of it unless you send word. Please use it as a safe haven for anyone who manages to escape. I will take its existence—and your own—to my grave. 

As of this moment, you are Lady of the Winter Court. I wish I could have asked you formally, could have gotten onto one knee and begged you like I meant to. I would have crowned you before our people, before our court, and declared you my equal in every way. 

Now, I’m on my knees begging you to take a position you didn’t ask for, that you may very well have turned down had I asked. My decisions, my rule, my very being cannot be trusted. And so—my crown, my throne, my territory is yours. 

I trust no one else with this task but you.

I love you. Did I tell you that? Well, just in case.

I love you.

Kallias 

Viviane re-read that letter over and over, trying to make sense of it. She read it until tears streamed down her cheeks, until her hands trembled so badly Nikolai had to take the letter from her. He read it while she walked to a chair, sitting numbly. She didn’t know how to feel—and so, she felt nothing.

“Fuck,” Nikolai whispered, eyeing the fox still circling her feet. She didn’t move, prompting Nikolai to reach into the little pouch for the things she’d missed—a delicate, silver band of twining leaves and an oval shaped amethyst stone that looked like freshly fallen snow when the sun hit it just right. Viviane stood, and promptly threw up all over the floor. 

Nikolai set the ring on her desk. 

“You’re not alone, Viv,” he said, pulling her hair off her face as she wretched. Kallias had sent her a goodbye letter. Held by some terrible spell and his only thought had been to protect her—she puked again and again, until there was nothing left but the sour stench of the air and her roiling, empty stomach. 

Viviane ran her fingers through her hair while Nikolai snapped his fingers, removing the mess from the floor. She saw how he winced, as if it took more effort than he expected. She’d test her own power in the morning, or when she could think about everything rationally. 

“If,” Viviane began softly, “The Hybern General means to wage war, she’ll destroy Prythian’s armies first.”

Nikolai nodded, his olive skin paling at the thought. Viviane couldn’t focus on Kallias declarations. She needed to figure out some measure of control, first. Some plan, some action that would steady her. 

“If Kallias has hidden us from view, we could build an army outside her awareness.”

“It would have to be a massive army,” Nikolai murmured. 

“So we ration the city. Anyone who can’t fight will farm. We’ll build a barracks—”

“And where will all these people come from?”

She looked at the fox curled at her feet. “We’ll send word to the other courts. Anyone who can get out, who can make it—”

“You’d risk all of Wegen on an army—”

“What else is there?!” Viviane cried, her tears back. “If we can’t build an army, if we can’t be a haven, if we can’t free him—”

“Nothing needs to be decided tonight,” Nikolai murmured, pulling her towards him for a gentle hug. “You don’t have to figure this out tonight.”

She sobbed into Nikolai’s shirt. “He did. It took him seconds to figure it out. Why do I get time—”

“Because he bought it for you. You know Kallias wouldn’t want you to be reckless on his account. Nothing will change between today and tomorrow.”

“He’ll need an army,” she whispered. 

“He’ll need you. C’mon. Why don’t you and I go into the drawing room with every blanket we can find, okay? We’ll sleep in front of the fireplace so you don’t have to be alone.” Viviane nodded, glancing at the letter and the ring sitting on her desk.

I love you.

I love you.

I love you.

“Why wouldn’t he just tell me?” she asked while Nikolai gathered up her pillow and duvet. He laughed, though there was no humor to his words.

“Careful Kal. I’m sure he thought he had a million years to figure it out.”

Viviane didn’t respond to that. She was so angry with him for keeping it to himself, for letting her believe them friends only to drop it on her as he told her goodbye. It was so like him. 

Nikolai didn’t ask if she reciprocated, which was just as well. Viviane didn’t know. She couldn’t think about that. She’d figure out her feelings later—when Kallias was free and had taken back the burden of keeping all of Winter safe. Until then, all Viviane needed to do was honor his final wish.

And keep him alive. As Nikolai trailed down the place steps, Viviane considered that she was right. She could turn Wegen into the new capitol of Winter by necessity. So long as she remained within its borders, she could expand into the mountains. She could carve into them, could create natural defenses. No one knew the Salten Mountains better than she did. If she raised an army, she could lure Amarantha to the base during the frigid, winter months and starve or freeze them out. Draw them up into the snow and into the forest.

She could use bears and foxes and deer as support. She could train soldiers to fight with guerrilla tactics in the woods instead of on the front lines like they’d been taught. And maybe it was folly, to think a mountain town filled with lesser fae farmers was capable of taking on Hybern, but Viviane had to believe they could, or there was no point at all.

If she didn’t believe Kallias had been right to give her his crown and his magic, then all she could do was sit in her palace and wait for him to die and someone else to rise and take his place.

Love or not, Kallias was still her best friend.

Nikolai had stayed to help her train more sentries they hardly needed. Autumn wasn’t so desperate they’d stage an invasion, though Kallias was unnerved after the ice bridge had gone tattling to the High Lord, who of course had money for more soldiers. Nikolai was to oversee and Kira had been begrudgingly called back to court. 

That, Viviane supposed, was for the best. Nikolai had come home that morning coated in blue, his eyes wild, his skin practically frosted over. Whatever had happened had unnerved him enough he refused to speak about it and Kira had sworn up and down nothing had happened.

Viviane wondered which was worse—they had sex and it was so good it freaked them out, or it was so bad they couldn’t make eye contact any longer.

That was how she felt with Einar. All that build up only to be fucked on his dining room table for the better part of two hours. She hadn’t dared tell Kallias the reason she couldn’t finish wasn’t because Einar was no good—he’d done his best with his lips and tongue and teeth—but because she couldn’t get her friend out of her mind. She’d tried. Viviane had taken control, had climbed into Einars lap, eyes locked on his.

Not Kal, not Kal, not Kal—

For all the good it did. In the end she’d faked it and gone crawling home like a miserable, terrible friend. Viviane still didn’t know what had possessed her that day. Maybe Calanmai merely heightened the tension growing between them, twisting it into lust. It had faded by morning—faded with each new carefully drawn sheet he’d made for her where he detailed how much it cost to treat the water each month. She’d fallen asleep with her head on his shoulder and woken alone in bed. Kallias had likely put her there before venturing into the city himself, because when Viviane woke, he smelled as though he’d been drenched in arousal not long before and his hair had been wrecked. 

It didn’t inspire jealousy in her, at any rate, which made it easy to write the whole night off as a one off. 

“Square up, Viv,” Nikolai ordered. She almost rolled her eyes at the command. They stood down in the valley in a makeshift training ring Kira had erected decades before. It would have been the perfect place for expanded barracks and an armory, had the High Lord ever allowed her such a thing. Perhaps Nikolai’s influence would change all that. It was the second to last missing puzzle to crafting her city as a major player. The very last was convincing both Kallias and the High Lord that the emissary from Hybern should be allowed to visit—to trade with them. Not just Hybern, of course. Autumn, Spring, and Summer, too. And with even a fraction of the High Lord’s court coming to live in Wegen, even if it was just to ski when the weather was mild, was enough. 

Barracks first. 

Nikolai pulled his icy blade from its sheath, the metal singing in the air. Viviane ignored that Einar had come to watch, his dark eyes blazing with curiosity. She also ignored that Kallias had said he’d come three days before and still hadn’t. All of those things were distractions.

She twisted her blade, offering a show of her teeth that wasn’t quite a smile. She waited for him to lunge before offering her own strike. Nikolai, she’d been told, had some magic of his own. Viviane wanted to find out just how much. And, perhaps, wanted to show off to the people she oversaw, if only a little.

 It was a careful dance of her feet and body, of knowing how she moved against the wind and the squelching mud. Nikolai was a warrior, trained just as she had been, though not quite as quick on his feet.

