The roses on Rheya's skin had never bloomed.
They twisted instead into tight spirals of dark crimson and black, thorns jutting from her collarbones, curling down her arms in jagged arcs. Some thorns lay dormant. Others bled when she dared feel too much. There was no fragrance. No softness. Only silent screams stitched into her flesh, secrets that screamed beneath her skin.
And she was being gifted like a bouquet of them.
The carriage jolted as it entered the gates of Virelion's capital. Rheya opened her eyes from where she had been pretending to sleep. Outside, the world was slate-grey, bitter with frost and iron. No singing flowers. No whispering willows. Soldiers lined the streets like statues, their faces unreadable behind masks of steel. Even the trees looked as though they had been stripped of memory.
The kingdom of emotionless hearts. She was to marry the prince.
"You look ill," her lady-in-waiting whispered, adjusting the ruby clasp at Rheya's throat.
"I always do," Rheya said, voice calm, almost bored. "The thorns do not suit lace."
Nor do they suit a crown, she did not add.
The bells of Virelion tolled above them like bones cracking under snow.
The ceremony was not a celebration. It was a declaration.
The union of House Valemair and House Thorn: two nations stitched together with decades of war, death, and silence. This marriage was not for love. Not even for peace. It was an exchange of dangers. HER THORNS FOR HIS FROST.
As Rheya stepped into the cathedral, the air thickened. A hush fell, as if the walls themselves dared not breathe in her presence.
And then she saw him.
Prince Kael Thorn.
Standing like a frozen painting at the altar, draped in silver and shadow. Sharp-jawed. Severe. Cloaked in a stillness so absolute it made the world shiver. On his hands were the infamous obsidian gloves, said to hide a curse colder than death itself.
Their eyes met.
For a single heartbeat, the thorns along Rheya's chest shivered, curling as if in recognition.
Kael's expression did not change. Not a flicker. Not a breath.
And she hated how much she wanted him to flinch.
The vows were recited in Virelion dialect, a clipped tongue where love sounded like surrender. Kael's voice was ice dipped in velvet, neither cruel nor kind.
"When he spoke my name…" Rheya thought, "…it felt like a snowflake burning."
When it was her turn, Rheya smiled. Not kindly. Not sweetly.
"I, Rheya of House Valemair," she said, letting the thorns glint proudly along her arms, "swear to bind myself to you until frost thaws and flowers bloom in Virelion once more."
A few gasps. A stifled laugh. A curse hidden in pretty words.
Kael raised one brow. Interesting.
The wedding feast was colder than the ceremony. Crystal goblets. Stark candlelight. The court stared like crows, waiting for her to bleed. Rheya did not eat. She did not drink. She let her presence be the weapon they feared.
Kael barely touched his wine. He spoke to no one. Even when she sat beside him, closer than touch, he did not brush against her. No accidental grazes. No stolen glances.
But he was watching her.
Every tilt of her head, every subtle gesture, was cataloged in silence. And she began to wonder…
Was he seeing the monster? The girl with thorns for skin? Or something he could not name?
When the moon hung like a shattered pearl, the court thinned. Rheya was led through endless corridors of glass and stone to the bridal chamber. A place where she would sleep beside a man she did not know, in a palace that felt like a mausoleum.
When the guards closed the door, Kael was already inside.
"You do not have to fear me," he said quietly.
Rheya tilted her head. "Is that your version of a wedding night promise?"
He studied her. Really studied.
"You are not what I expected."
"Let me guess," she drawled, stepping closer, "you thought I'd cry. Beg. Wilt just because you smiled at me."
"You haven't smiled at all," he said, his voice low, measured.
"I have thorns. Smiling cuts the lips."
A long pause. Outside, the wind howled. The fire in the hearth crackled.
Then Kael removed one glove.
Rheya's heart stopped.
Beneath it, his hand was etched with pale-blue veins—not veins, but Frostroots, patterns of ice that shimmered like frozen lace. When he moved, tiny flurries danced and vanished into the air.
"I will not touch you unless you allow it."
