When Beck was a child, a fever almost killed him.
It was his first experience cheating death.
He would never forget the heat, the raging of his skin that burned so hot the springtime breeze felt like a winter wind, the touch of his mother’s hand, a cold knife.
That was before she succumbed to the fever. Before his father, his friends, his elders all slowly faded away under its insidious grip.
While the others seemed to wither, trapped within the heat of their bodies, Beck became wracked with chills, his body shivering fiercely and his teeth chattering until his jaw ached.
Beck remembered that pain now as he hunched against the cold, his lips numb and goosebumps crawling up his arms and legs. He tried to swallow the sick feeling that always came when he thought back to that time. To the haze of fever while he lay with all the others in that sequestered room of the hospital.
The silence was stifling as death came quietly for each of them, one by one.
But it never came back for Beck.
He was sure his gloved fingers would be aching if he could feel them, having ridden as far and as long as they had through the slush and mud, but home wasn’t much farther now.
Tunnelled by ancient trees and their bare, overhanging branches, the road ahead was pocked with icy puddles, the company of horses behind Beck skittering about to try to avoid them.
They hadn’t passed another traveller since leaving the inn, so he was hardly paying attention to the empty road when his horse reared.
His numb fingers grasped for purchase on the reins, a jolt going through him as he tried to right himself and calm his whinnying mare. She huffed a breath, feet stamping and splattering him with frigid mud.
“Easy, girl,” he murmured in her ear, one hand gently petting her neck. “What’s going on?”
His breath caught when he lifted his eyes.
A woman stood in the road, her back to Beck and the retinue behind him. She was still as though she was made of stone, as if the ice on the wind had fixed her to the gravel road on which she stood. The only whisper of movement came from the black scarf over her head that swayed in the breeze.
“Miss?” Beck called out.
She made no response. He dismounted, the sting in his feet at the impact reverberating up his stiff ankles, and stepped towards her.
“Captain?” one of his companions said.
Beck held a hand up, signalling for them to hold steady, heart thrumming at the base of his throat. His breath came out in short puffs of steam as an ominous feeling crawled along his flesh. The hair on the back of his neck stood on end. “Miss?”
Disconcerted voices muttered behind him and the familiar squeak of the carriage door pierced the quiet, but he was transfixed by the woman just ahead of him now, her dark hair billowing out from beneath her scarf. The hem of her black dress was soaked through with mud as if she’d been walking for miles, for days. Everything about her was in stark contrast to the white, wintery territory surrounding them, as if she were a blot of ink on a fresh piece of paper.
The snow crunched beneath each footstep until he stood just a breath away from her. Then silence engulfed him.
Silence like that of death.
“Miss?” he repeated softly, reaching a hand towards her. He felt a pull, like a string between them going taut.
As his hand brushed her shoulder, she turned her head just a fraction.
Beck recoiled. But before he could back away any further, she snatched his wrist and whirled to face him.
She may have been lovely at some point in time, her face young, lips full, and her eyes big and blue. Now they were glazed over, the whites yellowed, and her lips were cracked and peeling. Black tears stained her cheeks and her nose was crusted with dried blood. Her skin was the colour of ash.
Beck would have fallen were it not for the grip she had on his wrist. His knees buckled as the breath was crushed from his lungs. Her cold, lifeless hand burned him through his clothes, biting into his flesh.
Around him, the snow had melted away. The ground was barren and dry and the trees lining the road crumbled like charcoal. The mountain ahead loomed, its blanket of evergreen woods burnt away to unyielding rock. The others, his entire company of guards and the carriage they escorted, were gone. Snow fell from the sky but it didn’t melt as it landed on her face. No, it flaked like skin.
Not snow—ash.
He was too terrified to scream as she reached towards him with her other hand, bones protruding and nails cracked and lined with grime. Beck sank to his knees as her skeletal palm covered his face. The smell of smoke and decay choked him, her fingers trailing over his eyes, his nose, his lips.
Her breath was cold and stale on his neck as she leaned closer. The burning in his wrist spread up to his shoulder, a whimper of pain loosing his lips.
“Don’t be afraid,” she whispered, her voice crackling like splintering ice.
And then she let go.
He fell to his back and the gnarled trees were above him again, his clothes soaked through with slush.
“Beck?”
He blinked away the haze, swallowing the lump in his throat as he met familiar hazel eyes, wide with alarm.
“Jace . . .” Beck began, voice trembling, “is everyone all right?”
Jace surveyed him, a hand at his shoulder. “Everyone’s fine. Are you all right?”
Nausea roiled in his stomach as he sat up. He managed a steadying breath before glancing past the other bewildered guards to the princess standing by the carriage, her face wrought with worry.