Not as careful with his magic. He was the first to strike, panting as he sent a blast of skin shredding ice her way. Viviane barked out a laugh, dodging it easily.

And then rained a torrent upon him. Nikolai had to choose between defending his person with his blade and risk her icy wrath or block the ice and risk her blade. It was the oldest trick in Viviane’s book. She thought that because she used her magic so infrequently, and never at its full intensity, that people often forgot what hummed in her veins.

Forgot why a future High Lord courted her attention. 

“Mother save me, Viv,” Nikolai panted. “Were you trying to kill me?”

Her victory was short-lived. As she walked to her friend, offering him a hand and noting where the blood staining his lips and cheeks, a new voice called through the mountain air.

“Now me.” Nikolai’s smirk told Viviane everything she needed to know. She turned, her eyes finding Kallias as he swung his powerful body over the fence with ease. Just to the left of him was Einar, watching her friend with guarded, almost distrustful eyes. She’d forgotten he’d only been interested in her when he learned Kallias was up at the palace.

It was a question for another day. Kallias had never once let her beat him and Viviane didn’t relish being beaten into the dirt in front of all the people she was supposed to oversee. 

“Where’s your sword, Kal?” she taunted, annoyed when Nikolai handed his over before leaving them alone in the muddy pit. 

“Miss me?” he asked, cocking his head to the side. The cold air ruffled at his white air, all but kissing his fair cheeks red. 

“Were you gone?” she replied blithely, pretending to examine her blade.

He shook his head, running his tongue along the inside of his cheek. “I missed you.”

“Why wouldn’t you? I’m funny, I’m pretty, I’m smart…all the things you lack—”

His blade sang through the air before she could finish, crashing into hers with such force it made her bones vibrate. Gone was Kallias’s easy amusement–those eyes were practically granite against his glacial face. She had to remind herself that this was how he focused—this was how he’d always been in the ring.

Your enemies won’t smile when they kill you, Viv.

She smiled, noting how he stumbled ever so slightly—not enough to turn things in her favor but enough to remind her that Kallias was so easily distracted by someone acting in a way he didn’t expect.

She sent him that first blast of ice, catching him against the cheekbone. He snarled, flinging his own magic viciously back at her. He was so much stronger she couldn’t avoid it all—she felt the burning sting against her exposed neck. She smelled the salt of her blood in the air but didn’t dare touch it. Not when Kallias’s blade came singing towards her. Viviane slammed to the ground, her whole body squelching into the cold, muddy ground in an effort to block him. 

It was easy to forget what Kallias was beneath his refined clothes and his fascination with numbers. He’d taught her to fight, afterall. His body was a weapon—he was an animal. He snapped his teeth against the cold, one of his thighs pressed between her legs as he bore his blade closer and closer to her wound.

Viviane took a risk, letting go of the hilt of her sword to press her frosted palm against his face. He roared against the pain, distracted just enough for her to plant her boot into his chest and push away. There was nothing fun about this fight anymore—it wasn’t quick like with Nikolai, nor was it particularly like a dance. It felt like a true battle where only one of them could walk away with their pride unwounded. 

Kallias sent another vicious blast of ice and wind directly at her, one Viviane offered up in equal measure. He cut his face again, though not half as bad as his own shards, which sliced through her jacket, exposing her skin to salty mountain air. 

She hissed, slammed right back to the ground as Kallias snarled in her face. His teeth were inches from her neck, his thigh wedged between her leg so hard she could feel the radiating heat. The only thing keeping him from pressing his body wholly against her was her blade between them.

Her arms shook from the effort.

“Surrender, Viv,” he whispered. “Let me clean up the blood.”

“You’re a bastard,” she replied. It didn’t matter. He wrenched her blade from his hand, tossing it to the ground and then pressed his own gently against her skin.

“An admirable effort,” he murmured, removing his blade and replacing it with his hand. All at once his body was off hers and Viviane couldn’t decide if she was angry or she was disappointed.

She took his hand, her body aching as she stood. No one made a sound—not Nikolai, who watched with eyes rounder than saucers.

And not Einar, who had gone ashen in the wake of their brutal showdown. 

“What’s with them?” she whispered, letting Kallias brace her body against his own.

“They’ve never seen your kind of raw power,” he offered charitably. And maybe that was true. Maybe they hadn’t expected that kind of magic to blow out of her.

But privately, Viviane thought it was Kallias who had surprised them. She’d forgotten what he was like when he was unleashed—how uncomfortable the High Lord had once been of him and the magic glowing silver from his skin. No one had ever dared voice those concerns out loud, but Viviane understood them as she looked from the shocked faces of the warriors around them.

Kallias had all the markers of the next High Lord. 

She reached between them for his arm. She didn’t want to think about how she’d lose him should that ever come to pass. 

“Take me home,” she murmured, pressing her head into his shoulder. 

He was just her friend—at least for now.

KALLIAS: 

[five months before the curse]

“Kal–” Kallias cut off her breathless plea, his tongue delving back into her mouth. More, he needed more. He couldn’t stop the desperate glide of his hands over her naked form, mapping her skin beneath his palms. Beneath him, Viviane moaned, grasping at his hair so viciously she was in danger of pulling the strands out by the root. He didn’t care. 

Still clad in his pants, he ground against her, desperate for relief. Kallias was drowning in the scent of her arousal, drinking it down while he tasted every inch of her mouth. Kallias needed to put his tongue between her legs, needed to know if all of her was sweet. She was warm here, open and inviting and he was so wrecked he couldn’t get his stupid body to catch up with his screaming brain.

He was running out of time. He couldn’t explain it. Something was ticking loudly in his head, some countdown to his doom he wanted to avoid. Wanted to ignore in favor of his female clawing at his back. 

“Kal,” she panted, arching her neck so he could nip kisses down her skin. His fingers tugged and teased at her pebbled nipples, drawing more of her arousal into the air. Burying his face between her breasts, Kallias inhaled deeply. This was what he’d been missing. This was what he needed.

He’d never felt so wild in his life. He was unrestrained for perhaps the first time in his life and it was all Viviane’s fault. He pushed apart her legs roughly, taking a moment to admire the splayed out form of her on his silken silver sheet. 

“You’re perfect,” he breathed, lifting her leg to press feather soft kisses up her thigh. She squirmed, eyes locked on his face. She wanted to watch? Kallias held her gaze, lowering his face until he could kiss the pale, pink lips of her cunt. Viviane exhaled, whimpering for more.

It was a dream, he thought. She was a dream, spread open for him to taste. He went to take that first hot taste of her, to slick his tongue over her clit—-

A banging on Kallias’s bedroom door dragged him from an all too familiar dream. He’d never gotten that far before. Usually Kallias woke just as he was about to remove her clothing. To find his head between her parted thighs was a new, almost exciting development, at least where his imagination was concerned. Nothing had changed between him and Viviane. As far as he knew, she was still seeing the disappointing male in Wegen and he was…well, Kallias was doing the world's shittiest job courting her. Unless, of course, utterly obliterating her with his magic counted as some romantic overture.

He very much doubted it. Viviane might have forgiven him for it, but the people of Wegen certainly hadn’t. They’d watched him with narrow-eyed suspicion the following day, as if he might turn her to a block of ice if she displeased him. As if Viviane wasn’t capable of removing his balls should he ever deserve it. 

That vicious knock forced Kallias to snarl. Night still poured through his half open drapes and his cock was throbbing with need. “What?” “Get up,” Kira’s voice whispered from behind the door. “Right now, get up.” He shoved the blanket off his naked body and stuffed himself in the first pair of pants he could find, artfully arranging himself so it wasn’t entirely obvious he had an erection. Kallias pulled open the door, shrugging a shirt over his head.

