The Duke of Snow and Apples (25 page)

“What are…?” The maid lapsed into unspoken communication with whoever had entered. Charlotte glanced up into the mirror propped up on the side table, but saw nothing but a pair of white gloves, blue sleeves, and gold braid as they slashed downward, a silent order to cease.

The maid’s hands fluttered and jabbed in response, pointing at Charlotte, pushing at the intruder.
Go away. I’m busy
.

The gloves lifted two fingers—
two moments
, perhaps—and the maid’s hands splayed once, in confusion, then relented. Her soft footsteps pattered out, followed by the creak of the door and the click of a lock sliding home.

“How do you feel, Charlotte?” the intruder asked.

Feel?
She supposed she was relieved to have that wig off; it made her scalp itch. Tired as well, since she’d been standing and speaking for an hour. Everything else vanished past the smooth gray walls in her mind. If she tried hard enough, sometimes she could feel shivers of
something
, like the vibrations of someone knocking on the other side of a door. She didn’t see any reason to try harder.

Charlotte heard the soft pad of footsteps approaching across the thick Elassine rug. She glanced up in the mirror again, and saw a man in a white wig, with dark eyebrows and blue, blue eyes.

She felt that
shiver
again, that quake muffled by distance and gray. She
did
feel something, or at least, she
remembered
feeling something. She looked down again. The calm was easier. She understood the calm. “I feel well enough.”

“Well enough?” She heard him start to laugh, then trail off halfway through. “Well enough.” Two heartbeats later, he crossed the room and laid a hand on her shoulder.

For one moment, she wanted to shake off that hand, that touch, for it awoke a soft keening from behind the smooth walls in her mind. Pain lurked behind those walls. She had to keep it out. Inside she was safe.

“Please remove your hand,” she said. She had no reason not to be polite and every reason to keep the walls intact.

His hand moved—not away, but down the line of her décolletage, pausing at the shadow between her breasts, then back up again to trace a sinew in her neck. “How do you feel now?”

“Impatient,” Charlotte said. A lie—one she couldn’t come up with a reason for. Her mind was bracketed on all sides by gray, but outside the world shook with the approach of some terrifying force, a force that bypassed the authority of her mind. Her hands trembled in her lap, and she felt heat flood her cheeks. “Remove your hand.”

After a moment’s pause, Frederick’s hand lifted off her shoulder, only to grasp her by the chin and turn her face toward his. Toward the blue, which suddenly frightened her far more than gray. “Look at me.”

“There is no reason to,” she said. She closed her eyes. Reason. He was a footman. Underfolk. Born to serve. All good reasons. She felt a little better—almost enough to open her eyes.

“
Look
at me.”

She couldn’t find a reason not to open her eyes, and she wasn’t ready to explain to herself this rising need to do things without reason, so she did as he said. She stared into eyes wide and clear as pools, rimmed with dark lashes. The smooth walls in her mind did not come tumbling down at the sight of such eyes. There was nothing to be afraid of, after all.

“How do you feel?” he asked.

“Annoyed,” Charlotte decided. Yes, that fit.

Those startling eyes narrowed, and from somewhere deep within them, a light glowed. Soft, flickering, as luminescent as a candle through a veil.

Charlotte stared at the dawning light. She was fairly certain eyes shouldn’t glow like that. She tried to pull away, but Frederick tightened his grip. His eyes narrowed, glowing from beneath the fan of his lashes, as he focused. It felt, to Charlotte, as if he was trying to see right through her, to something underneath.
Would he find the smooth gray walls?

“What do you see?” he asked.

Me? He’s the one looking
. “I see you.” She jerked against his grip. “You won’t let me see anything else. You’re pinching my chin.”

“What colors?” His eyes blazed so bright that Charlotte had to squint.

“I don’t see any colors,” she said. “Let me go.”

…

It wasn’t working, at least as well as Frederick had thought it would. With his magic singing in his head, he made himself look at the Gray encased around Charlotte, smooth and featureless.

