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I started shivering immediately, the frigid air seeping through my clothing and my skin and gnawing at the marrow of my bones like a wild animal. It was literally hard to breathe, and around me, everywhere I looked, was a strange and frightening world. Trees I didn’t even recognize hung heavy with frozen leaves that shivered in the strong wind that blew unceasingly through the trees. They trembled as if they wanted to rustle and sway with the wind like normal trees but were far too weighed down to even try. I knew the feeling.

I was being allowed to walk on my own, though Bracca was in front of me and one of his soldiers right behind, prodding me with his sword when I went too slowly.

The first things I noticed were the legendary Ice Poles. While I was with the Solarians, I’d heard the men say that the Poles marked the border between the Elves and the Dark Fairies. The poles were far larger than I’d ever imagined. The light Elves’ territory was known as Quendi land, and the Ice Poles were looming, narrow towers of solid ice, famous and legendary. But judging by the cold, we were somewhere in the far frozen north, and nowhere near Kent anymore. As far as I knew we were hundreds of miles away from everything I’d ever known, and I had no idea if I’d ever see England again.

The Poles lined the broad trail that led back into the forest for at least a kilometer or more. No one knew for sure how they had come to be, because they were so ancient, but the Solarians had told me they were all that was left of the old Ice Giants who had come there one frigid Samhain night to observe the celebration of the end of the autumnal equinox and the beginning of the winter solstice. They had miscalculated the cold and frozen in place there as they cast their circle and spoke of their deceased ancestors, held hands and chanted prayers through the night. That was the legend anyway.

This marked the Elves southern border, and though I wasn’t exactly sure where we were in the mysterious Liminal, I knew from the climate alone that we had somehow been magically transported to a place miles and miles away from Solaria. We had come through the rift in the air and been transported there by Bracca’s powerful magic. The Dark prince immediately turned and walked in the opposite direction of the Poles, and I trailed disconsolately after him, into the black and frozen night, until we had left the Poles and everyone else I’d ever known far behind us.

I was freezing now, and my feet didn’t even feel like a part of me, as I was wearing only my thick woolen stockings and had foolishly left my boots behind with my clothes—I’d thrown them at the Fairy lord, more accurately—at the time, I’d figured I’d be dead soon anyway and wouldn’t need them anymore. Perhaps I’d die in parts, slowly freezing to death from the feet up.

Thankfully, we hadn’t gone more than a few dozen steps before we came upon a small herd of huge deer stags that belonged to the Fairies. All the Fairies and the Elves rode these deer instead of horses, and they were almost as large as a small horse, standing perhaps three and a half to four feet tall at the shoulders—much larger than any kind of deer in the mortal world. This herd obviously belonged to Bracca’s men and served as their mounts.

I could hear the soldiers begin to make clicking noises with their tongues, calling softly to them. Ice hung off the hair on the deer stags’ chins like white beards, and they all had the tell-tale bells, beads and feathered jewelry strung all over their huge racks of antlers, too, which was a sure sign of ownership by a Fairy or an Elf, or so the legends said. I never thought I’d ever see one of these beasts in real life.

The beads and jewelry dangled and danced in the wind, making little musical sounds as they clinked together. I’d hunted deer many times and had never cared much for the wild stags, as they could be unpredictable beasts, who might decide to turn and charge you, using those antlers as weapons. Old adages existed for a reason, and my old nurse had taught me the one about how you could put lipstick on a pig, but it would still just be a pig. I thought that definitely applied here.

I couldn’t imagine riding one of the things, though I could understand the wisdom of using the stags in this climate. Still, I’d almost as soon saddle up a wild boar, as get on the back of one of the creatures.

My father had mentioned to me once that most deer had brown eyes, but the eyes of the stags that belonged to the Fae stayed blue all year round. I noticed one that Prince Bracca was petting and speaking softly to. The beast rolled his strangely pale blue eyes over at me and made a snorting sound deep in his throat.