Kira looked scared. Wide-eyed in the flickering hall light, she lunged for his wrist and began dragging him down the hall. Kallias was barefoot, though so was she, a robe hanging off her small frame.

“What is happening?” he hissed, running a hand through his messy hair in an attempt to keep it from falling into his eyes.

“Gunnar,” she whispered. “Oh Gods, Kal….he…”

A mournful wail interrupted what Kira had been about to say. He knew that voice.

“Gunnar?”

“Killed his wife,” Kira managed, practically shaking as she led him towards the throne room. “She wanted to leave him, too. And I guess…”

Kallias’s steps slowed as he imagined it. Wanting someone so badly you would have done anything to possess them, only to realize they didn’t want you back. The females at court had been lobbying hard, but Gunnar’s wife had been against them. 

“What changed?”

Kira shrugged. “Special treatment for her, hell for everyone else? I’m sorry,” Kira added softly. “I shouldn’t…he killed her.”

Kallias started to ask Kira how she could possibly know that, but the scent of blood flooded his senses. He understood why when he came into the vividly bright throne room, joining the other courtiers flooding in to witness the spectacle.

The High Lord stared at his son with lifeless eyes while his son clutched at his wife's bloodless body, kneeling half naked in her blood. It was the gravest offense in their court—to take a life, especially one as defenseless as Gunnar’s wife had been. 

All Kallias could see was Viviane laying there, her silver hair stained red as her blood cooled beneath Gunnar’s naked knees. She would have wanted the same—maybe not to leave him, given how dutiful Viviane could be, but the autonomy to be more than just the High Lord’s wife. She would have been vivacious and, when angry, vicious. 

She would have died, too. Kallias put his hand over his chest, unable to get the image out of his mind. He might have winnowed straight to her had the High Lord not taken a step towards his hunched over son. 

Everyone fell silent. Even Kallias didn’t believe the High Lord would kill his own son, law or not. Gunnar made no move to defend himself and Kallias wondered if he even realized what his father meant to do until it was too late. Gunnar twisted, eyes wide as he took a gasping breath of frigid air.

Kallia couldn’t watch this. He turned, pulling his arm from Kira’s grasp. He didn’t need to be present to hear that frigid death rattle or to know the High Lord had turned his son's lungs to ice. It was the end of a dynasty as old as their territory, ruined over one spoiled male too unused to being told no. 

Kallias flexed his fingers as warmth twanged through his body. He stumbled, almost crashing into a wall in an attempt to steady himself. His palm caught against the smooth surface, steadied by Kira who had followed him out.

“Kal—”

“Don’t,” he rasped, hating himself for the first time in his life. The High Lord would realize, would know the truth of the matter soon enough. His son might have inherited had he been a better father. And now a new line would rise through Winter, assuming Kallias lived long enough to see the High Lord fade. 

“Kallias—!”

A woman's high pitched scream forced a groan out of Kallias, his knees buckling beneath the weight of a vicious, violent cascade of magic. His palms stung, bracing his weight against the smooth floor while raw, unstemmed magic raced through his veins unrestrained. He looked over his shoulder to Kira, who knelt beside him. Her face was etched with her terror, the screaming in the throne room just behind him ringing in his ears.

“What did he do?” Kallias managed, bowing his head against the onslaught. 

“Could you survive the loss of your own child?” Kira whispered. The scent of warm blood filled the air, driving out all other thoughts. Had the High Lord truly chosen to kill himself rather than live with his grief? Kallias forced himself to stand, his legs shaking. Kira helped, bracing him against her body while he got his runaway heart under control.

“It wasn’t supposed to be like this,” Kallias whispered, flexing his fingers. 

How would he ever explain this? To the court, his people…to Viviane? 

“Go,” Kira told him. “The longer you make them wonder, the longer they have to plot against you. Shore up your power now.”

He had only a second to make a decision. It should have been Nikolai, he lamented. Kira ought to have remained with Viviane. 

“Get your sword,” he ordered. Kira’s eyes widened, and yet she nodded, racing down the hall. He had moments to get himself together, to step into that blood-soaked throne room and pretend this was normal–that he was normal. Kallias flexed his fingers, reveling in the feel of his magic, of the newness thrumming beneath his skin.

He took a step, swearing the world around him seemed to tremble. The screaming stopped and, with a breath, Kallias stepped into the room. The sight laid before him threatened to turn his stomach. Gunnar knelt before the corpse of his once beautiful wife, a block of frigid, blue ice. Beside him, the High Lord lay in his own rapidly cooling blood, his heart half torn from his body. It was all so gruesome, so unnecessary. Kallias knew that even if he lived for a century more, he’d never forget the sight. Not of the court that now belonged to him, all staring with wide, mistrusting eyes. 

Kira skidded into the room, flanked by several sentries. She still wore her blue night dress, comical against the vicious look on her face.

“Kneel,” Kallias ordered, watching those sentries from across the room. He needed their support if he didn’t want to die in the next few days. The transition between one family to the next was rocky—or, so he’d been told. Winter had always avoided those kinds of shifting power plays. His eyes drifted back to the High Lord, who loved his son so much he couldn’t tell him no. Would have seen all of Winter crumble beneath one spoiled lordling's whim then govern as he should. 

It was a reminder for Kallias, who turned his back to the kneeling nobility, of what he stood to lose. How things could go wrong so quickly—how he might lose focus if he wasn’t careful.

It felt strange, ascending the white cut dais to the glittering blue and amethyst throne. Kallias seated himself atop it, sweeping his eyes over the room. 

High Lord. 

Just like her friend. Every memory she had was tainted by his presence. The son of a lord just as she was, they were far enough removed from the High Lord and his family that they could do as they pleased, but not so far from court that they could run as wild as they wanted. 

Viviane had never had to spend a day of her life without Kallias. He’d had to spend two. She liked to tease him about that at times, pulling a scowl from his familiar face. It was his face creeping into her bedroom as the clock struck midnight. Winter Solstice meant a day of celebrations, of feasts and listening to priestesses drone on and on while they all shivered outdoors.

But midnight meant Kallias would slip into her room with a gift, and they’d celebrate just the two of them. She couldn’t remember when or how the tradition had begun. Only that for the last decade and a half, she could count on him to lock her door the minute that last chime rang out.

Viviane sat up, watching the lords son step carefully through the dark. He was dressed in pajamas just as she was, his feet bare against the heated marble floors. Kallias’s white hair shone bright in the flickering firelight, his icy blue eyes bright with delight. 

She reached beneath her bed, her own silvery blonde hair creating a curtain around her face as she withdrew the gift she’d hidden from her parents days before. They wanted her and Kallias to stop sneaking around the way they did.

People at court talked. As if Viviane cared. Her and Kallias were friends, and if the others didn’t understand that, she could hardly be blamed. He’d never once touched her and she didn’t think he ever would. What they had was special, but when she tried to explain it to her parents, they merely rolled their eyes with exasperation.

Kallias sat on the edge of her bed, grinning ear to ear as she righted herself. In his lap was a pretty, amethyst wrapped box. “Did I wake you?” he asked, just as he always did.

“Yes,” she lied, letting him admire how much nicer her box was wrapped. “Did you wrap that in the dark?”

“As a matter of fact,” he agreed, his smile undimmed. “Father insists I will not disturb Lady Viviane from her sleep this year.”

“It’s nice to know there are still some gentlemen at court,” she agreed, offering him up her box. 

“Oh? Are you too old for gifts at midnight?”

Viviane was seventeen, Kallias nineteen. They stared at the other for a moment. “No,” she admitted. “I think I will be five hundred years old still waiting for you to creep through the door. You’ll have children and a wife—”

Kallias snorted. “I doubt it.”

“And still I will expect to see you.”

