It was winter. It was wartime. It was snowing. A fresh layer of downy whiteness was beginning to cover the broken bodies in the clearing, the congealing blood that lay like pools of garnet across the ice. In the midst of that quieted carnage, a man and a girl were kneeling. The man was broad-shouldered, dark-eyed, dressed in the gray and crimson of Zanthar. His palms were roughly callused, his torso wrapped in thick bands of muscle, his skin scarred with the stories of the many battles he'd endured. Yet in this moment he appeared still. Almost gentle. Because the girl in front of him was crying bitterly. And his hands on her thin shoulders were soft.
...
"I cannot bear it," said Zara at last. Tears had left tracks of salt on her pale cheeks. Her voice was painfully hoarse, her fragile body nearly limp under Caspian's warm hands. Everything about her was screaming, pain.
"You can bear it." Caspian ran his thumbs across her high cheekbones, wiping the tears from her cool skin. He looked at the pads of his thumbs, shimmering and damp, wondered at the caress he had just bestowed on her. Such a touch had no place in their world. Neither one of them had felt anything quite like it.
Zara heaved a shuddering breath. The snow was beginning to swirl around them again, and the air was growing swiftly colder. One of her pale hands moved to brush a fire-red strand of hair out of her eyes. "Please," she spoke at last. "I'd like to say the rites."
When he paused, he saw panic cross her face. "Please," she begged. "I know it's cold, but—"
"It's not that. In Zanthar, we have no death ceremonies. I'd forgotten that some do."
"Oh." Zara was taken aback. She touched a gentle finger to his strong forearm, tracing one of the blue veins briefly. "I am sorry."
Caspian shrugged, an attempt at nonchalance. "You were right about the cold; it's getting colder by the second, little girl. We should get moving."
"But—please. Our rites don't take long. Please. I know that you saved me, Captain. I see what my fate would have been. I know what you've done for me. I won't fight you any longer, I swear it."
Her voice was so earnest that Caspian felt moved, but he knew his instinct to push forward was right. The sky was darkening, massive iron-colored clouds circling. The weather was worsening by the second. They needed to be getting back to shelter before it was too late. But looking down at those sad, sea-glass green eyes, Caspian found that he didn't want to say no. "Be quick," he compromised finally.
Zara didn't smile, but the peace that came over her pretty face was just as sweet. As she moved towards the broken forms of the priestesses, he suddenly wanted to protect her, to cover those ruined bodies before she could see the gruesome details of the scene.
As if she could read his thoughts, Zara turned back toward him, the blue winter's light framing her delicate silhouette like a halo. "You don't need to worry," she offered gently. "I've been going down to the battlefields for weeks. I've seen these things."
"Not when it's someone you love. It's different. It's harder."
Zara shook her head. "They weren't my loved ones, but they were someone's, on the battlefields. It is the same."
Caspian let himself fall silent. He knew the timbre of that tone, the steel that edged her honey voice. It was the edge of someone gritted for battle. Grim, but not naïve.
Zara knelt by each of the five bodies, closing their eyes tenderly, her fingers light but never trembling. She brushed hair from faces, straightened shattered limbs. When she turned back to look at him, he saw that she still had the blood of the Zanthar soldier smeared on her cheek. Still, he thought he had never seen something so pure.
He wasn't sure if he was meant to watch the rites, but Zara didn't seem to be bothered by his presence. She was chanting softly, occasionally touching a cold hand or forehead. Caspian remembered when she had healed him—now, too, there were the soft sounds of bells mixed with Zara's lilting voice, a soft buzzing that warmed the frosted air.
When she had finished, the clearing felt different. Serene. Caspian watched, astounded, as Zara knelt down by each of the slaughtered Zanthar soldiers and closed their eyes as well.
When she came to stand before him again, Caspian felt that he knew her. Watching her move about the clearing like an angel of death, he caught a deeper glimpse of who she was, how she must have lived her short, sweet life. He had seen straight through those clear green eyes, straight to the golden light at the center of her being.
He had seen her, and he could not look away.
So he was not surprised when she raised up on her tiptoes like a ballerina and kissed him softly on the cheek. She was a healer; it was what she did.
"We should be going," he said gruffly. As if responding to his words, the wind howled like a hungry wolf about their shoulders. Zara shivered. He pulled her in to his chest, letting her sink against him for a moment, letting his strong arms block the wind's bite.
She pulled away too soon, steeled for the journey. "Let's go."
They walked through the flurrying snow quickly, heads bent against the cold. The snow was higher than Zara's knees, and watching her wade through the drifts was painful. He knew she had to be freezing.
Still, he resisted the urge to carry her, not wanted to hurt her pride and knowing their makeshift shelter was close. The snowstorms here usually settled down after the second day; in the morning, they should be able to travel again.
It took a few minutes for him to find their shelter, camouflaged as it was among the snow banks. After that, it was short work to dig back inside and re-barricade the doorway.
Zara was shivering so hard she couldn't speak. Caspian pulled her down onto the canvas tarp and covered her with the blanket, pulling off his cloak to drape it over them. When Zara's numb fingers fumbled at the clasp of her ivy-green cloak, he unhooked it swiftly, taking a moment to let his eyes trace the lines of her form through her white dress. Her gown was remarkably clean given the events of the past few hours, and when he pulled if from her shoulders he carefully folded it beneath her head like a pillow.
He knew she was in mourning, and he knew their lives were at stake. But he was still a man, and she was still so beautiful. He couldn't stop the heat that stirred deep in his belly and pooled through his limbs. He wondered if she could feel it, if the warmth of his feelings for her were radiating through his skin like beacons.
It was that slip. Zara in that slip. It was enough to make him forget the trauma the girl had been through; it was hard to think clearly when he could see so much of her creamy skin. It was hard to think at all. His hands were running over her cool arms, down the sides of her jutting ribs, into the soft curve of her tightly coiled waist. He wasn't sure if he was trying to warm her, or simply trying to run his hands over every slope and angle of her slender body. It didn't matter. It was enough to just touch her, to watch her dusky lashes float against her cheeks as if she wasn't despising his touch much at all.
He pulled back to look at her. "Are you warm enough?"
