Chapter 9: Blood in the Snow
The world had narrowed to three things: the savage bite of the wind, the jarring rhythm of the horse beneath her, and the warm, alarming seep of blood against her back.
Jared’s blood.
He rode behind her, one arm clamped around her waist like an iron band, the other holding the reins in a white-knuckled grip. He hadn’t spoken in what felt like hours, just grunted occasionally when the horse stumbled on the hidden ice. Each grunt was tighter, more strained.
“Slow the pace,” Kellen’s voice cut through the moaning wind. He rode slightly ahead, his dark figure a sharp contrast to the endless white. He looked back, his face a mask of frost and calculation. “They’re not gaining.”
“They don’t need to gain,” Jared ground out, his breath hot against Clara’s ear. “They just need to follow the trail. The blood’s a damn road sign.”
Clara glanced down. Drops of black, already freezing into the snow, dotted the path behind them. Her stomach turned. It wasn’t just Jared’s. The memory flashed, unbidden: the eastern gate, shadows moving within shadows. A hissed warning from Freir’s man, Tor, then the wet, choking sound as an arrow found his throat. The violence had been silent, efficient, and utterly brutal. Freir’s other two men had died buying them ninety seconds. That was the cost of the gate’s shadow.
Freir rode at the rear, turning constantly in his saddle, his eyes scanning the ink-black tree line below them. The beautiful prince was gone, replaced by something feral and grim. He held a short, curved bow, an arrow already nocked.
“He’s right, Kellen,” Freir called forward, his voice stripped of all its usual charm. “We can’t outrun them. We have to out-think them. This pass is a funnel. They’ll try to get ahead.”
Kellen swore, a short, vicious word the wind snatched away. He reined in, signaling a halt in the partial lee of a massive, wind-scoured boulder. The horses stamped, blowing plumes of steam into the air that reeked of sweat and fear.
“Off,” Jared said to Clara, his voice strained.
She slid from the saddle, her legs numb. When Jared dismounted, he stumbled, his weight coming down hard on his good leg. Clara caught his arm, feeling the tremble in his massive frame. In the flat, grey light of the pre-dawn, she saw it clearly: the snapped shaft of a crossbow bolt protruding from the meat of his left thigh. The dark stain around it had spread down his breeches.
“Stars,” she whispered.
“It’s fine,” he muttered, leaning against the horse.
“It’s not fine,” Kellen said, striding over. He dropped to a crouch, examining the wound with detached focus. “It’s a broadhead. If we pull it, you bleed out. If we leave it in, the motion of the riding will tear you apart from the inside.” He looked up at Jared’s pale face. “You have maybe another hour in the saddle before you pass out from pain or blood loss.”
“Then I have an hour,” Jared said simply.
Freir joined them, his eyes still on the descent. “We need to split up.”
“No,” Clara said. The word left her mouth before she could think.
Freir looked at her, his amber eyes hard. “It’s the only play. They’re tracking a group of four. They’re expecting us to stick together.” He pointed to a fork in the pass ahead, two narrow paths diverging around a colossal spine of granite. “Kellen takes Clara. You go right, higher ground. Jared and I go left, downhill. We make noise, leave a better trail. We lead them off.”
“You’re both wounded,” Kellen stated, his gaze moving from Jared’s leg to a long, shallow slice along Freir’s forearm he’d taken deflecting a blade at the gate.
“We’re both bait,” Freir corrected. He finally looked at Clara. “It’s what we agreed to. The fortress is eight miles north-northwest of the fork. You’ll see the watchtowers. Get to the gates. They’re expecting you.”
“You’re signing their death warrant,” Clara said, her voice cracking. She looked at the blood in the snow, thinking of the three men already cooling back at the gate. “For me.”
Jared pushed off from the horse, standing upright with visible effort. He gripped her shoulder, his hand heavy. “Princess, with respect, shut up.” His tone wasn’t cruel. It was exhausted, factual. “This isn’t about your worth. It’s about the objective. The objective is you, alive, in that fortress. We are soldiers. This is the mission.”
