A Lick Of Frost   ::   Гамильтон Лорел

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It was not sword and shield that I first learned with these arms, it was axe and any other work a strong back could do to help take care of his family."

"You had children," I whispered.

"No. I thought it was because I wasn't real enough. Now, since you remain without child I wonder if it is simply not my fate to have children."

"But you were a couple," I said.

"Yes, and a priest who was more friendly than Christian even married us. But we could not stay in any one village for long, because I did not age. I grew with my Rose until I am as you see me now. Then I stopped, but she did not. I watched her hair turn from yellow to white, her eyes fade from the blue of winter to the gray of snowy skies."

He looked up at me then, and there was fierceness in his face. "I watched her fade, but I loved her always. Because it was her love that made me real, Merry. Not faerie, not wild magic, but the magic of love. I thought I was giving up what life I had to save Rose, but the consort had asked if I would give up everything I was, and I did. I became what she needed me to be. When I realized that I would not age with her I wept, because I could not imagine being without her."

He came to his knees and put his hands on my arms, and stared down into my face. "I will love you always. When this red hair is white, I will still love you. When the smooth softness of youth is replaced by the delicate softness of age, I will still want to touch your skin. When your face is full of the line of every smile you have ever smiled, of every surprise I have seen flash through your eyes, when every tear you have ever cried has left its mark upon your face, I will treasure you all the more, because I was there to see it all. I will share your life with you, Meredith, and I will love you until the last breath leave your body or mine."

He leaned down and kissed me, and this time I kissed him back. This time I melted into his arms, his body, because I could do nothing else.



CHAPTER 16

WE ENDED WITH HIM ABOVE ME. HIS HAIR HAD COME UNBOUND and fell around us like silver rain, if rain could be soft as silk and warm as your lover's body. Our skin glowed as if we'd swallowed the moon, and it was shining out of every inch of our skin. I knew my hair was a mass of red shining fire, because I could see the light of it from the edges of my eyes. His hair began to spark and shine as he moved above me, catching the light the way snow glitters in moonlight. I'd had other lovers who brought the sun to bed with them, but Frost was a winter's night with all its beauty and harshness.

He was too tall, or I was too short for him to lie down on top of me.

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