“As you should,” he agreed, his eyes focused intently upon her. She chose not to examine why, snatching the gift out of his lap. He chuckled softly, reaching for his own neatly wrapped gift.

His long fingers slid over the silver bow she painstakingly tied, head cocked as he admired it.

“You go to too much trouble each year,” he complained. “You don’t have to wrap it at all.”

“Of course I do,” she replied just a touch too smugly. “How else will I remind you of your many inadequacies?”

“Just open it, Viv,” Kallias ordered. That was the way of things. She went first, he second. His gift would be impossibly thoughtful and she’d feel bad for what she’d given him in return. She pulled at the paper, not bothering to save it like her mother would demand of her in the morning. Viviane never wanted to reuse the paper from last year—and certainly not on Kallias. 

She ought to have known the moment she felt its weight that he’d replace her worn skates. Only Kallias would have noticed she’d practically worn holes into the toes, that the blades were all but useless.

She swallowed, touching the pretty silver and blue nestled in sparkling golden paper. She looked up at him, heart pounding in her chest. “These are…”

“I saw you fall last month,” he admitted. “I thought these might help.”

“Do you want to go?” she asked. Viviane loved nothing more than she loved to ice skate. Of course he knew it—everyone knew it. 

He laughed loud enough her parents might have caught them had they still been awake. “Now?”

“Don’t you want to see if they fit?” she asked, scooting just a little closer. His eyes gleamed and for a moment, Viviane remembered just how handsome Kallias was. The other females said he was carved from ice, and with his pale skin and his cut jaw, his high cheekbones and his full mouth, she supposed she understood why they thought that. But Kallias was warm, seemed to burn with inner heat. No one understood that about him.

She saw it all, sitting an inch away from him. His fingers drummed on the package in his lap. “I’ll need to change.”

“Dress quickly, then,” she replied, pleased when he nodded his head. 

“What did you get me, Viv?”

She sighed, watching him pull the ribbon with a sinking feeling. She’d never figure out the right thing—the thing Kallias wanted above all else. She’d been trying her whole life. Kallias always got her the exact thing she wanted and needed, and she’d never quite managed the same.

He pulled the curved, steel dagger from inside the box, eyes wide as he beheld it. She’d tried harder this year.

“Where…”

“It’s Illyrian steel,” she whispered. “From the Night Court.”

He ran his finger over the black hilt, encrusted with carefully lain blue stones. “How…”

“I made a friend,” she replied. “One of their court daughters…Morrigan.”

He didn’t look at her for a long moment, a reminder that Kallias was the best fighter in their cohort. Better than the High Lord’s ninety year old son Gunnar—when the male didn’t cheat to win, anyway. She’d hoped this would finally settle whatever disappointment always flickered in his gaze after he considered her gift.

Viviane was wrong. He liked it and it wasn’t what he’d wanted. He looked up at her, unaware of how her heart sank at the sight of his longing. “This is perfect,” he told her. “Nikolai will be so jealous.”

“Do you like it?” she asked, ignoring how he’d said it was perfect. Kallias would have told her a box of used garbage was perfect. She studied him as he sighed.

“Yes, Viv. Perfect. I can’t wait to show the others.”

“Perhaps you could show me,” she replied. A reminder that he’d promised to teach her, too. That she was just as capable as him, and Kallias was the only one who thought so.

He smiled, his expression softening. “Before or after a midnight skate?”

“After,” she said, scrambling out of bed. The disappointment on his face was gone, replaced with only amusement. “Go get dressed.”

He heaved a heavy, mocking sigh. “So demanding—”

Viviane pushed his broad, muscular body towards the door. “Stop talking and just go.”

His soft chuckle echoed through her mind long after he’d left. Viviane scrambled into her fur lined leggings and a heavy purple coat dress. Very quickly, she braided her long hair off her face and tucked the tail into her hood. Just in time for Kallias to return, every inch a lord of winter. He frowned, arms crossed over his chest, when he realized she was jamming wool socks over her feet rather than ready to go.

“I have more hair than you,” she hissed, pleased to see his lips twitching with amusement. His own pair of black and gold skates hung over his shoulder, a reminder that Kallias skated because she loved it. His pair were in far better shape. 

“Hurry up. If your dad catches me, he might skin me alive.”

“It can’t be any worse than when he caught Aeden,” she replied, lacing up her boots quickly. Kallias went utterly still.

“Aeden?”

She laughed. “Yeah. With his pants down, of course. I told him not to be so loud, but…” But males loved for everyone to know they were fucking, even if it meant her father could hear, too.

Even if it meant Aeden had narrowly avoided being flayed within an inch of his life. 

She grabbed the skates from the box Kallias had given her, surprised to see the deep frown on her friend's face.

“Everything okay?” she asked. He blinked, some cold rage flickering just behind them. It was gone before she could finish taking a breath, replaced with an easy smile.

“Of course.” He offered her his own gloved hand. “Ready?”

Viviane had the distinct feeling she’d done something wrong, though she couldn’t say why. Taking his hand made her feel better, and reaching the frigid air outdoors helped. Kallias slipped on his skates, before the two were gliding against the emptied lake, still holding gloved hands. 

“So,” he began, his deep voice half lost in the howling wind. “Aeden, huh?”

“Aimee?” she replied, wondering what he knew that she didn’t. Viviane heard all the rumors of his sexual procilvities and always kept it to herself. He was her best friend, not her husband. She had no right to ask. Kallias’s fingers tightened. 

“Was he the first?”

“No,” she replied, exhaling her relief. Crisp air filled her lungs and the slide of her brand new skates against the lake made Viviane feel otherworldly—like some mystical creature never seen before. 

“Who?

“Jonas,” Viviane admitted. She didn’t dare tell him Jonas had happened because she’d learned Kallias had woken beside three females he barely knew. And her jealousy had overwhelmed her to the point that any male would do. Viviane didn’t dare tell Kal that she’d always assume they’d navigate those new waters together. 

“Ah. Not special, then?”

She snorted.  No. “Better to get it over with, right?”

Kallias peered down at her, his eyes practically colorless in the moonlight overhead. “Is that how you felt about it?”

And she wondered, in that moment, what would have happened if she’d just asked him to take her virginity from her. Viviane had just assumed he wouldn’t be interested, that it would cross some irrevocable line between them.

So she shrugged. He was her best friend. “Isn’t that how you felt about it?”

Kallias shrugged, too. “I suppose. I’m not judging, Viv.”

“I don’t want to talk about him,” she said, looking up into Kallias’s moon-bright eyes. She thought he might argue with her—she could see he had more questions.

He swallowed them with a nod of his head, following her lead as Viviane took them further from the palace. This was a familiar dance between them and though it wasn’t like a waltz, Kallias still knew every step. Every place his skates needed to go in order to keep his hand on her waist, anticipating her every movement seconds before she made it so they both didn’t smash into the ice below.

They stayed out too long, and Viv knew it. Kallias, too, though he didn’t say it. Snow had begun to fall over the ice by the time they took their half frozen bodies back to the palace. The argument that had begun brewing between them was gone, forgotten when Kallias smiled. Viviane relaxed, slipping back into the warmth still holding his hand.

“Happy Solstice, Kal,” she murmured when they had to part ways. 

Kallias hesitated and then grabbed her wrist, pulling her against his broad chest for a tight hug. 

“Happy Solstice, Viv.”

KALLIAS: 

“Gunnar is staring,” Kallias told Viviane, snaking his arm around her waist just to rub it in. She wasn’t paying attention, head turned to mouth something unreadable over at Kira. Only Kallias was looking at Gunnar on his icy throne, brown eyes boring into an ignorant Viviane. 

She was beautiful and Gunnar wanted her. He waited for the inevitable moment when Gunnar's head turned, looking at him.

