Madelynn’s body went limp in my arms and my worst nightmare quickly became reality. Reaching up to her neck, I pressed my cold fingers there.
Nothing.
“She has no pulse!” I screamed to Drae, hoping my old friend could do something about it. His wings pumped harder as he cut through the Winter sky and then descended faster.
This isn’t happening.
I looked down at Madelynn’s face, studying every freckle and curve. It was as if on the day the Maker made Madelynn, he set out to create a masterpiece. Her face was carved of porcelain, smattered with freckles across her nose. Her sharp chin made her entire head resemble a heart, but my favorite thing was her orange and red hair, like bits of fire were trapped inside. The colors were different depending on the angle and if the sunlight was hitting it or not. I ran the pad of my thumb over her soft pink lips and what life I had stored up in my heart after my mother died perished in that moment. I was born a great lover of all things and people, but with every drunken rant my father beat the love out of me and turned it to hate and vengeance. The only person who’d kept it alive was my mother, and then she died and I was lost. When the teenage girl I loved had cheated on me with my best friend, Raife, my heart turned black and I covered it in steel, impenetrable to anyone.
Then I saw Madelynn dancing in the wind with her sister, the sun lighting up her hair like a roaring fire, and it was as if I’d been kicked in the chest. My heart flickered to life, dropping its steel cage and letting me know it still wanted to beat.
I had to have her.
I didn’t blame Madelynn for hating me when she first saw me. I knew the rumors surrounding me were horrible—some of them even true. But when she stuck up for me with Marcelle and the Summer fae, and then again with my father, I fell in love with her so easily.
She owned my heart and soul.
I would do anything for this woman and now she was gone.
They always leave me.
I screamed into the sky as a frigid snowstorm blew around us. My powers were dangerous, and if not controlled would kill people, but I didn’t care right now. My grief consumed me.
Drae dropped quickly, so quickly that I had to tuck Madelynn to my chest to keep her from flying out of the basket.
I failed her. Maybe I should have tried to find a healer in Summer, but would they have helped her? We just killed Marcelle and they didn’t have any healer elves there, right? I was questioning everything now, every decision I ever made that led to this moment.
Suddenly Raife Lightstone, my oldest friend and the biggest pain in the ass, leapt into the basket atop Drae’s back.
He was the greatest healer in all of Avalier. But he couldn’t bring back the dead.
“She’s gone.” My voice was hollow, dead inside. My heart took its last beat and then began to stack an ice wall around it that I vowed to never thaw again.
I would never love another living soul, it only ended in disappointment. And they would never be her. Madelynn Windstrong could not be replaced.
Raife held his hand over Madelynn’s face and his mouth popped open. “She’s not gone yet. Her heartbeat is very weak but she lives,” Raife told me, and grasped my fingers to squeeze them. He winced: “Brother, your fingers are too cold to feel her pulse. Calm this storm so I can get her inside!” he snapped at me.
Alive? I looked down at her: lips purple, chest not moving. Was he sure?
I couldn’t see where we’d landed, the storm was raging too hard, a sea of white. I’d last left Raife at the Winter castle, so we must be somewhere near there.
Raife suddenly reached down and tried to wrestle Madelynn from my arms, and that got me moving.
“She’s too cold. Calm the storm, brother. I need to get her by a fire.” Raife shook my shoulders a little as if he were trying to shake sense into me.
“I had to freeze her to stop the blood,” I told him mindlessly. I didn’t want to allow myself to hope that she might still be alive. I felt like I was in a stupor. I’d gone into shock, I suspected, and I didn’t know how to get out of it.
“Lucien, you’re freezing her!” Raife yelled, and purple light exploded before me. His magic smacked whatever shock had its hold over me and it dissipated. It was like the storm clouds in my mind cleared instantly. “She’s alive,” he said again.
This time it hit me like an avalanche.
I dropped my power over the weather instantly. Standing, I clutched Madelynn to my chest and leapt out of the basket. My feet sank into snow that went up to my knees but I didn’t have time to feel bad about hitting my town with the storm.
