Page 160 of Severed Heir

I moved without will. I couldn’t stop.

“What does one seek,” he asked, though his lips never moved, “when they’ve already achieved so much?”

“A family,” I whispered.

He removed his hat slowly and looked at me. “Your mother asked for the same thing once, when she was your age.”

The sand beneath my feet grew warm for a moment, then vanished entirely. Cold crept in, seeping into my skin and tightening around my bones.

I was no longer in Ravensla.

I was sixteen again.

A hand touched my shoulder. I turned too quickly and, for a moment, I thought I saw a ghost. Not the glowing kind from the horror stories Cully used to read to me, but something solid. Something real.

“Klaus!” I gasped.

I threw myself into his arms. He caught me without hesitation, and the scent of pine and smoke wrapped around me like a memory I wasn’t ready for.

“Klaus,” I whispered again, barely able to breathe his name.

Worry dimmed the gold in his eyes as he looked me over. “Are you hurt?” he asked.

I buried my face in his chest, clinging to the illusion, because I knew damn well this couldn’t be real. “No. I missed you,” I said, my voice trembling.

Klaus smiled gently. “I went hunting with Charles. Knox caught a few squirrels. Plans to fry them for dinner, but I’ll vanish before that disaster unfolds.”

None of this was real. I knew it wasn’t, but I couldn’t stop it.

“I’ll come with you,” I said anyway, clinging to the lie.

We descended the stairs together, our footsteps muted by the thick snow pressing against the house. Aides moved past us in stiff silence, hauling iron buckets of seeds.

“They’re mad,” I murmured. “The seeds won’t take in frost. They’ll die.”

Klaus chuckled, spreading his arms. “Father bartered with a Summer Serpent at the annual Bid. We’ll have sun for a while.”

But the light was wrong.

It gleamed too sharp, too clean. I raised a hand to my brow, shielding myself from the glare. Colindale light was never this blinding.

“It’s not our sun,” Klaus said, gaze tracing lazy shapes through the clouds. “You can tell by the hue.”

His voice broke something in me. I wanted to stay frozen in this lie. To let it last. “What did Father trade?” I asked, eyeing the leather-bound journal tucked beneath his tunic. Did he know that he was a Seeker?

He arched a brow. “Nothing good.”

I already knew. But I couldn’t say it.

“What’s in your journal?”

“Mostly poems,” Klaus said with a grin, bumping his shoulder against mine. “You never asked about my poems before,” he teased. “It was always Cully’s you wanted to hear.”

We wandered deeper into the woods. I clung to Klaus’s arm, unwilling to let go. The trees thickened around us, their limbs gnarled like old hands reaching through the snow. The light dimmed as shadows stretched long across the frost.

“We shouldn’t go any further,” I said, my voice unsteady. “Not without help. Or weapons.”

He laughed, easy and sure, as if nothing could touch us. “The ice beasts are dying in this heat.”

---