Kallias couldn’t help himself. He flashed a feral edged smile, ever possessive when he had no right to be. She was his best friend and best friend only. In fifty years, that was the only constant between them. Kallias didn’t dare try and be anything else, too afraid he’d ruin the best thing he ever had.

“Oh, are we dancing?” Viviane breathed when he swept her up into his arms just at the edge of the open dance floor.

“Just once,” he agreed, taking the first dance for himself. Kallias was greedy when it came to her time.  

“Have you seen the emissary?” she asked, trying to look up over his shoulder. 

“Briefly, this morning,” he agreed, too busy looking down at Viviane in her deep purple gown to recall what that female had looked like. He knew she was going to ask, her painted lips parting with excitement. 

Hybern had sent an emissary. An apology for their role in the war four centuries before. Kallias was uneasy, though he couldn’t put his finger on it. Only that he didn’t want Viviane anywhere near that female until they knew for sure she came only with peaceful intentions. 

She’d been making her way down the courts. She’d begun in Night, then Day and Dawn before finally reaching their court just that morning. She had no home, and if her pattern held, she’d remain with them for a chunk of time, getting to know their land, their people.

Kallias had risen in court, had become an influential diplomat,  and had enough sway he could ask to move people to the border. He hadn’t told Viviane yet, but he’d gone to the High Lord and asked her to be sent to the fortress in the Salten Mountains just on the border. Far from this emissary, at least for now. They needed a steward, someone to help watch out for the mountainside city.

Who better than Viv? The High Lord imagined this a test for his terrible son, proof that Viviane would make a good Lady of Winter Court. Kallias didn’t deny that, though he thought he might have gone to war if she ever changed her opinion on insipid, stupid Gunnar. 

“What is she like?” Viviane asked him, pulling his thoughts back to the present. They were still dancing, he realized. His feet moved automatically, hands tight on her beaded waist. “Is she beautiful?

Kallias laughed. “Hardly.”

“They say she’s the never fading flower. I just assumed it was a testament to her beauty,” Viviane replied. He shook his head.

“I think it’s a testament to her persuasion skills. They say she can charm a High Lord to agree to anything.”

Viviane glanced at their own lord, imperious and solemn despite the festivities raging around him. “Agree to what?”

“Trade,” Kallias murmured, though he caught the note of uncertainty in her own voice. “Shipping. The cost of goods. Anything.”

The music slowed, fading to silence. Kallias pulled her against him, stepping backwards from the ivory colored floor as the arching double doors at the very end of the room opened. Amarantha. That was her name, hardly fitting given she looked less floral and more ice. She ought to have fit right in, and yet there wasn’t an ounce of warmth to her. Even when she smiled, her beetle black eyes and her gleaming, bone white teeth were unsettling. 

Unnatural. 

“Wasn’t she a general?” Viviane whispered, reaching between them to grasp his hand. Amarantha tucked a ruby piece of hair behind her arched ear, swanning past all of them in a sparkling black dress that showed off entirely too much of her moon pale skin. Kallias took another step backwards, blending into the crowd. He didn’t want Amarantha to look at Viviane at all. 

“Yes,” he agreed. He’d forgotten that, but Viviane loved history—she wouldn’t have overlooked such a detail.

All at once, his decision to remove Viviane from court seemed smart. Well thought out, even. Viviane would balk, but perhaps if Kira went, too, she’d see the wisdom in such a move. Amarantha didn’t need to know of Viviane’s existence at all. 

“Why not send an actual emissary?” Viviane wondered. Kallias glanced down at her, hating that the High Lord was right about Viviane. She would have made a good Lady of Winter. 

He cocked his head, watching the Hybernian general turned diplomat bow before the High Lord and Lady and his son with ease. As if she were born to live on her knees. Nothing about her betrayed some ulterior motive.

Kallias felt no better. Not when she took a place beside their High Lord to speak, her eyes sweeping over the room. Not when Viviane vanished to talk and giggle with Kira. Kallias kept watch at the far end of the throne room, leaned up against a pillar.

Nikolai came to see him, his dark hair pushed off his olive skin. Brown eyes swept the room, lingering on Amarantha. He nodded, lips pressed in a thin line. “What do you make of her?”

“I don’t know,” Kallias admitted. “The other courts speak so highly of her. They say she’s generous and eager to make amends.”

“The solar courts can’t be trusted,” Nikolai murmured, earning a careful nod from Kallias. Night was more shadow than anything—their strange High Lord a mystery. Thesan in Dawn was nice enough, though he rarely spoke. No one knew what to make of Thesan.

And of course, Phobos over in Day—popular and well-liked, Phobos might have been the exception to the statement that the solar courts couldn’t be trusted had he not been so close to Night. And anyone who allied alongside Rhysand as unquestioningly as Phobos did was suspect in the minds of the seasonal courts. 

“I guess we’ll see,” Kallias told his friend. His eyes found Viviane again, dancing with another lord's son, a smile on her perfect face. Kallias’s stomach tightened at the sight of her, a feeling he smothered before anyone caught his softness. It was hardly a secret that he and Viv were close and yet he wanted to draw no attention to their connection. Sending her away would put the rumors between them to rest.

Kallias had meant to tell Viviane what she meant to him when they came of age. Had planned to get on both knees and beg her to marry him. Kallias had a ring, he’d had it all planned out.

Hybern had landed that same day. The news of Amarantha swanning into Spring had unsettled them all, Kallias included.

He’d tell her when he knew how things were going to go. When Amarantha proved she only wanted to be friends with Prythian. When marrying Viviane wouldn’t put a target on her back…though, if Kallias was honest, there had been some relief in not having to go through with the proposal.

He had no idea if Viviane loved him as anything more than a brother. She’d never once given him any indication she felt even an inkling of the same love he did. Kallias had been in love with Viviane his whole life. Would have done anything for her.

And she…she was currently in the arms of another lord. 

“Kira is leaving with Viv. Did you tell her?”

Kallias’s eyes slid back to the floor. “No.”

“You should. Don’t let it be Gunnar who tells her. It ought to come from you.”

“Kira hasn’t said?”

Some dark emotion flashed through Nikolai’s eyes and Kallias wondered if he wasn’t the only one pining after a female wholly unaware of his affection. “She doesn’t know Viv is going, too. Only that she’s being removed from court for a mountain city.”

Right. Wegen was their most rural reaching city in the mountains. Defensively, there was nowhere better–the Salten Mountains were unforgiving and brutal, especially to those unused to the cold. 

“They can hold their own court,” Kallias said dismissively. Nikolai only snorted, rolling his eyes at how dismissive Kallias was. He took one step towards Viv, halting when Gunnar stepped off his throne. Eyes only on Viviane, Kallias could do nothing but watch the older male pull Viv into a dance. Only Kallias noticed the way her shoulders stiffened, how her vibrant blue eyes became chips of ice against her otherwise flushed face. 

Gunnar was a century older than the two of them and had been after her since she was a girl. Viviane hadn’t forgotten it.

Neither had Kallias. Kallias took a step back. Waiting. Gunnar wouldn’t be able to resist reminding her that she was being sent away—that the High Lord meant for her to rule. Her head snapped to the side, the words Gunnar murmured lost to the music and the laughing, talking crowd. Strands of her silvery blonde hair caught against her sticky lips, half hiding the betrayal when she finally found him standing at the edge of the crowd.

“Rough luck,” Nikolai murmured, watching Gunnar announce that should Viviane do well, he’d be asking her to marry him under the assumption of course she’d say yes. The High Lord would sanction this union and her parents would, too. Who didn’t want to see their daughter married to a future High Lord, after all? Gunnar had all the markers of it. 

