Pressing the heels of her hands against her eyelids, Chey drew in a few deep breaths and regained control of her emotions. She didn’t have the time or the luxury to wallow in self-pity and fear. What she needed was a plan.

  Shouting and screaming and beating at the door wouldn’t do anything but upset her and her unborn child. Chey knew the guards had no intention of opening the door anyway, perhaps even if she faked labor.

  What then? What else?

  If she managed to pry open the lock, the guards would physically prevent her from leaving the parlor. It wasn’t as if she could go all stealth ninja and fight her way free. Not with this belly.

  She could hope that Raune somehow worked his way free, overtook the current guard, and freed her to regain control of the castle.

  What if Raune is dead?

  She had to face reality. It was possible.

  Chey’s thoughts continued to dart from one scenario to the next, as they had all night, looking for ways out. Looking for an opening. For answers.

  The next thing she knew, hands pulled her up from the couch. A flashlight beam slanted back and forth across the parlor, half blinding her and adding to her general confusion.

  “What’s going on? Raune, is that you?” Chey asked. She must have fallen asleep. Dammit.

  Led into the low-lit hallway, Chey blinked away her disorientation to find that it wasn’t Raune who held her but Helina’s trusted guards. The men, wearing grim expressions, guided her into the hall and eventually the grand foyer, where several lit candles on thin iron pedestals cast the only illumination. Darkness lurked beyond the windows of the castle, proving daylight had not yet arrived.

  Waiting with Helina near the door were Chey’s children. Chey gasped with relief to see them whole and hale, without a mark on them.

  After she was released by the guards, Chey hurried to them and carefully dropped to a knee. Gathering the children to her, she hugged them fiercely and pressed urgent kisses to their cherubic cheeks. Elias bore it stoically, as if he thought he was too old for such nonsense.

  “Mom, why do you have a bump on your head?” Elias asked.

  Realizing that her kids were decked out in snow gear, Chey swallowed down a fresh bout of unease and met Elias’s eyes. “I took a spill, that’s all. I’m fine. Why are you dressed in your coats and snow boots?”

  Down deep, Chey knew. She knew what Helina had planned. Helina had, after all, warned her before.

  “We’re going to the mainland, Momma! Elias and me and Erick are in charge of getting you to the docks and onto the boat,” Emily said, chiming in. Her eyes lit with childish excitement at the idea of a grand adventure.

  There were only two guards and Helina in the foyer. Chey frantically weighed the odds of her success with an unexpected attack as Emily parroted phrases no doubt put in her head by Helina.

  If she could stun one guard, grab his gun and round on the other, she might have a chance. Helina, that crusty bitch, was too old and fragile to take her down physically.

  Two against one. Could she do it? To lead her children into a blizzard was tantamount to suicide. Erick, the youngest, was the most vulnerable. Chey needed to keep the kids in the shelter of the castle if they had any hope of survival at all.

  “Momma, are you listening?” Emily demanded.

  “Yes, I’m listening, darling,” Chey said.

  “It’s time. Bring her coat.” Helina gestured to someone out of Chey’s line of sight.

  Pressing to a stand, Chey glanced over her shoulder, dismayed to see two more guards approaching the foyer.

  Four against one. Even if she hadn’t been heavily pregnant, Chey knew she couldn’t win that fight.

  She accepted a coat from one guard and tried to meet his eyes. He avoided eye contact, making Chey suspect that Helina had forewarned them.

  Chey drew on the coat and took her time doing up the zipper.

  “Gloves are in the pockets. Here are your boots,” the second guard said, putting a pair of snow boots at Chey’s feet.

  The boots were heavy, with thick tread. Chey considered using one as a weapon. Desperate, feeling that she needed to do everything in her power to keep her children out of the elements, she hesitated. Silence fell upon the foyer. The guards and Helina were waiting for her to pick up the boots and put them on, Chey knew.

  “I wouldn’t,” Helina said quietly, as if she’d read Chey’s mind.

  Refusing to give credence to Helina’s comment, Chey turned to face the guards.

