The Snow Queen by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub

—32

“I was worried about you when they reported the storm.”

“It was nothing. We just rode it out,” listlessly.

Soft laughter. “How many of my Starbucks could say that without lying?”

Sparks did not answer, lying motionless on the bed, watching himself in the mirrors, watching her watch him watch, into infinity. Arienrhod lay beside him; the curving lines of her body were the folds of a continent rising from the sea, cloaked in the snow fields of her hair. Strands of thread-fine silver chain spilled down from her waist like a river of light. She massaged the fragrant oil into his skin with slow, exploratory fingers; but his body did not respond. Would not respond, to her most intimate touch, her most knowing suggestions. Like a corpse ... gods, help me, I’m buried alive.

Arienrhod’s hand slipped from his thigh as his muscles hardened, rigor mortis. She rolled onto her stomach, resting across his chest as she looked down at him with concern in her agate-colored eyes. The wrong eyes—as he saw the shadows that lay just below the surface, the depths of wisdom without mercy ... the eyes of a changeling who had made him a prisoner locked in his own mind. He closed his own eyes. But I did it all for you, Arienrhod.

“Are you so tired, then, after all?” She lifted the off worlder medal from his chest, turning it idly between her fingers; he heard the undercurrent of cool resentment below the shallows of her solicitude. “Or so bored? Shall I make it a threesome—?”

“No.” He put his arms around her and pulled her down on him, filling his hands with the silken cloth of her hair, kissing her lips, her eyes, the hollow of her throat . , . and feeling nothing. Nothing.

The ghost-girl who had come to him out of the sea would lie between them whenever they lay together from now on, and he would see her eyes—the right eyes, the only eyes. They would accuse him, weeping tears of blood, forever ... “Arienrhod,” despairingly. “Damn it, you know I love you! You know you’re everything to me, everything she ever was, and more—” But the word was a moan. His hands fell away from her.

Arienrhod turned rigid on top of him. “

“She?” ... What are you talking about, my love? Our Moon?” Her voice was soft and clouded-over. “Does she still come back to haunt you, after so long? She’s gone. We lost her a long time ago; you have to put her out of your mind.” She stroked his temples with her fingers, in slow circling motions.

“By all the gods, I thought I had!” He rolled his head from side to side, trying to look away from his own reflection, but it followed him inexorably.

“Then why? Why think about her now? Are you afraid of the Change coming? I promised you it would never come.”

“I don’t care about that.” About killing my people ... then I don’t care about anything at all. He shifted her carefully off of him, rolled over onto his stomach and propped his head in his hands.

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