He Signed Up for This

The cold doesn’t bother me anymore.

That’s what I tell myself every morning when I wake up with frost in my hair and numbness in my fingers. It’s what I whisper at night when my stomach cramps so hard I see stars. It’s a lie, obviously. But lies are cheaper than blankets, and I’ve never had coin for either.

Tonight, the lie isn’t even trying to work.

Because she has a fire.

I can see the glow from where I’m sitting—huddled in the corner of the common room with my knees tucked under my chin and my thin cloak pulled over my head like a hood. The door to the old storage closet is open a crack, and the light spilling out is the color of honey. Honey. I’ve seen honey once in my life, three years ago, when a traveling merchant let me lick the spoon after I scrubbed his pots. I remember thinking: this is what warmth tastes like.

Her room smells like that. I know because I snuck past at midnight when everyone else was asleep. Cinnamon and woodsmoke and something floral—roses, maybe, or the kind of expensive soap I’ll never touch.

And the shadows.

Gods, the shadows.

They move through her doorway like living things. One carries a tray—a tray—with a steaming cup on it. Another drapes a blanket over her sleeping form. A third just... hovers. Watching. Protecting. Because Prince Morovan’s magic doesn’t sleep. Doesn’t eat. Doesn’t feel the cold.

It just serves.

“You’re going to bore holes through that door with your eyes if you keep staring.”

I don’t turn around. Vesper’s voice has always grated on me—too sharp, too knowing, like she can see every ugly thought I’ve ever had and is just waiting for me to confirm them.

“Maybe that’s the plan,” I say. “Burn it down with my rage. Save us all the trouble of freezing to death slowly.”

Rowan snorts from across the room. She’s the youngest of us, barely fifteen, with a shock of white hair that marks her as half- something northern. “You’d need magic for that. And last I checked, none of us have any to spare.”

“Speak for yourself.” That’s Kaelen. She’s sitting in the darkest corner, as always, her arms wrapped around her knees. No one knows what Kaelen’s other half is. She showed up at the orphanage when she was twelve with no memory of how she got there and a scar across her throat that makes her voice sound like gravel. She’s also the only one here who’s never called me crazy for the things I say. “I’ve got plenty of magic. It’s just all dedicated to keeping my blood from freezing solid.”

I laugh at that. It’s not a nice laugh. It’s the kind of laugh that scrapes its way out of your throat and leaves scratches behind.

“She’s having tea,” I say. My voice sounds strange. Distant. “Right now. In there. She’s having tea. In a cup.With a saucer. While we’re sitting here drinking water that tastes like rust because the pump froze again.”

“She offered to share,” Rowan says quietly. “This morning. She said anyone could come in if they were cold.”

I whip my head around so fast my neck cracks. “And you believed her?”

Rowan flinches. Good. Let her flinch. Let her feel the weight of what she just said.

“It’s warm in there, Sable.” Vesper’s voice has gone soft. The kind of soft that makes me want to punch something. “I went in. Just for a minute. She has a rug. Not a mat. Not a pile of straw. A rug. Thick enough that you can’t feel the stone underneath. And the blankets—”

“I don’t want to hear about the blankets.”

“—feel like clouds,” Vesper continues, because she’s always been the kind of person who keeps talking when you tell her to stop. “I touched one. Just with one finger. And I almost cried, Sable. I almost cried. Because I’ve never felt anything that soft in my entire life. And she just... has it. Like it’s nothing. Like it’s normal."

“It is normal,” I snap. “For her. For people like her. For pure-blooded nobles with seventeen gods-damned mating marks and a prince who would burn down the world if she asked him to. That’s her normal. This”—I gesture at the room around us, at the cracked walls and the frozen windows and the floor that’s never been warm a single day in eighteen years—“this is ours."

No one says anything.

I’m breathing too fast. I can feel it—the way my chest is heaving, the way my hands have curled into fists without my permission. I unclench them. One finger at a time. The way I do when I’m tracking and need to keep my bow steady.

“So she’s lucky,” Kaelen says finally. Her gravel-voice cuts through the silence like a blade. “What else is new? The world is full of lucky people. Most of them aren’t sleeping in the room next to ours.”

