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The snow had stopped falling some time ago, but the wind blew so furiously it made no difference; the landscape was fully obscured by a wall of swirling white. The Tsaritsa’s mournful cries were audible in the whistle of the wind, heartbreak screaming across the land.
At least it was warm inside the hovel, or warm enough anyway. It was one of those miserable little one-room homes, dominated by the peculiar Snezhnayan stove, a building in miniature all its own, its white-washed stone stained with decades of smoke.
The heat from the stove was just strong enough to be felt where Scaramouche stood, by the window staring out at the flat white of the storm. He was coming to terms with the fact that they’d surely be sleeping on the stove that night.
It was the only alternative to freezing. The cold could not hurt Scaramouche but, as with so many things, he still felt it.
To add insult to injury, he was stranded out in the great wasteland of the tundra with Childe, who was idiotically charmed by the dangerous inconvenience of the storm.
In his greatcoat, buttoned-up and dusted with snow, pale face wreathed in the black fur that trimmed the collar, Delusion pinned to his chest, he almost looked like a proper Harbinger. An image that was dispelled the instant he opened his mouth.
The owners of the homestead had surrendered their home to them—as well they should—but only after enduring a half hour conversation with Childe, most of which consisted of trading names back and forth that one or the other might recognize.
He’d then insisted on loaning his greatcoat to them to use as an additional blanket out in the barn where they’d be spending the night, to the horror of everyone involved. Now he squatted before the stove in his jacket and trousers, a scarf hanging loose around his neck.
The scarf was garish red and evidently handmade, with bits of yarn coming unspooled at its ends.
Childe kept himself busy carving chunks of barely recognizable vegetables into a pot of thin, opaque liquid. An end of a carrot, a half of a potato, a wedge of cabbage, rolled end over end in his hand as he pulled a knife through them, letting the pieces fall into the pot below.
“What is that?” Scaramouche asked, implying through his tone that whatever it was, he wouldn’t consider it edible.
Childe threw him a quick glance over his shoulder, a spark of surprise in those dull slate eyes. At the fact that Scaramouche had spoken, or that he apparently didn’t recognize the depressing soup?
“Shchi,” Childe said, stirring the contents of the pot before placing the lid on and pushing it into the heat of the stove. “Never had it before?”
Scaramouche didn’t answer. What was the point?
The hovel was so small as to feel oppressive, locked in with bad company. The walls were stained from years of smoke, the straw underfoot old and brittle. Bundles of dried plants hung upside-down over the stove alongside ropes of garlic, above what Scaramouche assumed passed for the family’s ‘fine’ crockery; three frail-looking teacups proudly displayed on a shelf of their own.
The smoked window strained against the screech of the wind, rattling in its frame, as the distinct smell of cooked cabbage began to fill the miserable little room.
The shchi didn’t look any better warmed-through.
“It’s not fancy, but it’s good,” Childe said, like this was an implacable fact of life. “You gotta eat.”
“Even if I did, I wouldn’t eat anything you made,” Scaramouche said, dryly. “I doubt you’re capable of much more than chopping things.”
An indignant flush rose in Childe’s face. “I’m a great cook!”
Scaramouche shot the contents of the pot a baleful look, then looked into Childe’s splotchy-red face and said, “The results speak for themselves.”
Childe spluttered, speechless with rage.
Why did this bother him so much? The idea that the Eleventh Harbinger took such pride in his own cooking was fleetingly amusing. His ambitions always had been shallow.
Night fell swiftly, this far north. What little sunlight made it through the clouds and snow, when extinguished dumped the land into smothering dark.
The straw-stuffed mattress didn’t do much except release a musty smell; Scaramouche could still feel the hard stone of the stove digging into his hip. But he could also feel heat, seeping through the stone, prickly and almost painful on his chilled skin.
There wasn’t much space between the top of the stove and the ceiling, and the air there was warm and close. Someone had pinned a sorry watercolour of flowers to the wooden beams overhead.
Childe rolled over, bringing his face perilously close to Scaramouche’s. They stared at each other in the gloom, not enough light to make sense of anything more than the glint of an eye, the darker shadow that fell alongside a nose.
Scaramouche could hear him breathing, the steady in-and-out of air, could feel the warm fan of his breath across his cheek.
Laying down, facing each other in the dark; it was a kind of borrowed intimacy, with no substance to it. If Childe thought this made them comrades Scaramouche would be quick to correct him.
