The cold was a constant companion. It lived in the stone floors of the scullery, a damp chill that crept through the worn leather of her shoes and settled deep into her bones. Marin rung out the last rag, her knuckles raw and red, the rough cloth scraping against her chapped skin, a bucket of greasy water sloshed at her feet, its scent of old lard and lie filling the small windowless room.

 This was her world. stone, grease, and a cold that never truly left. She was an omega, a whisper in the boisterous halls of the sea Draona’s keep. Less than a servant, more than a ghost. Her presence was noted only when a task was left undone, a floor still dirty, a pot unscrubbed, the others in the kitchens moved around her with the easy cruelty of those who knew their place was at least a step above hers.

 They bumped her, took the choicest scraps of bread before she could reach them, and spoke of her as if she wear it there. The little mouse is slow today. Helga, the head cook, had grumbled an hour ago, her voice a low rumble that promised punishment. Marin had simply bowed her head and scrubbed faster, the familiar ache in her lower back flaring into a sharp, insistent pain.

 She did not speak unless spoken to. It was safer that way. Words she had learned long ago were weapons, and she had no armor. Her only flicker of strength came in the quiet moments, when the keep was asleep, and she was tasked with banking the great Halis hearth. In the dying orange light of the embers, she would allow herself to stand straight.

 She would close her eyes and imagine a different life. One where her hands were not cracked and bleeding. Where her stomach was not a hollow ache and where the cold was just a season, not a state of being. Tonight that small comfort was denied her. Helga cornered her as she was dumping the last bucket of slop.

 Ada Alfa’s hounds have not been fed. The kennel boy is sick with the fever. You o do it. Morena’s heart gave a painful lurch. The kennels were on the far side of the outer bailey, a cold, windswept walk in the biting dark. But it wasn’t the walk that terrified her. It was the woods. The kennels bordered the shadowed edge of the wolfwood, a place forbidden to all but the alaz most trusted hunters.

 A place, the stories said, where things older and wilder than their pack still roamed. Yes, Helga,” she whispered, her voice barely a threat of sound. The cook shoved a bucket of bloody scraps into her hands. The raw metallic scent of it made Maras empty stomach churn. “And be quick about it. I want that bucket back and scrubbed before the moon is high.

” She didn’t argue. She never argued. Marin pulled her thin cloak tighter, the coarse wool doing little to fend off the wind that sliced through the courtyard like claws. The moon was a sliver of ice in a black sky, offering no warmth and little light. She kept her head down, her eyes fixed on the muddy path, her world reduced to the sloshing of the bucket and the pounding of her own heart.

 But the errand was a lie, a cruel joke. When she reached the kennels, the hounds were quiet, their bellies clearly full. The kennel boy was there, hail and hearty, mucking out the last stall. He looked up at her, his face a mask of confusion. Uh, what are you doing here, Omega? The bucket slipped from her numb fingers, splattering scraps and blood across the packed earth.

 Humiliation, hot and sharp, washed over her. They had sent her out here for nothing. For a laugh, she turned to flee back to the relative safety of the kitchens to face Helgast’s scorn. But a sound from the woods stopped her. A low growl, deeper and more menacing than any of the keep hounds. It was not a challenge. It was a promise. Panic seized her.

 Her every instinct screamed at her to run, to scream, to make herself small and invisible. But something else, something old and stubborn inside her refused. She had been small her entire life. She had been invisible, and it had gotten her nothing but cold floors and colder hearts. Slowly, deliberately, four shapes detached themselves from the deeper shadows of the trees.

 They were enormous, their fur the color of charcoal and winter dusk. Their eyes glowed with a feral, hungry light. These were not the alphas wolves. They were wild things, starved and vicious. They fanned out, circling her. The air grew thick with their musky scent, the sound of their paws patting silently on the frozen ground. Marina’s breath hitched.

Her body trembled. A leaf in the wind. This was it. This was how she would die. Alone in the dark. a cruel joke as her eulogy. The thought did not bring despair. It brought a strange, startling clarity, a white hot rage. No, she would not die like this. She would not die as a punchline.

