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"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 fa
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."
He stopped talking for so long that I came to him and wrapped my arms around him from behind. This time he let me do it. He even leaned back against the pull of my body so that I cradled his upper body against my kneeling one.
I whispered, "What happened?"
"There was music in the snow, and Taranis, Lord of Light and Illusion, came riding on a horse made of moonlight. You have no idea how amazing a golden court could be when they rode out in those days, Merry. It wasn't just Taranis who could make a steed out of light or shadow or leaves. It was truly magical. He and his men lifted them out of the snow and began to ride away toward the faerie mound. I was content to lose her if it meant she lived. I waited to be blasted back to nothingness and I was content. I had saved them, and my existence for theirs seemed right. I won't say my life for theirs because I wasn't alive yet then, not as I am now."
I hugged him close, and he gave me more of his weight, so that I leaned back against the foot of the bed, and cradled him. I kept one hand on his chest so I could feel his words rumbling up through his body.
"She woke, held in the lap of one of the shining court. My little Rose woke. She cried out for her Jackie, for her Jackie Frost. I came to her as I had from that first moment. I came to her because I could do nothing else. She pushed herself from the arms of that shining lord of the sidhe and came to me. I was not as I am now, Merry. I was young and childlike. The goddess gave me a body that could do more. But I was not one of the shining court. I was a lesser fey in every way. I suppose to human eyes I might have appeared as a boy of perhaps fourteen or younger. I looked a good match for my Rose."
He lay still in my arms.
"What happened to her mother?" I asked.
"She is still a cook at the golden court."
I kissed his forehead, then asked, "What happened to Rose?"
"We found shelter, and I used my magic to carry her far away from her village. People didn't travel then as they do now, and twenty miles was enough distance that we never saw any of the others again, She taught me how to be real, and I grew with her."
"What, do you mean, you grew with her?"
"I looked like a boy of fourteen, as she was a girl of fifteen. As she grew, so did I. It was not sword and shield that I first learned with these arms, it was axe and any other work a strong back could do to help take care of his family."
"You had children," I whispered.
"No. I thought it was because I wasn't real enough. Now, since you remain without child I wonder if it is simply not my fate to have children."
"But you were a couple," I said.
"Yes, and a priest who was more friendly than Christian even married us. But we could not stay in any one village for long, because I did not age. I grew with my Rose until I am as you see me now. Then I stopped, but she did not. I watched her hair turn from yellow to white, her eyes fade from the blue of winter to the gray of snowy skies."
He looked up at me then, and there was fierceness in his face. "I watched her fade, but I loved her always. Because it was her love that made me real, Merry. Not faerie, not wild magic, but the magic of love. I thought I was giving up what life I had to save Rose, but the consort had asked if I would give up everything I was, and I did. I became what she needed me to be. When I realized that I would not age with her I wept, because I could not imagine being without her."
He came to his knees and put his hands on my arms, and stared down into my face. "I will love you always. When this red hair is white, I will still love you. When the smooth softness of youth is replaced by the delicate softness of age, I will still want to touch your skin. When your face is full of the line of every smile you have ever smiled, of every surprise I have seen flash through your eyes, when every tear you have ever cried has left its mark upon your face, I will treasure you all the more, because I was there to see it all. I will share your life with you, Meredith, and I will love you until the last breath leave your body or mine."
He leaned down and kissed me, and this time I kissed him back. This time I melted into his arms, his body, because I could do nothing else.