Page 23 of Kiss of Frost

“If you were going to kill me, you would have done it already. Although, I might die of hypothermia.” He winced as he cast a look down his body. “I thought the regular kind of blue balls was bad, but this kind is giving those a run for their money.” He tipped his head back and blew into the air, his breath puffing around his face. He waved a hand at the frosty cloud and gave me an expectant look.

“What?” I demanded, searching my memory for blue balls and run for their money and coming up short.

“Aren’t you cold? Your castle is a refrigerator.”

I thumped a light fist against my chest. “Ice dragon.”

He snorted. “More like masochist.”

Another unfamiliar word. Judging from his tone, it was a bad thing. And it was…irksome for this pup to know something I didn’t. It shouldn’t have bothered me. Like honey, bother was a thing from my past. Irritation was a distraction, and I’d removed all distractions when I took my vows. But the lad’s attitude—his carefree air and unusual turns of speech—chafed in a way I hadn’t experienced in hundreds of years. Bother leaked around the edges of my mind like water flowing around a barrier.

It made me want to put him in his place. Undoubtedly, that was the witch’s doing, too. I should have resisted the urge to school him.

Instead, I opened my mouth and spoke in rapid-fire Gaelic. “Are you always a disrespectful pain in the arse?”

“I was taught that respect is earned,” he replied easily in the same language.

With a grunt, I switched back to English. “You fought well enough. Who trained you?”

“Bram McGregor.”

The name was as foreign as everything else he’d said. “Who is he?” I asked. “Your mate?” For some reason, the thought of that had me stepping forward, another unwelcome growl forming in my throat.

“No,” Callum said. “He’s mated to Fergus Devlin and Halina of Krovnosta. Bram is brother to our queen.”

“Now you’re lying, boy. We have no queen. We barely have a king. Cormac was lost to the fire centuries ago.”

“Perhaps your advanced age has diminished your hearing,” Callum said, moving forward so we stood less than a foot apart. A shaft of sunlight fell between us—a yellow barrier sparkling with tiny snowflakes that drifted through the uncovered window. “I told you I’m no boy. And I speak the truth. King Cormac has emerged from the fire. He reunited with the Consort, and they found their fated female in the demon plane. She was lost to us for over three hundred years, but now she’s back among her own kind.”

I searched his gaze, looking for duplicity. “Her own kind…” I repeated. “But she can’t be—”

“A dragon,” he said, his eyes gleaming. “I know it’s hard to believe, but it’s true. And it gets better. The Consort discovered that Mullo Balfour created the Curse. Two of our kind are mated to a donum. She battled Mullo and turned his magic against him.”

“Mullo is dead?” The head of House Balfour had been a formidable witch.

“Aye, and the Curse with him.”

For a moment, I could only stare. “Broken?” I asked, my voice hoarse in my ears. The Curse that had caused so much heartache and destruction? The Curse that had ripped my life apart? The room tilted, and I flung out a hand to steady myself. But there was nothing to grab onto, and I ended up stumbling into Callum.

“Whoa,” he said, gripping my arm. His touch frazzled through me like an electric shock, lifting every hair on my body.

I sucked in a breath. Our gazes locked. He’d stepped into the beam of sunlight, and now his hair was more blond than brown. The tips of his eyelashes gleamed like they’d been dipped in liquid gold.

“Are you okay?” he asked, his deep voice cutting through my shock.

Except that was impossible. I didn’t feel shock—or delight or relief or anything of the sort.

I yanked my arm from his grip. “I’m fine.” I stepped back, putting the sunlight between us once more. “I don’t need your help.”

“All right,” he said easily, his gaze steady.

“You tell the truth about the Curse?”

He nodded. “I vow it.”

The sincerity of his words rang in the air. The mysterious illness that had plagued our women was…gone. The Curse was broken. King Cormac had emerged from his fire—and joined with not one but two mates.

“Fate has smiled upon Cormac,” I said, my voice gruff in the quiet chamber. Snow swirled in the beam of sunlight, the flakes seemingly lighter than air.

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