 Marin straightened her back. She lifted her chin. She planted her feet in the cold mud and drew the thin cloak around her like aos mantle. The wolves paused, their predatory circling slowing. They sensed the change in her. the sudden absence of Ferris scent. She made herself big. She met the glowing eyes of the lead wolf, a massive brute with a scarred muzzle.

 She did not scream. She did not run. She held its gaze and took one deliberate step forward. Toward them, a snarl ripped from the lead wolf’s throat, and it launched itself at her. Time seemed to slow. Marin saw the flash of teeth, the spray of saliva. She did not flinch. She was ready. But the attack never landed. A blur of motion, a shape of pure midnight, slammed into the charging wolf from the side.

 It was another wolf, larger than any of the others. Its fur the color of a starless night sky. The sound of the impact was a wet, brutal crunch. The newcomer moved with a speed and ferocity that was terrifying. It was not a wild animal fighting for a meal. It was a warrior. In moments it was over.

 Two of the wolves lay broken and still. The other two fled, yelping back into the suffocating darkness of the woods. The massive black wolf stood over the bodies, its chest heaving. It turned its head and its eyes the color of molten silver fixed on her. There was an intelligence in that gaze, a weighing and measuring that stole her breath.

Then the wolf gave a low whine and staggered, a dark stain spreading across its flank. It limped a few paces toward her before its legs gave out. It collapsed onto the frozen ground with a heavy thud. Marin stood frozen for a heartbeat, the adrenaline draining away, leaving her weak and shaking. The wolf was hurt badly. She should run.

 She should get back to the keep and never speak of this. But she couldn’t. She had faced down four wolves to die on her own terms. She could not leave this one, her unlikely savior, to die alone. She took a hesitant step closer. The wolf watched her, its silver eyes weary. It tried to rise to growl, but only a pained sigh escaped its throat.

 She saw the wound, then a deep gash in its side, ragged and bleeding freely. Slowly she knelt beside it. Oh, a tas. All right, she whispered, her voice trembling. I am not going to hurt you. The great beast laid its head on its paws, a gesture of trust, or perhaps just exhaustion. Marin reached out a hesitant hand, her fingers brushing against the thick, coarse fur.

It was surprisingly soft. A strange warmth seemed to pulse from the creature, a stark contrast to the biting cold of the night. As her fingers touched the edge of the wound, the wolf shuddered violently. A strange shimmering began to distort the air around it. Bones cracked and reformed. Fur receded.

 The massive form contorted, shrinking, changing. Marin scrambled back, her eyes wide with shock and awe as the wolf shifted. Where the giant animal had lain, a man now lay sprawled on the ground. He was naked. His body lean and powerful, corded with muscle. His skin was pale in the moonlight, and his hair was as black as the wolf’s fur had been. He was unconscious.

 A deep gash weeping blood onto the frozen mud of his side. She had heard tales of shifters. Of course, their alpha king was one. But toa, it was magic, raw and real. She knew she should leave him. He was a shifter, a stranger, a danger. But she saw the vulnerability in the line of his jaw, the faint tremor of his chilled skin.

 She could not abandon him with a strength she didn’t know she possessed. Marin managed to get one of his arms over her shoulders. He was incredibly heavy, a dead weight of muscle and bone. She grunted with the effort. Her own aches and pains forgotten. A come on,” she muttered to him, to herself. “Up! We have to get you out of the cold.

” Ah, somehow she got him to his feet. He leaned on her, his head lolling against her shoulder, his breath warm against her neck. She couldn’t take him back to the keep. They would kill him or her, or both. Her mind raced. There was an old hunter cabin deep in the woods, abandoned for years. Her father had shown it to her once a lifetime ago before he had died. It was a long shot.

It was their only shot. Half dragging, half carrying the unconscious stranger. Marin stumbled away from the keep, away from the only life she had ever known, and plunged into the darkness of the wolfwood. She didn’t know who he was or what he was. She only knew that he had saved her, and now it was her turn to save him.

