Even between normal lovers, there were boundaries, and the dream left him feeling like he was one raw wound, bleeding freely beside her. “What’s the matter?” he asked, trying for his usual tone.
“You’re trembling. Are you cold?”
“How could I be, with such a hot little bundle beside me?” He thought he sounded fine, should be enough to get her to go back to sleep.
It wasn’t.
“Bad dream?” she guessed, with an acuity that was as impressive as it was intrusive.
His first instinct was to snap, as wolves did when unfamiliar hands went after their sore spots, but then he remembered how she’d told him about her mother, poisoned by her father’s mistress. That couldn’t have been an easy thing to share, but she’d trusted him with it, long before she curled into his arms. Such candor was a rare sort of courage, an example he should follow.
“You want to hear about my long, dark night of the soul?” he asked quietly. “It’s not in our contract.”
“That’s a baseline agreement, as in, this is the minimum we will do for one another. There’s no reason we can’t give more, if desired.”
“What a long, roundabout way to say, ‘Yes, Raff, I want to hear your story’.”
She curled into him, sliding one thigh over his and rested her head on his chest. “I want to listen, Raff.”
“Better. I like things straightforward.” He closed his eyes, aware that he was about to tell a story that most of the pack knew, but he’d never really spoken about before. “If things were different, you might have married my older brother, you know.”
A jolt of surprise went through her; he felt it. “You have a brother?”
“Not anymore. Which is too bad because he was brilliant, years of training and so many incredible ideas. Pine Ridge lost a lot when he died.”
“You feel responsible.” It wasn’t a question.
Thalia opened her palm on Raff’s chest, clearly an attempt to comfort him. Some of the horrors of the dream faded, leaving him more grounded. He covered her fingers with his and tried to keep it together. It was one thing to confide in her, another to break down.
“No denying that. He was trying to save me from a beating and paid the ultimate price for that interference.”
“Your father didn’t have him…” She trailed off like she couldn’t even ask the question.
“Executed? No. Officially his death was an accident, but if I hadn’t tried to run, it wouldn’t have happened.” Now that he was talking, it was easier than he’d expected, as if this was a dam that badly needed breaking.
Under the cover of darkness, Raff told her everything—how his mother had died in childbirth and his father hated him irrationally, so that nothing he ever did was good enough. About Evert, who was always his shield, until that terrible night when he wrestled with their father like gods of old, and how in the end, the whole pack paid the price.
“My father was never…right, afterward. He kept it together long enough to install Korin as my second, but that was the last sane decision he ever made.”
“Grief drove him to madness,” she said softly. “Where is he now?”
“Safely confined in Pine Ridge. Are you shocked?”
“I’d be lying if I said no, but mostly, I feel sad. Because like me, you never knew your mother, and like me, you never had your father’s love.”
Astonishment flared in him, bright as a match kindled in absolute darkness. “Are you saying we’re two of a kind?”
“Maybe I am. Of the two of us, I think you’ve had the better outcome.”
“Why do you say that, my good wife?”
“Because you had a brother who loved you so much that he was trying to protect you to his last breath…and even though he’s currently lost, there’s still a chance your father could come back to you.”
His chest hurt with the unexpected sweetness of her words and their undeniable truth chipped away at the awful residue the nightmare had left behind. “Mm, well, I do concede that I’m a lucky devil, not just for those reasons.”
“Why, then?”
With gentle reverence, he kissed her temple. “Because I married you.”
17.
In the morning, Thalia woke hungry.
Nothing had been solved, so she shouldn’t feel so serene, but she couldn’t muster sufficient ambition to haul herself out of bed. The room held a fearful chill, as the fire had died at some point during the night, so she was wrapped around Raff like he was the flame that could keep her alive.
Getting out of bed would be torture.
Still, even knowing that didn’t stifle her whimper at the cold shock against her bare skin. She scrambled into her torn and filthy clothes, for once missing the luxuries she’d enjoyed during her confinement at Riverwind. There in her gilded cage, she’d had heated floors and an endless supply of hot water.
“You’re so eager to leave,” Raff mumbled.
Layering up only helped so much. Thalia’s hands were so cold that the joints hurt. It had been such a long winter; this should be that last hurrah of ice and snow, yielding to spring and warmer weather. She tried to imagine the dead ground coming back to life as she went to the window, but found it impossible to superimpose verdant growth atop the white field and the icicles dripping from the trees.
It was just warm enough that they were melting, slowly. That would make it dangerous to pass through the woods. People always told gruesome stories of those who died with ice spikes in their eyes.
“I should call Ferith,” she said.
They had to be worried at Daruvar, search parties combing the woods. Last night there had been no signal, but before she could touch the screen, Raff snatched her phone. He didn’t seem to feel the cold as much because he was completely naked, paying no mind to the frigid air or his bare skin. In the full daylight, she could appreciate
