A Lick of Frost(57)

"You will always be our princess," he said, and his face showed that he was trying to understand.

I took my hand away and lay back on the bed, staring up at that impossibly lovely face. Tears burned at the back of my eyes and tightened my throat so that I could choke on regret. With everything that had happened today, all that had gone wrong, all the danger around us, I was ready to cry because the men I loved would always remain as beautiful as they were today but I would not. It wasn't death I feared, really, it was the slow decay. How had Maeve Reed's husband borne watching her remain while he grew old? How do love and sanity survive such a thing?

Frost leaned over me, and his shoulders were so broad that his hair fanned out around me like some shining tent, a waterfall caught in mid-motion to glitter in the dim light of my room. "You are young and you are beautiful this night. Why do you borrow such sorrows when they are far away, and I am right here?" He whispered the last words above my lips, and ended with a kiss.

I let him kiss me, but didn't kiss him back. Did he not understand? Well, of course he didn't. How could he? Or… or…

I pushed a hand against his chest and got enough space to look into his face. "Have you loved someone and watched her grow old?"

He sat back abruptly and would not look at me. I wrapped my hand around as much of his wrist as I could. It was too big for me to encircle it. "You have, haven't you?" I asked.

He would not look at me, but finally he nodded.

"Who, when?" I asked.

"I saw her through a pane of glass when I was not the Killing Frost but just Frost. I was just the hoarfrost made into something alive by the belief of the people and the magic of faerie." He looked at me, and there was uncertainty in that look. "You saw me in a vision once, what I began as."

I nodded. I remembered. "You came to her window as Jack Frost," I said.

"Yes."

"What was her name?"

"Rose. She had golden curls and eyes like a winter sky. She saw me at the window, saw me and tried to tell her mother that there was a face at the window."

"She had second sight," I said.

He nodded.

I almost let it go, but I couldn't. I just couldn't. "What happened?"

"She was always alone. The other children seemed to sense that she was different. She made the mistake of telling them the things she could see. They named her witch, and her mother with her. She had no father. From the talk among the other villagers she had never had a father. I heard them as I painted frost on their houses whispering that Rose was begotten by no man, but the devil. They were so poor, and I was just another part of the winter cold that hurt them the most. I wanted so to help her." He raised his big hands, as if he were seeing different hands, smaller and less powerful. "I needed to be more."

"Did you ask for help?" I asked.

He looked at me, startled. "Do you mean, did I ask the Goddess and consort to help me?"

I nodded.

He smiled and it lightened his face, made a joy shine through that he hid most of the time. "I did."

I smiled back at him. "And you were answered."

"Yes," he said, still smiling. "I went to sleep, and when I woke, I was taller, stronger. I found them fuel for their fire, all that long winter. I found them food." Then the joy fled from his face. "I took the food from the other villagers, and they accused her mother of stealing. Rose told them that her friend left it, her shining friend."

I took his hand in mine. "They accused her of withcraft," I said softly.

"Yes and theft. I tried to help, but I didn't understand what it was to be human, or even fey, I was so new, Merry, so new to being anything but ice and cold. I was a thought made into a being. I did not know how to be alive, or what it meant."

"You wanted to help," I said.

He nodded. "My help cost them everything. They were jailed and condemned to death. The first time I called cold to my hands, a cold so deep that it could shatter metal, was for Rose and her mother. I broke their bars and rescued them."

"But that's wonderful." Yet his hand convulsed around mine, and I knew the story didn't end there.

"Can you imagine what the villagers thought when they found the metal bars shattered and the two women gone? Can you imagine what they thought about Rose and her mother?"

"Nothing they hadn't already believed," I said softly.

"Perhaps, but I was a piece of winter. I could not build them a shelter. I could not keep them warm. I could do nothing but take them out into the dead of winter with every human within reach turned against them."

I sat up and tried to hold him, but he wouldn't let me. He turned away and finished his story. "They were dying because where I went, winter followed. I was still too much an elemental thing to understand my own magic. When all was lost, I prayed. The consort came to me and he asked me if I would give up all that I was to save them. I hadn't been alive very long, Merry, and I remembered what it had been like before. I didn't want to go back to that, but Rose lay so still in the snow, her hair fading into the whiteness, that I said yes. I would give up all that I was if it would save them. It seemed a suitable sacrifice, since my meddling, no matter how well intentioned, had brought about their misery."