  Such a risk she was taking.

  A necessary one.

  She not only risked Helina’s wrath, but upsetting her children.

  Surprise flickered across the expressions of all four guards. They pinned wary looks in Chey’s direction.

  “As wife of the king, I order you to stand down. To continue with your current course of action will be deemed treason when His Majesty returns, and the crimes dealt with accordingly,” Chey said, meeting each man’s gaze. She infused all the authority she could muster into the command.

  “Mom, what—”

  “Momma!”

  “Silence!” Helina demanded, cracking the end of her cane on the floor. “You will remove her at once—”

  “Not only will your crimes be aptly punished, but I’ll make sure the king understands you willfully acted against my wishes. Against me. And his heirs. I won’t need to encourage harder sentences when the king hears what you’ve done,” Chey continued, cutting Helina off. One guard wavered, doubt surfacing in his eyes. He was not one of Helina’s original guards, but one of the staff at Kallaster.

  “These are the words of a desperate mother, you must remember,” Helina said to the guards. “She will say and do anything, even lie, to turn you against me. Remember what I told you about the message we received of the king.”

  About to snap that Sander was not dead, Chey checked the impulse. Helina had, at the very least, not tortured the children with that news. If she argued it out loud, she would be causing her kids immeasurable grief.

  “Mom, what’s going on?” Elias demanded, frowning.

  “Just a moment,” Chey said to her son, not breaking eye contact with the guards. One still seemed unsure, as if he might be swayed to Chey’s side. To the other guards, Chey added, “Don’t think for a moment that you haven’t signed your own death warrant. Simply being here, knowing what she plans to do, puts you in grave danger. After it’s over, she won’t hesitate to have you—”

  “Guards! Listen not a moment longer. I’ve made my promises, and I intend to keep them,” Helina said.

  Erick tugged at Chey’s pant leg, wanting up.

  “Let’s go,” one of the guards said with a gesture toward Chey. A gesture that meant he expected her to finish dressing and get on with her journey.

  The lone guard who might have stood up for her backed down, Chey noticed with dismay, as his brethren made their choice.

  A choice to stand with Helina.

  Chey kissed the top of Erick’s head and changed into the snow boots. The guards were too on edge now, too wary, for her to attempt an attack.

  “Put your gloves on. We’re heading to the docks, then to the mainland,” she told her children in a firm voice.

  “But Mom—” Elias quieted when Chey gave him a direct look.

  “Hurry now. I’ll answer your questions when we get to the mainland.” Chey made sure each child had their gloves on and hoods up. Drawing on gloves of her own, she straightened and sent Helina a withering look. Not that she thought it would do any good. Helina felt no guilt, no remorse, for what she was about to do. There wasn’t an ounce of compassion in that woman’s body.

  Chey flipped up her hood, tightened the strings beneath her chin, and led the children through the foyer. A frigid gust of wind took Chey’s breath away as she stood on the threshold, overlooking the snow-covered bailey, after the guard opened the door. Someone had recently cleared the pathway from the castle to the far gate, snow piled high on each side.

  “Make sure they reach the gate safely,” Helina said to the guards.

  Holding Erick and Emily’s hands, trusting Elias to follow close at her side, Chey crossed the broad porch and descended the steps to the bailey. Out in the open, away from the protection of the porch roof, Chey experienced the true force of the storm. Wind tried to knock her sideways, blowing snow and sleet into her cheeks and eyes. Automatically, she reached down to tug the children’s hoods further over their heads, attempting to protect them from the worst of it.

  I can do this. We’ll make it. We’re strong. Repeating the litany, she carefully made her way across the bailey to the gate, following the shoveled path. Between the darkness and the sideways snow, she found it difficult to see. Navigating the terrain outside the walls of the castle would be much harder.

  A guard pulled open one side of the heavy gate and waited for Chey to move on.

  And so she did.

