Somehow the clouds had found another swell of emotion, and a new wave of gentler rain cascaded down and pattered rhythmically over the naked forest. The outdoor tempest had swathed most of the ambient light trickling into the cave with a pallid gossamer shroud. Everything was diffused, softened, dreamlike. Even the shade of the cave had a plushness to it, like many velvet curtains overlapping: dark and supple. As Kobato crept her way quietly across the dirt floor, the muted silver light washing over the cave’s entrance silhouetted her dainty frame in delicate brush strokes of frost. He told her to come, and she complied, the glimmer of her warm amber eyes flashing and fleeting like bright fish circling lazily in a stream. Vladya sensed his own anxious energy resonating from the smooth stone walls behind him. Eventually Kobato stood so that the doorway was all but obscured, and there was only the two of them—only vague outlines of snow and copper, only two pairs of enraptured eyes, only the comforting sound of lungs moving as their breath warmed the space.

Her kisses, all over his face.

Warm. Gentle. Love.

Without warning, a lean forelimb reached out and hooked over Kobato’s shoulders, pulling her tight to Vladya’s concrete chest and cradling her in the protective curve of his body. He sheltered her crown below his jaw, upper body hooding her possessively, a dragon guarding his hoard. A simmering, petulant growl rippled through his vocal chords like a lick of flames. “Don’t you dare squirm away. I want to hold you for a bit.” Or all night. Or forever. “Be good.”

Heat was blossoming where their pelts touched, a skin of crackling electricity that entwined itself with Vladya’s every nerve. Restless energy squeezed his heart and sent arcs of fire down his abdomen, into the base of his pelvic bone—he forced himself to calm his breath, restraining exhalations that wanted to be pants and moans. She was here. Right here. His. Mine, mine, mind. He wouldn’t hurt her—he’d be gentle, for the first time in his life he’d be gentle, and kind. Except . . . there was this thought. A jarring clip of her limp form on Abendrot earth, him curled around her to keep her warm while she slept. Slashing across his vision. Why . . . why did he remember that? Now of all times? An odd sadness made the electric buzz shivering down his pallid cloak fizzle out. Kobato was his world. He thought he should understand her a little better before he earned the right to touch her.

“Kobato . . . what happened back at Abendrot?” Something close to terror spilled into Vladya’s stomach, slowly swirling like a sip of bitter alcohol in a glass. And stirred in with that fear: desire. An intoxicating, sickening cocktail. Desire for her and her fur and her soul, and also desire to know the truth. His entire life, Vlad had been programmed to bury the past. If something bad happens, never speak of it again. But Vladya was beginning to see that the ruthless laws that kept him alive on the tundra were not universal. Kobato was teaching him that, bit by precious bit. Now a newly blooming instinct told the war-torn soldier that perhaps such memories were meant to be exorcised instead of entombed. He held his own horrific stories, bound up in hide and barbed wire within his chest. Those he would work on later, with help from his lady’s compassionate hand. He felt he owed this to Kobato . . . if anyone deserved a chance to open their heart and let the poison pour out, it was her.

“Before Kershov,” the ivory warrior continued slowly, “there was something wrong. Very wrong. You were always so happy whenever you came to see me. I . . . I didn’t know . . . you could be like that.” One time Vladya had been tortured so badly he wept and pleaded for death—and surprisingly that wasn’t by his heartless ex-King. No: this particular son-of-a-bitch was a psycho in his own tier, just about burned to scorching ashes by his own feverish insanity, and young Vlad had been unlucky enough to cross his path. At one point, after his limbs had been dislocated and blood ran from every part of his battered body, the monster told Vladya that he was going to skin him alive. Vladya believed him. And the white knight did not feel such visceral horror as he did then until Kobato limped up to Abendrot with her eyes empty portals of glass.

The vision of her innocent face so obscured by darkness haunted him to this day. He shuddered as he held her. “Please tell me.” It was an apologetic whisper filled with love, because Vladya knew that the answer would harm his dove if it ever came. All he could do was cradle her here and try to pick up the pieces if she fractured.