Chey departed the conference room on a mission. Marching to the stairs, fists clenched at her sides, she started to ascend with the intent of heading straight to the master suite. Her mind spun with plans and scenarios, all of which went directly against the popular vote.

“Your Highness! It’s the king,” Raune called from the foyer. “You need to take it outside.” The guard gestured to the closed front door, indicating someone had Sander on the satellite phone.

Performing an abrupt about-face, Chey hurried to meet Raune. She passed him for the door and stepped outside with nothing to protect herself from the cold except a single layer of clothing. Wind tore at her hair and skin, making her gasp for breath. She grabbed the satellite phone from another guard and put it to her ear. Her heart hammered in her chest with sudden anticipation. Sander. She couldn’t wait to hear his voice. “Sander? Are you there?”

Static hissed over the line.

“Sander?” Chey turned a slow circle, as if that might help reception. “Where are you?”

“. . . ix . . . ast . . . ere?”

“Sander, I can’t understand you. Can you hear me?” Chey heard just enough to let her know that it was Sander on the other end of the phone. But static cut his words in half and then lulled into another hiss that seemed to last an eternity.

Oh God, please. Just a little help here. I need to speak to him.

“Sander, try another location. Can you hear me? You’re breaking up.” She pressed a finger against her opposite ear to block out all other sounds. “If you can hear me, I—”

“. . . left the tr . . . osition? . . . end men.”

“I can’t understand. Sander, if you can hear me, we need you to come home.” Chey knew she was going to have to come clean about the twinges and fainting, even if she hadn’t suffered any symptoms since then. That nearly took a backseat in her mind to the actions the advisors were about to take. “You need to come home immediately. The councilmen voted to send the refugees here away. Without supplies. They’re making them leave tomorrow. And I fainted—it’s nothing to worry about—”

“. . . ear me? Chey?”

“Sander! Yes, I heard you that time.” Mostly. “Where are you?”

“You’re breaking up. Let me give you my location . . . ore . . . ime.”

Chey knew she had better reception out here than in the castle, where a pen and paper awaited. She would have to memorize the location and hurry inside when the call was done. Silently cursing the hiss and static that interrupted the few seconds of clarity, she said, “Give me your coordinates. Can you come home now? I’ve been having unusual twinges and I fainted, in case you missed it the first time.”

Raune, who had followed her outside, arched a brow when she mentioned twinges. Chey caught the expression and shook her head to indicate that Raune wasn’t to say anything about the twinges to anyone else.

He nodded, but looked unhappy about keeping the secret.

“Sander?” Chey waited impatiently for her husband’s voice to rise out of the static.

Thirty seconds turned into a minute. Still only broken bits of white noise. Chey turned around and walked a few steps from the doors, hoping to boost the signal. “Sander?”

She pulled the phone away from her ear, glanced at the screen, and discovered the signal was totally gone. “No. Raune, can we get it back?”

Raune stepped to her side, gently took the phone from her grasp, and punched a numerical code on the keypad. Listening, he shook his head. “Sorry, Your Highness. Looks like we lost them.”

“Dammit! He was right there.” Chey shivered and rubbed her hands over her arms. Despite standing under the broad porch overhang, flurries stuck to her hair and clothes. The frigid wind bit at her skin with needlelike teeth.

“I’ll keep trying.” Raune pushed up his hood and braced himself against the weather.

“Thank you. If you reach him again, please try and get their location. Tell him—tell him that he needs to come home immediately.” Chey traded a long look with Raune. She didn’t repeat the news about the twinges and the fainting. Raune had heard well enough the first time. “And will you have someone send Wynn up, please?”

“I will. What do you plan to do about the exodus?” Raune asked, stepping inside the threshold after her. He closed the doors on the weather. Thankful for a reprieve from the chill, she accepted a heavy blanket from a maid before considering Raune’s question. Pulling the blanket tight around her shoulders, she said, “I have some ideas, but I need more time. We have to do something, Raune. If we don’t, hundreds of people will be sent out into the cold to fend for themselves. Including the children.”

Chey couldn’t bear the thought.

“The councilmen have the advantage of numbers,” Raune said. “Some members of your personal guard will stand with you. I’ll stand with you. But if the advisors threaten the guards’ families, I fear they’ll bend to the advisors’ demands.”

“I know.” Chey shivered inside the blanket. She needed to be next to a fire before her teeth started chattering. “How many men in the castle, the regular staff, do you think can handle going on another hunt?”

At the start of winter, when they realized the snows might last and that food stores might run low, groups of hunters had scoured the island for game. Chey had put a limit on how many deer the hunters could bring down—after all, there were only so many on the island to begin with. Back then, it hadn’t seemed necessary to obliterate the entire population. Fishermen had fished, but the colder it became, the less game the hunters found and the less fish wound up on the line. Then the serious blizzards had hit the land, preventing anyone from going outside at all. When you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face, it was pointless to try and hunt. Chey wasn’t certain that many animals had survived such a harsh season.

She wasn’t certain that humans would survive it either.

Raune glanced out the windows. Darkness had fallen, stealing what meager light daytime had provided.

Chey regarded him while he contemplated the weather, unsure what her next move would be.

He turned back with a shake of his head.

“It’s snowing hard. Blowing sideways, too, which means another blizzard is probably rolling in. We can’t send hunters out in this. Honestly, I’m not sure there’s any game left,” he said.

“For once, this blizzard might be a good thing. The advisors can’t force people into a whiteout.” Chey was certain of this. Raune’s doubtful expression cast her certainty into shadow.

“I don’t know, Your Highness. If they’re convinced it has to happen, then I don’t think anything will change their minds.”

