. 02

She waited and waited for Zach to show up, unsure what she'd do or say when he did but nonetheless certain that she needed to see him. Her brother didn't come, though. Not up the stairs of her tower, nor across an ice bridge leading up to her window.

Was he too busy with Lena?

What was it between them, anyway? The woman was a monster, so far as Yvette could tell. Of course, after meeting the queen, she was pretty sure she would soon be as well, but still. Zach didn't know that. And he wasn't the kind of guy who'd go for that sort of thing. Was he? Heck, he'd not even been able to bring himself put Curt out of his misery. He'd hurt the guy real bad, but when push had come to shove, his sense of decency had won out. How then could he be drawn to the very woman who'd tried to get him to kill his friend?

Perhaps he had more of Daphne's cold blood in him than was outwardly apparent. He pretty much had to. Which was good, all things considered. But she wanted to be the one to draw it out of him. Fuck Lena.

With a sigh, Yvette mirrored a section of the ice walls.

There was no question that she'd changed since arriving in Winter, and that was as true on the outside as much as anywhere else. Once upon a time, her figure had brought her more shame than pride. But as she turned this way and that, studying her proud breasts, narrow waist, flat butt, and long, slender legs, Yvette couldn't help but smile. She would've liked to be more proportional, but she looked

good

. Fuck that false modesty shit.

She was a good deal prettier than she'd once been too. Not as pretty as Lena, let alone the infinitely gorgeous Lady Winter, but she definitely liked what she saw. Her nose was smaller, her blue eyes brighter, and her brows had acquired the shape she'd always tried to give them but had never quite been able to pull off. Thin, but not overplucked. Arched, but not excessively. Her complexion was perfect, entirely free of the acne she'd still struggled with after graduating high school. And even on her best hair day, the sheets of black silk falling to her shoulders hadn't been so perfect, so straight and shiny.

What did Lena really have on her, anyway?

Well, okay, the bitch had taken his virginity.

That was a cold, hard fact she couldn't deny. However much she wanted to. A freezing rain that kept falling on the mental parade she held in her own honor. Yvette might be looking better than ever, and feeling a confidence she'd never even imagined possible, but in at least one important respect, Lena would always have an advantage over her, just because she'd been Zach's first. It was that simple. All the more so because he was, at heart, a decent guy. Assholes didn't get sentimental or overattached just because a girl had spread her legs for him. But nice guys did. All the fucking time.

Damn. She'd

really

fucked up back in the cabin.

There were only so many ways that night could have ended, all of led to Winter, but at least Yvette could have given herself some chance of holding onto her brother. But noooo. She just had to have the confident, mysterious stranger instead. And so she was left wondering whether Lena would be the one to bring Zach over to the dark side.

No. No, no, no. She wasn't going to do this to herself.

Yvette snapped her fingers, shortening her skirts so they stopped at her ankles. A second snap collapsed the layers of satin into a single sheet of rumpled cotton, free of blue embroidery. Elegance might be called for when appearing before a queen, but her brother was a simple man, and he'd appreciate a more casual look. Besides, she didn't want him thinking she'd already decided her loyalties, even if she had. He might pull away if he realized that Daphne had brokered a peace agreement between her and Bad Yvette that gave all the territory to the latter and required the former to fully disarm.

Yvette pushed the thought aside, gave herself another look over followed by an approving nod that was mostly sincere, and then headed for the stairs.

Her brother would be hers soon enough, she assured herself as she made her way over to his tower. Well, no, not

hers

. The queen's, really. Which meant it didn't really matter who won him over. But even so, she'd be the reason he came around.

When she reached Zach's tower, her heart started racing. Yvette stopped at the bottom, listening for Lena's voice. Or the squeaking of a mattress. Realizing such was not only possible, but trivially easy, she projected her hearing up the long stairwell. Yet heard nothing but the cry of wind dying on the mountain and the low groan of thick blocks of ice. Drawing a deep breath, she ascended the stairs.

"Hey," her brother said before she quite reached his room.

"Hi," Yvette replied from the second-to-last step.

Zach was sitting in the air, legs folded beneath him, reading something on a tablet. There was something strange about the juxtaposition a feat rightly thought impossible in the world that had produced the advanced technology he held in his hands with the presence of a gadget few in Winter would find much use for.