Soldiers. Not husbands. The distinction, in this frozen hell, was the only thing that made sense.
Kellen was already moving, transferring the lightest pack to his own horse. He approached Clara. “Can you ride on your own? Really?”
She swallowed, nodding. The thought of being alone on the beast was terrifying, but less terrifying than Jared dying behind her.
“Good.” Kellen’s icy demeanor was back, a useful tool. He helped her mount, his hands efficient and impersonal. “Stay behind me. Do exactly what I do. If I stop, you stop. If I go off the path, you follow. Do not speak. Sound carries.”
Freir gave Jared a shoulder to lean on as he remounted. The big guard’s face was the color of old ash. Freir looked across at Kellen, then at Clara. He gave a short, sharp nod. No pretty words. No promises.
“See you at the fortress,” Jared said, and it sounded like both a hope and a farewell.
Then they were moving, splitting apart. Clara forced herself not to look back. She focused on the dark wool of Kellen’s cloak, on the steady, deliberate placement of his horse’s hooves. The right-hand path was steeper, a narrow ledge above a dizzying drop into mist.
The silence was different now. Absent the others, it was a pressing, auditory void filled only by the wind and the crunch of ice. Every creak of leather, every snort from the horse, felt like a scream.
They rode for twenty minutes, the cold gnawing through the woolen tunic Freir had given her. Then Kellen raised a fist. Frozen mid-motion.
From below, drifting up on a curl of wind, came the distinct, metallic ring of a sword being drawn. Then a shout, abruptly cut off.
Clara’s breath stopped. Kellen’s head was tilted, listening. More sounds followed. Muffled. Distant. A horse’s scream. It was impossible to tell if it was a sound of attack or a beast stumbling on the ice.
Kellen didn’t move. He was a statue, analysing the data of the violence. Clara saw his gloved hand flex on the reins, once. That was all.
“They’ve taken the bait,” he murmured, so low she almost didn’t hear. There was no triumph in it. It was just an assessment.
He nudged his horse forward. Clara followed, her heart a frantic drum against her ribs. The sounds faded, swallowed by the vast, indifferent mountains.
The sky lightened from pitch to a bruised grey. The cold became a living entity, stealing the feeling from her fingers and toes. She lost track of time, existing only in the wake of Kellen’s horse.
Then he stopped again.
He pointed.
Through a break in the swirling mist, far in the distance across a glacial valley, clung a structure to the side of a mountain. It wasn’t a castle from a storybook. It was a jagged, brutal thing of dark stone, fused to the cliff face as if it had grown there. Two thin watchtowers pierced the low clouds like spears.
The fortress.
A sob of relief choked her. She bit it back.
Kellen didn’t celebrate. He studied the descent into the valley, the treeless, open slope of scree and ice between them and salvation. It was a killing field.
“We wait for full light,” he decided. “Going down there in the half-dark is asking for a broken neck. Or an arrow.”
They dismounted, finding a cramped hollow in the rock to share minimal body heat. Kellen passed her a water skin and a strip of tough, salty dried meat. He never took his eyes off the valley below.
“Will they make it?” she asked, the question tearing itself from her. She didn’t specify who.
Kellen took a long time to answer. “Freir is unnaturally good at not dying. Jared is too stubborn to.” He finally looked at her, his grey eyes reflecting the snowy gloom. “The plan was sound. But sound plans often fail. You need to prepare yourself for that.”
She stared at the fortress, a dark smudge of safety that seemed to mock her. She thought of Jared’s blood on her hands, of Freir’s grim nod, of the three nameless men whose only role was to die first. A trail of corpses, leading right to her.
“I am prepared,” she lied, her voice as cold as the air.
He held her gaze for a moment, then gave a single, acknowledging nod. He believed the lie. It was all they had.