“That’s the thing, though.” I’m on my feet now. I didn’t decide to stand up. My body just did it, like it’s tired of sitting still while my brain spins. “She’s not just lucky. She’s here. In this place. Throwing her dinner scraps to us like we’re dogs at her feet. And you”—I point at Vesper—“you thanked her. I saw you. This morning. She pushed her plate toward you like she was offering a gift, and you thanked her.”

Vesper’s jaw tightens. “It was food,Sable. Actual food. Meat. Bread. Cheese that didn’t have mold on it. I haven’t eaten in two days. Neither have you, if we’re being honest. So yes, I thanked her. I’d thank a demon if it offered me a meal.”

“It wasn’t a meal. It was leftovers. She ate half of it—half—and then pushed it away like she was full. She’s never been hungry a day in her life. Not once. She doesn’t know what it feels like to chew on leather because your stomach is eating itself from the inside. She doesn’t know what it’s like to dream about bread."

“And that’s her fault?” Rowan’s voice is small but steady. “She didn’t choose to be born noble. She didn’t choose to be mated to a prince. She didn’t choose any of this.”

“No,” I agree. “But she chose to come back here. She chose to let him bring her to this place—this rotting, freezing, gods-forsaken orphanage—instead of sending her somewhere else. Somewhere with walls. Somewhere with heat. Somewhere where she wouldn’t have to look at us every day and pretend she doesn’t see what we are.”

“Where else was she supposed to go?” Kaelen asks. “The rebels are threatening the palace. The crown prince wants her somewhere far away and safe. This is far away. It’s not safe, but—”

“But it’s convenient." I’m pacing now. Back and forth. Back and forth. Like a caged animal. “It’s convenient for him. Stick the precious mate in a place no one would think to look. Never mind that there are children here. Never mind that we’re all half-frozen and half-starved. Never mind that he could snap his fingers and fix all of it."

That lands.

I see it in their faces. The way Vesper’s eyes widen. The way Rowan’s mouth falls open just a little. The way Kaelen goes very, very still.

“He could, couldn’t he?” I stop pacing. Face them. Let them see the fury I’ve been swallowing for days. “Shadow magic. The most powerful family in the realm. A prince who can bend darkness to his will. He could wave his hand and this entire building would have central heating. He could snap his fingers and there’d be food in the pantry for a year. He could blink and we’d all have blankets that don’t have holes in them.”

“Maybe he doesn’t know—” Rowan starts.

“Doesn’t know?" My laugh is sharp enough to cut glass. “He walked through this place to get to her room. He saw the frost on the inside of the windows. He saw us huddled together for warmth. He stepped over the crack in the floor where the cold air comes up from the cellar. He knows. He just doesn’t care."

I can feel the tears coming. Hot and humiliating and absolutely useless. I blink them back. I refuse. I refuse.

“Why would he care?” I continue, because if I stop talking, I’ll start sobbing, and I’d rather die than let them see that. “We’re not his problem. We’re not anyone’s problem. We’re half-breeds. We’re mistakes. We’re the children that pure-blooded fae fucked into human women and then abandoned because we weren’t enough. Not fae enough to claim. Not human enough to keep. We’re nothing. We’re no one."

“That’s not true,” Vesper says. But her voice wavers.

“It is true. And you know it. Every single one of you knows it. That’s why we’re here. That’s why no one came for us. That’s why the matron drinks herself to sleep every night instead of feeding us. Because no one cares if we live or die. No one would even notice."

“Sable—”

“No, Vesper. Don’t. Don’t Sable me like I’m being dramatic. Tell me I’m wrong. Tell me that if I dropped dead right now, anyone outside this room would give a single shit.”

Silence.

The kind of silence that tells you everything you didn’t want to know.

“That’s what I thought.” My voice cracks on the last word, and I hate it, I hate it, I hate it.

The tears win.

They just... come. No warning. No dignity. Just hot and messy and pathetic. I swipe at my face with the back of my hand, but more keep coming. My nose starts running. My chin trembles. I am eighteen years old. I have killed a leopard with a rock and a trap. I have survived winters that would have killed grown men. And I am crying because a princess has a warm room and I don’t.

Get it together, I snarl at myself. Get it together. You’re better than this.

