Page 88 of Blood Beneath the Snow

Ignoring him and crawling back into bed was easy. Until he clambered in after me, hastily discarding his armor piece by piece with loud clangs. “Please, Princess. Give me a chance to explain.”

“No.”

He groaned, and when I peered briefly over my shoulder, he wason his knees, head hung, hair falling over his face. “I fucked it all up. I’m sorry. I was trying to do my duty, all right? Same as you. To serve my queen.” His throat worked as he swept a palm over his forehead. “I believe you. I hope you know I do.”

I sat up grudgingly, wrapping my arms around my knees. The prison was warmer than usual tonight, but I had no doubt the cold would seep back in sooner rather than later. “How do I know you’re telling the truth? How do I know you’re not using me—or, worse, that you’ll discard me the moment I prove to be as powerless as I always have been?”

He stretched his long frame out along the bed, his face in front of me. “I’m not sure how to prove it to you. But asking was stupid. Insisting was even worse. I made a mistake. I don’t care whether you have a Lurae—regardless, you’re winning those Trials and taking the throne. You have enough grit and determination to make you far more dangerous than anyone with a Lurae.”

There was raw honesty in his eyes. And more than that, Iwantedhim to be telling the truth.

After spending so long in no one’s company but his, I felt we were finally coming to understand each other. What kind of person would I be if I faulted him for attempting to fulfill his obligation to the queen? Was I not here because of a commitment to my own people? Did I not knowexactlywhat it was to disregard my own feelings in favor of something bigger?

We both deserved to trust each other for a while longer before I returned to reality.

“I’m not the only one whose future is being determined right now,” I said softly, rubbing the edge of the blanket between my fingers. The sensation was a comfort against the storm of emotion flooding me—emotion I didn’t want to even begin deciphering. “There are people counting on me. Not just Freja but…” I hesitated, then decided to prove I had forgiven him. “There’s a rebellion. A small one,but they need me. If I win, we might stand a chance of decimating the priests. Rooting out the corruption. Killing every head at once, so no new ones can grow back.”

Søren’s brow creased. “Winning the Trials is all-or-nothing, then.”

I nodded. “I know you said you believe me. But what about the queen? What will she do when she discovers I have no magic? Will this be over before it’s even had the chance to begin?”

He sat up, swinging his legs to stretch them out on either side of me, then took my hands in his. “No. I won’t let it. I’ll make her see reason—understand you still have a chance at winning. You said you’re allied with your brothers, right? There’s no way the three of you together can be defeated. Not when you’re this strong even without a Lurae.”

I tackled him to the bed and kissed him.

It was the same as our other kisses—hot, heated, passionate—and different at the same time—slow, heady, filled with words we couldn’t say aloud. He wrapped his arms around my waist and twisted us onto our sides, legs intertwined, and we kissed like we were lovesick.

Maybe we were.

I ignored the hot tears burning behind my closed eyelids. “I won’t let her hurt you,” Søren promised, his nose nuzzling beside mine. “I won’t.”

We both pretended we didn’t know the truth: the Queen of Kryllian could do whatever she wanted; Søren had a sister to protect who mattered infinitely more than the woman he’d never see again after this war ended; and if by some miracle the queen decided not to kill me, I had two brothers waiting in line to do the deed themselves.

“What would this be like,” I whispered against his mouth between kisses, “if we were both entirely different people?”

He hummed quietly, chest rumbling with the sound. Twistingstrands of my hair in his fingers, he mused, “We’d have met in an equally hostile way but doing something utterly domestic. Like buying fruit.”

I snorted, picturing the image in perfect clarity. “You’d have demanded a bad price for something and refused when I tried to haggle. So I would have picked up the nearest tomato and hurled it at your head.”

We both burst into laughter, and it felt even better wrapped in each other’s arms. Like the joy of the moment multiplied because of our nearness.

Søren was always beautiful, but laughing? He lit up like a sky full of stars. I wanted to bottle up the moment and make it last forever.

“But we’d find ourselves together regardless,” he continued. “Maybe we’d live in a cottage on a beach somewhere.”

“You like the ocean?” I scrunched my nose.

“Sure. Don’t you?”

I shook my head. “That much water in one place isn’t natural.”

“It’s the very definition of natural.”

“You know what I mean.” I shoved him half-heartedly, immediately pulling him back into my embrace. “I’d rather live in a forest. Maybe near a mountain.”

His eyes lit up. “That sounds lovely.”

We basked in each other’s gaze for a long while before he added, “And there would be no war. No Lurae. No corrupt rulers, no duties, no people to save.”

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