“Do you sleep?” Childe asked, half-mocking. He’d eaten a full serving of his shchi, watching Scaramouche mulishly as he chewed.
Would he dare to sleep, laying this close to Scaramouche? Direct violence was forbidden between the Harbingers, but there were a hundred ways to get around the Tsaritsa’s decree. And Scaramouche was stronger, faster, superior in every way, with the rank to prove it.
Scaramouche rolled onto his back and said, “Only one way to find out.”
The Harbingers’ quarters in Zapolyarny were elaborate and spacious, as befitted their prestige, and were consequentially damn hard to heat.
Large panels of stained glass took up most of one wall in Scaramouche’s sitting room, filtering the murky blizzard light through panes of green, blue, gold. The flagstone floor was blanketed in half a dozen rugs; their overlapping edges made for uncertain footing, but they stopped the stone from leeching all the warmth from the air.
The occupants in this wing of the palace were Scaramouche and Dottore’s Segments. No one else was willing to live in proximity to Dottore’s lab, and Scaramouche stayed out of stubbornness. He was proving something, wasn’t he? A lack of fear?
At an unfamiliar knocking sound, Scaramouche looked up from his desk, alert. He only realized the sound was someone at the door as it began to open.
“What is it?” he snapped, getting to his feet.
Shouldering through the doorway, a large tray covered in silver cloches cradled in both arms, was Childe. He was wearing his greatcoat, a testament to the chill in the corridors, a slash of red visible down the open collar.
Scaramouche startled and didn’t recover fast enough to keep the surprise off his face. Childe smiled and kicked the door closed behind him. “Hey, comrade. You hungry?”
“What do you want?” Scaramouche was abruptly very aware of the fact that he was only wearing a plain house kimono.
There was a shitty little grin on Childe’s face as he strode into the room, his greatcoat sweeping the rugs behind him. Scaramouche folded his arms, slipping his hands into his sleeves, and clenched his fists.
He couldn’t remember the last time someone else had been in his quarters, besides the unseen servants who tended to the fire and kept the stained-glass sparkling. He felt unbalanced, though it should’ve been the opposite, given that they were in his territory. His feet were bare. Why did it matter that his feet were bare?
Childe set the tray down on the low table before the hearth and lifted one of the cloches with a flourish, revealing a plate of pastries, shiny and golden, topped with delicate sprays of some green leaf.
Scaramouche looked at them, then up at Childe. “What is this?”
“Dinner!” Childe spoke with determined cheer, something like a challenge in the set of his mouth.
Dryly, Scaramouche said, “Are you so stupid as to think that you could poison me?”
Childe paused, head cocked to one side like he hadn’t considered it—this, for some reason, sparked a hot rage in Scaramouche’s hollow chest—then laughed. “Interesting idea, but no. I’m here to prove you wrong.”
Scaramouche looked from him to the food. Was it possible that he was so hung up on his words from weeks ago, that it was so easy to get under his skin? What a simpleton. Aloud, he said, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
A muscle flexed in Childe’s jaw, the only outward sign of frustration he showed. “Aw, don’t be like that, not after I’ve made you all this delicious food. Here, take just one bite and then try telling me I can’t cook.”
Interesting, that he swallowed his frustration instead of venting it. All Scaramouche had seen of Childe was impulse; picking fights, speaking his mind, ignoring the delicate power plays of Zapolyarny to chase his own simple-minded goals.
But for this, somehow, it was worth changing tack?
Was that all it took—one sign that the Eleventh was capable of thought before action? One overeager attempt to please him? The fact was, Scaramouche liked that Childe was trying to impress him, liked that he’d brought an offering.
Scaramouche sat on a cushion and drove a fork into the nearest pastry. He sawed off a piece then stuck it in his mouth. The pastry was warm, filled with flaky fish and soft slivers of onion, doused in hot broth.
The rich flavour flooded his mouth, and Scaramouche became inexplicably aware of how cold his body was.
“How is it?” Childe didn’t even wait for him to swallow before asking, and then he was kneeling across from Scaramouche lifting the cloche from the second plate, the third. “Here—try this.”
Scaramouche quietly sampled each dish, taking his time to chew and never letting his expression shift. He felt himself begin to warm from the inside out.