“Yes,” he mumbled. He took Jace’s hand and found that the pain was fading from his arm. Snow hung heavy in the tangle of branches above him again, the mountain beyond a wall of white-capped forest. “There . . . there was a woman.”
“What woman?” Jace asked, voice growing faint as he helped Beck to his feet.
Beck fought back the rush of blood that made the world momentarily spin, turning as if half-expecting to still find her there. “She was standing in the middle of the road. She was right there.” He gestured shakily before raking a hand through his dirty-blond hair.
The alarm in Jace’s eyes hadn’t wavered. “There was no one there, Beck.”
His chest tightened. He hadn’t imagined it. A sting still lingered at his wrist.
“Are you ill?” Jace asked quietly.
Beck tried to take a deep breath but it trembled the way the rest of him did. “I don’t know.”
“Captain Windborn.”
Beck turned to the woman striding towards them, a fur-trimmed cloak pulled tightly around her. Her nose was rosy from the cold, bright blue eyes wide the way Jace’s had been.
“Is everything all right?” she asked.
“I think the captain has come under the weather, Your Highness,” Jace replied.
Beck shook his head, still trying to reconcile what seemingly only he had seen. “I’m fine. I just need a moment.”
She strode towards them, clutching her cloak closed against the brisk wind. “Why don’t you rest in the carriage.”
“Princess—”
“Then we needn’t delay any longer,” she said. “It would be best to make it to Gilden by nightfall, would it not?”
He swallowed, then nodded once. “Yes, Your Highness”
She nodded over her shoulder. “Then let’s get moving, shall we? Oh—and leave your coat with one of your men. We don’t want the coach getting covered in mud.”
Beck’s cheeks burned as he lowered his gaze and shucked off his soiled coat. An outstretched hand was waiting to claim it as the cold bit into him through his clothes. “Jace, take the lead,” he muttered before falling behind Princess Sola.
It was warmer inside the carriage, but Beck couldn’t shake the chill that had burrowed deep inside of him. His clothes were sodden, his body quivering as he clenched his teeth down on the shivers that rolled through him.
“Here,” Sola said once they were sitting, handing him the blanket that had been lying across her lap when they’d departed.
“Thank you,” he mumbled, wrapping it around his shoulders as he peered out the window. He could feel her eyes on him.
After a long silence, interrupted only by the rattle of wheels and the plod of hooves against the beaten road, she finally asked, “What happened back there?”
He shrugged, not out of nonchalance, but to shake off the feeling making his skin crawl. “I don’t know. I must have fainted.”
“You worried us.”
At that, he finally met her glistening eyes. Her lips were a thin line. Beck slouched forward, clasping his hands together to keep them from shaking. “I’m sorry.”
“Beck,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. She only ever called him by his given name in hushed tones, and only ever when they were alone. She reached across the short distance between them, the coach so small that their knees nearly brushed, and touched his hand. “If something is wrong, you can tell me.”
His eyes fell to their hands, a rush of heat spreading through his stomach.
But “Nothing’s wrong” was all he said, the words hollow even to his own ears. Maybe he really was coming down with something. Maybe the whole thing had been a trick of his overtired brain.
Her throat bobbed as she gingerly pulled her hand back into her own lap. “Okay.”
Beck mirrored her, straightening as he turned back to the window. He was exhausted, that much he would admit. They’d been travelling back from Alderholm for two days in the cold with nothing to protect them but the layers of clothes they had piled on. The severe winds of the plains, which spanned much of the distance between there and the capital, Gildenloch, had cut through him like a blade. Not to mention the nights spent at seedy taverns along the way, with their threadbare beds and whistling windows that did little to stave off the chill.
But soon, he told himself—soon they would be home, nestled in the mountains where springtime was drawing near, the snow giving way to wet forests and rushing waterfalls.
He’d travelled much of Elandria over the six months away from Gildenloch, escorting the princess on her various voyages to meet those she sought to gain favour with before her impending rise to the crown. She had been under the tutelage of her parents’ former advisors since her youth, but had finally been entitled to her crown when she turned twenty years old at the end of last year. All that remained was her coronation.
Beck thought back to when he was twenty and training with the Royal Guard. Sola had just turned sixteen then. She had seemed like a child.
His gaze flicked towards her once. Nothing of that child was left. Her silvery blonde hair fell in soft waves around her face, and her eyes were as pure as the winter-blue sky. Though, they carried the same shadow that most parentless children bore. The shadow Beck knew that he bore too.
“You can rest,” she said as if she could feel the brief brush of his eyes on her. “We still have a few hours yet.”
Beck didn’t reply, he only leaned his head against the carriage door and shut his eyes.
He saw her face for a moment—the face of that woman in the road.
And then he was enveloped in darkness.