  Into a blinding blizzard, with the temperature so cold her bones were already shivering. Snow drifts partially covered the road leading away from Kallaster, the same road the citizens had taken yesterday, and the one that had brought Helina here. At least Chey could still make out the general direction, using her boots to kick snow away from the asphalt.

  The creak and bang of the gate closing, cutting off Kallaster for good, sounded like a death knell.

  Chapter Seventeen

  “Hey. Wake up.”

  Sander’s eyes snapped open. Leander’s face swam into view, illuminated by the flicker of light from the pocket stove. Everything else was dark. Cold.

  Unbearably cold.

  “What? What is it?” Sander asked. His voice felt rough in his throat.

  “You need to put this under the Mylar blanket. It’s the last one,” Leander said, stuffing a newly activated heat pack against Sander’s chest.

  “You need it, too,” Sander said, pushing it back at Leander.

  “My teeth aren’t chattering and I’m not groaning in my sleep. You need more meds, too. Sit up after you put that heat pack in and take these.” Leander shook two tablets from a small packet. “I’ve got water boiling for coffee. Should help.”

  Sander pushed himself into a sitting position. “You’re wrong,” he said, meeting Leander’s eyes. “Your teeth are chattering. Keep the heat pack.”

  Leander seemed surprised.

  “Maybe you’re coming down with what I’ve got. You should take the pills, try and ward it off before it gets too bad.” Sander didn’t take the medication.

  “I’m cold, yes, because it’s colder than the Arctic out there. But I’m not sick. So take these or I’ll wrestle you down and make you take them.” Leander gestured impatiently with the hand holding the pills. The message was clear: take these right now.

  Sander understood that Leander would give him the medication no matter what. Saving the king, and all that. Leander sometimes forgot that Sander could be just as stubborn about saving lives. Of his brothers, friends, citizens of the kingdom. If Leander was just cold, however, and not sick, then the meds would be wasted on him.

  “Why don’t we save the meds? Use them if I take another bad turn, or if you come down with it,” Sander said, fishing out his canteen for a sip of water.

  “This is the time to try and kill it. One or two doses of antibiotics won’t be enough. You need to take four or five days, at least. I’ve got more meds, don’t worry about that.” Leander shoved the pills into Sander’s hand.

  Sander popped the medication onto his tongue and swallowed it down. Leander’s particular phrasing proved that he might not be worried about the pills, but he was worried about something.

  After capping the canteen, Sander unlooped the strap from around his neck and set it aside. He met Leander’s eyes in the dimly lit tent. For a moment, Sander was struck by his friend’s condition. A thick but short beard covered Leander’s jaw and chin, his hair curling wildly past the edges of his hood. His cheeks appeared ruddy, as if he’d been sunburned or windburned, and hollowness existed around his eyes. Leander resembled a man in a fight for his life, exposed to the harsh elements of Mother Nature, and it sure as hell looked like Mother Nature was winning.

  “Here.” Leander broke the spell by handing a steaming mug across to Sander.

  “Thanks.” He lifted the coffee to his lips for a scalding sip. He hadn’t realized his hands were shaking so bad until he balanced the cup against his mouth. His extremities felt somewhat numb, muscles achy and sore. The longer he was awake, the more it seemed as if they were sitting inside a freezer. Except this freezer happened to be somewhere in the neighborhood of minus sixty degrees.

  It dawned on him minutes later, midsip of his coffee, that Leander hadn’t woken him just to take the meds. Leander had woken him to make sure he didn’t die in his sleep.

  Sitting for a time in silence, Sander finished the coffee and set the mug aside. Mylar crinkled with every movement. “So what’s the plan of attack?” he asked.

  Leander doused the small flame on the fuel tab, clearly saving energy. “We wait another two or three hours, closer to daybreak, and hope that the blizzard passes. Then we keep going.”

  “Good plan. We sure as hell can’t stay here much longer,” Sander said. We’ll freeze to death. “And if the blizzard’s still raging?”

  “We go anyway. We have to.” Leander pulled his Mylar blanket tighter around him.

  Sander had never seen him look so miserable. He looks like I feel. “I agree. We have to.” He closed his eyes. Just for a moment.