However, it seemed to have dissipated—no longer an opaque deadness of color, it looked more like a heavy veil, behind which he could see shapes and lights shifting faintly. Frederick had never heard of the Gray weakening before.
Because I never stayed long enough to find out
. He swallowed his guilt, saving it for another time. He’d locked the door, but someone would notice Charlotte’s absence soon. He didn’t have much time.

He’d thought displaying his power, letting his own colors shine out, might melt the Gray. He could almost see the interplay of emotions muffled behind the Gray, but always the lifeless barrier remained between them. Displaying his magic wasn’t enough.

“You’re hurting me,” Charlotte said in a neutral tone she might have used had he stepped on her toe during a dance. Hurt welled in him—that this should have happened to her, that she was trapped and didn’t even know it. He started to push it down out of habit, then paused. No. He allowed it to flow upward, into his heart, into his mind, and let his magic take to it like fire to kindling, burning all the brighter. Pain and fear, despair and loneliness, they all rose in a tide, emerging from his eyes in deep purples and mauves, silver, lavender.

Look, Charlotte
, he begged.
See that I’m sorry. See that I wish I could make it right again. See how much losing you is destroying me.

Charlotte stopped struggling, and a growing blush stained her cheeks. She swallowed—and there, beneath the veil of Gray, Frederick detected hues swirling, twisting. A gray so faint it might have been pale blue. The barest hint of rose in deep shadow. Just as quickly glimpsed, and gone.

Frederick growled in frustration.
Almost
. Not enough. He couldn’t pierce the Gray alone—he needed her to fight from her end. Before he could rationalize a different plan, he brought his mouth down on hers. Need flashed through him, scalding, and he kept his eyes open to show her how hot he burned for her, a beacon to fight toward. He ran his tongue along the seam of her lips—and she jerked away.

“Stop that,” she whispered, eyes wide. Dirty yellows and pallid greens warred behind the Gray.

“No.” Frederick brought a hand up to the back of her head, to press her closer, to keep her from pulling away. No more tentative kisses, no more hesitancy. If she wanted him to stop, she would damn well have to show it. He kissed her with particular savagery, fighting past lips parted in shock to steal the treasures of her mouth—the softness of satin, with teeth smooth as pearls.

He pulled away to gulp air, every nerve in his body humming, every part of him—and he meant
every
—awake and eager. The Gray writhed and fluttered, like a curtain in a high wind, revealing flashes of flickering color. So close. Frederick pressed in for another try, one arm restraining her head, the other curving around her waist.

Charlotte clamped her mouth shut, shaking her head frantically. Frederick diverted, tracing his tongue up the line of her jaw, nipping her earlobe.

“No!” She squirmed in his iron grip, slapping her hands against his chest. “No! Stop it!”

Frederick pulled away to look her in the face, his head thrumming with power. His lips pulled back, baring his teeth in a feral grin. “Make me.”

“No.”

“Stop me.”

“I can’t!”

“
Fight
me.” It came out softer than he intended, a low, charged whisper, commanding and pleading both.
Fight. Please.
“Fight the Gray.”

Slowly, he removed all of his barriers, all of his shields, and let everything he felt, everything he was, flow up and into his eyes. If this didn’t work, he’d have nothing left.

Fight me, Charlotte.

…

The walls around her mind shook. Cracks sprouted everywhere, webs of lines and fractures. She could almost remember what lay beyond, enough to know she wasn’t ready to face them. Beyond lay fire, and pain. Why couldn’t Frederick let her stay where it was quiet?

He kissed her again, offering her no mercy, no escape, and every tempting, teasing movement of his lips and tongue riled the forces laying siege to her peace. Mentally, she cowered beneath the weakening gray walls. Reason—there had to be a reason he was kissing her, despite the fact that he could lose his position if he were caught, and surely some logical motivation existed behind his demand that she fight him. She didn’t want to fight. She wanted to stay where she did not have to think too hard.

Finally, he stopped kissing her and just looked at her, with his jewel-bright eyes, constellations of light swirling in their depths, spraying outward like sunlight shattered by a prism. She saw the shapes, the lights swirling inward, giving her a glimpse into something that went deeper than his eyes—but she couldn’t understand. With his magic, he spoke to her in a foreign language from beyond the gray walls, a language she’d forgotten.

