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You will figure it out. You . . .

Her words died, and the cold inside me intensified. My heart raced.

I stood on a precipice. If I didn’t return now, if I didn’t fight back the cold clouding my veins, I’d never return at all.

So I made a choice.

Chapter 42

VALE

Neve’s eyelids fluttered, and for the first time in what felt like a thousand turns, I took a full breath.

“She’s waking up, right?” Anna choked from blue lips. She shivered violently but refused to leave the room. As we did not want the human to pass out, Caelo had started a fire, and the temperature in the room was rising, albeit slowly. “Please tell me you see that she’s waking up.”

“I think so.” I placed a hand on my wife’s shoulder and winced at how the cold shot up my arm and stole my breath.

Though I’d been upset that she hadn’t wished to share a bed with me last night, that she’d left me with so many questions, perhaps it had been for the best. The room was so cold, as was she. Had I slept in the bed with her, I might have frozen to death.

How did she survive?

“Neve?” I rubbed her shoulder, trying to force some heat into her skin. “Can you hear us?”

“She’s still so blue,” Clemencia whispered from where she stood behind Anna. “Should we have a bath drawn?”

Yes, Neve had turned a stomach-churning shade of blue, and her skin was freezing to the touch. She truly looked as though she’d been frozen inside a block of ice, but she breathed normally.

“It can’t hurt.” Luccan shot a glance at Caelo, Arie, and Thantrel, grouped together at his right. “Than and Arie, the servants are sleeping. Can you draw the water? Caelo, maybe toss another log on the fire? Get it roaring hot.”

Caelo stoked the hearth as the two younger Riis brothers ran from the room into the adjoining bath chamber and began preparing the tub. My gaze followed them, taking in the bedchamber covered in ice. The room was barely tolerable to stand in, and everyone inside shivered.

Everyone except Neve.

What was going on?

Was this winter magic? I suspected I’d witnessed her wielding it last night too, but this was far beyond anything I’d seen.

“Not the price.” The words slipped from Neve’s lips and her eyelids fluttered harder, ratcheting up my heart rate. “Not the price to be paid.”

My eyebrows slammed together. She’d asked about a price before. Of hurting people. Whispered of her mother too.

Magical releases could be powerful, but Neve seemed to be experiencing hallucinations. I’d never heard of such a thing. Then again, I’d never heard of a faerie coming into their magic so late in life, either. Perhaps, for someone in Neve’s circumstances, this reaction would be normal. I hoped she came out of it unharmed.

“I still have to pay the price,” Neve spoke again, her voice becoming more frantic.

That should have been a cause for distress, but as she spoke, her breathing deepened. Beneath my hand, she grew a touch warmer, and color returned to her cheeks. She really was coming back to us.

“Neve, we’re here.” Anna took her friend’s hand in her own. That small display of connection, of love, had to have hurt. Anna was human and thus, more sensitive to pain than the fae, but while Anna shivered even more violently than the rest of us, the human did not flinch back or release Neve. “Please, come back.”

Anna’s words worked like a spell, and Neve’s violet eyes flew open. They landed first on me, then darted to Anna and Clemencia. My wife exhaled and some of the panic left her eyes.

“You’re all alive. Of course you are, but when she left, I wasn’t sure.”

“Who isshe?” I asked, and Neve tensed as if she hadn’t been aware she’d spoken out loud.

“I—don’t—” Her mouth closed, and her eyes flared. “I mean, she was—” Again, her mouth closed, and her fingers lifted to cover her lips. “Bleeding skies, I can’t lie.”

I removed my hand, and it formed a fist before Icaught myself and loosened. Why had she needed to lie? We were hovering around her, worried for her life. Why would Neve want to tell us an untruth?