That could be considered really symbolic. It probably didn't mean anything at all, but she couldn't help thinking that her brother was revealing just how conflicted he was. How close to giving in he'd already come. And why not? Though the powers they'd just discovered worked well enough in the Lodge, to truly embrace them would be to remain in Winter. To serve the glorious queen from whom they'd inherited them.

It was almost a wonder he hadn't laid the old Zach to rest already. Their mother was

that

amazing. And then some. There was simply no one like her.

"Whachya reading?" she asked, hoping she sounded casual.

It was a perfectly innocent question. She wasn't looking for clues as to where his mind was. Nope. Just making conversation. Nothing more.

Lady Winter had to have made at least as strong an impression on him as she had on Yvette. Nothing else would make sense. She was beyond amazing. So beautiful, so serene, and so powerful. Who could resist her?

Zach settled back down to the ground. As he did, he reached to the side and placed the device on a non-existent table. It winked out of existence. Or went into some extra-dimensional storage space. Whatever.

Yvette was surprised to realize that such things hardly seemed worth paying any attention to, though just a few days ago, the future engineer would found the mere mention of them somewhere between absurdly fanciful and utterly ridiculous.

"Oh, nothing," he said.

Yvette waited for him to elaborate, but he din't. "Something she gave you?"

"Lena? Or the queen?"

"Either, I guess," Yvette said, though she'd meant the former.

Her brother shrugged. "Nope." For a moment, she thought Zach was going to force her to settle for a clipped response again. But then he said, "I don't think she's ever read anything that wasn't printed on dead trees." One half of his beard shifted as he scrunched his face up pensively. "Hard to say, really, since none of us has apparently ever set foot in the real world. Or the real version of

that

world. Or whatever. Point is, she's a lot

lot

older than us, however young she might look."

She didn't look young, though. Not to Yvette's eyes. So far as she was concerned, the queen had an ageless look. The wisdom and patience of one who'd been around forever, but the skin of a teenager. And a figure that was not to be found on a mortal of any age.

The same was more or less true of all of them. For the rest of their lives, they'd look as young as they wished. Should they decide that a few hints of maturity might look good on them, the way Lance had, then their black manes would sport some silver and a few grooves might etch themselves into their faces. But otherwise, they'd stay young for

ever

.

Wow. That was going to take some getting used to.

It was entirely possible that Daphne was nearly as old as time. That she'd come to Winter before empires Yvette had learned about in school had risen, let alone fallen. If she didn't consider such things beneath her, Lady Winter could disabuse lots of people of lots of strange notions about history. Like the greatness of the Great Man, for starters.

"How old, exactly?" Yvette asked, a tone of reverence she hadn't quite meant to adopt creeping in. But who could blame her?

Zach shrugged. "Didn't ask. But she did say she's been in power for over a decade."

"Only a

decade

?"

Her brother snorted. "Time flows differently here. She said that more than a week has passed back in...the Lodge," he explained, stumbling over their name for the false world in which they'd grown up. "We haven't even been here for twenty-four hours." He said that last part with a detached curiosity, the way she might talk about the results of a lab experiment in her chem class. And without any appreciation for how unnecessary it was to mansplain that to her, as most of the guys in her chem class might. "If the simulations we'd though were our families were real, they'd be worried sick." He ran his hand through his hair. Yvette loved when he did that. For a nervous tic, it sure was cute. But just at the moment, she was more concerned with his tone. Not too long ago, he hadn't considered the people of that world mere simulations. "Well, they probably still are," he added, which was probably good, but he accompanied it with an indifferent shrug that seemed entirely at odds with the words coming out of his mouth. And with the boy she'd first met not so many hours ago. "I don't know. Makes my head hurt," he said, without much concern. "Either way, I figure it's possible she lived through the turn of a different century."

Well. That wasn't quite what Yvette been thinking. But it was still crazy.

Almost as crazy as Zach being totally unconcerned with the anguish they were causing, whether to real people or bits of software that could pass the Turing test.

"Of course, we didn't really spend

that much

time talking," Zach said with a half-smile.

