A Touch of Stone and Snow (A Gathering of Dragons, #2)

by Milla Vane

“She was here,” Riasa said, stirring the fire with a stick before lifting her gaze to his. “Then ran when we told her Koth’s prince came.” Pain slashed through him, the hot agony of a gut wound. She had run from him. But Lizzan did not run from anything. She had stood her ground against wraiths and lies. Yet she had run from him. It was as if he’d stepped through a mist and into a hazy world that made no sense. As if in a fog, he looked to the others at the fire, the boy prince and the girl warrior. They watched him with such steady and sympathetic eyes that he did not know who they saw. Not a huntsman or even a feral prince, but a man utterly lost. “Should we have detained her?” Riasa asked. Like a criminal? His voice was a painful rasp when he told her, “Lizzan has done nothing wrong.” Slowly the woman nodded. “She claimed that she was unwelcome at home because she did not die when she was supposed to.” At the mere thought of her death, new agony wrenched through his heart and he shook his head. “She only spoke a truth that no one wanted to hear. She is Koth’s shining jewel and was tossed into the mud.”

Aerax glanced over at the woman, who was baiting a fishing hook. “The woman who fought the bandits—was she hurt?” The woman lowered her line into the water. “Quite badly.” His heart stopped, his gaze flying to the boat. Too far to jump. And a current too swift to cross without being carried far downstream. “But that injury was done long before she arrived here,” the woman continued. “And was not delivered by a bandit, but by a snow-haired prince she called a villain.” A full breath it took for Aerax to understand what she meant. That Lizzan was not injured now . . . but had been. By him.

“Lizzan.” She closed her eyes. So badly she wanted to turn toward him. To see him. “You’re not supposed to say my name.” “You said mine when no one else would. Never will I not say yours.”

A disappointment? Never could Lizzan be. Yet he had made her feel so. “You are no—” Aerax broke off, and panic clutched his heart when she began to rise out of the water. “Not like this,” he said hoarsely, catching her hips before she could step out. Once before he’d let her leave with hurt and misunderstanding burning between them. Never could he again. “Please. You are no disappointment. After the red fever, I know you had barely a moment away from your duties, let alone time to petition the crown. Please, Lizzan. Do not go when we are like this.”

“So perfect you are, Lizzan.” He did not deserve to even touch her.

And he could not bear hurting her. With agony clawing at his chest, he told her, “Then strangers we will be.”

Now she sounded exhausted. And as his gaze adjusted to the dark, she seemed so frail to him . . . and so near tears. An ache took hold of his heart. “You didn’t use the vine?” Her short laugh sounded nothing like amusement, and nearer to despair. “How could I complete my task if I cannot awaken when danger comes? So instead I sit here, while my every thought tears my head apart.” Her eyes closed, and the tears that spilled beneath her lashes all but destroyed him. Throat raw, he cupped her face in his hands. “Lizzan,” he said thickly. “What are these thoughts that are hurting you? I will chase them away.” Another painful laugh shook through her. “We do not do well as strangers.” “I’m not sorry for it.”

Angry. Did she not know he would destroy anyone who would take her from this earth? Yet she was the one who threatened it now. What he felt was not anger. Nothing so tepid described the fury rampaging through his heart, the rage that he fought with all his strength to suppress, because never would he touch her in anger, and he still held her face in his hands.

“If I have to become a monster to save you, that is what I will do.”