Page 53 of Kiss of Frost

Callum and Graeme were nowhere to be found.

But the battlements were smashed like someone had taken a hammer to the stone.

And a trail of footprints in the snow led to the edge.

“No!” I gasped, lurching forward. A tight hand gripped my arm and spun me around, and then Graeme was snarling in my face.

“What are you doing up here alone?”

I yanked at his grip. “Let me go! Callum is hurt!”

Shock flared in Graeme’s eyes. “What do you mean?”

“Let me go!” Desperation rose, wild and hot, and it lent me enough strength to break his hold. I whirled—and promptly froze as I struggled to comprehend the scene before me.

The footprints were gone, the snow pristine and unmarked. The battlements were intact. Every stone was whole. The fortification appeared exactly as it had the last time Callum and I had visited the roof.

My mouth went dry. “I don’t… I don’t understand.” I walked forward, but Graeme caught my arm again.

“You’re not going to the edge,” he growled. “Where is Callum?”

“I don’t know!” I cried, tugging at my arm. I’d never wished I had a dragon’s ability to shift into smoke more than in that moment. “I heard moaning, and there were footsteps. Let go of me so I can go find him!” I swung my booted foot at his calf and connected.

He grunted. “Damn you, hold still!”

“No!” I swiped my free hand through the air, grabbed a current, and flung it in his face. The wind was too weak to do much damage, but it blasted him, making him sputter and release my arm.

I rushed to the battlements and peered over the edge. The snow at the base of the tower was smooth, with no Callum-sized holes in the powder. Relief whipped through me, and I sagged against the frost-covered battlements.

“Georgina,” Graeme said behind me, an odd note in his voice.

I turned to find him as pale as the snow around us. His eyes were wide…and terrified.

“What is it?” I asked, and I started to come away from the stone, only to yelp when something wet and rough swiped over my palm. I jerked my hand away, prepared to see blood, but there was nothing. But as I stepped away from the battlements and stared at the white crenellations, I could have sworn the fortress…wagged its tail.

No. That was stupid. I’d fallen harder on the stairs than I thought, and now I was hallucinating.

“It likes you.”

I looked at Graeme, whose expression had gone from frightened to awestruck. He stared at me like he’d never seen me before. Like he couldn’t believe his eyes.

“What?” I asked, looking from him to the battlements. The frost sparkled in the weak sunlight, the thick layers of white like spun sugar. The White Gate ate trespassers. My heart pumped harder. Did that mean it…licked people it liked? I turned back to Graeme, and his expression had changed yet again.

Now, he stared at me with an intensity that stole my breath. As I looked into his eyes, something impossibly ancient stared back at me. I’d seen its like before, when I met King Cormac in the antechamber at Castle Beithir.

Graeme’s dragon had me in its sights—and it had exactly zero intention of letting me go.

“Um…” I cleared my throat. “I need to look for—”

“You’ll look at nothing without me,” Graeme said, his voice rumbling the stone beneath my feet. He held out his hand. “Come away from there. Now.”

“Excuse me?”

“The battlements are slippery and dangerous. You’re not permitted to come up here anymore.”

My jaw dropped. “What?”

He stared, his gaze unwavering—and deadly serious. He’d gone full caveman. Mariah Crane’s voice reached through time and space and whispered in my mind. If a dragon pair thinks you’re theirs, they won’t ask if you feel the same. They’ll just take you, Georgie, and they’ll never let you go.

---