Book II: Chapter 7 – The Wrong Kind of Cold

Morning light fills the room.

Not the warm kind that settles on your skin and makes waking up feel like a mercy. This is thinner than that. Colder. The kind that forces itself through heavy curtains just enough to announce that night has ended whether anyone agreed to it or not.

To my delight, nothing else about the morning is cold.

The Emberwell Inn, true to its luxury, keeps all of that outside where it belongs.

And then, on top of that, or rather, on top of me, Kit is draped dreamily across my chest on the heavy plush couch. We never made it to bed last night. At some point, someone covered us with a thick patchwork quilt, and the Harem Bed ability did the rest.

I glance around slowly.

The hearth in the main room has burned low, its last coals breathing soft orange under a blanket of ash. Morning does its meager work through the curtains, barely brightening the suite. On the table beside the fire, the Crystal Skull of the Spectral Choir sits quiet and pale, its radiance dimmed to a respectful hush.

My eyes drift to Kit’s face as my hand rises almost on its own, brushing a loose strand of blonde hair away from her cheek. The tiny white tufts on her ears droop comfortably beneath my touch, and my fingers linger there for a moment, slow and gentle.

I press a soft kiss to her temple. That stirs her in all the right ways.

Kit shifts against me with a sleepy little sound that is far too intentional to be mistaken for anything else. She is awake. Just basking in the Harem Bed warmth the same way I am, wrapped in comfort, recovery, and the dangerous luxury of not needing to move yet.

For one foolish, wonderful moment, I let myself think about it being just us.

The thought slips through the bond, and it isn’t innocent.

Her smile curves against my chest before her hand slips beneath the quilt, trailing lazily down until she finds more than enough evidence of where my mind has gone.

Her amber eyes open slowly and lift to mine.

“Master,” she murmurs, voice still rough with sleep, “you are very awake.”

My eyes meet hers as her hand lingers beneath the quilt, stoking the evidence of my not-so-innocent thoughts until my breath catches.

My own hand drifts up her leg, over the curve of her hip, and settles against the soft roundness of her backside, squeezing just where I know it will make her smile.

“Well,” I manage, my voice strained and deepening, “you’re waking me up in all the right ways.”

Kit’s smile turns slow and wicked as her grasp becomes firmer.

In playful retaliation, my fingers drift back over her exposed hip and the pale softness of her skin, tracing slow circles that make her breath catch against me. My hand slips lower a moment later, between her thighs, cupping her warmth, and for one deeply unfair second, I regret that we both slept in our clothes. Still, the fabric is yielding enough for my touch to find what I am looking for, and Kit approves immediately. Her eyes sparkle, her lips part, and the smile she gives me is all wicked permission and sleepy hunger.

Our eyes remain locked as our breathing quickens, warm against each other’s mouths between kisses that come in soft, sensual bursts. What starts playful turns more deliberate by the second, smiles fading into quiet need as clothing becomes less a comfort and more an obstacle.

Her fingers work deftly at buttons, impatient and sure, and a strained breath catches between us when the last bit of clothing finally gives way, freeing me enough for her grasp to become firmer and her strokes bolder. I answer in kind, my hand slipping beneath the fabric at her hip, brushing through the soft white tuft between her thighs until Kit arches closer with a quiet, eager sound. 

Our mouths find each other again, deeper this time, hungry enough to swallow Kit’s desperate little sounds and my own rougher groans between kisses. The playfulness burns away into something needier as we race each other toward the same breathless edge of blissful release. The moment takes us both in a trembling, beautiful mess. 

“Kit…” I groan.

“Vincent…” she gasps. 

My eyes snap fully open.

Not because of the rush still throbbing through me.

Not because of the way she clings to me, breathless and shuddering, her eyes closed in perfect, helpless ecstasy.

Because she calls my name. 

Not Master.

Vincent.

She collapses against my chest, breathless and warm, her hand slowing until touch becomes less urgency and more embrace.

For a few heartbeats, neither of us moves.

The room comes back in soft pieces. The quilt. The low hearth. Morning light pressing faintly through the curtains. Kit’s breathing against my skin.

