Page 128 of A Tale of Ice and Ash
Eirwen lunged forward and closed the minute gap between them, curling her fingers in Cole’s shirt and burying her face against his chest. The wooden bird fell to her lap. Any stiffness in Cole melted away. His arms encircled her.
“My mother got rid of most of your belongings,” he said. “But I took this from your room before she could. I barely knew why, I’d done such a good job of convincing myself I didn’t care about you, back then. But I knew I needed something to remember you by. Your father always called you ‘little dove’. I think it reminded me of him, too.”
“Did you go back into the palace to get this?”
“Um, yes,” he said. “But I wasverycareful. No one saw me. Promise.”
“Thank you,” she said. She picked it up again, examining its painted face, every etched feather. “I should have Merry make it a partner.”
“Another dove?”
“No,” she said, smoothing a lock of his hair. “A raven, I think.”
Cole’s heart almost exploded in his chest. He grabbed her hands. “Come with me,” he said.
∞∞∞
They walked a little further from the party, the music fading to a gentle hum, into a clearing behind the tents. The snow was falling thick and fast here. Cole loosened his cape and draped it around her shoulders. The faint light of the fire sparkled in his eyes. She stared at the inky sky, alight with stars.
Cole did not follow her gaze. It remained threaded on her, intense and unwavering.
“What? What is it?” she asked.
“I’m wishing I was a poet or a painter.”
“What?”
“So I would have some way of expressing how wondrously, unequivocally beautiful you are right now.”
“What–”
“I mean it. You are, in this moment, the most beautiful thing I have ever beheld, and even that doesn’t do you justice.”
“I… I was definitely prettier at the ball–”
He shook his head. “No, you’re more beautiful now. Moreyounow.”
“Cole… what did you mean, before? When you said that you weren’t helping me for all the right reasons?”
“You haven’t figured it out, huh?” He shook his head.
“I… I have an idea.”
“I like you, Snow. I like you a lot. You… you don’t have to say anything. I don’t want to put you on the spot. And I’m aware that the timing may be less than ideal. But, see, the thing is, I’m… I’m falling in love with you. Or rather… I suspect I’m there already. I’ve never knownanyoneas fierce or as gentle as you are. Since the moment we were reunited, I felt this inexplicable pull towards you. I told myself that I was obligated to help you because of what my mother did, I told myself I just wanted to see you because I was lonely, because our few conversations were quite literally the most enjoyable I’d had in… in years, if not ever. And all of that is true. But I want to be near you because I’ve fallen for you in a way that is quite honestly terrifying in its permeance. I’m not sure I can scrub you out of me. I’m not sure I want to. The thought of you not being in the world makes me sick to my stomach. No, worse than that, sick to my soul. It makes me want to cave in just thinking about it.”
He looked at her, as if waiting for a reaction.
She couldn’t give him one.
“Silly, right? I wasn’t nearly this upset the last time I thought you were dead.” He reached out to touch a lock of her hair. “I was upset, though. More than I let on. But mostly for selfish reasons, back then. I felt alone without you. Now I think I’d die without you. Now I think I’d happily trade my life for yours.” He waited. “That wasn’t too impoetic, was it?”
Eirwen stared at him.
“Say something, Snow.”
Eirwen’s words turned gummy in her mouth. They fell away from her.
Say something. Say anything! Don’t let him think you feel nothing at all–
