Page 61 of Cold Hearted
“What? Who?”
He grasped my hand, pulling me toward Omen. “Come on. We’re going to meet the Wise Ones.”
I frowned. “The who?”
He peered back at me with slight fear in his gaze. “The keepers of all knowledge. You only get to ask them one question, so you better make it a good one, Dawn.”
Oh great.
No pressure there.
Chapter 18
After eating breakfast, washing up, and packing away camp, we left when the sun was just peeking out in the sky. The entire six-hour ride north I pestered Zander about the Wise Ones. Apparently they were extremely powerful immortal fae. Because they had small horns on their heads, they’d been seen as unseelie and exiled here when the royals of Faerie kicked everyone out. Each soul could ask them one question and they would answer. They knew everything there was to know about everything, and spent their time hunched over books and scrolls for eons. But Zander said he suspected they also possessed a supernatural psychic ability—knowing things that had not yet come to pass.
“Why do you think that?” I asked as I leaned into his embrace. Omen was riding steadily to the Northern Mountains where the Wise Ones lived.
“I went to see them when the rondak took over my kingdom. I asked what I could do to get my kingdom back.”
I nodded. “And what did they say?”
I imagined they gave him a detailed battle strategy or something.
He chuckled. “Nothing.”
I frowned. “What?”
“They said, ‘Nothing.’ There was nothing I could do to defeat the monster that had stolen my kingdom. I was so confused and furious at that answer that I left and wrote them off as fools. But now I see.” He tipped my chin to look up at him. “They were right. It was always supposed to be you. I was waiting for you to hand me back my kingdom, and you did.”
Chills broke out onto my arms at that. Could they know the future?
“So what’s your question going to be?” he asked as we pulled Omen up to the base of a looming mountain and stopped.
We’d arrived? Already?
I swallowed hard. “Is there anything else that I can do to save the people of Faerie from the curse, other than taking the heart of an Ethereum lord?”
“Yes,” Zander said quickly.
“What?”
“That is a yes or no question. That’s the answer you will get. You need to ask it better.”
Oh.My heart thumped wildly in my chest.I was totally going to screw this up and then my people would all die and—
Zander pulled my face into his hands and met my gaze. “What can I, or anyone else, do to save the people of Faerie from the curse, other than taking the heart of an Ethereum lord?”
I nodded. “Okay.” Now I just needed to remember that in the moment.
Zander dismounted Omen and pulled me from the saddle, keeping his hands on my hips. I’d never let a man touch me so much in my entire life,and now I didn’t want his hands off of me. I wanted to glue them to my hips forever.
There was a flash of heat in his eyes, but when he bent to kiss my forehead his lips barely brushed my skin before he pulled back. I could tell from the look on his face and his tight grip that he wanted more, but this wasn’t the time or place. I stepped back, ready to meet these Wise Ones.
A gust of wind funneled around us, whipping up ice particles and sending my hair in all directions. I quickly braided the longest strands to keep them from flying in my face. With the loss of Zander’s heat, a chill ran through me, making me shiver.
If I was going to live in the Northern Kingdom with Zander for the rest of my life, I was going to have to make peace with the cold. Maybe I could talk him into visiting one of the kingdoms with a more temperate climate a couple times a year, because this Summer fae wasnotused to these temperatures.
Zander must have seen the chill run through me, because a moment later he draped his cape over my shoulders and fastened it around my neck. The leftover warmth from his body seeped into me and I stopped shaking.
