Chapter 4 Chapter Four

Alaric

Aldric decides Maren matters before the dream has fully collapsed, which would be less irritating if I didn't feel the same thing he does. He simply trusts it. That has always been the fundamental difference between us. My brother can stand at the edge of something he doesn't understand, feel that it is right, and step forward because instinct told him to. I need to know who built the edge, why it exists, what happens after the first step, and whether somebody decided where I should land before I ever arrived.

"She's ours," Aldric says the moment we are both fully awake in Winter, sitting on the edge of my bed because he Shadowstepped into my room without knocking after feeling the dream break. I stare at him until he rolls his eyes. "Not ours like property. Stop looking at me like I'm an idiot." I rub both hands over my face because it is too early for whatever argument he is trying to start. "You said the sentence. I reacted to the sentence." He ignores that completely. "You felt it."

I did. That is the problem.

I can still feel the shape of Maren's hand around mine even though there is no physical reason I should. I remember her laugh, the little crease that appeared between her brows when she was irritated, the way hurt flashed across her face when I admitted I didn't know what I thought. None of those memories belong to a man who met a woman once in dreamspace. The attraction I can explain. She is beautiful, sexually open, and somehow reached two trained dreamwalkers across a boundary she should not even know exists. Curiosity would be reasonable. Desire would be extremely reasonable. This feels bigger than both, and I resent that enough to make Aldric grin at me.

"You're fighting it already," he says, sounding far too pleased with himself. I get to my feet and pull on a shirt because arguing naked will only encourage him. "I'm examining it." "You're fighting it." "I haven't known her long enough to decide anything about her." Aldric leans back on both hands, entirely comfortable in my room and in the conclusion he reached sometime between Maren moaning his name and waking. "You don't have to decide what she is to you tonight. You only have to stop pretending the pull isn't there."

I turn on him. "That is exactly what concerns me. If there is a mate structure involved, then something old and magical made a decision before any of us had the chance to. I've never wanted that. If I ever took a mate, I intended to choose her because I knew her and wanted a life with her, not because some buried piece of magic shoved us toward each other and informed me after the fact." Aldric's expression finally loses some of its amusement. "Fate putting someone in front of you isn't the same as fate making you love her."

"You don't know that." He stands too, green eyes sharpening. "Neither do you. That's my point. I felt her. I wanted her before I knew what any of it meant. I liked the way she argued. I liked that she laughed at you while your cock was in her hand. I liked that she asked whether she'd see us again instead of pretending she didn't care. Those things happened to me. Fate didn't manufacture them just because it might've opened the door first." I hate how much sense that makes, mostly because the answer doesn't remove the thing I actually resent. I still don't know which part began with me.

Before I can tell him that, Mother's voice comes through the private door connecting the family wing to the strategy rooms. "Both of you. Now." Aldric and I exchange a look. Mother never uses that tone unless she has already learned something we have not, which is enough to end the argument for the moment.

Father is waiting in the private strategy room with Mother and no advisers when we arrive. A route message is open across the central table, old seeker markings glowing at the edge of it. I recognize the classification before I read a word. The sender identifies herself as Pryssalyn, active Spring seeker assigned on Earth under the human name Piper Rowan. Her first line contains Maren Gracewood's name. Her second describes a High-Hinge symbol physically carved inside Maren's apartment after an unauthorized entry.

Her third line is much less diplomatic.

You answered her.

Aldric reads it over my shoulder and lets out a humorless laugh. "She makes that sound optional." I look at the dream trace Mother's recorders captured before the connection closed. "It should have been. That's part of the problem." Father reads the message again, then looks at us. "A private dream connection is one concern. Someone physically entering her home is another. Don't combine them simply because the timing is convenient. Tell me exactly who initiated the dream."

"Maren did," I answer before Aldric can turn it into evidence of fate. "Neither Winter gate opened the contact. Neither of us searched for her. She reached Aldric first and me almost immediately afterward, then held both connections long enough for a stable shared dreamspace to form." Mother comes closer to the table. "From Earth?" "Yes." Her expression changes slightly because she knows what that should require. Earth suppresses fae magic hard enough that trained travelers need maintained hinge routes to cross physically. An untrained sleeping woman should not be able to reach across the boundary by instinct.

Aldric folds his arms. "She called. We answered. I'm not apologizing for that." Father gives him the kind of look that has ended arguments between generals. It barely slows my brother. "Nobody asked you to apologize. I'm asking whether answering her exposed her." Aldric's jaw tightens. "Probably not." I turn my head. "Probably isn't the same as no." He gives me a flat stare. "Thank you, Alaric. I had forgotten how language works."

Mother ignores us and reads Pryssalyn's next note. "Maren thinks the encounter was an ordinary dream." Something in my chest tightens, and Aldric notices because of course he does. Mother continues before he can comment. "Pryssalyn says Maren doesn't know who she is, doesn't know Elaria exists, and has no confirmed proof that she is the Spring child Pryssalyn was sent to find. The break-in forced partial disclosure because the intruder left a High-Hinge mark intended for the seeker."

"Then we go," Aldric says immediately. I tell him, "You aren't deciding that alone," even though I already know I am going too, which makes the objection somewhat hypocritical. He looks at me and waits. I hate that he knows me well enough not to argue. I cannot tolerate the thought of him crossing without me, not because I think he is incapable, but because Maren is there. That truth annoys me more than it should.

Father rests both hands on the table. "If you cross, you go under your Earth covers. Frost remains the surname attached to both files. No royal insignia, no public magic unless a life is immediately at risk, and you don't identify Maren as a mate, princess, heir, or anything else until the facts support it and she has been told what those words mean." Aldric opens his mouth. Father points at him. "Especially you." My brother actually looks offended. "I know the difference between what I believe and what she has agreed to."

"Good," Mother says calmly. "Keep knowing it when you are frightened."

That silences him because it is the useful warning. Mother turns to me next. "And you. Do not punish Maren because you resent the possibility that magic made an introduction you did not request." The accuracy irritates me instantly. "I'm not punishing her." Mother lifts one eyebrow. "You hurt her in the dream by turning your uncertainty toward her instead of toward the system you are questioning. There is a difference." I remember Maren covering the hurt with sarcasm and have no defense worth offering.

Aldric looks between us and, wisely, says nothing.

Father activates the Earth cover records. Boise State transfer paperwork, housing, academic schedules, and athletic evaluations appear beside our names. Pryssalyn has apparently decided that putting two Winter princes on an American football roster is the least suspicious explanation for our size and for the amount of time we will need to spend near Maren. Aldric brightens visibly when he reads the sport summary. "Humans built a public game around hitting each other?" I close my eyes. "Please remember we are going there to protect someone, not discover your true calling."

He grins. "Those can be the same trip."

The ridiculousness should make this easier. It does not. I look again at Maren's name on Pryssalyn's message and feel the pull immediately, low and persistent. I want to see whether it survives daylight. I want to hear her voice when we aren't inside a dream. I want to know whether I still want her when every magical edge is stripped away and she is simply a woman standing in front of me with the freedom to decide she does not want either of us.

That is the part I can trust.

Choice.

Mine and hers.

If something ancient put us on the same path, then fine. I will still decide whether I walk it.

And for reasons I am not ready to examine too closely, I am already putting on my coat.