There were thin slices of pork cured with paprika, small bowls of pickled vegetables and grated horseradish. What he supposed was the main dish was a fillet of breaded chicken on a bed of silken mashed potatoes. When Scaramouche cut into the meat, a spurt of hot, fragrant butter spilled out.
He could feel Childe’s attention on him as he brought a bite to his mouth. The breaded outside was crisp, the chicken itself juicy with garlicky butter. Scaramouche chewed slowly.
Childe had even made dessert; a square of some kind of layered cake, dusted with icing sugar. It tasted overwhelmingly of honey, too sweet by half for Scaramouche’s tastes.
As he ate, he considered Childe. Why did he care about this? Was it only a matter of pride, or was he trying to ingratiate himself to his senior? Childe watched him eat intently, gaze jumping from his mouth to his eyes, trying to guess at his thoughts.
The attention sang across Scaramouche’s skin, like static electricity.
Say he was bored. Say he thought that this misguided desire to please could be useful.
The fact was, he was in motion before the decision even crystallized, up on his feet and making for the inner door that led to his bedroom. He paused with one hand on the doorknob, and said, “I’ve got some sake. Come, have a nightcap.”
The look on Childe’s face was so obvious Scaramouch almost burst into laughter. He scrambled to his feet, hesitated, then moved towards him. “So, it was good, wasn’t it?”
“Was it?” Scaramouche smiled thinly, then opened the door.
The Eleventh of the Fatui Harbingers stood with a knife in hand and a small, self-satisfied smile on his face. It was a familiar sight, but one made strange by the circumstances; he stood in a bright, clean kitchen, and he was wearing an apron.
Scaramouche had been too tired to argue, was too tired to complain. Childe held the second of two fish over the sink and ran the knife up and down its body, scraping away the scales. He was whistling.
The kitchen—one of several in the palace—was low-ceilinged and relatively small, with only three ovens and two large worktables. Lamps lit the room daylight-bright, and there were no windows to let the storm in.
It was late at night, but the kitchens never really closed. Childe had asked the staff to leave politely, as if that mattered with the Tsaritsa’s favour pinned to his chest.
Scaramouche sat at a nearby table, its surface still dusty with flour and the smell of yeast hanging over it, watching Childe with a vague sense of dread.
He knew where they stood, most of the time. He felt so sure of it when he was inside Childe, when he held him squirming beneath him, wide-eyed and wanting and vulnerable. But times like these were only confusing.
What was there to gain from this? What advantage did Childe think it gave him?
The scales flew off the fish in little silvery flakes that stuck to Childe’s hand, caught the light and threw it back.
“You know,” Childe was saying, “It’d normally cost an arm and a leg to get fish this fresh at this time of year.”
This time of year meant nothing to Scaramouche—if there were seasons in Snezhnaya, he’d never noticed them. Childe ran the tap, let the water pick up and carry away all those flecks of light.
But then, Childe was often talking nonsense, about food, about sights out in the wild country wilderness, about his cloying love for his family. Scaramouche ignored it, or stopped it, depending on his mood.
Childe picked up both descaled fish, carried them by their tails in one fist over to the table. He sat across from Scaramouche at a cutting board and smiled at him. His smile didn’t reach his eyes. That was the only thing about this pseudo-domestic scene that made any sense to Scaramouche.
Childe held a fish in one hand, its white belly exposed, and with the other drove the tip of his knife inside just above the tail and with a slow, smooth pull sliced the fish open. He angled the blade inside and scooped out pale pink guts, tendons shifting in the backs of his hands as he manipulated the knife.
His knuckles were red and chapped from exposure to the cold, the tip of his long forefinger turned white as he steadied the back of the blade. With a delicate flick of his wrist, he severed the guts neatly, then pushed them to the edge of the cutting board.
Setting aside the knife, Childe slipped two fingers inside the fish and with a faint wet pop pulled something or other free, set that bit of pink aside with the rest, then ran his fingers through the belly of the fish once more. They came out shining, bloodless. He picked up the next fish. Scaramouche looked away.
Nothing was keeping him there. Why did he stay?
Childe melted some butter in a hot pan on the stove, squeezed a lemon into it. And did the lemon not cost an arm and leg? Scaramouche thought, but didn’t say. The juice sizzled and popped as Childe tilted the pan.
Next, Childe rubbed the fish with soy sauce then oiled them and placed them, gleaming, into a shallow dish with the melted butter. The dish went into an oven and Childe wiped his hands with the end of his apron.