 The cabin was exactly as she remembered it. A small, dark shape huddled amongst the ancient pines, looking as if it had grown from the earth itself. The door groaned on rusted hinges as she forced it open. Inside, it smelled of dust, cold earth, and forgotten things. It was a miserable place, but it was shelter. With the last of her strength, she maneuvered the man onto a rickety cot covered in a moaten blanket.

 He moaned, his brow furrowed in pain. His skin was slick with a feverish sweat. Yet he shivered uncontrollably. Marin worked by instinct. She found a flint and steel in a dusty box, and with trembling hands managed to coax a tiny flame to life in the stone hearth. She fed it twigs, then larger branches, until a small, cheerful fire pushed back the oppressive gloom and the biting cold. A next the wound.

 She tore a strip from the hem of her already ragged tunic and gently cleaned the gash with water from a half full rain barrel outside. It was deep, angrier than it had looked in the moonlight. He needed stitches. He needed a healer. She was just a scullery maid. She did what she could. She remembered her mother, a healer in their old village, gathering yarao to pack wounds and stop bleeding.

 There was some growing in a stubborn patch near the door. She crushed the leaves and flowers into a pus and pressed it gently into the gash. The man flinched, a low growl rumbling in his chest, but he didn’t wake. She bound the wound tightly with another strip of her tunic. For hours, she sat by his side, bathing his forehead with a cool, damp cloth, feeding the fire and watching him in the flickering fire light.

 She could see his face clearly for the first time. It was a harsh, unforgiving face, all sharp angles and severe lines, a faint scar cut through his left eyebrow. He was not handsome in the way the knights at the keep were. He was beautiful in the way a storm lashed cliff was beautiful, elemental, dangerous and ancient. Who was he? A lone wolf, an exile? His power felt immense even in this weakened state.

 It radiated from him like heat, a silent pressure in the small cavern. Sometime before dawn, he woke, his eyes snapped open, the silver depths instantly alert and focused on her. There was no confusion, no groggginess, just sharp predatory awareness. “Who are you?” E rasped, his voice a low, grally sound that vibrated through her. Marin flinched back, startled.

 “Ay, my name is Marin.” He tried to sit up, hissing in pain as the movement pulled at his wound. He fell back against the cot, his jaw tight. A Where are we? An old cabin in the woods? Uh,” she said softly. “I you were hurt. I brought you here.” His silver eyes narrowed. Studying her, she felt like a mouse under the gaze of a hawk.

 He was reading her, seeing every threadbear patch of her dress, every callous on her hands, the deep-seated weariness in her bones. You are not afraid of me. It wasn’t a question. It was a statement of fact tinged with disbelief. I was a she admitted awe when you were a wolf. But you saved me and now you were hurt. It was the simplest logic in the world to her.

 A debt had been incurred. A debt was being paid. He was silent for a long moment. His gaze unwavering of the others. A two ran. Two are dead. A flicker of something approval. Respect. I passed through his eyes. He grunted. a sound of grim satisfaction. “My name is Vasa,” he said. “Finally, I am a a border guard. My patrol was ambushed.

 It was a plausible lie.” She dened and Ary believe it, but she nodded anyway. A border guard wouldn’t have eyes that looked like they had seen centuries pass. A border guard wouldn’t carry an aura of such absolute command, even when lying broken on a cot. But it was his story to tell, and she had no right to question it.

 You need to rest, Fauca, she said, her voice gaining a sliver of confidence. Here in this cabin, she was not an omega. She was a caretaker. She had a purpose. For the next few days, a strange rhythm settled over them. Marin foraged for edible roots and late season berries. She found snares left by the cavana’s long deadad owner and managed to catch a rabbit which she stewed into a thin but nourishing broth.

 She tended to Voss’s wound, changing the pus, keeping it clean. His silence was a heavy blanket in the small space. He was a terrible patient, restless and proud, hating his own weakness. He fought her at every turn, insisting he could do things himself, only to collapse back in a wave of pain and fever. “I stay still.