Together, they watched the dawn bleed across the ice, waiting for the light that would show them the path to safety, or the shapes of their pursuers closing in from behind.
The light grew, pale and grudging, revealing no moving shapes on the slopes behind them. Only endless, silent white. Kellen stood, joints stiff from the cold. “Now. Quick and quiet.”
The descent was a controlled slide. Their horses skidded on the scree, sending cascades of pebbles into the void. Clara focused on each placement of her mount’s hooves, her knuckles aching from the grip on the reins. The fortress loomed larger, its details sharpening into high, windowless walls and a single iron-banded gate.
No horns sounded. No arrows flew from the battlements.
It felt like a trap. Her every instinct, honed in the palace, screamed that safety was an illusion. “Why is it so quiet?” she whispered, the words torn away by the wind.
“Because they’re watching,” Kellen replied, his eyes scanning the walls. “And they’ve seen us for an hour.”
A small postern gate, barely wider than a man, creaked open as they reached the base of the cliff. Two guards in grey furs, faces obscured by frost-rimed helms, emerged with crossbows held low and ready. They didn’t speak.
Kellen dismounted, moving slowly. He pulled a ring from his finger—a heavy silver sigil Freir had given him at the fork. He tossed it. One guard caught it, examined it, and gave a sharp nod.
“The princess,” Kellen said, the title sounding foreign here.
The guards looked at Clara, still on her horse. Their gaze was assessment, not reverence. One gestured sharply inward. “Bring her. Stables are inside, to the left. You wait here.”
Clara slid from the saddle, her legs buckling as they hit solid, unmoving ground. Kellen caught her elbow, steadying her for a second before letting go. The guard’s wording sank in. “Wait? He’s with me.”
“Our orders are for the princess only,” the guard said, his voice flat. “From the prince. You wait here until he arrives.”
A flash of betrayal hit her. Kellen’s face showed nothing, just a slow exhale that steamed in the air. “Logical,” he conceded, though his jaw was tight. “They don’t know me. Freir’s men only.” He looked at her. “Go.”
She was ushered through the narrow, dark passage that stank of wet stone and old iron. It opened into a vast, echoing courtyard carved from the mountain itself. People moved with quiet purpose—hard-faced men and women in thick woolens, their breaths pluming. They stopped to stare. There was no cheering, no bowing. Just a cold, palpable curiosity.
A woman with a streak of white in her dark braid and a healer’s bag at her hip approached. “This way, Highness.” The title was uttered without inflection, a mere identifier.
She was led not to a hall, but to a small, round chamber with a hearth where a real fire crackled. The heat was a physical shock, making her skin burn. “You will wait here,” the healer said. “Do not wander.”
The door, thick oak, shut with a definitive thud. It wasn’t locked. She tested it. But the message was clear. She was a specimen, delivered.
Time warped. She stood by the fire until she was dizzy with warmth, then paced the circumference of the room. She listened to the foreign sounds of the stronghold—the distant clang of a smith, the bark of commands in a guttural dialect. Every muffled footstep in the corridor outside made her heart jump.
Had they heard more sounds from the pass? Was that why Kellen was left outside?
The wait stretched, thin and agonizing. She watched the grey light through a high, narrow window strengthen to a dull midday glow.
Finally, a commotion echoed in the courtyard—shouted orders, the uneven clatter of hooves on stone. She rushed to the door, yanking it open against the protesting healer who was suddenly there.
“You should stay—”
Clara pushed past her into the courtyard.
Two horses stood, steaming and trembling with exhaustion. Freir was dismounting, his beautiful face etched with deep cuts from branches and smeared with old blood that wasn’t his. His eyes found hers instantly, flashing with a grim satisfaction.
Jared was slumped over his horse’s neck, barely conscious. His left leg was a ruin; the breeches were soaked crimson from thigh to knee, the broken bolt shaft jutting at a sickening angle. His skin had a waxy, grey sheen.