The same to you , I thought to myself, glaring at him.

Bracca’s stag had an impressive rack of antlers, typically strung with gaudy jewels, although for all I knew those jewels might be real. There were also little sprigs of holly and silver bells that jingled as he moved around on the snow-crusted ground. The stag was so tall that even Bracca had to raise up his arm to pet the top of the beast’s head.

The Fairies gave them silly names too, in my opinion, like Buttercup or Snowflake or Acorn. I couldn’t imagine the beasts answering to their names, though they seemed to be following the soldiers around, like my father’s hounds always followed him from room to room. Maybe there was some intelligence and affection there after all.

The prince, along with his twelve soldiers, had gone to the herd right away, leaving me on the trail, not sure of what to do. My feet were numb by then, probably mostly frozen as I’d lost all feeling in them, so I just leaned against a tree and watched them with dull eyes. They had begun digging out saddles they’d hidden in the brush by the trail, brushing off snow, so they could get the stags saddled again and ready to ride. And did I mention the fact that I thought they were only taking me off somewhere to kill me? So I didn’t offer any help, because why would I? Why should I aid them in any way?

I was just standing there, sunk in misery and contemplating my fate, when my knees suddenly buckled, and I collapsed, pitching forward and falling face down in the snow, getting covered in it in the process.

I was so exhausted and heartsick after all I’d been through that I just lay there. Maybe my body had simply given up the ghost or come close to it anyway. I was freezing and had almost no energy left, and I no longer seemed to care. Once we’d passed into this snowy, ice-covered world, wherever it was, everything had changed, and I thought I had somehow slipped time. I had a distinct feeling it was now late afternoon and not early morning. I felt it in my bones, though I didn’t know how that was possible either.

I was wondering what would happen if I just lay there and let the snow simply cover me up as it fell. Would they eventually retrieve my body or simply step over me and leave me lying there since they were going to kill me anyway? I’d heard that freezing to death was peaceful and probably better than what the prince had planned for me.

My question was answered a second or two later when Bracca himself scooped me up like I weighed nothing much at all and shook the snow off me, quite literally. It wasn’t the first time he’d shaken me like a rag doll, and I decided I really didn’t like it all that much. I gave him a weak punch on the shoulder, which he ignored. He carried me over to a nearby stag and shoved me up on top of the beast, surprising me so much that I almost fell off it again, but he pushed me back upright, growling something at me in his Fairy language, which had always sounded to me like totally incomprehensible gibberish, none of which I knew a word. It was probably a form of Gaelic but could have been Greek for all I knew. I didn’t think he was talking to me anyway, so I didn’t bother to answer. He grabbed my feet and stuck them in the stirrups and gazed up at me.

“Hang on a minute, boy,” he said then in his heavily accented voice. “Here—take the reins and hold the pommel and try not to fall off if you feel yourself fainting again.”

“I never faint,” I said, my voice weak as I swayed in the saddle. I was surprised to hear my voice sound so reedy and thin.

He made a rude noise and stalked off, leaving me alone with the stag, who looked back at me over his shoulder at me, like he, too, thought that what I’d said was foolish. He shook his antlers at me to let me know how thoroughly unimpressed he was by me, and I stuck out my tongue at him.

I held the leather reins Bracca had given me tightly in my hands and clutched the pommel so I wouldn’t slide off his back and land on the snow again in a little heap, since I’d assured the prince that I would never do such a thing. He went to the stag in front of us—the one I thought was his own big beast—and dug around through his packs. He pulled out some black boots that he handed to me. He growled something to me in that strange language again, and I realized he was probably telling me to put the boots on, but my fingers were far too numb. They felt like fat sausages someone had attached to my hands and wrists. In the end, he shook his head and raised my feet to help me pull off my snow-coated socks. He looked down at my foot in his hand, which was a decided shade of blue with the toes turning a little more of an interesting navy color, and he huffed out a breath before pulling off his gloves and chafing my toes between his hands until they began to burn and tingle.