It was quiet in the kitchen, deep in the bowels of Zapolyarny, and it was warm; the ovens were kept hot year-round. The staff wouldn’t dare return without being told to. They were perfectly alone.
Childe’s fingers tasted like fish, moving inside his mouth, skimming his tongue, his teeth. It didn’t disgust Scaramouche the way it should’ve.
The smell of yeast, then sweat. Childe’s breath hot on his throat, the flex of muscle in his forearm, the twist of his wrist. Hands pressed to Scaramouche’s skin, fingers slick and shining, slipping in then out. Scaramouche braced for the cut, but it never came.
“Is it good?” asked Childe.
Scaramouche swallowed. The fish was delicate, buttery in his mouth, delicious. Childe watched him like it sated his own hunger, like he knew the answer without needing to hear it. But he wanted it all the same, he wanted Scaramouche to say it.
So he said, “Not particularly.”
Scaramouche did not, as a rule, eat. He’d found that while hunger pangs might pinch, the body could sustain itself. Food was unnecessary, a human habit. But he was more than human, he was a god, and he didn’t have a human’s need for food, comfort, companionship.
He didn’t. He didn’t.
He would prove it.
The rented room had a crappy little window which let in hazy sunlight, filtered through the city’s vapours, sweated out in the long afternoon heat.
There was just about enough space for two people in the room; the galley kitchen was a few steps from the bed, separated only by the door to the hall. The pipes groaned in the walls as someone washed their hands in the floor’s shared bathroom.
A little vase of Sumeru Roses stood on the windowsill, petals translucent in the sun. The smell of fresh green herbs burst into the air with every chop of the knife, a fistful of thin stalks snapping under its weight.
Dread was a knot in Wanderer’s throat.
Why was he doing this? He was curious, he supposed, and couldn’t resist the stab of pain from a total lack of recognition. The careful kindness of a stranger, the unconscious step away to maintain a polite distance, each like a blade between his ribs.
Where was the blood, the spit, the demand for his undivided attention?
Childe whistled as he chopped the herbs, chatted about his family back home, the brutal tundra rendered peaceful and homey when filtered through his memory. He was cheerful, kept shooting Wanderer glances out the corner of his eye like he was checking to see how he responded.
Invited to his rented room, so he could prepare them a meal. Showing off, in an utterly benign way, a gentle escalation after walks through the market, drinks at the tavern. Like Wanderer was some holiday conquest, like he was someone to bring home to meet the family.
It was almost enough to make him laugh.
“Have you had oysters before?” Childe asked, half-turning to look at him over his shoulder. On the cutting board before him, a handful of the rock-like things, shells dark and uneven.
What did he read in Wanderer’s silence? A denial, a hesitation?
“They’re good, even raw,” Childe said. “Give me a second.”
He held an oyster with one hand, thumb folded over the wider end, then with his other hand slid a small knife into the hinge of its shell. He pressed in, then, with a delicate flick of the wrist, twisted the blade and cracked the shell softly.
With practiced fluidity, he pulled the knife along the seam of the oyster, lifting it a touch to scrape along the roof of the shell then flipped it open. Inside, the flesh was pale, greyish, wet and cool in the muggy heat.
Wanderer’s belly cramped, but not for the food.
Childe swiped the tip of the blade beneath the flesh once, quickly, then set the knife aside and picked up a lemon slice instead. He squirted it into the shell—the sharp citric smell did nothing to bring Wanderer to his senses—and held it out.
“Here,” Childe said, smiling coyly like he’d done something impressive, but wasn’t going to make a big deal of it. “Try.”
Wanderer looked at him. Freckles crowded his nose, sweat darkened the hair at his nape. His smile didn’t meet his eyes. Wanderer lifted his chin and leaned forwards, watched surprise wash over Childe’s face.
Childe held the oyster to Wanderer’s mouth, the edge of the shell dug into his bottom lip. They moved together, Wanderer tipping his head back, Childe tipping the shell forwards, and the oyster slipped smoothly into his mouth.
The sharp brine of the ocean, cold the way Childe loved it. The bite of muscle, lemon, slick in the mouth.
Wanderer grabbed Childe’s wrist before he could pull away completely. Another wash of surprise, a spike of nerves Wanderer smothered. He licked Childe’s thumb, tasted the herbs he’d been chopping, the sharp acidity of the lemon.