“He needs immediate attention on that wound,” Freir said, his voice rough and loud, cutting through the gathered silence. It wasn’t a request. It was a command that brooked no delay.
The healer with the white braid snapped into motion, barking for a litter and assistants. Men gently pulled Jared from the saddle. His head lolled back, and a low, pained groan escaped his lips as his leg was jostled.
Freir crossed the courtyard to Clara. He reeked of sweat, cold iron, and pine. “Told you I was lucky at dice,” he muttered, but the joke fell flat. His eyes were shadowed.
“Kellen is outside the postern gate,” Clara said, her voice tight.
“I know. He’ll be brought in.” Freir watched as they carried Jared towards a low doorway. “The bolt’s barbed. Taking it out will be… messy.” He finally looked at her fully, taking in her safe, unmarked state. “Your father’s hunters turned back at the border stream. They won’t cross into our territory without a formal company. You’re here.”
She was here. In a stone hollow in a mountain, surrounded by strangers, with one husband left waiting at the gate, another bleeding out on a litter, and a third looking ten years older than he had the night before. The gilded cage was gone, shattered. What lay before her was this raw, brutal, and costly freedom. And Jared’s blood, now dripping a steady, deliberate pattern onto the fortress’s immutable stone floor.
The sound of those drops hitting stone was the loudest thing in the courtyard. Clara stared at the growing dark petals on the grey flagstones. Her own breathing felt too shallow, as if the mountain air was too thin to support the weight of what that blood meant.
She moved without deciding to. Her feet carried her across the space to where Freir stood. He was still watching the doorway they’d taken Jared through, his body rigid with leftover adrenaline. She didn’t say anything. She just wrapped her arms around him, her face pressing against the cold, blood-stained wool of his tunic. He smelled like violence and snowmelt.
He stiffened for a half-second, the instinct of a man who expected attacks, not contact. Then he let out a shuddering breath. His arms came around her, crushing her to him with a desperate, grateful strength. He buried his face in her hair. They stood like that, two anchors in the swirling, silent aftermath.
“The man at the gate,” she whispered into his chest, her voice muffled. “Tor. He… he died right in front of me.”
Freir’s hand tightened on the back of her head. “I know.” He didn’t offer platitudes. His voice was raw. “He was my friend since we were boys. He knew the job.” He pulled back just enough to look at her, his thumbs wiping at the tears she hadn’t felt herself shed. “So did Jared. He’s still doing his job. Let’s make sure it wasn’t for nothing.”
He released her, his princely mask sliding back into place, though it was cracked and worn. He turned to the guards near the postern gate. “Bring the duke in. Now.”
The guard who had stopped Kellen gave a sharp nod and disappeared into the passage. A tense minute later, Kellen entered the courtyard, blinking in the relative dimness. The cold had painted his sharp features even more severe. His eyes scanned the area, cataloging Clara’s state, Freir’s condition, the absent Jared, the blood on the stones.
“Report,” Kellen said, the word directed at Freir.
“Jared’s with the healer. Lost a lot of blood. The bolt’s still in. They turned back at the border stream.” Freir rattled it off like a military dispatch. “Your status?”
“Unharmed. Unfollowed.” Kellen’s gaze finally settled on Clara. “The objective is secured.”
Secured. Like a package. Clara felt a spike of irrational anger at the word, but it fizzled out under a wave of pure exhaustion. They were all just using the language that kept them functioning. “We need to see him,” she said.
Freir led the way. The healer’s domain was a low-ceilinged room off the courtyard, walls lined with shelves of jars and dried herbs. The smell hit her first—astringent yarrow, something metallic, and beneath it, the coppery tang of fresh blood.
Jared lay on a wide wooden table, stripped to the waist. His skin was pale, making the old scars and new bruises stand out like maps of other battles. The healer, Siora, and an assistant were cleaning the mangled flesh around the bolt. Jared’s eyes were clenched shut, his jaw locked so tight the muscles in his neck stood out like cables.