Yvette grinned lasciviously. There was definitely a reason they were letting go of their old selves. Her more so than him, perhaps, but even her brother had noticed their mother's charms. Because of course he had. Lady Winter could make one forget that there was such a thing as warmth. That were colors other than black, white, and blue. That some people didn't live in homes made of ice, surrounded by snow that would never melt.

"She's something else, isn't she?"

"Yeah," Yvette said. "You could say that."

He nodded. And for a time, they both lost themselves in the memory of her touch.

It almost surprised Yvette when a trace of her brother's scent reached her nose. The air temperature in the frozen palace would have been murderously low, were they mortal. And she knew that odor molecules moved slower through cold air. All the same, his musk teased her nostrils, giving her a faint rush.

He hadn't smelled quite like that back in the Lodge, but then, their appearances weren't the only things they'd been masking subconsciously for most of their lives. When she'd first met Zach, he'd smelled like most college guys trying too hard to impress girls they didn't really see as people so much as potential fuck buddies---which was to say, he'd sacrificed an entire bottle of Axe body spray to the sex gods. But now, he smelled incredible. A little like a wild animal and a lot like a man, with the faintest trace of crisp peppermint. He smelled clean and fragrant, and not because of anything he'd applied via aerosol.

That almost made Yvette forget the conversation they were fumbling their way towards starting. She wasn't sure she'd ever met a man who smelled so good. Or that anything could enhance a guy's sex appeal as quickly, or disarm a girl as deceptively, as working through the power of scent. Especially since so many guys didn't try at all, or went crazy with the chemical crap. It seemed like there was something in the y-chromosome that damaged the olfactory senses. Or maybe smell just didn't play as big a role in attraction for men as it did for women. Either way, Yvette was having trouble thinking about anything other than how badly she wanted to throw her brother down on the bed, rip through that ridiculously-flattering-if-not-exactly-fashionable white T-shirt, and bury her nose in his chest hair.

Zach went and sat casually on the bed. His beautiful blue eyes beckoned her to join him, and Yvette didn't hesitate to comply. "So what do you think of her big plan?"

"She told it to you?"

A sheepish look came over her brother's face. "Didn't realize she'd held out on you."

"Well, she did," Yvette replied. Why tell her brother and not her? Wasn't he the one whose loyalty was in doubt? "But you're not gonna, right?"

The knife digging into her midsection, tearing roughly through her intestines, was cold and dull. Whatever she needed to do to convince the queen to open up to her, she'd do it. Gladly. Had she somehow given the impression that she wouldn't?

Zach frowned. "If the queen wanted you to know, you'd know." With a shake of his head, he added, "This must be some kind of test." He sighed. "I'm not sure how worthy of her trust I really want to be, but I

do

know I'd like to go on living."

Yvette regarded him in silence for a time. She didn't like it, but his reasoning was sound.

"Though I think I know what you meant about being at war with yourself," he added.

A faint grin spread across her lips. "But not the part about wondering whether you should kill me to prove you'd fit in here, right?"

"No, not that," he said quickly, and with genuine amusement. Awkward as the moment was, he seemed to be saying that they were in it together. He could be forgiven for being taken aback by the question, but he wasn't. In fact, he placed a hand on the bed beside her, letting his bicep and forearm press against her back in a way that was at once intimate and familiar yet not forward or presumptuous. It wasn't an assertive gesture, yet neither did it lack confidence. "That's pretty much the last thing I want to do to you."

Yvette felt like a schoolgirl again. It wouldn't be fair to say she hadn't feel like that in a long time, because Daphne had humbled her like no other lover. But this was different, if only because she could tell that her brother was feeling a little nervous himself.

"I just meant...is it wrong that when Lena said she and the queen could have fun converting me, it made me really hard?" he asked. But he didn't wait for her to answer. "Okay, of course it is. I know that. And part of me wanted to tell them I'll never be a wolf or a bear, whatever the heck they even mean by that. But another part of me...."

"Yeah," Yvette said. "They have that effect."

Maybe even Lena.