Kallias turned, ignoring the accusation on Viviane’s face. She could hate him all she liked so long as she was far, far away from Hybern. Kallias made it as far as the end of the hall before he heard heels on the marble.

“Kal!”

He stiffened, but didn’t stop.

“Kal!”

Only Viviane’s hand on his biceps stopped him completely. “You…” she breathed, her chest rising and falling rapidly. “You asked to put me at the border?”

Viviane wasn’t really a soldier, though she’d trained as one, just as most of them had. Defending this decision without falling at her feet and telling her everything would be a near impossible task.

“Would you prefer the barracks?” he asked. “You’ll oversee the city itself. I thought you’d prefer that sort of assignment.”

“Since when?” she snapped, shoving him hard in the chest. Kallias didn’t budge, though it wounded him all the same. “When have I ever expressed interest in ruling?”

Her fury threatened to cut him to ribbons. “What are you interested in, then Viv—”

“Politics, and you know it,” she hissed. “And don’t pretend for one minute you didn’t do this to get me away from Hybern’s emissary.”

He remained still, which only seemed to make her angrier. Viviane shoved him again, her cheeks flushed with color. “Gunnar seems to think the end of this assignment will be marriage.”

“You’d make a good Lady of Winter,” Kallias conceded. Viviane’s hand flew upwards, striking him against the cheek before he could stop her.

“What…” she swallowed, eyes wide as if she just realized what she’d done “How could you say that to me?”

“I…” he blinked, the sting of her anger burning his skin. “I’m afraid.”

Taking her wrist in his hand, Kallis flipped her hand palm side up and pressed it against the same cheek she’d just struck. “I know you love politics, Viv. But I’m afraid…” he couldn’t finish that thought. Couldn’t admit that if the Hybern emissary realized that Gunnar was fascinated by Viviane, Amarantha wouldn’t one day use her as some sort of pawn to keep the High Lord’s family in check. Viviane let him press his lips to her skin, let him inhale the soft, feminine scent of her skin. 

“You should have told me,” she said, stepping closer into the shadows. “We’re supposed to be friends. I would have…” she took a deep breath, eyes holding his gaze. “You know I’d do anything you asked.”

He let go of her hand, nodding. “It’s not forever. Just…for now.”

“And you? You’ll stay here?” she questioned. Trust. She’d swallow her anger and hurt because she trusted him. Relief flooded through him. 

“If I could leave, I would,” he admitted. “Kira will take my place.”

“It seems you thought of everything, Kal,” she whispered, unable to hide the entirety of her hurt. A heartbeat of silence passed between them before Viviane stepped away entirely. Shaking her long head of beautiful hair, she turned back for the throne room and the celebration happening just beyond.

And it wasn’t until later that Kallias considered that Viviane had been waiting for him to say something. 

Anything.

And he’d said nothing at all. 

VIVIANE:

Saying goodbye to court had been a toned down affair.Viviane had ignored her mothers whispered you will be Lady of Winter Court one day, with a roll of her eyes. Over her bleeding, dead body would she ever sit beside Gunnar, would she ever rule at all. The whispering, the excitement only irked her. She wasn’t going to prove she could be some thoughtful equal to the one-day High Lord.

She was going because Kallias was an overbearing asshole. It had been his smug face in the crowd, arms crossed over his chest as she made her way out, Kira at her side. Viviane made her way to him, letting him pull her into a hug while her father clicked his teeth with exasperation in the background.

“I think one day you will regret putting so much distance between us,” she murmured, taking a deep inhale of his jacket one last time. He smelled of ice covered pine and midnight snow. Masculine and crisp and comforting. Kallias put his chin atop her head, sighing heavily. 

“One of us has to be careful, Viv.”

“You’ll write?” 

“Everyday.”

“And you’ll visit?”

“When I can,” he agreed. “We’ll still be friends.”

And she knew it. Viviane knew her and Kallias would be friends until the stars winked out—that there was nothing that would keep him from honoring that whispered promise. It made being angry with him difficult. Kallias was cautious—a planner. It was what made him an adept politician, why the High Lord valued his input and insight. Kallias considered everything and everyone. She’d always known that about him. Despite looking as if he’d been carved of the ice and wind, Kallias burned like the fire beneath their land that heated the water.

And if he was sending her from court, he was scared. He’d said so and still, to see it when she pulled from his embrace was another. There was no kiss this time, perhaps because her father would disapprove of making such a show when the heir to the throne of winter was so fixated. Or, perhaps Kallias merely didn’t care to do it twice. He was her friend, not her lover after all.

She sighed. 

“Who will remind you to have fun?” she whispered, her heart aching in her chest. His mouth pulled deeper, a frown threatening to etch itself permanently onto his face. He placed one of his steady, broad hands against his chest just above his heart.

“You, of course,” he murmured with obvious affection. “As if I could ever remove the sound of your voice from my head urging me to work less.”

Viviane nodded. It wouldn’t be the same and it would  have been petulant to say so. She could feel her fathers eyes on her. Questioning why she needed so long to tell one male goodbye. How often had she assured them Kallias was just like any other friend? Her whole life. Fifty years. It was nothing, a drop in the endless, immortal bucket she expected to live and yet…fifty years of Viviane and Kallias was coming to an end.

She wondered if he felt her anguish, her hurt. Kallias took a careful step forward, his ice blue eyes flickering up over her head before falling back on her face. “You’ll be back before you know it, Viv. Nothing else will change. I swear it.”

Viviane didn’t know why she couldn’t promise him the same. She caught his disappointment just before she turned her back. Viviane had a million things she might have said to him, speeches she’d rehearsed in her mind before coming down. Begging Kallias to use his influence to call this whole thing off, threats that she would marry Gunnar, as if Kallias cared who she chose to marry at all. And her fury for not even bothering to tell her. For keeping this secret until Gunnar blurted it out with excitement. 

Oh, but her anger threatened to drown her. She’d never been so angry with Kallias with her life. Viviane swallowed it, because telling him so might fracture something between them. And if Viviane had to live with either her anger or not having her best friend, well, she’d choose the anger every time. She knew, besides, that Kallias was well aware one day this was all going to come out. 

That he’d have to atone for this caution.

Not that day, though. He merely remained in court, the last thing she saw before she and Kira winnowed away. She thought that was fitting—after all, hre very first memory was of him, too. Some strange part of her assumed his eyes would be the last thing she saw when she died, too—because some too careful decision caused her innate need to rebel, taking her life. 

The image of his disappointment was banished the minute she and Kira reached Wegen.

“Oh…oh Gods,” Kira whispered, clutching Viviane’s wrist. To say the Salten Mountain city was rural was an understatement. Their things were set at their feet not on a road, but a mud path beaten into the ground by the hooves of animals. Livestock roamed between old, rotting buildings in desperate need of repair. 

Built into the mountains was a gleaming, white palace she’d been told the locals affectionately called the Salt Palace. It was where her and Kira were to stay. Viviane didn’t move, the cold, dry air whipping around her until she was certain it had burned her cheeks. Kira, too, remained still. 

“Lady Viviane?”

Both her and Kira turned their heads to the male making his way towards them. He might have been her fathers age, or the wind had merely weathered him prematurely. It was impossible to say—only that his olive skin and his warm, blue eyes had been touched by this place and the result wasn’t unpleasant. Unlike the males back home, who fussed endlessly over their appearance, he just was.

He took the hat from his head, betraying wintry blonde hair not unlike her own fathers. “Forgive me, Lady…”

“Kira,” Kira murmured, glancing towards Viviane with wide, confused eyes.

“We were told only one steward—”

“Just me,” Viviane breathed, catching how tense and tight Kira’s shoulders were. “Kira is here to help with defense and secure the border between Autumn and Winter.”