She’s alive. She’s alive. She’s alive.
The last bits of snow fluttered to the ground.
Raife ran alongside me, his glowing purple hands hovering over Madelynn’s wound as I ran inside the open entryway of my palace. My snow-covered boots slid on the cool stone floors as I fumbled to get her in front of the fire in the drawing room.
She was limp, her hair in half frozen chunks about her head and her lips purple. I feared that in my effort to keep the wound cold so she wouldn’t bleed out… I’d frozen her to death.
Raife’s strong hand clasped my shoulder and squeezed. “You did good. She wouldn’t have made it otherwise,” he told me.
I backed away half a step as he knelt before the woman I hoped to one day very soon marry. Raife and Drae were once some of my closest friends but we’d grown apart. More than grew apart, Raife and I had a falling out due to his sleeping with the woman I loved at the time. I heard later that she’d slept with half my Royal Guard too, so he probably saved me from heartache, but that wasn’t the point. The wound he’d inflicted so soon after my mother’s death left a scar. I didn’t think I could ever care for him again, or trust him.
Then Madelynn’s lady-in-waiting arrived on bare horseback and told me what Marcelle had done. When she’d told me that he’d taken my betrothed against her will to have for himself, I nearly froze the entire realm just to spite him. And that’s when Drae and Raife showed up. The second they heard the news about my future wife, they helped me fight my way to her at the border, and when that failed, Drae risked his life and flew me into Summer. I knew now that even though we’d had time and circumstances that drew us apart, I could always count on these men as brothers.
“How is she?” Drae’s voice came from behind me and shook me a little.
Raife was hunched over Madelynn, throwing purple arcs of healing light over her and grunting. He’d pulled the arrow out and it lay in two pieces beside her.
“Drae, I need you to fetch my wife. Fly as fast as you can. She’s at the border with our armies making a show of togetherness for Zaphira. Tell her to bring her human medicine kit,” he told Drae, and my stomach dropped.
I’d heard rumors that his new wife had an ability to bring the dead back to life. Was Raife afraid Madelynn would die? But her ability was not without great cost to herself, and I couldn’t imagine him risking his own wife’s life just to save Madelynn, no matter how good of friends we were. And a human medicine kit, how the Hades would that help us now? Raife was the greatest healer alive; no human concoction could touch his ability.
Drae bolted from the room, already shifting to his dragon form before he was even at the door.
“Talk to me.” I didn’t recognize my own voice. It was hollow and devoid of emotion, yet on the verge of panic at the same time.
When Raife glanced up at me, I didn’t like the look in his eye. “I can heal any wound, shrink any growth, rid the body of nearly any poison…”
I didn’t breathe, I didn’t want to miss a word of what he was about to tell me. I wanted to be hit with the truth so that I could absorb it.
“…but I cannot make blood once it has left the body. I’ve closed her wound, but her heart… it’s failing.” He paused and a guttural wail ripped from my throat as the temperature inside the house plunged.
No. No. No. I couldn’t lose her. Not like this.
Raife chewed his lip. “If Madelynn doesn’t get blood soon, she’ll die. My wife knows how to take blood from one person and give it to another to save them. I’ve seen her do it at our infirmary.”
That sounded like Necromere sorcery. Something I wanted nothing to do with. “Put blood into her? Are you mad?”
He sighed. “I thought it was crazy too until I saw Kailani save a life doing it. My work is done, the wound is healed, but she needs blood.”
Put an outsider’s blood into her body? It was a wild idea that terrified me. But not more than the thought of losing her.
I looked down at her now ashen lips and went back to the memory of the time I first tasted them. I’d wanted to kiss her since the moment I laid eyes on her, and it did not disappoint. I wanted a thousand more kisses with her and I would not settle for less.
“Do whatever it takes,” I told him, then I fell to my knees, cradling her head in my lap. “Give her mine,” I begged him. “Please. Whatever she needs.”
“Is her mother here?” Raife asked suddenly, peering around.