She didn’t comprehend. She didn’t want to. Even as she stared, memories seeped through the cracks in the smoothness, memories of words as sharp as splinters of glass, burrowing under her skin and drawing blood where she couldn’t see. Understanding beckoned from beyond the gray safety.

Frederick moved again to claim her mouth, and fear rose in her—a fear she didn’t understand. Why did she fear? Unless—

I came to say that this attachment we’ve formed, it needs to end. I had hoped we would both be able to see the necessity of this.

I came here to end this, because I wanted to end this.

Heartache pealed like a bell, tolling the impending destruction of the gray walls. Once again, she saw the wasteland he’d made of her heart. She’d told him she loved him and he’d spat in her face, even as now he plunged his fingers into her hair and stared at her lips as if they existed for his pleasure alone.

Make me. Stop me. Fight me.

As he captured her mouth, Charlotte bit down. Hard. Frederick jerked back with a yelp, his mouth flecked with blood. His eyes widened, and he loosened his pinioning grip.

Wrenching one arm free at last, Charlotte brought it sweeping forward, meeting his face with a cold, echoing
smack
. “Don’t you touch me! Don’t you
dare
touch me!”

Distantly, she heard her overturned chair clatter to the ground, as she threw herself at him, scratching and spitting, not caring what she sounded or looked like. He’d left her. He’d broken her. He’d stolen her peace. She owed him nothing. He tried to deflect her hands, often unsuccessfully, then settled on capturing her face in his hands, ignoring the scoring of her nails.

“Look at me, Charlotte,” he said. The lines of his face, formerly locked into an intense expression of concentration, loosened and unknotted as dazed joy conquered his features.

“No,” Charlotte growled. “You don’t get to smile, you don’t get to look. It’s your fault I feel this way!”

“I know, and I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. For the Gray. For everything. Let me show you. Look at me.”

She dug her nails into the hands bracketing her face and dodged his eye contact. “I never want to look at you again.”

“I’m here this time.
All
of me. Please.”

Fury still curled her fingers into claws, but she couldn’t resist the pull of those eyes. She never could. She told herself not to be afraid, that this wouldn’t change anything, that his magic was really nothing more than a strange play of lights. She would still hate him. She would still want nothing to do with him. She wouldn’t be so stupid as to fall for him again.

Clenching her jaw, setting her lips into a determined frown, she met Frederick, eye to eye—and
fell.

One moment, she stared at those familiar too-blue eyes, and waited for his sadness and hopefully his contrition to bloom between them, as pretty and meaningless as a glamoured puppet-show. Instead, Frederick…well,
opened
, the sparking, changing hues of his eyes spiraling inward, drawing her with them, drawing her
inside
.

The rest of the world faded from view, replaced by a wintry, but fluid landscape. Light flowed all around her—lavender rushed beneath her feet, streaked with shades of cream and eggshell. A blue as pale as ice in shadow swept by, brushing her cheek. Ribbons of transparent yellows curled past her. She had never felt, or been, anywhere so cold.

She bent and dipped her hands in a stream of white so pure it hurt her eyes to look at it, and she felt Frederick’s loneliness to her very core. Everywhere around her, pale shades of emotion spun in lazy orbits. She threw out her hands, tasting the chill breezes of professionalism, honor, duty, and guilt. So much guilt, a translucent green like the sluggish water beneath a frozen brook.

Is this how he really feels?
She looked down, as a flash of brightness caught her eye. She saw it—a pulse of living color, faint beneath the layers of fear and worry. She dove through the strange, mutable reality of Frederick, down, down, toward the vivid spark that still shone underneath heavy drifts of sorrow.

It was small, round, and red, vibrantly red—a crimson so rich it stood out amidst all the whites and grays like a spot of blood on a clean handkerchief. It was so small, but it shone valiantly against the frozen repression all around it. Charlotte reached out and held it in her hands, unprepared for the buffet of emotion. Courage. Loyalty. Desire. Joy. Love.

She sensed this went beyond which shade of red meant which feeling—she held in her hands the essence of Frederick, his natural passion, his innate kindness, the cheerfulness that rose in him like a bubbling spring.