My mind, unfortunately, does not come back softly but races instead with thoughts that I bury almost the instant they form, shoving them down before the bond can catch the shape of them and carry them to her.

A few minutes pass before a knock comes from the bedroom door.

Enora’s door.

I freeze, slightly startled, mostly because if Raka or Perri had been moving around, I would have felt them through the bond. It is not them. It is Enora, unbonded and apparently polite enough to knock before entering the common room in a suite she is technically already inside.

A courtesy announcement.

My mind catches up a heartbeat later.

“Were we that vocal?”

Kit’s ears flick, and she blushes in an answer that says probably yes.

Things happen very quickly after that. Clothes are adjusted. Buttons are dealt with. Kit makes herself look innocent with the speed of a professional criminal. The quilt ends up wadded on the floor in a state that makes it very clear it will need to be laundered before anyone respectable looks at it too closely.

“Yes?” I call, trying to sound like I have not just been caught with a woman on a rented couch.

The door opens a crack as the brim of Enora’s hat emerges.

“I don’t mean to disturb you…” she says, barely above a whisper.

Her voice trails off.

“…you two,” she corrects.

Kit’s mouth twitches in a smirk.

I clear my throat and do my best to sit casually on the couch, despite the fact that casual is no longer available as a believable option.

“Enora, it’s okay,” I say. “Please come out.”

For one terrible second, her hat does not move.

Then she steps into the room, eyes carefully angled anywhere except the quilt.

The hat does most of the work for her. Its brim sits low enough that I can only see the lower half of her face, which is unfortunate for her, because the lower half of her face is doing absolutely nothing to hide the blush creeping across her cheeks.

Kit notices, and I feel her amusement brush against the bond like a tail flicking over my ribs.

Enora clears her throat.

Then again, like the first attempt has failed some private academic standard.

“I was awake,” she says, her words landing in the room with all the grace of a dropped plate.

“I mean, not intentionally awake. I woke up. And then I remained awake. Because there were sounds.”

Kit’s smirk grows wider.

Enora’s fingers tighten around the edge of her sleeve. Her eyes remain hidden beneath the brim of her hat, but her voice continues in that careful, scholarly rhythm she uses when emotion is trying to break into the room and she intends to barricade the door with terminology.

“Which is not a complaint,” she adds quickly. “Nor a judgment. Merely an observation. The walls are thick, but apparently not absolute, and the common room produces unusual acoustic behavior.”

Kit makes a small sound against my side, barely contained mirth pressing through the bond.

Enora’s blush deepens.

“Which I am not asking about,” she says.

“Mostly.”

I cough into my fist, now also grinning.

Kit’s ears perk with immediate, wicked interest.

Enora seems to realize what she has just said and retreats another inch beneath her hat without actually moving.

“What I mean,” she says very carefully, “is that Thronstadt is a large city with formal guild infrastructure, winter market districts, regulated adventurer access, and apparently an extremely aggressive relationship with cold weather.”

That is, without question, the hardest pivot I have ever watched another person attempt.

I respect it.

“I was thinking,” she continues, still hidden deep beneath her brim, “that not everyone needs to go back out into the cold this morning. Raka and Perri looked tired last night, Kit is clearly…”

Her voice catches.

Kit’s smile becomes dangerous.

Enora chooses emotional survival.

“…comfortable,” she finishes.

“Very,” Kit murmurs.

Enora’s hat lowers another fraction.

“So,” Enora says, “I could go with Vincent to the market. For warmer clothing. Cloaks, gloves, boots, inner layers, anything treated for snow or wet stone. Proper Thronstadt gear, not Marrowpine travel gear pretending it knows what winter is. We can both cast Identify and Detect Magic, and I can cast Lore if needed.” 

I blink at her.

That is actually practical.

Very practical.

Suspiciously practical.

“You want to come with me?” I ask.

Her fingers worry at her sleeve again.

“I would like to see the city,” she says. “Properly. Not just the gate, the inn, and whatever judgmental guild banners can be observed from street level.”

There is the faintest spark of curiosity in her voice now, peeking through the embarrassment.