The silence that followed was absolute. No one had ever said that to her.
"…Why?"
"Because you look like someone who's never been given a choice."
Then he turned, giving her his back, walking to the far side of the chamber where a second bed had been placed. Not a marital bed. Two beds. Separate.
An insult? A rejection? Somehow, it felt like an offering.
That night, Rheya lay beneath silk sheets, staring at the ceiling carved with winter constellations. She did not cry. But for the first time in years, her thorns stopped aching.
She dreamed of a garden. Not touched by man or moon. Where impossible flowers bloomed in silence. In the center, a tree with glass petals reflected her face. And beside it was a man. Not Kael. But also Kael.
Eyes like frostbite. Lips like regret. Reaching for her.
When she woke, her pillow was damp.
And a single, pale bud had bloomed at her wrist. The first flower she had ever grown.
A secret garden Kael restores for her abandoned, half-dead, hidden behind the east wing of the palace. It's their first moment alone in weeks, after a public confrontation where Rheya defends him.
The garden had no name.
It had been left to rot decades ago, buried under frost and ivy, hidden behind a rusted iron gate no one dared open. But Kael had remembered it. With each day Rheya endured his court's venom, each word she bit back with thorns on her tongue, he had carved out a secret piece of the palace for her.
Now, she stood in it silently. Breathless.
"This was yours?" she asked, voice a hush of disbelief.
"No," he said, stepping beside her. "It was always meant for you."
The dying flowers had begun to bloom again. Pale green vines curled near her ankles as she walked the stone path. The once-dead roses now glowed faintly beneath the dusklight, like memories remembering how to breathe.
She turned to him, her eyes unreadable, dark as dusk and deep as pain.
"You keep doing this."
"Doing what?"
"Unmaking everything I thought I knew."
Kael reached for his glove, then paused. Waited.
Her silence was permission.
He peeled it off.
The frostbitten hand shimmered faintly in the evening air. She lifted her arm, bare now, the thorns dulled but not gone. Still dangerous, still hers.
"You said I could choose," she said.
"And you still can."
"I'm choosing now."
Then, without ceremony, she took his hand.
It was cold like moonlight on a river. And when her thorns brushed against his skin, something impossible happened:
They didn't cut.
Instead, his frost kissed them gently, winding around each thorn like a ribbon of light. Her pain did not lash out; it exhaled. His numbness didn't devour it.
She stepped closer.
So did he.
No rush. No breath wasted.
Then she rose on her toes, with a softness that undid every wall they had ever built.
She kissed him.
It was not fireworks. It was an earthquake. A crack down the middle of everything broken inside them, and through it, a bloom. Her mouth tasted like blood and bravery. He felt like the cold before snow still, quiet, perfect.
And in the garden around them, roses bloomed that had never existed before.
One curled into the air like a question.
Another burst into flame.
And somewhere in the center, a glass rose began to glow.
Kael's POV
He had expected a weapon.
A woman born of rage, trained in silence, draped in thorns and danger. A creature made not to be loved, but to be survived.
What he found was fire and fragility folded into one.
From the moment he saw her walking into the cathedral like a warning wrapped in velvet, he couldn't breathe.
Not because she was beautiful, though she was, devastatingly, but because she felt something he had a long time ago and stopped believing existed.
He had spent years teaching himself not to feel. Ice was safer. Distance kept people alive. His own curse the frost in his blood had killed before. He dared not tempt it again.
And yet…
She had looked at him with eyes like sharpened poetry. And instead of flinching, she challenged him.
She had thorns.
He had frost.
And yet… when he stood close to her, it didn't feel like death.
It felt like a thaw.
That night, after offering her the second bed, the choice no one had given her before Kael had stood by the fire long after she slept. Not to warm himself, but to watch the flicker of light on her face.
She looked soft in sleep. Younger. Not broken just… locked away.
He saw her stir, once.
A tear slipped down her cheek.
And Kael knew, in that moment, that the most dangerous thing in the world wasn't her curse.
It was the thought of being the first man to make her bloom.
And perhaps… the last.