Her mother? So that she could say goodbye to her daughter? I leaned forward and kissed Madelynn’s head. “No. I sent her lady-in-waiting to fetch her mother and sister before I kill her father for treason,” I growled.
Raife cleared his throat as if he didn’t like the idea of that. I didn’t care. He sold her to someone else after she’d been promised to me. I would punish him.
“I was asking because it would be best to have someone she shares blood with. Do you have a staff member from Fall Court?”
My face fell, my stomach tightening into knots, and I looked up into my friend’s eyes. “I do not hire staff outside of Winter Court.”
That admission settled over us, and I didn’t have the heart to ask him if Madelynn would die if we could not get Fall Court blood into her.
Just as I was wondering how long it would take one of my messengers to kidnap a Fall Court fae and bring them to me, Kailani arrived.
The half human, half elvin queen ran through my front door panting. She held a black satchel and her blond hair with a streak of brown in front was blown around her shoulders.
“I’m here. Talk to me,” she said as she rushed forward and opened the satchel, pulling out tubes and a needle.
“She was mortally injured,” Raife told her as her gaze took in the dire position Madelynn was in. “Lucien froze the wound which saved her until she could reach me, but she lost a lot of blood. I have closed the opening but her heart is failing.”
Kailani was wearing a pretty silk purple dress and yet she had no qualms about kneeling in the blood puddle at Madelynn’s side and pressing two fingers to the side of her neck. “Do we have a next of kin nearby?” She hadn’t looked at me yet, which was fine by me. She’d gone into healer mode and I’d rather she be focused on Madelynn. The last time I saw her I had hit on her and tried to kill Raife, so I would understand if she were even a little mad at me.
“No,” Raife said. “And Lucien has no Fall Court staff.”
Kailani put the needle into Madelynn’s arm and then looked up at me. “I have no idea what this will do to her powers, but if you want her to live, give me your arm.”
Her words shocked me. Her powers might be affected? Did I care about that right now? No. But she might. Still, if she were alive to yell at me for messing up her powers, I didn’t care. I would pay all of the gold in my vault to be yelled at by her again.
Without question, I extended my arm and Raife placed a hand on his wife’s lower back. “Are you sure this will not harm Lucien’s power?”
She shrugged. “The average body has more than enough blood to spare. He will grow his back while he sleeps. He might be weak in power for a day or two, but that’s it… I think.”
Weak? I’d never been weak in my life. I hated to even think of it. But Madelynn was worth it.
“Just save her. Please,” I begged. I would grovel if needed, but Kailani didn’t require it. She simply wiped a wet cotton ball across my arm and then poked a needle into it.
I flinched, not really at the pain but at the sight of my red lifeblood leaving my body and filling the tube she’d connected to it. It streamed down to where Madelynn lay on the floor and went into her arm.
“This is wild. Are you sure this will work?” I’d never seen something like this before in my life, and I’d seen a lot of healings growing up.
Kailani nodded. “We don’t have healers in Nightfall where I grew up. Humans have to use other things like inventions and medicines to survive. This is one of them. When a person loses too much blood, it can be donated from another person.” She looked worried, her face hiding something.
“Then why do you look so concerned?” I asked her.
She chewed at her lip. “We don’t know why yet but some people have reactions to blood donations.”
I stiffened. “What kind of reactions?”
She took a shaky breath. “I’ve never heard of someone dying but… in Madelynn’s case it wouldn’t be good since she’s already so weak.”
All the hope I’d had for her to make it out of this was quashed in that moment.
“Maybe I can help if there is a reaction,” Raife offered.
Kailani gave him a sweet smile but she didn’t look too confident.
“That’s why you asked about her mother or someone from Fall Court?” I said.
Kailani dipped her chin in agreement. “Next of kin is always the best. Blood closest to hers is less likely to have a reaction.”
My heart began to hammer in my chest and I wasn’t sure if it was because I was now low on blood or if I was just processing her words.
“Have you ever done this on fae?” I asked her.
She shook her head. “Humans and elves only.”