He exhaled, clearly relieved he had not missed some vital communication from the High Lord. He offered them both a bow that made Kira burst into stifled giggles. Viviane kept her face polite, waiting for him to straighten.

“We haven’t had a lord…ah….forgive me, a lady…in our town in a near century,” he said. Viviane could see that. She wondered if Kallias had known how rough this place was when he’d suggested it. Viviane looked around again. Necessary businesses built like upside down pyramids, she assumed to help protect those on the streets shopping. Viviane could imagine rows upon rows of them lining a neat, well-paved cobblestone street where people could bring their sleds pulled by massive winter deer and dogs. Where the livestock wasn’t just roaming. They’d need to fence them off higher up, and create trails for grazing in order to keep the streets from being smeared in shit.

They’d need gold.

“Do you need anything?” Viviane asked. What had the former lord of this place done? “What is your name?”

He ducked his head. “Agnar, lady.”

“Agnar was one of our great warriors, was he not?” she asked, recalling the legend with perfect clarity. A hero of winter and their first High Lord. 

Agnar’s cheeks flushed. “I am a simple farmer, lady.”

“And Wegner? Does it need anything?”

Besides the obvious, though she didn’t dare say that. Agnar’s cheeks were practically a flame. 

“A school,” he managed. 

Kira’s steps stumbled over a large rock in their path.

“What did the former lord of this place do when he was here?” she asked, wondering who it had been. Kallias would know. She vowed to ask when she wrote, if only to put that male on Kallias’s radar. 

“He built the palace, lady.”

At the expense of the people living in Wegner. He ruled from the edge of the mountains in what she assumed had once been a beautiful fortress. It, like everything else, had seen better days. Just another expensive project, one she’d have to beg the High Lord to fix. 

Viviane was a courtier, just barely a politician. She wasn’t a ruler and had assumed she’d be coming to a place already well run to merely keep their books balanced and throw little parties. Beside her, Kira would create a patrol of sentries, would maybe teach some people more advanced fighting techniques.

And instead—

“There was also sickness last brutal season,” Agnar practically whispered. “We lost three of our younglings.”

Losing even one child was unacceptable. To lose three? She could see his grief, could feel it in the pit of her stomach. Viviane didn’t know what to say as she nodded. 

“I…we will fix our mistakes.”

He would assume she was sent with gold and influence. Had a male come, he might have been right. Instead, Viviane was here to prove she would be a good wife. 

Viviane would make a terrible wife. She was far too rebellious, too headstrong, too spontaneous. Too troublesome, even. The High Lord would learn that evening, she decided with squared shoulders. She would have roads, she would have lumber, and she would see no more children uneducated or dying because of shit in the streets. Not in her territory. 

Agnar offered his gratitude and promised to help her staff the palace before leaving her and Kira to stare down the Salt Palace with disbelief.

“How much do you think the High Lord paid for this monstrosity?”

“It’s bigger than the Ice Palace,” Viviane murmured, her boots creeping towards a wooden drawbridge that separated the sloping castle from the city built in the valley. She could see the use of such a thing—if there were invaders from the north, they could pull it upwards after evacuating, though she doubted the lord had done it for any other reason than to keep the lesser fae off the drive. 

It would do little to keep the marauders from Autumn out—and that was the problem with the Salten Mountains. Autumn paid a pittance to their lesser fae, forcing them to grind out a miserable living. Some joined roving bands that risked the treacherous path between the two courts in favor of looting, burning, and pillaging whatever they could steal from Winter. 

How many made it to Wegen was a question for another day. Viviane possessed enough ice magic to make the roads into their city a miserable journey and both she and Kira were talented enough with a blade to make any former peasant turned warrior think twice when encountering a Winter Court soldier. 

Those were different problems. The High Lord would pay salaries for staff, for warriors, for weapons that kept Autumn from making their way into Winter. Would he pay for medicine, too? And the materials for schools, for markets, for roads? 

Viviane pushed those thoughts aside as well as she stepped into the palace.

“Well,” Kira began, “there truly is no accounting for taste.”

The ivory colored marble was the only decent thing about the palace. It was clear no female had advised the male in charge, who had been giving free reign to just…spend money without consequence.

“Why we let males rule is a mystery,” Viviane agreed breathlessly. Everything was slate gray. The walls, the curtains, the furniture. Huge coats of arms stood motionless and at attention, lining the halls one either side. Unlit sconces on the walls told Viviane she’d have to have faelights installed if she didn’t want to always smell like an open bonfire. 

“If you agreed to marry Gunnar, he’d let you come home,” Kira murmured. Viviane looked to her friend.

“I’d rather stay.”

Kira’s pretty face warmed with a smile. “I was hoping you’d say that. You’ll never catch me bowing to Viviane, Lady of Winter Court.”

Viviane burst out laughing. “Can you imagine?”

“I could,” Kira admitted, looping her arm through Viviane’s. Their things were left at the front door in favor of exploration. “If the lord's son was less awful.”

“I can’t,” Viviane declared. “The Lady of Winter is so…so…”

“Boring?”

“Yes, exactly,” Viviane agreed. “And I simply cannot be bothered to stop having fun.”

Kira elbowed her gently. “Maybe that’s what Gunnar likes.”

“Gunnar likes my long hair and my pretty face,” she replied without ego. “He thinks our children will be powerful and lovely and that I will be perfectly content to lay beneath him while he ruts into me mindlessly.”

“Every females dream,” Kira agreed with amusement. 

“He’ll move on,” Viviane added with certainty. “When I’m not around all day, he’ll move on to someone more accessible.”

“And you’ll remain here?”

She halted at the sweeping steps, her mind returning to Kallias and his disappointment. He’d sent her here to keep her from the Hybern general turned emissary. She didn’t dare wonder if he’d also wanted to banish her from the court scheming. If he didn’t know that refusing the High Lord’s son would ruin her at court. 

“Until the work is done,” Viviane agreed. 

That would keep her busy, at least.

And Viviane loved a project. 

KALLIAS: 

Kallias sat in bed, staring at the large envelope in his hand. He knew that elegant, flowing script like he knew the sight of his own face. 

Kallias

Two decades without Viviane was wearing on him. And he knew why she’d written—it wasn’t to beg to come home. In fact, Viviane had never asked him that. Other females might have bided their time, might have done exactly what was required of them. Not his Viv. 

He slid his finger along the lip of the envelope, pulling it out with nervous fingers. He hadn’t seen her in months, and it would be at least another before he could excuse himself long enough to go. 

I miss you.

His chest nearly caved. He had to stand, to pace his bedroom as he reread those words. Kallias felt pulled, just as he always had, always would. His Viv was at the border, safe and most importantly, a ghost to the likes of Hybern and Amarantha. Amarantha, who’d lived at their court for eleven years, knew everyone. Had attended every wedding, had met each new baby born. Knew all the females by name and had bedded many of the males. She didn’t know of Viviane. Couldn’t place her face, had never looked into Viviane’s pretty eyes, had never scented her sugar sweet scent.

Kallias didn’t regret sending Viviane away. She was his heart, and so long as she was safe, Kallias could continue. 

Pacing, he returned to the letter. 

We have begun clearing the Salten Pass towards Autumn, and as you can imagine, it’s tedious. I’ve built an ice bridge and I can’t wait for you to see it. My finest creation yet—it’s load bearing, before you ask. Yes, I did try it myself. You would have died, it’s a straight drop into a ravine. I could hear you begging me to get off it the entire time. Did I mention I miss you? 

Gods, but Kallias could imagine it. Could picture her jumping with glee over a thousand foot drop, fully prepared to plunge to her death just so no one else would take on that risk. Had he been there, he would have done it for her. But he wasn’t. He was here, and she was at the border, playing her games. Making friends.

Living her life without him.