Academic curiosity. The kind that makes her sound more like herself.

“And,” she adds more softly, “I think it may be easier if only two of us go. Less attention. Less cold exposure for the others. Fewer questions if anyone recognizes your subclass before we understand how registration works here.”

That sobers me. She has been paying attention.

Kit shifts against me, amusement dimming into protection.

“It can’t be just you and Master,” she says.

Enora finally lifts her face enough for one purple eye to appear beneath the brim of her hat. It fixes on Kit, clearly challenging the logic of why she cannot be alone with me for a simple trip to the market.

Before that look turns into something it is not, I jump in.

“Enora, my abilities, magic, and literal physical well-being are tethered to my subclass and my bonded companions.”

I try to make that sound academic.

I fail somewhere around “physical well-being,” mostly because the couch, the quilt, and Kit’s smug little smile are still doing absolutely nothing to help me appear professional.

Enora looks back and forth between us, trying very hard to work through that statement without blushing harder.

“I mean, it’s distance related,” I say quickly. “Physically. The Harem Bond weakens the farther I am from one of my…”

Kit cuts me off before I can make it worse.

“I’ll go with you two casters,” she says, stretching like the matter is settled. “Besides, I don’t believe for a moment that either of you would pick out anything cute for us to wear.”

Ignoring Kit’s jab at our fashion sense, I nod to both of them.

It is not lost on me that Enora is thinking of us like a party.

For the family she is not ready to admit she is orbiting.

I encourage it carefully.

“Thronstadt cold-weather gear sounds smart,” I say. “And thoughtful, Enora.”

Her hat dips slightly.

“We passed the market entrance near the main gate when we came in,” I continue. “That seems like the best place to start.”

Kit stretches beside me, looking entirely too pleased with herself.

“And the best place to prevent two casters from dressing everyone like suspicious librarians,” she adds.

Enora’s visible eye narrows in something that weirdly looks like a challenge.

“I know how clothing works.”

Kit smiles.

“That is not the same thing.”

Enora’s eyes drop despite her blush, taking in the plunging neckline of her own black dress and the rather ample cleavage contained by it. Evidence that she understands presentation better than her hat would like us to believe.

Her gaze lifts again from beneath the brim, one twinkling purple eye fixing on Kit, then on me.

“Isn’t it?”

Sometime later, I check in on Raka and Perri.

Both of them are very comfortable.

They are both also mildly irritated about missing out on the benefits of the Harem Bed last night, and both of them have mixed opinions about being left at the inn while the rest of us go into the city.

That lasts until I explain that this is not an adventure. It is a purely practical shopping trip led by Enora and fashionably supervised by Kit.

Raka and Perri stare at me for a moment.

In unison they groan at the thought.

“Yeah,” Raka says, rolling back into the blankets. “I’m out.”

Perri burrows deeper into her pillow with a tiny sigh.

“Please bring something warm,” she murmurs.

“And cute,” Kit calls from the common room.

Perri’s ears twitch as her green eyes plead directly to me.

“Warm first,” she says.

Raka snorts.

And just like that, they both agree to be left out of this particular battle.

Stepping out into the streets of Thronstadt is nothing less than terrible, even after the Hostess’s warning that it is cold out there.

If anything, the Emberwell Inn makes it worse.

Leaving that place feels like betrayal.

We pass through the first set of doors, then the second, moving from warm, humid air and suffocating comfort into the bitter, wind-swept street beyond. The transition is so violent it feels like a heroic feat of will just to keep walking instead of turning around and crawling back to the hearth.

Kit flinches hard enough that her ears flatten. “Lorica Noctis.”

Spectral armor blooms around her in a wash of ghostly light, wrapping her like moonlit smoke. It forms against the arctic wind as surely as it would against a blade.

I am not so lucky.

Neither is Enora.

She takes exactly three steps before realizing that, in this specific climate, the plunging neckline of her black dress is no longer quite the asset it was indoors.

It is still early, and the snowfall from the night before has not been fully cleared from the streets. Shopkeepers, city guards, and maintenance crews move through the morning bundled in heavy coats, scarves, gloves, and fur-lined hoods, battling the ever-building drifts while giving the three of us looks that suggest we are either very brave or very stupid. Possibly both.