” Ah! She chided him on the third day, pushing him gently back onto the cot as he tried to stand. “Aule tear the wound open again.” He glared at her, his silver eyes flashing with frustration. “I am not some fragile pup.” “A no!” she agreed calmly. meeting his glare without flinching. A you are a foolish wolf who thinks pride will heal a wound faster than rest. His mouth fell open slightly.

No one had spoken to him like that in centuries. He should have been furious, should have put her in her place with a single growl. Instead, a startling, unfamiliar feeling bubbled up in his chest. A rough bark of laughter escaped him, which quickly turned into a grimace of pain.

 You have a sharp tongue, Marin, he said, his voice laced with grudging admiration. Aayita is all I have, she replied simply, and the truth of the statement hung in the air between them. The intimacy of the sick room was a strange and powerful thing. She saw him at his most vulnerable delirious with fever, his powerful body racked with shivers.

She held a cup of water to his lips. She wiped the sweat from his brow. She learned the lines of his face, the way a muscle in his jaw twitched when the pain was bad, the surprising softness of his hair. He in turn learned her. He saw the quiet efficiency of her movements, the deep, unshakable kindness in her touch.

He heard her humming softly to herself as she stirred the pot over the fire, a sad, forgotten tune. He watched her stare into the flames. Her expression filled with a longing so profound it made his own chest ache. One night, the fever was particularly bad. He thrashed on the cot, muttering words in a language she didn’t understand.

 A strange cold began to emanate from him. A deep, unnatural chill that had nothing to do with the night air. It felt like the touch of a grave. Alarmed, Marin placed her hand on his forehead. His skin was burning up. Yet the air around him was freezing. Frost began to creep across the wooden floorboards near the cot.

 “Os,” she whispered, her voice tight with fear. His eyes flew open, but they weren’t at his own. They were wide with a terror that seemed ancient, bottomless. He grabbed her wrist, his grip like iron. His skin was ice cold. It has me, he choked out, the words ripped from his throat of the cold the itas taking me. A what is? She cried, trying to pull away, but he held fast.

The chill from his hand was seeping into her. A painful numbing cold that felt utterly wrong. “Ah, Kursa,” he gasped, his eyes rolling back in his head, his grip went slack, and he fell back unconscious. The frost on the floor spread. a delicate deadly lattice of ice. Marin stared, her heart pounding, a curse. He was not just a border guard.

The cold, the power, the ancient sorrow in his eyes. It was all connected. She piled more blankets on him, stoke the fire until it roared. But it was useless. The cold was coming from inside him. It was consuming him from within. His breathing grew shallow, his lips turning a faint blue. She knew with a certainty that terrified her that he was dying.

 For two days she fought a losing battle. She forced warm broth between his lips. She chafed his icy hands. She kept the fire blazing so hot. The air in the cabin shimmerred. Nothing worked. The frost line crept further and further from the cot. The temperature in the small room plummeted. She could see her own breath misting in the air.

 Voss remained unconscious, trapped in a frozen stillness. Sometimes he would murmur in his sleep, his words fragments of a story she could not piece together. He spoke of a queen of ice, a blood debt, a heart turned to stone. He spoke a name over and over, a desperate broken whisper, Lyra. Grief sharp and surprisingly painful pierced through Marinos fear.

 Who was Lyra? a lost love, the one who had cursed him. The thought of this powerful, proud man brought low by such a sorrow was unbearable. On the third night of the freeze, she sat beside him, utterly exhausted. She had not slept. She had barely eaten. Her hope was worn down to a raw nub. The cold had leeched the strength from her limbs, and a deep despair was settling over her.

 She had brought him here to save him, and she had failed. he was going to die and the cold would take her with him. She reached out and took his hand. It felt like a block of ice. There was no pulse she could feel, only the profound, unyielding cold. Tears welled in her eyes, freezing on her lashes. “I am sorry,” she whispered to the still figure on the cot. “I am so sorry.

False.” She didn’t know why she was crying for this stranger. But in the short time they had shared. In the forced intimacy of their sanctuary, she had seen something beyond the harsh exterior. She had seen the loneliness in his silver eyes, the weary weight of a burden carried for too long. She had seen the man, not the wolf or the border guard, and her heart broke for him.