Unusual twinges and I fainted. Out of all the broken sentences and static interference, those were the words that affected Sander the most. What he’d actually heard was: unusual . . . t . . . inges . . . nd I . . . ainted. He had no trouble discerning the full message from those snips, his mind automatically filling in what his ears hadn’t heard. Chey had been pregnant four times, and after three successful births, he was well accustomed to ‘pregnancy speak.’

What he wasn’t accustomed to was the initial fissure of panic that exploded in his chest like a bomb. They’d been so very lucky with all the other pregnancies, labors, and deliveries; the idea that Chey was having difficulties and had fainted, for God’s sake, put him on edge like nothing else had. He’d expected to return to Kallaster Castle with four weeks to spare before the baby’s due date, since Chey had a tendency to carry full term, but now his sole focus was to return home as soon as possible.

You’ve saved as many people as you could. Now you need to help your family.

Leander and Mattias stared at him with sober, serious expressions. Sander said, “We lost the signal. Leander, we’re going with your plan. We’ll leave most of the food behind and set out as soon as possible. I want to attempt connection again for the next two hours, then we’ll try again in the morning.”

“That might run the battery out,” Leander said. “And since we left the truck, we don’t have any way to charge it.”

“It should last through two more tries tonight and two tries in the morning.” Sander handed the satellite phone to Leander and glanced at the approaching storm. The snowfall had increased, as well as the wind. Low fog hung around the tops of the trees, settling lower and lower through the branches.

“What are your plans if this turns into a full-out blizzard?” Mattias asked.

Sander rubbed his hands together—he’d not yet put on gloves—and met his brother’s eyes. “I don’t want to wait to leave. Chey could be in trouble. I—” Sander hushed as movement near one of the windows caught his attention. A shady figure eased back from the curtains, as if someone had been standing there listening to or watching the trio speak.

Without warning, Sander entered the farmhouse and glanced at the window. Turo, Valder’s oldest son, let the curtain fall back into place and retreated from the window without meeting Sander’s gaze.

“Storm’s really kicking up,” Turo reported.

Sander tracked Turo’s steps to the dining area, where Gunnar, Joska, Gaius, and Tiemus were returning food to the pantry. The weather announcement was a convenient way to make Turo’s actions less suspicious, Sander thought, and decided he would have to be very careful in the farmhouse from then on. Leander might be right; they could have stumbled into a wolves’ den of discontented citizens who had fought against him in the war. Valder could be lying about his allegiance—and who wouldn’t when faced with the proverbial enemy?

“Everything all right?” Mattias asked at his back.

“Yes.” Sander slanted a look over his shoulder to silently let Mattias know they needed to be more aware of their surroundings. He knew his brother would pass the message on to Leander.

After shucking his coat, Sander hung it on a peg near the door and pushed up the sleeves of his thermal shirt. He didn’t intend on announcing that he would be leaving come morning, both because he wasn’t positive the weather would allow it and because he didn’t want to precipitate action from one of the homesteaders. If they were hostile to his presence, knowing he would be departing could trigger a confrontation.

For the next half hour, Sander helped organize the food back into Valder’s pantry. He kept aside three days’ worth of supplies and packed that into their bags when the others weren’t looking. The house had grown strangely quiet; everyone had a job, and they performed their tasks without speaking.

As they sat down to dinner at a long rustic table with benches in place of chairs, Alda returned from upstairs with her children in tow. By the glow of candlelight, Sander took in the rumpled clothing and stubborn expressions of the girls as Alda placed them at the far end of the table. The oldest girl, ten if Sander remembered right, glanced warily at the newest additions to the table before picking up her fork. She said nothing, as did her mother. Alda kept the two-year-old on her lap as the meal began.

Skeptical and untrusting, Leander had discreetly tested Sander’s food before allowing him to have even one bite. Only when he didn’t keel over dead did Leander subtly nod that Sander could eat.

Bean soup, white rice, and dehydrated turkey was the fare for the evening. Valder’s family all but attacked the food, proving that Valder hadn’t lied about the hunger situation. The amounts were small but the soup was hot, at least, as was the coffee that tasted better than the meal. At least in Sander’s opinion. Being so limited in supply made him miss his vice even more.

Near the end, a low howl of wind tore across the roof of the farmhouse, causing every person at the table to glance at the ceiling. Leander rose first and went straight to the front window.

Sander didn’t need Leander to tell them that they were in the midst of another blizzard. A bad one, Sander knew, because that was his luck. He wanted to leave immediately, so therefore the weather decided to take a turn for the worse.

“Thanks for dinner.” Sander couldn’t pull up more gratitude for Berith’s cooking than that at the moment. He left the table and sought his coat, then the satellite phone. Mattias had tried again earlier, to no avail. Instead of waiting on his brother to make the last attempt for the night, Sander took the phone out onto the porch, hunching against an icy gust that felt five times colder than it had before. After tugging up the hood, he faced away from the wind and powered up the phone.

No signal. Not the faintest blip of life. Snarling, he powered the phone down and slid it into his jacket pocket. Withdrawing gloves, he stared at the dark night and considered his options should the blizzard continue raging until morning.

He needed to get back to Kallaster, but forcing his men into a whiteout was foolish and dangerous. No matter how desperate he was to return to the island, Sander understood that he had to wait for some kind of break in the weather.

If he and everyone in his party died trying to get home, it wouldn’t do Chey any good.

Bide your time. She’ll be okay until you get there. She’s Chey, the most stubborn, willful woman you’ve ever met.

Sander decided he’d better concentrate on surviving in a house whose occupants may or may not want him to leave there alive.