Disclaimer: I only own bits and pieces of my own imagination.
She excused herself and slipped out of the ballroom. The chill of the winter night was a welcomed change to the stuffy room so she ignored the shiver running her back.
She stepped forward and touched the petals of a rose before trailing her fingers absently down the stem. She jumped as she felt one of the thorns prick her and draw blood and then berated herself for her absent-mindedness. Brushing it from her mind, she leaned her arms on the balustrade and closed her eyes to enjoy this moment of respite.
A sudden gust of wind coming from nowhere showered a handful of snow onto her bare shoulders. She started at the sensation only to stumble backwards into someone's arms. With a startled 'oh' she whirled around.
"My apologies for startling you, my lady," he beat her to the apology. He was handsome, but eerily so. She wondered how she hadn't noticed him earlier during the ball for no one could miss sighting him, yet she hadn't really even heard him approaching now either.
He was pale. Pale, as if there was no more blood in him other than the two drops of blood that made his lips look so startling crimson.
His clothes were old-fashioned but the silver thread braided into the soft fabric and the white leather boots encasing his legs seemed oddly suitable for him. His blonde hair was loose and falling – in defiance to the rules of society – onto his shoulders in a loose white mane. His face was angular and sharp and his pale-blue eyes cutting.
She flushed enticingly as she met his gaze and abashedly lowered her eyes only to see him offering a rose-bloom to her.
"Thank you," she murmured as she gingerly accepted to white flower. It took a moment before she realised that she held hard crystal between her fingers rather than the stem of a real flower. She marvelled at the craftsmanship – the rose seemed so lifelike that she wouldn't have realised it was not, had she not been holding it.
"May I have this dance?" he questioned and without giving her a chance to reply swept her up in his arms.
He even felt cold – like ice and snow – under her trembling hand as she followed him through the steps of the waltz. She clutched the crystal flower and his shoulder, seeking support as they stared at each other.
"Come with me."
His voice sounded almost feverish as it caressed the shell of her ear. He was holding her much too close, yet she felt powerless under his coldly smouldering gaze.
"Come with me."
She heard it. The lonely howling of wind in impassable mountain gorges; the lazy breath of it over vast deserts; its vengeful weave whipping the sea into frenzy; the whispered endearments of a refreshing spring breeze at dusk. She heard it all just as she saw the pure and glittery ice of mountain tops that reached high above the clouds in his eyes.
"Come with me."
He was offering it all to her, she realised. Power, adventure, beauty, strength, cold. She could have it all if she would just reach out her hand and take it.
She could never express in words how much of her it took to wrench her gaze from his. Her head felt hazy and heavy as she helplessly turned her head to glance at the light and music of the ballroom she had came from.
"I…" She shook her head in an effort to try to clear it. "I can't… I mustn't…"
The wind rose suddenly, making her skirts flutter wildly around her as she raised her hand to try and protect her eyes from the blinding snow the gust had thrown in the air. Just as suddenly as it had started, the wind died out again and she glanced up again only to find the stranger gone without a single trace.
She suddenly realised that she was cold. Her arms and shoulders felt numb as she wrapped her arms around herself in search of warmth and comfort. Stepping over the crystal rose she had dropped, she hurried back into the ballroom without a single glance back.
The winter garden fell into calm again. The only reminders of the fact that something had just transpired, being a crystal rose laying in the snow next to drops of blood in the shape of lips.