Childe bent towards him as swiftly as if he’d been kicked in the gut, winded and shocked like he really had. Then something else moved under his expression, and his pupils dilated.
The press of his lips was so soft after the hard edge of the shell, the heat of his tongue a shock after the cool slipperiness of the oyster.
A noise, muffled by Wanderer’s mouth, a sharp gasp.
“But the…” Childe mumbled without pulling away and Wanderer licked inside him. He groaned as Wanderer sucked his tongue. “It’ll keep.”
And again, “It’ll keep,” as he pulled Wanderer close, collapsed around him. The air was hot, fragrant with whatever those herbs were, the sharp tang of the ocean on Wanderer’s breath.
The bed was right there, after all. Might as well use it.
“Are you hungry?”
“Wh-what?” Wanderer barely understood the question, as pleasure was still ricocheting through his body, making him weak.
In Sumeru, everything sweats. The plants, the walls, the people. The air felt wet against Wanderer’s skin, as heavy as the sheet he’d kicked away. He felt dazed, drunk, poisoned.
Childe was braced over him, flushed and glistening from his nose to his chin, eyes blown dark. Sweat gathered in the notch at the base of his throat, dripped onto Wanderer. A flicker of annoyance; it was a waste of the tongue he’d just been fucking Wanderer with to ask nonsense questions.
“I could cook something quick,” he said, glancing at the kitchen then back to Wanderer, like he wasn’t sure he wouldn’t disappear. “Do you like fish?”
A kick in his navel, the urge to open his mouth. “I’m not hungry.”
Childe was already rolling out of bed, stretching to open a cupboard. His body was lean, ropy with scars, dark starbursts of healed punctures, hard white striations from shallow cuts. There were red lines on his back from Wanderer’s nails, purple bruises on his neck, the insides of his thighs, from Wanderer’s teeth. The hair between his legs was damp with sweat and spit and slick.
Wanderer flexed his jaw and felt it pop.
“Just a snack, then,” Childe said, and pulled a bowl of fruit down from a shelf. He snagged a paring knife off the counter, then settled back on the bed with the bowl in his lap.
It was piled high with fruits of all kinds—anything, it seemed, could thrive in Sumeru—in a cacophony of colours; dark purple, mottled red, bright yellow, tender pink, and all the shades in between, glossy with condensation.
Childe tossed a grape into the air and caught it in his mouth, grinning like a fool. Then he selected a fruit from the bowl and with the knife sliced a thick wedge off of it. Its skin shaded from green to orange to red and parted soundlessly beneath the blade, revealing gleaming wet flesh, orange-yellow like the fat afternoon sun.
“Do you enjoy studying at the Akademiya?” Childe asked, cutting a slice off the wedge. It made the faintest sound, a gentle wet sucking. The knife shone, dripping with juice.
“Doesn’t matter if I enjoy it,” Wanderer said, frowning. It was the path he’d been set on, it was a means to an end. “Do you enjoy your work?”
Childe tipped his head to one side, considering. He held the slice of fruit in one hand and pulled the knife smoothly between the flesh and the skin, juice beading around the blade, trickling down his fingers.
His fingers, emerging wet from between Wanderer’s thighs, disappearing between Childe’s lips. A look on his face that Scaramouche never could bear, and that Wanderer struggled with. His tongue on him, in him, where he ached for it, even still. The scrape of his teeth, a wanting that strained for more.
Childe said, “I do, yeah. For the most part.”
It was exactly the answer Wanderer had anticipated. He only barely stopped himself from rolling his eyes.
Childe held out the peeled slice, balanced on the knife. The flesh, the blade, his fingers, all gleamed. Humouring him, Wanderer leaned forward and took a bite. The fruit was soft, split easily between his teeth, bloomed sweet on his tongue. Some juice spilled over his lip.
There was a thrumming in the pit of his belly, just this side of painful. In the walls the pipes groaned, outside a bird trilled. The look on Childe’s face was unbearable.
Childe popped the rest of the slice into his mouth and chewed, then began to carve a new one. “Hey, could we do this again sometime?”
Wanderer hesitated, wiped the juice from his lip. “What do you mean?”
“I mean I don’t want this to be a one-time thing,” Childe said, watching him. “I like you.”
A prickling heat flooded Wanderer’s face and he had to resist the urge to look away.