"She's not as bad as she seems," Zach continued. "I don't want to say it's all a front, because I don't think it is. There's no sympathy there for those who are not of her blood. Not even a little. And it seems that even some who are deserve only contempt, in her eyes." He let that hang there for a moment, as if hoping Yvette might disagree. But she saw absolutely no reason to. He gave himself a nod before resuming. "But in the end, I think she's working towards the right goal." He frowned. "I can't say what it is obviously, but I don't think it would bother her to hear me say that she's doing the right thing for the wrong reason." Then he laughed. "Well it might, but not because I gave too much away."

That gave Bad Yvette chills. They were beholden to a woman who might take offense at being accused of doing the right thing, and at some point in the last twenty-four hours, her brother had become the sort of person who might find that amusing. But even though she knew that ought to have unnerved her, she found it as thrilling as having ice swirled around her nipple, which she'd enjoyed even before first her father then her queen showed her how those with the right blood could produce such an effect with the tips of their fingers.

He understood. And it wouldn't take much to win him over.

"Maybe just a hint," Yvette asked, batting her eyelashes at her brother.

He laughed. The way he stared at her with those intense blue eyes made he feel penetrated as deeply as she hoped to be by his hard cock soon. Though nominally still interested in how he might respond to her request, she took the opportunity to lean in and taste his minty lips. Feel his soft beard bristling against her face and the palm she pressed to his cheek.

His breath was so cold. It hardened her nipples. Sent frozen fingers dancing down her spine. Mortal men neither kissed like that nor had the sense to wish they could. It was bewildering. When Yvette finally withdrew, she felt like she'd wrapped her lips around a bottle of peppermint schnapps rather than pressing them against her brother's.

It took a while for him to open his eyes again. "You know what you're doing."

"Damn straight."

They shared a laugh at that.

"I don't just mean with your lips," he said. "The way you reached inside me? That was...I don't know how to describe it. But I liked it."

She hadn't even realized she'd done it. But once he brought it up, she remembered exactly how she'd stimulated his Libido. Poured a thin streamer of her energy into the shallow depths of his own, agitating the latter for no reason other than that she could.

"We're not the same people anymore, are we?" he asked.

"Not really," Yvette said.

Not

at all

.

"And that's bad, right?"

"Maybe."

No. It really wasn't.

"Yeah," he said with an awkward chuckle. "I'm not sure either."

Yvette forced herself not to straddle her brother's hips and start ripping at his clothes while sinking her teeth into his neck. Didn't even allow herself to play with his beard, though it wasn't shy about tempting her to do so, sitting there looking all manly and sexy. "Tell me what good will inadvertently come from her master plan," she said. Her hand rubbed his hard cock through the fabric of his jeans and she noted with delight that he closed his eyes and groaned as she did. "Or I just might refuse to suck your big dick."

Zach laughed, eyes opening again. "No, you won't." He looked surprised at his own boldness, but alas, he wasn't wrong. "We both know you love the taste of cum."

Her head spun. He'd struck her at first as the type of guy who was enough of a pig to speak that way when he was with his friends, but too timid to ever say such things when alone with a girl. Yet here he was, calling his very own sister a cocksucker.

And she loved it.

"Only

your

cum."

"Or your father's," he said.

That sounded so strange. She couldn't consider Lance her father anymore. He was a brother, as he insisted. To think of him otherwise was to put him on the same level as Daphne, and that just wasn't right. Impressive as he was, she was in a league of her own.

"Probably Quincy's too, if the queen ever gave you the chance to find out." Zach laughed. "Fuck, who knows how many brothers we have. A veritable army, from the sounds of it. All supernaturally sexy. Each with his own unique taste."

"If you're trying to talk me

out

of your bed, I think it might be working," Yvette said. "Think I might go wander the halls and see who I bump into. Round up a bunch of brothers I've never met and start getting acquainted with them."

The hand behind her moved from the bed to her butt. It squeezed tighter than she'd ever have expected it to. The way Lance might.

"You'd like to watch that, wouldn't you? A brotherly blowbang?"

He leaned closer. "Just your mouth, then?"

"Oh, we're getting dirty now, are we?"

Again, he made her make the move. Or made too hard for her to resist the kiss he hadn't been looking for. Whatever. Either way, she could keep her lips from his no longer, so Yvette claimed another dizzying, breath-destroying frozen treat. And it was even sweeter than the first, even if it left her lips tingling and her brain filled with ice crystals.