“W-what are you d-doing?” I said, around chattering teeth.

“Making sure your toes don’t fall off.” He gave my other foot the same treatment, and when he was finally done, he shoved my bare feet back inside the black boots which were thickly lined with soft, blessedly warm fur. They were way too big, but they felt so nice I actually felt a little faint and moaned out loud, earning myself another odd glance from the prince. Next, he pulled out a voluminous, soft mink blanket from one of the packs on the stag I was riding and wrapped it around me. It was huge, so I hugged it to me and hunched down into it, covering the top of my head and even my face with its furry warmth. It was so warm, in fact, that I began to feel tingly and dizzy all over and decided I might live a while longer after all. Until it was time for my execution, that is. The reminder made my shoulders slump again.

Bracca jumped up behind me, snatched the reins away from me and clicked his tongue to the stag. It began trotting forward and he stopped to snag the reins of his own stag so he could pull him along after us. The others fell in behind us in a long, straight column. From time to time, the stag we were riding would glance back around at me as if he were wondering just exactly who I might be and how I dared be so bold as to perch upon his back. I thought at first that he might bite me, but he never made any move to do so.

I was so far gone at that point that I dared to lean back into Bracca’s warmth—or maybe I fainted again—and the feel of his hard thighs beneath me made my breath fluttery and my heart pound.

The branches on the trees in this forest shouldn’t have snow this time of year. It was the middle of summer in Solaria and at my home in Kent, too, yet here they were, stubbornly ice-bound and frozen stiff. I wondered if they might be that way year-round and if so, why weren’t they dead? Nothing here made any sense. A few of the pines had limbs that hung low, weighed down by ice. They swayed slowly in the wind, like snow Fairies dancing with their long white skirts sweeping the icy ground as they moved. White birds flew among these trees and perched on them. An occasional white hare came to the edge of the trail and stared after us with brooding blood-red eyes as we galloped by. The stag’s hooves made a muffled sound, and the moon peeped out from behind a cloud to gaze down, curiously watching us pass.

Perhaps an hour or two later, the whole group drew to a stop. I had fallen sound asleep by then and stopping jarred me awake. At first, I was in a daze, unable to figure out at first just where I was.

Bracca left me on the stag’s back to jump down and go to work, like everyone else in the group. No one seemed to think it was odd in the least that the prince was working alongside them. I sat on the stag’s back, watching them, my senses dulled with exhaustion as they began preparing a place for us to sleep through the night.

It was ridiculous on the face of it. How could we possibly sleep in this terrible, unrelenting, merciless cold? Surely, if we stopped moving, we’d freeze stiff long before morning. The soldiers seemed to be bending small trees over and weaving their branches in some intricate fashion to fasten them together so they could heap skins and furs on top of them, making a kind of fur covered tent or a long structure of some sort. They rapidly cleared out the underbrush inside it, cutting it back ruthlessly and then sweeping the snow from the ground inside with branches. Then they built fires on the ground by clicking their fingers at piles of the branches and sticks they’d hastily gathered and put inside to cover the ground. Steam began to billow out of the hole they’d left as an entrance.

The fires had blazed up white hot instantly, as they simply snapped their fingers at them, , which had to be more magic, because how did the tent not flame up too, as well as the trees around them? The fire finally died out as they clicked their fingers again. It had left the hot, charred remains over the now steaming ground. They used more tree branches on top of those and then more thick furs on top of the branches to cover the coals of the fires and make warm beds. It was all done amazingly quickly, but in the end, they had made themselves a large bed for the night—large enough for the entire group to lie down, side by side.

