Bitter Frost Read online

  Life was strange here in the fairy kingdom, I thought. A Princess could be banished from her own court; a Queen could threaten her own son, a fairy Prince, with death! It had been so beautiful in my dreams, this place, but since my return I could not help but feel that the dangers of the cities and the forests were too new, too terrifying. It was not the fairyland I remembered from my dreams. It was a darker place.

  The guards escorted me inside and I saw her sitting on a throne made of golden columns, with rubies inlaid down and around the building. I had dreamed many times of the Summer Court, but I had never dreamed of her in any of those nights. Nevertheless, I recognized her; my magic found and responded to hers. How could it not? Her magic was overwhelming. Her hair was long and so golden that it was almost white, her tresses falling into her lap and down the sides of her seat, tangling in one another. Her eyes were a warm brown – like the color of cinnamon – flecked with gold, eyes I could see were fixing on me with predatory interest as I entered. She wore a long, flowing dress of crushed red velvet; it only accentuated her deep, glowing skin. She was beautiful; she was also terrible. She was the Summer Queen.

  She was a venerable ruler; from the moment I entered I knew that it was she who ran the Summer Court; she exuded power from the hem of her heavy skirt to the crown she wore perched upon her head.

  “So,” she said. “Here at last, are we?” She smiled and it was not a smile of friendship. “Do you remember me at all, Breena?”

  I shook my head, still awe-struck by the power of this fiery figure.

  She laughed, and her laughter echoed through the palace halls. “And to think,” she said, “there was a time when you used to run in here, covered in fairy-flowers and water from one of the fountains in the gardens, run and embrace me. Do you remember what you used to call me, Breena?”

  I shook my head again.

  “Mother Queen, you called me. Mother Queen.” She put the matter aside. “And now you don't remember me at all! I'm not surprised, the way your mother brought you up. Of course, one must make allowances for concubines.”

  I reddened.

  “Please, Your Highness,” I began, my voice shaking as I felt that “Mother Queen” would have the opposite of the desired effect. “Where is...” I meant to ask for the king; the words reshaped themselves in my mouth. “...my father?”

  She scoffed.

  “Out beyond the Crystal River somewhere,” she said mockingly, her voice full of scorn. “In your realm. Cavorting with one or the other of the maids from that side of the universe – he's got such a weakness for mortal women! It really is sickening!”

  “He's in the mortal world?” I repeated. “Why?”

  “I don't care who she is,” said the Summer Queen, “as long as her name isn't Raine – that's all that matters to me. He can have his fun – but he'd sacrifice the whole Summer Court to that woman! And I can't have that happening.”

  “He's with another woman?” I asked.

  “While I'm left to run a country and fight a war by myself.” She smiled. “All by myself – can you believe it? You see what I have to put up with!”

  I could not help feeling a little sorry for her. I had seen what the fairy war had done to Feyland; I would not have wanted her position for the world.

  “Typical men,” she said, and then remembered that I was there. “Well then, Breena,” she continued, “You've put us all in quite a state. You always were a trouble-maker. I remember how dirty you used to get – you used to run and play hide-and-seek and the servants would have a time of it trying to catch you.”

  I thought of my father in Feyland. I couldn't believe what the Summer Queen was saying – that he was there in the mortal world only to lay his eyes on mortal women. No, he was my father, after all, even if I didn't know him. He had to have been looking for my mother, trying desperately to warn us of the danger...

  “You're getting to be quite a nice-looking young lady, I must admit,” she said. “Although it pains me to do so. Rather like your mother when she was young.” She sighed, heavily. “She was only a little older than you were when she met my husband. And how he fell for her! I've never seen anything like it! The other ones he would hide away, he would be discreet about. But not her! He insisted that she had to be near him at all times, that he had to put her up at Court, you see, at my Court, and that her children would inherit...ah, well, but that's my curse, you see, as well as the curse of so many powerful fairies. We are all barren, barren as the trees of the Winter Court. And so our court has to make do with Halflings like you.”

  “That isn't to say I didn't enjoy the sound of children playing in the Court – while it lasted. You and the Winter children all running about rambunctiously while your father played with you like the child he was! But it didn't matter, then. There was no war, then, not until we were attacked...”

  “Attacked?” I asked.

  “The Winter Court,” she said, “set a trap for us. The traitors.” Her mouth and eyes contorted in disgust. “But I blame you. You, child, have been a problem for us since the day you were born – you and your mother, with your magic, attracting trouble everywhere you went! I knew you had strong magic – from the time you were a child. I saw a kewpie try to come into your crib once; at six months of age you were able to repel it. And usually it takes two grown men to do that! Danger will follow you wherever you go, you and your kind. At last I made your father see sense. He didn't want to, of course, but at last I persuaded him to banish the both of you for the good of this whole kingdom.”

  My father had agreed to send me away? My eyes welled with tears. How could I be dangerous? What had I done? I was only a baby then!

  Life in the fairy court was getting stranger and stranger.