Great. “So you have no idea what a Winter fae giving blood to a Fall fae will do?”
Kailani swallowed loudly, her mouth thinning to a line. “I do not, but I know that either way you’ve bought her time. If your blood fails, we will know pretty quickly, and by then the mother and sister should be here.”
I held on to that, on to the promise that even if I couldn’t save her, maybe I’d bought her time so that her mother could.
A few minutes passed as I stared at the pulse in her throat. Was it my imagination or did it look stronger? Kailani was mumbling under her breath, counting. I assumed timing how much blood I could lose before I myself needed a donation.
After what seemed like forever, Kailani pinched the tube and then pulled the needle out of my arm and did the same to Madelynn. She then threw the tube and needles into the fire and looked up at me. “How do you feel?”
Panicked. Heartbroken. Desperate.
“Fine,” I mumbled.
Raife scanned his hand over Madelynn’s chest, then her stomach, and grinned. “Her heartbeat is stronger. I don’t sense any reaction yet.”
Yet.
“When will she wake up?” I took her cold hand into mine and realized that the house was freezing. I was horrible at keeping my emotions in check, and since my power and emotions were tied together, it made things difficult.
“She just needs rest,” was all Raife said.
“Let’s get her in a warm bed. I’ll change her into some dry clothes,” Kailani offered.
Her clothes were wet from snow and blood and so I nodded. I knew she’d rather her lady-in-waiting change her, but she needed to warm up and rest, so I allowed it.
After carrying her to her room upstairs, I sat her on the bed, holding her head up on my shoulder as I looked away from her.
Kailani made quick work of stripping her clothing and throwing it on the floor. I continued to hold her head against my chest as her limp arms were flopped around by the grunting elvin queen, until finally Kailani told me I could look.
Madelynn had been changed into a simple white dressing gown which looked dry and warm. I set her head back on the pillow and tugged the thick woolen blanket up to her chest. Then I pulled a chair up to the side of the bed.
Grasping Madelynn’s hands between mine, I rested my head on the blanket and tried not to lose hope.
“Do you need me to stay as a chaperone until her lady-in-waiting shows?” Kailani asked from the open doorway.
The fae were very proper in our culture about purity and marriage. It was why I was going to go back the first chance I got and cut Marcelle’s manhood from his dead corpse for forcing himself on my future wife. The very thought made me want to freeze the entire Summer Court realm. I looked down at Madelynn’s sleeping face and the soft rise and fall of her chest. We weren’t officially married yet, I had not bedded her, and yet she already felt like my wife.
She was my forever.
“I think we’re past that,” I told Kailani, “But you can send in my head maid to be sure.” I didn’t know what Madelynn would want. Her reputation was important to her and I didn’t want to tarnish it any more than it had been.
Kailani nodded and then moved to leave.
“Kailani,” I called out after her.
She turned to look at me in the doorway with a soft expression, and I couldn’t help but feel that my friend Raife had struck gold with her. She’d just rode on a dragon’s back at a moment’s notice to save Madelynn after the way I treated her and her husband the last time I saw them.
“Thank you,” I said.
She smiled and gave me a slight bow, which was gracious of her considering she was a queen herself.
A few moments later my head maid arrived. She took the dirty dress from the floor and tossed it out before setting up a chair in the corner to read.
The hours passed. Raife came and went, checking on her and telling me everything looked good. My lead guard gave me news on the warfront. The Nightfall queen had been quiet since I’d stopped the storm. We both agreed she was probably using the moment to regroup and bolster her defenses. I just didn’t care right now.
The stress of the last twenty-four hours weighed on me. It had been a ruthless nonstop war with my own people to get Madelynn back. Not to mention this attack from Zaphira at my border. I was exhausted. And so I gave in to the pull of sleep with my face on the blanket beside Madelynn’s stomach. I never cared much for belief in the Maker. After losing my mother and then being constantly abused by my father, I couldn’t fathom a Maker that would allow that. But my last thought before I fell asleep was a prayer to the Maker that he would let Madelynn live and make her my wife forever.