 As she wept, the air in the cabin shifted. The fire in the hearth guttered and died, not with a flicker, but as if it had been instantly snuffed out. The oppressive silence of the woods outside deepened. A new presence was in the room, a cold far older and more malevolent than the one radiating from Voss.

 Marin looked up, her tears freezing on her face. A figure stood in the doorway, breathed in shadows and shimmering frost. It was a woman, tall and unnaturally slender, with skin as white as newfallen snow and hair like spun silver. Her eyes were chips of blue ice, and they held no warmth, no pity, only an ancient burning hatred.

 A so the woman’s voice was the whisper of wind over a frozen lake. Of the last of his wretched line has finally found something to warm his frozen heart. How pathetic. Amarin scrambled to her feet, placing herself between the woman and Voss’s cot. Who are you? What do you want? The woman laughed. A sound like shattering ice.

 I am the architect of his suffering. I am the winter in his blood. Generations ago, his ancestor, the great King Theron, burned my people from these islands. He took everything from me. My home, my family, my magic. So I took the only thing he had left to value, his future. T she glided into the room, the frost on the floor swirling around her feet.

 A wo a curse into his bloodline, a simple, elegant thing. They would be strong. They would be powerful. They would rule. But they would never know love. For the moment any warmth enters their heart, the ice claims it. Love will literally kill him. Little mouse. And you, you are his death. Ah, Marin stared at her, horrified. An ancient witch, a curse. It was all real.

This was the source of Vas’s agony. A He has done nothing to you, Marin said, her voice shaking but firm. A this is not justice. It is vengeance on an innocent man. A innocence is a luxury my people were never afforded. The witch hissed, her beautiful face contorting with rage. A he carries his ancestors blood.

 He will pay his ancestorous price. The witch raised a pale long-fingered hand. But I am not without a sliver of mercy. You are nothing in this. A servant girl and Omega. Leave now. Walk out that door and do not look back. I will let you live. Stay and you will share. His frozen grave. A. It was a choice. her life or his freedom or a meaningless death beside a man she barely knew.

Everything in her, the lifetime of survival, of making herself small and staying out of the way, screamed at her to run. She looked from the witch’s merciless face to Vos’s still form. She saw the proud line of his jaw, remembered the grudging respect in his eyes when she had spoken back to him. She remembered the way he had thrown himself in front of her.

 A great black wolf defending a creature he had no reason to protect. He was paying for a crime he did not commit. He was dying because of an ancient festering injustice. And she was being offered a chance to walk away and let it happen. The old Marin, the Omega from the scullery would have fled. But the woman who had faced down four wolves in the dark, the woman who had nursed a stranger back from the brink, that woman could not.

 The rage she had felt that night returned, a pure, clean fire in her veins. It was not a rage for herself, but for him, for the sheer screaming wrongness of it all, she would not let it happen. She looked the witch in the eye, a no. The word was quiet, but it echoed in the frozen cabin like a thunderclap. The witch’s eyes narrowed. “A you choose to die for him? A man who does not even know your worth? A my worth is not for him to decide,” Amarin said, a strange calm settling over her.

“And I am not choosing to die for him. I am choosing not to be a part of your injustice.” She knew she could not fight. She had no weapon, no power. The witch could kill her with a thought, but there was one final act of defiance she could offer. She would not die at the witch’s hand. She would die at his side.

She turned her back on the witch. A deliberate final dismissal. She walked to the cot and knelt beside Voss. She took his frozen hand in both of her own. She closed her eyes, accepting her fate. She would let the cold take her. She would meet her end willingly. a last silent protest against a world that had never given her a choice.

 As she surrendered, as she let go of her fear and her anger, and accepted the encroaching ice, something deep inside her broke open. It was not a violent explosion. It was a gentle unfurling like a fern in springtime. A warmth bloomed in the center of her chest. A soft golden light that had nothing to do with fire.

