“Now, I want you to keep skating, but this time, only hold one of my hands. If you need to stop, for any reason, don’t panic. Just bend your knees slightly inward and push out with one or both of your feet. Like this.” He released one of her hands and skated a half circle around her, stopping with a sideways motion that scraped a fine layer of powdered ice off the frozen surface of the pond. “See?”

“Uh-huh . . .” Khamsin held Wynter’s one hand in a death grip. “All right. Here goes.” She pushed off with her left foot, the way he’d shown her. Her ankles wobbled. The skates slid on the ice. She flung her free arm out to the side to steady herself. She started falling backward, and in a panic, lunged for Wynter.

He caught her around her waist to steady her. “I’ve got you. Don’t panic. Just bend your knees. Lean forward over your skates. Keep your balance centered over the skates. There. All right. Try that again.”

“I think maybe skating isn’t for me.”

“I had no idea I’d married such a coward.”

“Neither did I, but apparently we were both wrong.”

He laughed. “No, we weren’t. I wed a fierce and fearless Summerlass with lightning in her hair and a storm in her eyes. Come now, eldi-kona. Show me what you’re made of.”

He thought she was fierce and fearless? Khamsin clenched her jaw and squared her shoulders, determined not to disappoint him. “All right.”

She bent her knees slightly, working hard to stop her ankles from wobbling and keep the metal blades of the skates perpendicular to the ice. She leaned forward slightly over her bent knees, as Wynter had instructed, and pushed off with her left foot again.

Whether because she was concentrating more, or because she was simply determined not to fall and embarrass herself in front of him, she managed to maintain her balance. This time, she completed an entire circuit around the pond, holding only one of his hands; and then, feeling slightly braver, she made a second circuit without holding on to him at all.

“Very good, Summerlass. You’re getting the hang of it. I knew you could do it.” He glided across the ice alongside her, spinning in lazy, graceful circles, his long white hair blowing around his face and shoulders.

“You’re showing off.”

“No.” He smiled. “This is showing off.” He pushed off with a sudden burst of strength and skated rapidly along the perimeter of the pond, gathering speed as he went. As he circled back around to pass her, he crouched slightly, gathering strength, and leapt into the air in front of her, his body spinning like a top. He landed on one skate several yards away, then twirled, skated back her way, and slid to a stop in a spray of powdered ice.

She gaped at him. “I hope you’re not expecting me to try that.”

He laughed, white teeth flashing against golden skin. “Maybe one day.”

She arched both brows. Maybe never was more like it. “Right . . . um, so where is that cave you were telling me about?”

“This way, little coward.” Still chuckling, he put an arm around her waist and skated with her over to the frozen streams of water that had formed layer upon layer of breathtaking falls of icicles. “Crouch down over here, where the ice is thinner. Do you see it?”

She bent over, trying to peer through the slivers of dark space between the frozen streams of water. “I think so.”

“Hold on.” Wynter slammed a fist into the frozen fall, breaking off several large chunks. “There. Do you see?”

Now she could see the black stone behind the waterfall and the blacker shadow of a small cave bored into the rock at the base of the fall. “I see it. How far does it go back?”

“Twenty feet or so. It gets tight pretty quickly though. I doubt I’d fit more than three feet beyond the opening anymore, but when I was your size, I’d crawl back as far as I could squeeze in. I used to pretend it was a dragon cave, and that if I went deep enough, I’d find the dragon’s treasure.”

It was difficult to imagine him as a child, despite having seen the sculptures in the Atrium. He was so . . . masculine. So intimidating. Seven feet of pure, unequivocal male.

“Did Garrick hunt dragon treasure in this cave, too?”

“Of course. He even found some of the dragon’s gold.”

Her head reared back. “No, he didn’t.”

“Oh, he did.” Wynter’s expression was one of complete sincerity. For an instant, he almost had her believing the dragon’s gold was real, until he said, “I know because I put it there myself. Same as my father did when I was a boy.”

A laugh broke from her lips. “Did Garrick know?”

“Of course not. Not until much later. That would have ruined the magic.”

Something squeezed tight around her heart. She’d never imagined Wynter as a father. Husband, yes. Lover, definitely. King, warrior, hero. But never a father. Not even when she knew he wanted children.

But now, hearing him talk about Garrick, having seen the love he’d carved so clearly into every sculpture in the Atrium, she saw a different side of the man she’d married. And she realized he wasn’t the sort of man who would sire children and leave others to raise them. He would be involved in his children’s lives, devoted to them. He would be a good father—no, a great one. A father who loved his children. A father who would salt a cave with gold to spark the imagination of his son. The sort of father Verdan Coruscate had never been to her.