A soldier came over and hauled me off the stag I was still sitting on to carry me over to the structure they’d fashioned. I was so far gone I didn’t fight him. I saw them even putting the stags inside another one of the little huts that another group had been constructing, built much like the first one and throwing furs across the stags’ backs. I was directed to crawl inside the surprisingly warm space for the soldiers but instead, I sank down near a fire they had burning by the entrance—and this was more magic on display, as it burned white hot but gave off almost no smoke. Other soldiers were coming in and lying down all around me. I realized they were going to all sleep here in a big pile, in order to share body heat. I could tell they were taking off their clothing under the covers. I was still shivering and sitting there like a lump, though I wasn’t sure if the shivering I was doing was from the cold or from the shock of what was happening to me. Maybe it was both. The other men glanced at me but then ignored me totally and turned their backs to pull the covers over their heads.

Someone pushed back the flap and ducked inside the little impromptu structure, and I saw that it was Prince Bracca again. He looked at me and raised an eyebrow.

“What is it? Why aren’t you lying down? Do you need something?”

I shook my head, feeling like I was in a daze. “No, I-I just don’t think I’ll be able to sleep.”

“You’ve been doing a good impression of it then, ever since we left Solaria. Snoring in my ear the last ten miles or so. Lie down. Now.”

“But I’ll freeze to death. Or maybe that’s the point…”

****

Prince Bracca

Irritating boy—did he think I’d brought him all this way just to let him freeze to death? “Don’t be any more ridiculous than you can help,” I snapped, and then immediately felt bad when his eyes glazed over with tears. He’d been brave so far, and I wasn’t going to begrudge him this momentary weakness. I began to strip off my clothes as the boy stared at me in fascination.

“What are you staring at? I’m tired and need to rest too. Take off your clothing, so you can lie down beside me. It will be warmer that way once we’re under the furs.” His eyes got big as saucers, and he stared at me.

“Well? What are you waiting for?”

He got to his feet again, swaying a bit but then his shoulders slumped, and he began doing what I’d asked—a hopeless, defeated expression on his face. He looked as if he didn’t much care what happened to him anymore, and I hated that look. Where were all his defiant words now? He had cursed everyone to hell and back and was ready to fight everyone in the Solarian courtyard not so long ago. He had been magnificent in his rage, and it had made me proud. Why was he giving up now?

It occurred to me that he might think I was going to assault him. The idea was distasteful. Especially because I wanted him so badly and had given serious thought to at least seducing him. “You need me to share body heat with you, but nothing more,” I said, which wasn’t a lie, because I would never force him. I had wanted to reassure him, but my voice sounded rough from the cold. This was going all wrong, so I tried to soften my tone.

“Take off your clothes, a chuisle . No one will hurt you.”

I tried not to stare at him or even look at him as he slowly took off each piece of clothing, revealing his body. He was perfectly formed, but he was still fairly young. I felt a vague sense of wrongness about bringing him here, away from his family. Then I remembered how his family treated him, and I felt better. His “brothers” had abused him shamefully and cared little for him, not to mention how badly Sir John had treated him, but I still had a vague sense of unease.

I didn’t think it would last long. I wasn’t an introspective person, but while it lasted, I was finding it uncomfortable, and I didn’t like it.

“I promise you nothing else will happen but sleeping. Get undressed.”

He looked at me uncertainly, but then nodded. But why was he biting his fucking bottom lip? He had to be doing that on purpose.

As soon as he took off the last item of clothing, he slipped under the blanket, shivering. Though I tried not to stare, I got a flash of the golden tanned skin of his round, little ass. I reached for him as gently as I could, gritting my teeth, knowing what he must be thinking but pulling him back against me anyway, slowly but surely so as not to startle him, making sure my hands were touching him above his waist and not straying anywhere else, because I had promised him. I pulled the fur blankets over both our heads, and immediately his sweet scent filled my nostrils. I whispered to him. “Put your feet against my legs.”

He did so, squirming around to get them in place and rubbing his little ass against me. His feet were like little chunks of ice. I pulled him closer anyway. I was afraid this was going to be a very long night.