But I’m not. That’s the worst part. I’m not better than this. I’m exactly this—a jealous, angry, starving girl who wants what she can’t have and hates everyone who does.

“I want a mate,” I whisper. The words come out before I can stop them. “Is that so terrible? I want someone who looks at me the way he looks at her. I want someone who would move mountains to keep me safe. I want to be chosen. Just once. I want to be chosen."

Rowan’s face crumples. Vesper looks away. Kaelen just watches me with those dark, unreadable eyes.

“We all want that,” Rowan says softly.

“Do we?” I laugh through my tears, and it’s an ugly sound. “Because from where I’m standing, it looks like you’ve all made your peace with this. With her. With the scraps and the pity and the oh, you poor things."

“What else can we do?” Vesper asks. “Fight her? She has a prince. She has shadows. She has magic so pure it could probably resurrect the dead. What are we supposed to do? Spit in her tea? Refuse her leftovers? That doesn’t get us warmth, Sable. That doesn’t get us food."

“It gets us dignity."

“Dignity doesn’t fill my stomach.”

“Neither does groveling.”

“I’m not groveling. I’m surviving. There’s a difference.”

“Is there?” I’m at the door now. I don’t remember walking here. My body is moving on its own, like it’s finally had enough of my indecision. “Because from out here, it looks exactly the same.”

“Sable, don’t.” Kaelen’s gravel-voice cuts through the room. “It’s dark. There’s a storm coming. You’ll freeze.”

“I’ve frozen before.”

“Not like this. Not with the windchill. You’ll die, Sable.”

“Maybe.” I grab my spear from where it’s propped against the wall. The shaft is smooth under my palm—familiar. Safe. The only thing in this world that’s never let me down. “Maybe I’ll die. Maybe I’ll catch something. Maybe I’ll come back with meat and prove that I don’t need her scraps."

“You can’t hunt in the dark.”

“I’ve done it before.”

“Not in a blizzard."

“Watch me.”

I pull open the door.

The wind screams in my face. It’s colder than I expected—colder than it has any right to be. The snow is already starting, fat flakes that stick to my eyelashes and melt on my cheeks. The storm isn’t coming. It’s here.

“Sable, please." Vesper is standing now. They’re all standing. Looking at me like I’ve lost my mind. Maybe I have. “Please don’t do this. We need you. I need you. You’re the only one who knows how to hunt. You’re the only one who—”

“You need me to feed you.” I cut her off. “That’s what you mean. You need me to go out tomorrow, when the storm passes, and find something to kill. You need my skills. Not me."

“That’s not—”

“It is. And that’s fine. I don’t need you to love me. I don’t need anyone to love me. I stopped needing that a long time ago.” I step outside. The snow is already soaking through my boots. “But I can’t stay in there. Not with her. Not with her fire and her books and her mate who could save all of us and just... doesn’t.”

“Sable.”

I turn back. Just for a moment. Just long enough to see their faces—Vesper’s fear, Rowan’s tears, Kaelen’s clenched jaw.

“Tell your princess something for me,” I say. “Tell her I hope she enjoys those books. I hope she turns every page and feels nothing. I hope she never knows what it’s like to chase a story so badly that you’d kill for it.”

I sold a leopard’s pelt for my diary. I was seven years old. The tanner laughed at me. Called me a feral little thing. Gave me half of what the pelt was worth because he knew I had nowhere else to go.

I bought a diary. A pencil that never goes blunt. Three books, a year ago, with the antlers of a buck I tracked for three days through snow up to my thighs.

Those books are under my mattress right now. Wrapped in deer hide. Next to the diary I’ve been writing in since I was six years old, filling page after page with everything I’ve never been able to say out loud.

They’re mine.

No one gave them to me. No one handed them over with a pitying smile and a here, poor thing, take this.

I earned them.

Just like I’ll earn my next meal.

I turn my back on the orphanage. On the golden light spilling from the storage closet. On the girls who think I’m crazy for leaving.

The forest is waiting.

Dark. Cold. Dangerous.

Home.

I walk toward the trees, my spear in my hand, my fury burning hot enough to keep the frost at bay.

The cold doesn’t bother me anymore.

And this time, for just a moment, the lie tastes almost like the truth.