The silence after their shared heat was a fragile thing, thin as the ice crusting the pine needles.
Will knelt in the snow, the cold seeping through his knees, the taste of Ser Waymar Royce still sharp on his tongue.
Gared had righted his clothing, his movements slow, his face a mask of weary confusion.
Waymar stood tall, fastening his cloak with an air of restored authority, but his grey eyes kept flicking back to the grisly clearing, to the girl on the tree.
The raw, animal need had been sated, but the fear it had temporarily burned away was creeping back, colder and sharper than before.
It was Gared who broke the spell, his voice gravelly and low.
"We need to go. Now. Back to the Wall."
Waymar turned, his beautiful face hardening.
"Go? We've seen nothing but dead savages and a… a macabre display. My father did not send me to the Wall to flee from corpses."
"This ain't about your father, m'lord," Gared insisted, a spark of his old defiance returning.
"This is about things that shouldn't be. That girl… the way they're laid out… this is old magic. Evil. We report to the Lord Commander. Let him send a full ranging."
"And tell him what?" Waymar's laugh was short, derisive.
"That we lost our nerve at the sight of a few dead wildlings? That the cold… affected us?"
His gaze swept over them, laden with meaning.
"We go back with nothing but tales of fear, and we'll be the laughing stock of Castle Black. Or worse. We investigate. We determine what killed them. Then we return with facts."
Will pushed himself to his feet, his body aching in a dozen new, intimate ways.
The memory of being inside Gared, of Waymar's seed down his throat, was a brand on his mind, a pocket of heat in the vast cold.
It made the thought of leaving this cursed place and returning to the sterile, vow-bound life of the Wall feel like a death sentence.
He craved more of that heat, that desperate, living connection.
He found himself speaking, his voice rough.
"The bodies are here. We should look. Closer."
Gared shot him a betrayed, furious look.
Will met it, his own eyes pleading.
Don't you want to feel it again? he thought, the desire a throbbing echo in his groin.
Don't you want to feel anything but this dread?
Waymar's smile was a victory.
"The scout agrees. We look."
It was a short, tense walk back to the heart tree clearing.
The wind had picked up, moaning through the branches, scattering a fine dust of snow.
Will led, his scout's instincts on high alert, but every sense felt hyper-focused, raw.
He could still smell Gared on his skin, taste Waymar.
It mingled with the scent of pine and cold decay.
They reached the edge of the clearing.
Will stopped dead.
The pink-stained snow was there.
The impressions where the bodies had lain were there, dark hollows in the white.
But the bodies themselves—the arranged limbs, the stacked torsos—were gone.
"Gods be good," Gared whispered, his hand going to the hilt of his sword.
Waymar strode forward, disbelief etched on his fine features.
"Impossible. They were just here."
He kicked at the snow, as if the corpses might be buried beneath.
"The animals… a shadowcat wouldn't… not so quickly, not so cleanly."
A new kind of cold settled in Will's gut, one that had nothing to do with the air.
This was a silent, stealing cold.
The absence was worse than the presence.
He moved into the clearing, his eyes scanning the ground.
His scout's mind, usually so sharp, felt sluggish, clouded by residual pleasure and rising terror.
He saw the tracks—their own boot prints, the scuff marks from their… encounter.
But no drag marks.
No trail of blood leading into the woods.
It was as if the dead had simply stood up and walked away.
"Will," Gared called, his voice tight.
He was a dozen yards off, near the base of a great oak.
He was on his knees, digging in the snow with his bare hands.
"Here."
Will and Waymar went to him.
Gared pulled a scrap of cloth from the snow.
It was coarse, stained a deep, frozen brown with blood.
A piece of a wildling tunic.
It wasn't lying on the surface; it had been buried, tucked under a thin layer of powder as if hidden in haste.
Waymar took it, examining it.
"So. Something did take them. Dragged them off and this was torn free."
He sounded like he was trying to convince himself.
The commanding certainty was fraying.
"Dragged them off without a trail?" Gared stood, brushing snow from his hands.
His eyes were wide, the whites showing all around.
"M'lord, please. We must go. This is a place of death, and it's not done with us."
The fear in the old ranger's voice was a palpable thing.
It should have been contagious.
But in Will, it sparked a contrary, desperate fire.
The danger was real, imminent.
It made the need for sensation, for proof of life, even more urgent.
He saw the way Gared's chest heaved, the pulse hammering in his scarred neck.
He saw the high color in Waymar's cheeks, the way his full lips were parted as he breathed.
They were alive, vibrantly so, surrounded by silent, stealing death.
Will's cock, spent and sensitive just minutes before, began to thicken again against his breeches.
The terror was an aphrodisiac, sharp and potent.
He couldn't go back.
Not yet.
Not without one more taste of that heat.
"We should fan out," Will heard himself say.
"Search for a trail. Just a quick circle. If we find nothing, we ride."
He was looking at Waymar, but his words were for Gared.