 It spread down her arms into her hands. It was the warmth of the sun on new soil, the heat of a sleeping body, the quiet glow of life itself. The light flowed from her palms into Vosa’s frozen hand. Where it touched, the ice retreated. The deadly frost on the floor around the cot sizzled and vanished, not melting, but simply ceasing to be.

 The witch gasped behind her. Oh, what is this? What are you? Amarin did not know. She felt a connection to the very earth beneath the cabin, to the ancient stones and the deep roots of the pines. Whispers seemed to echo in her mind. Voices of her ancestors, guardians of this land, a lineage she had never known she possessed.

 They were healers, balancers, tenders of the islands spirit. Their power suppressed for generations had finally been awakened by an act of perfect selfless defiance. Her power was not a weapon. It was a bomb. It did not fight the witch’s cold. It simply reminded the world that warmth also existed. It was a power of balance. The golden light intensified, filling the small cavern.

 It was not a destructive force. It was a lifeaffffirming one. It pushed against the witch’s magic, not with aggression, but with a quiet, undeniable presence that said, “You do not belong here.” The witch shrieked, shielding her eyes, not from the brightness, but from the sheer, unadulterated life in the light. Her magic, born of hatred and death, could not exist in its presence.

 With a final curse, she dissolved into a swirl of black frost and vanished into the night. The cabin was silent. The golden light from Marin’s hands slowly faded, sinking back into her, leaving a gentle warmth in its wake. The fire in the hearth flickered back to life. On the cot, Vos stirred. A shudder ran through his body.

A violent, convulsive tremor. The bluish tint left his lips replaced by a healthy flush. He took a deep ragged breath, the first clear breath he had taken in days. His eyes opened. They were no longer wild with fever or clouded with pain. They were his own, clear and silver, and they were fixed on her with an expression of pure, unadulterated awe.

 A merina, he breathed her name. It was not a question or a statement. It was a prayer. She let go of his hand, suddenly shy, the immensity of what had just happened crashing down on her. The power receded, leaving her feeling strangely empty, yet whole in a way she had never been before.

 He struggled to sit up, and this time she did not stop him. He swung his legs over the side of the cot, his movements weak but steady. He looked at his own hands, then at the place where the frost had been. He looked at her, truly looked at her, and she saw the walls of his pride, his secrecy, his ancient pain crumble to dust. Of the curse, he said, his voice, “Ah, it is a quiet.” Ah, she came, Marin whispered.

Uh, the witch, she said, she cursed your bloodline. A. He nodded, his gaze dropping to the floor. The shame of his helplessness was a visible weight on his shoulders. A my name is not Voss. Not just Voss. It is Vos the house of the wolf. I am the alpha king of these isles. The title hit her like a physical blow.

 The alpha king, the remote godlike figurehead of their entire world, the man whose castle she had just been scrubbing floors in. She had been ordering a king to stay in bed. She had been feeding him thin rabbit stew. A hysterical giggle bubbled in her throat, which she quickly suppressed. She instinctively started to slide to the floor, to bow, to make herself small again.

 It was what an omega did in the presence of an alpha, let alone the king. “An no,” he said, his voice sharp but not unkind. He reached out and caught her arm. His touch gentle. His skin was no longer cold as ice. It was warm human. Adon it. Never do that. Not with me. He held her arm. His thumb stroking the back of her wrist. I saw what you did, Marin.

 I was all trapped in the ice. But I could see. I saw you stand against her. I saw you choose to die rather than abandon me. His voice broke on the last words. A no one has ever done that a she could speak. She could only look at him. This impossible powerful man. His silver eyes filled with a raw vulnerability that mirrored her own.

 Ah, that power, he continued, his gaze full of wonder. Ah, it came from you. You drove her back. You saved me. I don’t know what it was, she confessed. I just I couldn’t let her win. I no omega, he said. his voice soft but absolute. He stood towering over her and gently took her hands and his. He lifted them to his lips and pressed a kiss to her scarred knuckles.