Yesterday was cold with snowfall. 

Today’s whipping wind is something else entirely.

It cuts through every gap in my clothing and makes a very convincing argument that the Emberwell Inn should never have been left. 

We move from cleared shop eaves to corners, ducking under awnings and using any scrap of cover we can find. Even through the bond, I can feel Perri cringing for us from the warmth of the inn.

Which is not helpful, but accurate.

We battle through several blocks of wind before reaching the main gate and the crossroad that leads to the already-waking market beyond it. 

From here, I can see Firebeard and Snorts standing vigilant near the gate, bundled against the morning and watching traffic with the same tired suspicion as yesterday. Fire barrels burn nearby for warmth like any other day. 

I consider calling out, but then the wind hits me sideways hard enough to make my eyes water, and I decide that any detour requiring extra steps can go die heroically in the snow.

The market is closer this way and the need is real.

A few more blocks past the gate bring us to the edge of the market square. 

The place is already waking, though reluctantly. Stalls creak open beneath layers of snow. Shopkeepers sweep their thresholds with the exhausted determination of people who know the sky is only going to replace whatever they clear. Lanterns glow behind frosted glass, turning the square into a blur of warm windows, cold stone, and wind-driven white.

Enora points toward a shop not far away:  The Winterglass Wardrobe 

Its windows boast warmth and luxury in careful displays of fine clothes, fur-lined cloaks, heavy coats, gloves, scarves, and boots that look like they could survive a war against winter and win.

I am already heading that way with her when dread slams through the bond.

I turn hard.

Kit is standing still behind us, frozen so completely that, for one awful second, the wind itself seems to forget her. The cold is no longer the thing touching her. Her sharp amber eyes are wide with horror, fixed across the market square toward the far end.

“How is it… here?” she sends through the bond, her voice shaking. 

Kit being afraid is rare enough.

Kit being this afraid moves me before thought can catch up.

My hand snaps to Stormcast, drawing it free as I angle the spear toward whatever threat has found us. Snow whips across the square, thick enough to blur faces, signs, roofs, and moving bodies into half-seen shapes. I scan through it, pulse rising, searching for the thing that has drained what little color Kit has.

Then I see it.

Looming beyond the edge of the market like a shadow the city has failed to notice.

The slave traders’ tent.

Not a tent.

The same impossible, unmistakable, horrid place we thought we left behind in Marrowpine.

Wind be damned, I stand frozen beside Kit.

My arm reaches for hers.

She almost flinches when I touch her. Almost.

“That’s impossible,” I mutter.

Kit looks at me, dread sharpening into anger before her gaze snaps back across the square.

Enora calls something through the drowning roar of the wind, but I can barely hear her. For a moment, Kit and I just stand there, freezing, staring, seething with enough heat to make us forget the cold.

Faces from every cage I left behind rise suddenly in my memory.

Worse memories flood through the bond from Kit, jagged and awful, but they burn away beneath the anger she has for one person.

The Greasy Slave Trader.

Enora, unable to see what we are looking at and clearly not understanding why it feels like an immediate threat, shakes us out of it.

“We need to get out of this wind!” she calls.

The cold is not dramatic anymore. It is dangerous.

I step in front of Kit, blocking her line of sight with my body. Not because I think she cannot handle it, but because I need her to feel me instead.

“Kit,” I send through the bond, steady and firm. “I don’t know how that’s here, but I promise you, we’ll find out. Not right now. Right now, we need clothing.” 

A very real chill still clings to her through the bond.

Then slowly, painfully, it begins to melt beneath the warmth I push toward her.

Kit’s hand finds mine. Her exhaled breath is lost to the wind as she nods in agreement.

The three of us move quickly out of the street, escaping the wind and snow through the polished doors of The Winterglass Wardrobe.

Warmth folds around us immediately.

The kind that smells faintly of cedar, wool, polished wood, and money.

But despite the heat rolling through the room...

Thronstadt has suddenly grown that much colder.