A promise, a delay.
Waymar nodded, grasping at the suggestion of action.
"A quick circle. Gared, east. Will, north. I'll take the west. Meet back here. Stay within shouting distance."
Gared looked like he wanted to argue, but years of obedience to command, even from a green boy, won out.
He gave a curt, miserable nod and turned, trudging toward the eastern tree line, his shoulders hunched against the cold and his own dread.
Will moved north, but his heart wasn't in the search.
He listened to the sounds of the others fading.
He counted to one hundred, his own breath loud in his ears.
Then he turned and moved not north, but west, following the path he'd seen Waymar take.
He found the knight standing before a small, frozen creek, staring at the ice as if it held answers.
Waymar heard his approach and turned.
He didn't look surprised.
"No trail?" Waymar asked.
"No trail," Will confirmed, stopping close.
Too close.
He could see the individual lashes framing Waymar's grey eyes, the faint stubble darkening his jaw.
"Gared's right. We should go."
"But you don't want to," Waymar stated, his voice dropping to that intimate, dangerous register from before.
A flicker of the old power returned to his eyes.
The fear was there, underneath, but it was being mastered, channeled into this.
Into dominance.
"No," Will breathed.
"I don't."
"The cold is coming back," Waymar murmured, stepping closer until the fronts of their cloaks brushed.
"I can feel it. In my bones. After the fire we made… its return is an insult."
He brought a gloved hand up, cupping Will's cheek.
The leather was cold, but the intent behind it was scorching.
"You have a furnace in you, scout. I tasted your obedience. Now I need to feel your heat against me. Properly."
Will shuddered, a full-body tremor of anticipation.
He nodded, wordless.
Waymar's smile was all sharp edges.
"Here. Against this tree."
He pointed to a massive, sheltering pine with thick, low branches.
"I'll have you from behind. I want to see the forest over your shoulder while I take what's mine."
The crude, possessive words sent a jolt straight to Will's groin.
He moved to the tree, placing his hands on the rough bark, mimicking Gared's position from before.
The memory of fucking the old man, of Waymar watching and guiding him, flooded back, making his mouth water.
This was different.
This was submission.
He heard the rustle of clothing behind him, the clink of a belt being undone.
Waymar's body pressed against his back, not in a guiding touch, but in full, demanding contact.
The knight had shed his gloves.
His bare hands, long-fingered and strong, pushed Will's cloak aside and yanked his breeches and smallclothes down to his thighs in one rough motion.
The cold air assaulted his exposed skin, making him gasp.
"So eager," Waymar whispered, his breath hot on Will's neck.
One hand smoothed over the curve of Will's ass, a possessive caress.
The other, Will heard, was busy spitting into his palm.
The sound was obscenely loud.
Then that wet, hot hand was on him, not on his cock, but rubbing firmly over his entrance.
Will tensed, a spike of pure, sharp sensation shooting through him.
It was more invasive than when he'd prepared for Gared.
This was not about preparation; it was about claiming.
"Relax," Waymar commanded, his voice leaving no room for refusal.
A finger, slick with spit, pressed insistently against the tight ring of muscle.
"You took Gared's heat. Now you'll take mine. You'll take your lord's."
The finger pushed in, a slow, burning stretch.
Will buried his face against the tree bark, a choked sound escaping him.
It hurt, a bright, clean pain that was inseparable from pleasure because of who was causing it, because of where they were, because of the death that had vanished around them.
Waymar worked the finger in and out, then added a second.
The stretch became a burn, a fullness that made Will's knees weak.
He was panting, his cock hard and trapped against the rough tree trunk.
"Please," Will heard himself beg, the word torn from him.
Waymar withdrew his fingers.
Will felt the blunt, broad head of the knight's cock nudge against him.
Waymar's other hand gripped Will's hip, holding him in place.
"This is what you stayed for," Waymar hissed. And he pushed forward.
The invasion was breathtaking.
Will saw white behind his eyelids.
It was a deeper, more complete penetration than he'd achieved with Gared.
Waymar was bigger, and he gave no quarter.
He sheathed himself in one long, relentless stroke until his hips were flush against Will's ass.
He held there, buried to the hilt, and Will felt owned, utterly and completely.
Then Waymar began to move.
It was not the desperate, driving rhythm Will had used.
It was a steady, powerful, controlled piston motion.
Each thrust was deliberate, deep, meant to be felt in the core.
Waymar fucked him with the same arrogant grace with which he did everything else.
The tree shuddered with their impact.
Will could do nothing but take it, each slam sending waves of intense, conflicting sensation through him—the burn of the stretch, the shocking fullness, the delicious friction on his own trapped cock, the sheer heat of the man buried inside him.
"You feel that," Waymar grunted, his composure slipping with each drive.
"You feel how alive I am? How alive I make you?" He leaned over Will's back, his teeth finding the juncture of Will's neck and shoulder.
He bit down, not a love bite, but a mark of possession.
