Wynter turned to the girl. The lethal threat of the Ice Gaze burned at the back of his eyes, and he knew he looked frightening. “Come here,” he commanded.

The Seasons clung to her as if to hold her back and keep her safe from him. Verdan’s dark eyes gleamed with triumph. He was all but gloating. No doubt he and his daughters thought Wynter would kill the girl now. That was the reputation Wyn had spent the last three years earning. Those who deceived him died. Usually by ice, sometimes in a messier fashion.

But Wynter remembered other things about last night. He remembered the slow, careful way his bride had walked to the altar. The curious smell of poppies and herbs that had made him wonder if she’d sought courage from a potion. The flinch when he’d put a hand at the small of her back and the way she’d refused to surrender her gown in bed—even when the only thing it covered was her back. Most of all, he remembered the blood—too much blood—on the sheets of their bridal bed.

Khamsin stilled her sisters’ objections and pulled away from their fearful grips to approach him. He learned something else about his wife that moment. She was brave. He could see the paleness beneath her dark Summerlander skin, could smell the fear on her, but still she came to him, step after courageous step.

“Take off that cape,” he ordered, when she drew near.

For a moment, he thought she might defy him, but apparently she thought the better of it. She fumbled with the golden frogs at her throat until the fasteners slipped free. Fur-lined wool puddled at her feet.

“Turn around.”

She obeyed, then flinched at the snick of metal against scabbard as he unsheathed his dagger. He lifted the blade to the back of her neck and plunged it downward in a single, carefully guided thrust of restrained violence, slitting the ties of her gown and her underlying corset and chemise in one pass. Material parted, and she flinched again as the room temperature plummeted several dangerous degrees.

With effort, Wynter sheathed his blade, stilled his hands from shaking and pushed aside the fabric to bare her back. He examined the extent of the damage without a word, fingers hovering so close to her skin little bursts of energy arced towards his hands as they passed. From one shoulder to the other, down the length of her spine to the inviting dip just above her bu**ocks, where her skin disappeared into her skirts, her back was a horror of yellowing bruises, angry red scars, and half-healed wounds.

His hands withdrew. Without a word—he did not trust himself to speak—he bent to retrieve her cloak from the ground and handed it to her. She tugged it back into place to cover her naked back, refusing to look at him. She’d been beaten like a cur, and he could see it shamed her deeply to have him know it.

He would not allow her even visual retreat. Cupping her face in one broad hand, he forced her with gentle implacability to face him. His anger was a burning flame, one that did not emit heat but rather consumed it. It grew even icier when he saw the mark, high on her left cheek. A shape very familiar to him, having only just seen it on scores of documents.

The Rose of Summerlea. The king’s royal seal. Not the large, ostentatiously engraved seal of the office of the king, but the smaller simpler version made by Verdan’s signet ring. Burned into her cheek like a brand.

“I will not ask who beat you,” he said. His thumb brushed across her cheek, over the ridges of the Rose branded into her skin. “As he signed his work, there is no need.” Then his voice dropped to a low whisper for her ears only. “Was marriage to me such a terrible fate that this was the better option?”

Her eyes shot up to lock with his. Her full lips trembled. “I—”

His lips thinned, and he stepped back. “Go with your sisters. Put on a different gown. Something loose-fitting that will not damage you further.”

He waited for his wife and her sisters to leave the chamber, then advanced on Verdan with slow deliberation.

“You sought to deceive me. You beat your own child within an inch of her life so she would go along with your deception. Which hand did you beat her with, Verdan? Which hand did you raise against the woman you gave to me as wife? This one, I think.” His hand shot out, snatching Verdan’s right wrist—his sword arm—and holding it in a grip of stone.

“You made a mistake, Summerlander,” Wynter continued. “She is my wife now. By the laws of the Craig, it is my duty to seek justice for any crimes done against her—even those crimes committed against her before we wed. The blows you struck against her are now blows struck against me.

For the first time all morning, genuine fear crept into Verdan’s eyes.

“This hand, which beat my wife until she could scarcely stand, you will never lift again against another. She lives, and so you live. But the hand you raised against her dies.” Power came to his call, burning his veins with ice, traveling down his arm to the hand that gripped Verdan’s right wrist.

Verdan hissed as the first, painful tingles of cold shot through his skin. As the blood and flesh began to freeze, his eyes widened, and he began to struggle, but Wynter grabbed him by the throat and squeezed, sending the Summer King to his knees.

The frost spread, creeping up the Summer King’s arm to his shoulder and down to the tips of his fingers. His choked cries turned to outright shrieks as the skin of his frozen hand and arm began to harden. Relentless, icy, unmoved by the other man’s pleas for mercy, Wynter held his grip until the arm was a dead, useless hulk of flesh.

Through it all, Wynter felt nothing. No remorse, no pity. Not even a particular rage. His heart was an unmoved block of ice in his chest. When he released his enemy, the once-haughty Summer King hunched over his dead arm, weeping and moaning, his body racked by shivers.