  “Hey. Wake up. No sleeping,” Leander said, shaking Sander’s shoulder.

  Startled into awareness, Sander realized he’d dozed off. “I feel like I could sleep for a year.”

  “That’s death trying to creep in. Don’t let it,” Leander said.

  “It’ll take more than that for death to claim me,” Sander retorted, temporarily full of defiance.

  Leander grunted.

  Sander wrapped the Mylar tighter around his body.

  “I swear it must be minus seventy out there,” Leander said. “Ridiculously cold.”

  “Colder than anything I’ve ever felt in Latvala,” Sander agreed. He caught himself with his eyes closed and popped them open again. It was getting harder and harder to stay awake. Glancing over, he noticed Leander fighting to keep his eyes open, too. A prickle of danger caused goose bumps to spread over Sander’s skin. They couldn’t go to sleep. He cleared his throat and huddled into himself, listening to the wind attempt to rip the small tent apart. Sleet pinged off the material, seeking entry. Thankful for the heat pack, which kept some of the worst of the chill at bay, he hunched his shoulders and stared at the gloomy reflections in the Mylar. It gave him something to focus on besides his misery.

  * * *

  . . .

  * * *

  Jerking awake, a plume of frigid air pulsing past his lips, Sander’s first thought was: dammit, we fell asleep. The interior of the tent seemed unusually light, not as if from daylight but moonlight, the eerie glow outlining the shape of the pocket stove, the carafe, and . . . Leander. His friend lay on his back, supine, Mylar curled around his body like a funeral shroud.

  I don’t see his breath. There isn’t a stream of white from his mouth like there is from mine.

  Leander’s lips were purplish-blue, skin so white it looked translucent.

  Panic took hold. Rolling onto his knees, Sander yanked a glove from his hand.

  “Leander! Wake up!” Sander shouted, thrusting his fingers down to feel for a pulse against Leander’s throat. Leander’s skin felt as cold as a block of ice.

  Wheezing a breath, Sander tugged off the other glove and started chest compressions. “Don’t die on me. Leander! Wake up.”

  But he knew. Sander knew by the rigid feel of Leander’s body that it was too late. Far too late.

  Chest compressions wouldn’t save him now.

  The cold had won. Winter had claimed another victim.

  * * *

  . . .

  * * *

  “Sander! Stop throwing your fists around!”

  Bolting upright and breathing hard, Sander grappled against restraining arms. Eyes wild, darting frantic glances around the tent, his focus landed back on Leander.

  “You’re having a nightmare, old man. Wake the hell up.” Leander shook Sander by the shoulders.

  “What?” Sander rasped. A nightmare? Leander was alive, breathing. Sander registered the truth and slumped, the fight going out of his limbs.

  “You probably saved our lives, you bastard,” Leander said, sitting back. Out of breath, he snatched the Mylar closer around his body. “You were thrashing and hit me, which woke me up. We both fell asleep.”

  Sander rattled off a few distinct curses. “I dreamed you died. I woke up and you were stone cold.”

  “I might have been had you not gone batshit crazy.” Leander did not sound happy that he’d fallen asleep.

  “We’ve got to get ourselves to shelter,” Sander said. “In another hour, two at most, we’re moving out.” Only after the immediate panic had worn off could Sander take stock of his own health: a low-grade fever simmered under his skin and he felt like he’d been run over a few times by a truck. But he was alive, heart pounding in his chest, the burst of adrenaline giving him a surge of energy and determination.

  “Yeah. I’m with you, brother. I’m with you,” Leander said, unfurling from the Mylar long enough to light the fuel tab and start a new pot of water. His teeth chattered and his fingers shook.

  Sander stared balefully at the small flame on the fuel tab, ridding himself of the nightmare by thinking about Chey. About his kids.

  No matter how hard the journey, he would make it home.

  * * *

  . . .

  * * *

  “Come on, Mom! I’ll lead the way,” Elias said, barging forward bravely into the snowstorm.

 

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