Will cried out, the pain blossoming into a sharp pleasure that tightened his channel around Waymar's cock.
Waymar groaned, his rhythm faltering for a second.
"Yes. Grip me. Grip your lord."
His pace increased, becoming harder, faster.
The control was slipping, giving way to raw, driving need.
Will pushed back against him, meeting each thrust, eager for more of that devastating fullness.
The world narrowed to the slap of skin, the creak of the tree, Waymar's ragged breaths in his ear, the incredible, all-consuming sensation of being used so perfectly.
The fear was gone, burned away in this crucible of pleasure.
"I'm going to fill you," Waymar gasped, his voice raw.
"I'm going to mark you as mine. Here, in this cursed wood. They'll all know whose heat you carried."
The promise, the vulgarity of it, pushed Will to the edge.
His own climax was building, a tight coil about to snap, fueled by submission and sensation.
He was moaning openly now, meaningless pleas and curses muffled against the bark.
Waymar's thrusts became erratic, brutal.
He drove in one last, deep time and held, his body rigid.
Will felt the hot, sudden pulse deep inside him, a flood of wet heat that seemed to sear his very core.
The feeling of being filled, claimed in the most primal way, triggered Will's own release.
He came with a shattered cry, his seed spilling against the tree trunk in hot, helpless spurts, his body convulsing around the cock still pumping into him.
For a long moment, they stayed locked together, both trembling, sweat cooling instantly on their skin.
Waymar's weight was heavy on his back, his breathing a harsh gust in Will's ear. Slowly, sensitively, Waymar pulled out.
Will gasped at the loss, the sudden emptiness, the cold air hitting the wetness left behind.
Waymar stepped back, lacing his breeches with hands that weren't quite steady.
Will slumped against the tree, his legs watery, trying to right his own clothes.
The animal contentment was back, thicker, doped with a heavy lassitude.
He turned, leaning against the pine, to look at Waymar.
The knight's beauty was wrecked, gloriously so.
His hair was damp with sweat, his lips swollen, his eyes dark and sated.
He looked at Will with a fierce, proud satisfaction.
And then the temperature dropped.
It was not the gradual chill of evening.
It was a sudden, violent plunge, as if the very air had been sucked out and replaced with something frozen solid.
Will's breath, which had been steaming, now crystallized in front of his face with a faint, sharp tinkling sound.
The moisture between his legs felt like it was freezing.
Waymar's triumphant expression froze.
He looked past Will, into the darkening woods.
A figure stood at the edge of the clearing.
It was tall, taller than any man, and slender.
Its armor seemed to be made of ice, shifting and reflecting the dying light in pale, blue shimmers.
It held a long, thin sword that looked like a sliver of crystal.
And its eyes… they shone with a cold, blue light that held no warmth, no life, only an ancient, endless winter.
Ser Waymar Royce, to his credit, did not scream.
He drew his longsword with a steely rasp that was the loudest sound in the sudden, absolute silence.
The metal rang, a brave, foolish, human sound.
"Dance with me then," he said, his voice carrying, proud and defiant to the last.
The thing moved.
It was faster than thought.
Its crystal sword met Waymar's steel with a sound like shattering glass.
Waymar's blade exploded into a thousand brittle fragments.
The knight stared, stunned, at the hilt in his hand.
The ice blade flickered once, twice.
Waymar made a small, choked sound.
A line of red appeared across his throat.
Then another across his chest, slicing through ringmail as if it were parchment.
He crumpled, his body falling into the pink snow, his beautiful grey eyes staring sightlessly at the twilight sky.
Will could not move.
Could not breathe.
The horror was absolute, a physical weight crushing his lungs.
From the other side of the clearing, there was a shout.
Gared.
The old ranger had seen.
He wasn't coming to fight.
He was running, crashing through the undergrowth, back toward where the horses were tied.
The tall figure turned its head with an eerie, smooth motion, those blue eyes tracking the sound.
It moved, gliding over the snow without leaving a mark.
It was faster than a running man.
Will heard Gared's cry cut short, replaced by a wet, final thud.
Silence again.
Then, a slow, dragging sound.
From behind the heart tree, a shape shambled into view.
It was the wildling girl.
The spear was gone from her shoulder.
Her skin was pale as milk, her eyes the same familiar, glowing blue.
She moved stiffly, unnaturally, her head turning until her gaze fixed on Will.
A soft thump sounded at Will's feet.
He looked down.
Gared's head lay in the snow, his eyes wide with terminal surprise, his weathered face already rimed with frost.
A few feet away, his body was a dark shape against the white.
Will's bladder let go, a hot rush down his leg that froze almost instantly.
A high, thin whine escaped his throat, the only sound he could make.
He was backpedaling, stumbling, his hands scrabbling behind him for purchase.
The tall figure with the ice sword was now standing over Ser Waymar's body.
It looked down at the dead knight for a moment, then those chilling blue eyes lifted and locked onto Will.