Mated to the Griffin (Elemental Mates 5)

Now everything was silent. Instead of lights, icicles glistened in the slowly fading light of the evening sun.

Dara gasped as they stopped by the railing. This side of the castle faced away from the road that had once allowed visitors to travel here from the gate.

“See, I told you that in reality, it isn’t much of a castle,” Henrik said and nodded at the two large wings that surrounded the courtyard they looked down upon. “That’s mainly what remains from the original mansion. My father had those buildings enlarged when he came up with the idea of Snow Castle. There are some guest rooms, but mainly it was a venue for weddings and celebrations, and we’d had a restaurant down there, and—”

“There!” Dara interrupted, nearly bouncing on her feet as she pointed forward. “Oh, it really is a real snow castle!”

“Told you that this isn’t the real one.” There was all the pride of his dragon in Henrik’s voice as he stepped closer to Dara. “It hasn’t been maintained properly, of course—but that over there is the real snow castle. Two stories high, and all snow. There are rooms inside, and slides, and it isn’t cold in there at all. The children would play in there for hours. We’d have real battles with snowballs and pretend that this was a fort we were attacking.”

“And over there?” Dara asked. “Is that a maze?”

Henrik nodded. A small shiver ran through him as he looked at the entrance to the snow maze. He’d been avoiding it as much as the outside world...

“It was more popular with the adults. It’s much larger than it looks from here. You probably don’t want to explore it, it hasn’t been properly maintained in ages and you could quite possibly get lost for real.”

Dara shivered and wrapped her arms around herself. “No thanks. I think I’ve had enough of that for the day. Or the year.”

Gently, Henrik wrapped his arm around her. “Are you cold? Should we go back inside?” he murmured.

Dara turned in his arms. Her eyes were gleaming as she looked at him, her cheeks red from the cold. “I’m not feeling cold right now...”

Entranced, Henrik watched as snow began falling once more. A large snowflake landed on Dara’s nose, and with a small smile he reached out to brush it away with the pad of his thumb.

At the touch, another small jolt ran through him. Despite the heavy winter clothes, he could feel the heat of Dara’s body against him. Her lips were red, and as he watched, they parted slightly as she released a small sigh.

Daringly, he trailed his finger along her cheek, brushing away the snowflakes that kept falling. Against his fingers, her skin was hot and soft. She smelled a little like the gingerbread spices of the coffee.