the Sea between them like the precious heirloom it was. “I know this,” he said thickly. And with one hand he reached for hers, drawing it out of his tangled hair. Carefully he slid the heavy ring over her forefinger, and though it did not fit perfectly, it knocked firmly to her knuckle where it belonged.
Mora kissed him, deep and hungry, and Rowan put his arms around her waist, pulling her into his lap. The heat in her belly expanded, filling her limbs, her mouth, the tips of her fingers, and she surrounded him with it, reaching, tugging, grasping at his body. To give her fire to him, into him. Only together could they contain it, Mora thought distantly, where thinking still existed, and she thought, too, laughing as she bit his tongue, as she tasted and sucked at his mouth, I am not repressed anymore. Rowan only stripped what little he had to, opening both their clothes, baring skin, until they were joined and moving together there on the summit of the Mountain of Teeth.
HOTSPUR
Perseria, winter
THE STORM SUMMONED her out of Red Castle.
It built to the south, as well as inside her; an undercurrent of heartache mirroring the slow churn of clouds.
Hotspur Perseria had left her heart in Lionis weeks ago, and her chest was an empty cavity that no winter obligations or family traditions had even begun to fill. Though usually she lived these darkest weeks with her family at Annyck, she’d fled to Red Castle, which was hers alone.
The wind arrived three days past the Longest Night, hissing at the cracks beneath doors. Then it slammed suddenly into the shutters, startling the hunting dogs asleep in the great hall. There’d been no snow yet this season, but frost glossed the fields every morning with bright white light and the air was cold.
When the wind moaned late this afternoon, long and high with sorrow, Hotspur stilled, hearing her own lament in that grieving draft.
The castle servants and Persy retainers all looked to Hotspur. They knew she’d say if a storm approached. Everyone at Red Castle was good at pretending there was nothing strange about their earl’s daughter reading weather. Some folk simply knew such things.
Hotspur told her steward they should probably bring in the horses.
Then she stood and went to the field herself, but instead of joining the men in rounding up the beasts, she stared south, grabbed a pale mare, and mounted up.
The horse seemed to know where she needed to go. Hotspur only felt the urge to seek.
They rode for hours, and the wind picked up. Ecstatic gusts dragged Hotspur’s hood down, eagerly dancing along her pink-chapped cheeks. The mare kept its head down, driving forward steadily, and Hotspur could raise her face to the rolling black clouds, the flashes of light—a dark/light answer to the desperate question she had no words to voice.
Except why why why.
Hotspur slid off her horse, reckless, staring up at the crackling clouds. She patted its rump, then stepped into the weedy dead grass sloping away from the road. Black winter trees bowed to her, pushed by the wind. She stomped over scraggly bushes and kicked piles of shattered brown leaves, then moved beneath the skeletal canopy.
The rain was coming. She heard it in the cadence of the wind and smelled it, too.
Hotspur could love anyone. Why did it have to be Hal Bolinbroke?
Her breath hitched as her body recalled the grief her mind strove to ignore. The wind echoed her little gasps and gave her sympathetic cries in return. She was the Wolf of Aremoria; she should be better than this.
Soon bone-branches waved hard, scratching at the black clouds. The sky tore open and frozen rain sliced down. It cut against the trees and marked cold lines down her face.
(Does she see us yet?)
The whisper jerked her shoulders back and Hotspur spun, seeing nothing. She ran back toward the road—only it was not the right direction. She stumbled and fell into freezing hard mud, but scrambled up, charging forward again. She slapped branches from her path, palm stinging from the whiplike bite of twigs.
A roar sounded, approaching like the furious maw of the Lion of War—Hal’s lion—and the tearing wall of rain burst through the forest. Rain soaked her wool coat and slid beneath, plastering her shirt to her body; rivulets of cold water poured down her spine, her face, and dragged her curls into long red snarls.
She stared out through streams of rain at black tree-shadows, whipping branches.
Golden light