“This will hurt,” Siora said, her voice calm. She wasn’t talking to them. She was preparing Jared. “The head is barbed. I have to push it through to clip the barbs before I can pull it back out. Do you understand?”
Jared gave a single, sharp nod. He turned his head, his eyes opening to slits. They found Clara, Kellen, and Freir in the doorway. A weird, pained smirk touched his lips. “Front row seats,” he rasped.
“Don’t be a hero,” Freir said, leaning against the doorframe. “Just breathe.”
Siora took a cleaned, cruel-looking metal rod. The assistant pinned Jared’s hip down. There was no ceremony. She positioned the rod against the broken stub of the bolt and applied steady, immense pressure.
A raw, animal sound tore from Jared’s throat. His back arched off the table, every corded muscle straining. Clara’s own leg throbbed in sympathetic agony. She couldn’t look away.
There was a sickening, wet pop. Siora worked quickly, her fingers now on the other side of his thigh where the arrowhead had just emerged. The snip of shears was obscenely loud. “Now,” she said, and pulled the ruined shaft back through the wound in one long, smooth, terrible motion.
Jared’s body went limp, his head lolling to the side. He’d passed out. The relief in the room was immediate, tinged with shame.
Siora didn’t pause. She packed the wound with a pungent green paste, then began stitching with methodical speed. The bleeding slowed to an ooze. She wrapped the leg in layers of clean linen, tight and precise.
“The fever will come,” she said, wiping her hands on a rag. She looked at the three of them. “He is strong. The bolt missed the major artery. If the poison doesn’t take him, he’ll walk again.” She pointed a bloody finger at Freir. “You. Out. I have other patients.” Her eyes flicked to his arm, which he was cradling again.
In a small side chamber, Siora cleaned and stitched the long slice on Freir’s forearm. He didn’t flinch, just watched the needle with detached interest. “Jared killed two on the slope,” he said quietly, to Kellen. “I got one. The others broke off when they saw the border markers.”
“Cost,” Kellen stated.
“Three of mine at the gate. One of theirs on the slope. Two more by Jared. Acceptable, for extracting a royal asset from the heart of enemy territory.” Freir’s tone was coldly analytical. Then he looked at Clara, who was leaning against the wall, watching Siora tie off his stitches. “It doesn’t feel acceptable, though, does it?”
She shook her head. The numbers were just numbers. They didn’t capture Tor’s choking gasp or the void in Jared’s eyes when the bolt went through.
Finished, Siora left them in the quiet, fire-warmed room. Jared was asleep in the next chamber, his breathing deep and regular. The fortress settled around them, a living, humming thing of stone and survival.
Freir sat heavily on a wooden bench, the exhaustion finally claiming him. Kellen remained standing, a sentinel by the door. Clara stayed against the wall, the solidity of it the only thing holding her up.
“So,” Kellen said into the silence. “We’re now fugitives harboring a disputed royal. Your father will spin the tale of your abduction by treacherous husbands.”
“My brother will demand my return,” Clara said, the old fear a dull echo. “He’ll be furious.”
“Let him,” Freir said, his head leaning back against the stone wall. His eyes were closed. “My father’s diplomats are already drafting the formal grievance for the breach of the marriage accords and the attempted murder of a prince and a duke. We’re not fugitives. We’re complainants.” He opened one eye. “You’re not a prisoner here, Clara. But you can’t go back. Not ever.”
The finality of it wrapped around her. The gilded cage was gone, reduced to splinters and bloodstains on a mountain pass. This fortress, this harsh, real place of grim faces and survival, was her world now. She looked at the three men—the wounded soldier, the calculating strategist, the weary prince. Her conspirators. Her unlikely guard.
Jared’s steady breath was a rhythm from the other room. It was the sound of a thread not cut. For now, it was enough.