 A you are a queen. The words hung in the warm air of the cabin, more binding than any vow, more intimate than any touch. It was not a declaration of love. It was a statement of fact, a recognition of her soul. In that moment, he saw her truly saw her for the first time. And in his eyes, she finally saw herself.

 A month later, the sea dragon’s keep was a different world. Marin no longer slept on a straw pallet in the servant quarters. She had a room in the royal wing with a soft feather bed and windows that looked out over the crashing sea. She wore simple but well-made dresses of soft wool, and her hands, though still scarred, were no longer raw and chapped.

The return to the keep had been a storm. Voss, the Alpha King, had walked through the main gates with a supposed omega on his arm, and the court had nearly torn itself apart. With shock and outrage, Helga had fainted dead away. The nobles whispered. The servants stared. How could their king, who had never shown interest in any highborn lady, Chu Zaher Voss, had silenced them all with a single look? He had convened his council, and with Marin standing beside him, he had told them the truth of the ambush by feral wolves, of her courage,

of the curse that had plagued his line for centuries, and of the power dormant within her that had saved his life. He declared her his chosen mate, his queen. The word was law. It was a strange and bewildering new life. Marin was learning what her power was. She was a scion of the island’s original guardians, a line of healers whose magic had been driven into hiding by Voss’s ancestors.

 Her connection was to the life of the land itself, a balancing force. It was her presence, her very nature, that soothed the cold curse within him, keeping it dormant. The witch had not returned. Marin had reached out with her newfound senses feeling for the woman as cold hatred. She found it a small bitter presence hiding in the northernmost, most most desolate of the islands.

 The witch was not defeated, merely held in check. Marin knew that true peace would not come from destroying her, but from healing the wound that Vos’s ancestor had inflicted upon the land and her people. That was a task for the future. For now, her focus was on learning, on growing into the role Voss had given her.

 He was patient, a constant, steady presence at her side. He taught her history, politics, the ways of the court. She, in turn, taught him things he had long forgotten. How to laugh, how to find joy in a simple meal, how to be still and listen to the breathing of the world. Tonight they stood on the high balcony of her chambers, the salt spray misting their faces.

 The moon was full and bright, a coin of pure silver in the night sky. “Are you happy?” Maras asked, his voice a low rumble beside her. She looked at her hands resting on the cold stone of the ballastrade. They were the same hands that had scrubbed floors and hauled buckets of slop, but they felt different. They felt like her own.

 I don’t know if happy is the right word. She said honestly, I feel a hole. Like a part of me that was asleep has finally woken up. She turned to look at him. In the moonlight, the silver of his eyes seemed to glow. “Are you?” He was silent for a long moment, watching the waves crash against the rocks below.

 “Ah, for centuries,” he began, his voice soft. I have felt like a man living in a house made of ice. I could see the warmth of the world through the walls, but I could never feel it. I was surrounded by people, but I was utterly alone. The curse ensured it, he turned to face her, taking her hands in his.

 His skin was warm, the vibrant living heat, a constant miracle to her. “Oh, when I am with you,” he said, his silver eyes surging hers. Other walls melt, the cold recedes. For the first time in my life, I don’t feel alone. He lifted a hand and gently brushed a stray strand of hair from her face. His touch was feather light, yet it sent a jolt of warmth through her entire body.

 “A cannot say the words,” “Maran,” he whispered, and she saw the agony of the curse, the fear of it still lurking in the depths of his gaze. A I will not risk you for a phrase. I know, she said softly, her heart aching for him. She placed her hand over his on her cheek. You do not have to.

 She understood his love was not in a word. It was in the way he looked at her as if she were the first sunrise after a lifetime of darkness. It was in the way he stood beside her, a silent, unshakable shield against the whispers of the court. It was in the warmth of his hand, a warmth that only she could feel. The future was uncertain.

 The threat of the witch remained. The curse was dormant, not broken. But as she stood there with the king’s hand in hers, and the salt wind on her face, Marin felt no fear. She had been an omega, a ghost in the scullery. She had faced down wolves in the dark, and made herself big. She had walked out of that forest and she would keep walking with him into whatever came next