We caught three marauders halfway to Wegen. Kira is holding them, but we aren’t sure what we should do. They look hungry and are very poor. I know we aren’t supposed to let thieves have amnesty but one of them couldn’t be older than fifteen, Kal. Will you talk to the High Lord about it? 

And there it was. Viviane had learned the High Lord did not care about the Salten Pass, or Wegen, or even the plague that ripped through a decade before. Viviane cared so much she’d refused to come home when Gunnar had all but gotten on his knees and begged her. Gunnar was moving on, had realized that Wegen was not Viviane’s project. 

And Kallias was the only person she trusted to ask for help. He marked it down on a little sheet of paper—vowing to write her back either way and tell her to send them back if the High Lord told her no. Viviane wouldn’t execute someone for being hungry, at any rate. 

I requested gold or supplies for the roads five years ago. The High Lord wrote me back, by the way. He told me it couldn’t be spared. I’m frustrated—how am I supposed to keep illness out if we can’t have functioning sewers like everywhere else in Winter. I’m tired of looking into the faces of mothers and telling them I’m doing my best. I feel like I do nothing except say no because of costs and through my hands in the air. Last brutal season we buried a six week old baby and I’ve been having nightmares.

Will you talk to him? For me? Just…break it down for me so I might explain. No one cares about his overhead, not when he throws a Winter Solstice celebration so lavish we are taxed to fund it. People feel abandoned. I do, too. As if I am only useful so long as I am breedable to his son. And Kal—I have considered it. I can admit that to only you, but I have considered it more than once. Promising to be his wife, if only to secure their patronage. 

It makes me feel ill to admit even to the gods, let alone to confess to you. I do not think you would judge me for it. The only thing that stops me from making such an offer is the knowledge I would be dragged back, when I am starting to love this place. 

Only Viviane could see filth, squalor, and suffering and find something to love. It made his body tight, imagining her out there doing exactly as the High Lord had hoped she would. His insipid, shallow son was too brainless to see what Viviane was—what she could be. Kallias was grateful for it. If Gunnar ever realized what a true gem Viviane was and how the people might love her enough to forgive their lavish spending and callous, capricious nature, he would have demanded her with a fervor that even Kallias couldn’t have stopped.

He took a breath.

Say you’ll come visit soon. I have forgotten what you look like. When I close my eyes I see not a male (who may or may not be handsome), but a wild, slobbering jotnar. Is that what you are, Kallias? Because you once came monthly, and now I only see you on Solstice and my birthday. Who do I lobby a complain with over this terrible neglect?Should you continue your distance, I will be forced to make new friends. If that is what you want, than by all means. Continue as you are. But I should remind you that I am actually quite charming and many people find my company pleasing. You are not the only one who is entranced by my sparkling personality. 

I miss you. Did I tell you that? Well, just in case.

I miss you.

Viviane. 

Kallias didn’t know whether to laugh or snarl, pacing as he was. The thought of another male making his Viv laugh was enough to practically drag him to his dresser. He halted, fingers grazing the wood. She would have wanted that. Would have worded her letter hoping he’d make a rash, impulsive decision. No one else could compel him to act without thinking. 

He’d visit after he finished his work in Summer. And after he asked the High Lord why she couldn’t have gold for the streets. Kallias did reread her letter, just to hear her admit she missed him. 

Kallias found the High Lord in his office, frowning over a long expense report. Kallias didn’t have to ask what this was about. His son spent money like they’d have it forever, not bothering to consider it had to come from somewhere. 

Blue eyes met his own. “Kallias,” the High Lord murmured, gesturing for him to take a seat opposite his crystal desk. Kallias obliged, looking out the open windows towards the icy lake. He could see others skating atop its surface in the warm summer sun and was reminded of how often that had been him, once.

“The work you’ve done in Summer…” the High Lord trailed off. Kallias crossed his ankle over his knee, reclining in the leather chair. He knew, though he didn’t dare brag. “What do you need?”

“Gold, for Wegen.”

There was nothing but still silence between them. The High Lord assessed him cooly, frosty in his displeasure. Every request Kallias ever made was on Viviane’s behalf.

“I’ve told her no. It can’t be spared.”

“She’s losing younglings to cold and illness. Cold,” he added pointedly. As if they were the masters of it. 

“It’s a tragedy. They were certainly not the only ones who felt it.

“We didn’t,” Kallias reminded the High Lord.

“I wonder,” the High Lord began, steepling long, pale fingers against his lips, “when you might come asking a different question on behalf of Lady Viviane.”

Kallias didn’t back down. 

“She is unmarried,” the High Lord continued. “She could use a patron.”

“She has a patron,” Kallies replied with that same coolness. “She doesn’t need a husband to secure my loyalty and I have no interest in being that for her.  I’m asking to build a road that leads from the Salten path into Winter.”

“My answer is unchanged. I wish I could say yes, but there are circumstances even you cannot change.”

Kallias didn’t dare react—didn’t dare say what he thought. That he’d never have a son so spoiled it threatened to bankrupt their territory. That he’d never put his own comfort above the suffering of younglings. 

That he’d never tell Viviane no. 

“She’s not going to marry Gunnar, is she?” The High Lord’s question stopped Kallias at the door. He had to swallow the urge to snarl, to leap onto the desk and throttle the male for daring to ask. 

“I don’t know why you’d ask me that,” Kallias lied.

The High Lord chuckled. “I’m certain you don’t. Give my regards to Summer…and Lady Viviane, when you visit. I’d like to see what progress she’s made with Wegen one of these days.”

All on her own. No help from the High Lord who wanted to make her his daughter. She was merely decoration. 

Kallias ripped open the door with more force than was necessary. If the High Lord wouldn’t give her the fucking roads, then Kallias would. What was the point of being separated, of working as long and often as he did, if he couldn’t empty his accounts?

“You look…you look pissed,” Nikolai commented when Kallias came to find him.

“Just Gunnar, fucking everything up as he so often does. What else is new?” Kallias hissed, shoving a heavy pouch of gold into Nikolai’s hands. 

“A gift?”

“For Viviane. I need you to take it to her, along with whatever else she needs to build roads in Wegen. Actual, stone laid roads.”

“Is this–”

“I have to go to Summer,” Kallias continued, his chest rising and falling rapidly. He felt as if he were unraveling. Like he needed to winnow directly to her, bury his face in her lap, and confess everything. Gods, but Kallias wanted the High Lord to be right. He wanted to waltz into his office and declare he’d married Viviane, that she was in love with him too, and then maybe put his middle finger right into the male’s face.

But Viviane had never given any indication she loved Kallias like he loved her. And what she wanted—what she needed—was someone who believed in her vision. 

“Should I tell her who sent this?” Nikolai questioned, weighing the sack of gold in his hand without surprise.

“Tell her it's from the High Lord. That’s not a lie—he pays my salary.”

“It would mean more to her knowing you sent it.”

“And then she’d know he had wholly abandoned her,” Kallias retorted hotly. “And she might think she’d be better turning to Gunnar for help. You’ll do this for me?”

“Of course,” Nikolai agreed. 

Relief flooded his otherwise taut body. He nodded, the only gratitude he could force out. Kallias left his friend confused, turning abruptly for his bedroom, if only to get himself together. Only behind the closed door could he run his fingers through his hair, tugging at the strands as he paced again.

I miss you.

He growled into the air, into the silence. He’d sent her away—he didn’t regret the decision. If he hadn’t, she’d be betrothed to Gunnar or worse. Amarantha would have known her face, and though the emissary had done nothing untrustworthy to deserve Kallias’s dislike, he couldn’t risk it all the same.

Couldn’t risk her. 

Wouldn’t.

He swallowed, turning back to her letter laying sweetly on his desk. Kallias dropped into his chair and reached for a pen.

Viv,