Childe’s attention, his frankness, was proving to be disarming in a way it had never been before. Scaramouche had thought him too simple-minded for caution, but it was clear now that that wasn’t the case.
That this was Childe unguarded.
Childe cut another slice free, peeled it, held it out on the flat of the knife. The sweet smell of the fruit ripened the air, the sunlight lay across the pale inside of Childe’s wrist. He looked at Wanderer and smiled.
Wanderer found that he was hungry, after all.
It was warm in Childe’s quarters, well-insulated from the perpetual Snezhnayan cold; heavy drapes hung over the stained-glass windows, fur skins were strewn on the furniture, coals glowed red hot in the hearth.
No lamps were lit. The air was still. It was like being held in the mouth of some great beast; warm, dark, dreadful.
Childe slumped on the couch, his hair sticking in all directions. He was battered, worn through, grey and sickly. The scars visible down the front of his shirt were old, the wound he now nursed was invisible. Scaramouche knew the signs of Abyssal corruption. Phantom pain thrummed in his hollow chest.
Liyue had gutted Childe, given in return a spattering of freckles across the bridge of his nose and a ring on his left hand, silver and pronged like a deer’s head, molten in the red glow of the hearth.
There was a bitterness to his expression that had been better hidden before.
Scaramouche had read Signoria’s gloating report, which arrived weeks ahead of Childe’s return. Much as he hated to give her credit, the mission had been, by any measure, a success.
Childe’s own report had concurred.
By the hearth Childe had set up a small cooking area, of course he had, with a simple wooden table, an icebox, a shelf of dry food. Scaramouche knelt by the hearth and scooped rice into a bowl, patted it absently into shape.
Childe watched him, flexing his hands, curling them into fists. He hadn’t said much, though he had laughed and said missed me? at the door to his quarters. He’d groaned as he’d taken Scaramouche into his mouth, gasped as Scaramouche pushed inside him, cried out as he came, shuddering, once and then once more.
Scaramouche hadn’t said any of the obvious, trite things that came to mind—you haven’t been out of your quarters, are you eating, have you been tending to your wounds—he’d said, it’s childish to sulk.
Childe’s fingers flexed and the ring flashed golden, slid back to silver. His shirt was unbuttoned to his navel, he hadn’t bothered to put back on his pants. Why should be? These were his quarters. Shadows pooled in the dips of his collarbones, the notch at the base of his throat.
His touch lingered on Scaramouche, in the body, both familiar and strange. An ache that wasn’t quite pain, a borrowed heat.
Scaramouche swung the pot crane out of the mouth of the fireplace and unhooked the kettle, poured steaming broth over the rice. He topped it with salted salmon, some flakes of dried seaweed.
Wordlessly, he placed it on the table before Childe.
“What is that?” Childe sounded genuinely baffled.
Annoyed, Scaramouche said, “Food.”
Childe looked at the bowl and blinked, brows rising just a hair. He made no move to eat it. What energy he’d had, he’d spent, with his fingers in Scaramouche’s hair and his mouth at his throat, with his lungs working hard and his hips pinned beneath Scaramouche’s weight.
His eyes were dull and flat. Scaramouche felt a flicker of unease, cold down his spine.
“I didn’t know,” he said. “About Signora’s deal with Rex Lapis.”
Childe smiled, flinty. “But even if you had, you wouldn’t have told me, right?”
A lurch in the pit of Scaramouche’s stomach, like a hand driving in and twisting. The thought, unbidden, pathetic: I would’ve, I would’ve.
He caught that thought and throttled it. He was above this. Childe was just a diversion, a way to pass the time. He wouldn’t defend himself, not to someone so fragile, someone so disposable.
Childe sighed and touched a hand to his sternum, where Scaramouche’s mouth had been just minutes before. Where he had pressed down as he moved on top of Childe, where the pound of his heart could be felt when his blood was up.
The glow from coals in the hearth only extended so far; at Childe’s back an uneasy darkness began. They looked at each other in the half-light. Scaramouche despised the expression on Childe’s face.
Unseen, the storm rattled the windows, whistled off the cornices of the palace, rammed the gate like an invading force. Snow piled up in doorways, flew off the distant mountain peaks, swept across the frozen seas.
A land pressed flat by an incessant dirge that rolled blindly over everything in its path. What was the point of a single point of warmth in a world like that?
There was no meaning in this. He’d thought as much from the start.
“I guess we’ll never know.”