  Chapter 19

  When the Summer Queen had finished speaking, she was interrupted by the arrival of a messenger. He was a slim, golden creature – a small fairy page-boy with eyes like the summer sun, wearing a long scarlet tunic. I tried to use the time he spent whispering in her ear to gather my thoughts. I was nervous, of course – absolutely terrified! - but beyond that I was worried about myself. What could I have done, I thought? What had I done that was so wrong, so wicked, so dangerous that my own father would send me away beyond the Crystal River – and my mother, too? I, the fairy Queen had said, had trouble everywhere I went – it dogged my footsteps. Was she right? I thought of the Pixie King, of Kian, of Logan (and a lump rose in my throat when I thought of Logan) and at once I wasn't sure whether I could deny it.

  The Queen looked up as the pageboy left. Her demeanor was expressionless, the marble countenance of a great Queen bearing secrets of state. “Well,” she said. “It seems that we will soon have a visitor here in the Summer Court, Breena. What think you of that?”

  “I – I don't know, Your Highness,” I stammered.

  She smiled a grim smile. “The Winter Court has sent us a letter.”

  “What does it say?” I asked, too-eager, thinking of Kian.

  “Well,” she said, “Let me tell you what it says. It offers me a very interesting deal. And I'm curious – Princess – should I take it?”

  “What is it?”

  “An exchange of prisoners,” she said. “Interesting indeed. The Winter Court has someone very intriguing they would like to offer me in exchange for the Princess languishing down there in the dungeons. They do say that it would be a peaceful exchange...”

  I thought of Kian, of our nights and days together at the manor, and wished he were here alongside me, to talk of peace, of hope. We had promised each other that we would find some way, some how, to make peace between the two kingdoms; having seen the harsh ferocity of the Summer Court, my hopeful heart was slowly sinking. How silly must I have been to think that I – a mere girl of sixteen – could fight battles of centuries of fairy history. I swallowed hard.

  “Who are the prisoners?” I asked.

  “Funny you should ask,” said the Summer Queen. “Let's see.” Her voice was like clo
tted honey; it stuck in her throat. “Your opinion on this matter will indubitably be most, most entertaining. You see, the prisoner that the Winter Court wants is its oldest daughter, Shasta. Perhaps you remember her! You played with each other when the two of you were children, and we were not yet at war with the Winter Court.”

  “And the other prisoner?” I said warily. I had once been the other prisoner; who else could it be?

  The Summer Queen's lips closed in a smirk. “Your mother,” she said.

  I gasped. My mother! I thought of her mysteriously vanished on the morning of my birthday – it seemed so long ago! - and my throat tightened. What would they do with her? She was my mother – my protectress – the idea that anything could have happened to her was still unthinkable to me.

  “Now, I don't care a fig about your mother. She's nothing but a dangerous concubine – the Winter Court can have her for all I care! But there is one problem.” She peered at me. “Your silly father. As long as the favorite concubine of the Summer King is in the Winter Court, they have a huge hold of us – for you know he would fight a hundred thousand pixies to get to her, let alone some Winter fairies. And if the Winter Court has him, well...I have been ruling this court for years – but ruling without even the appearance of a king by my side! But the Summer fairies love their king and would not stand for any Summer royalty to be a prisoner of the Winter Court. They come in peace, they say, but I don’t trust them. We trusted them years ago when we allowed the Winter Court to visit us, only to be betrayed and tricked, attacked right in our own palace. That was what started this war.”

  “Now, Breena,” she continued. “You think you have the right to take my place one day, don't you? Of course you do. You see, being a queen takes more cunning and wisdom, more strength to do the right thing for your people, and more fortitude than you would think. A queen should be the equal match of a king (in my case, even stronger) because of the enormous fate a queen controls for many. And a queen should be willing to sacrifice her life, and dreams for her kingdom. So why don't you give me the answer to this...conundrum? What would you do? Now be careful! I'm still Queen, and if I don't like your answer, I can always send you to the Pitchkey Dungeons. You'll be rat food there – if you're lucky.”

  I stood limply before her, my mind cycling through centuries of fairy history, fairy learning, trying desperately to think what to do...

  Epilogue

  A dream, feverish and terrifying, coming over me again and again.

  A dungeon, dank and moldy, with stone walls and the scurrying of rats around the hay. A terrible smell – plague, pus, agony. No light except for the torches on the walls, the gleam in the guards' eyes. Pixie guards. Some of them recognizable – these are Delano's men. Cold. Ugly. Evil.

  A figure, lying in the middle of the floor, great and hulking, covered in so much blood I cannot see the fur or figure underneath. A howl of terror. A scream of pain. Over and over again until I think I am going to wake up in a sweat.

  The slow trail of starvation. Terror.

  A pixie's voice. “You know, I think we'd be doing him a favor by ending it.”

  A low moan from the figure.

  “There's only so much torture one of their kind can take. Eventually they go insane, and then you lose all the fun.”

  A voice, high-pitched and eerie. This is Delano's voice; I recognize it by its cruelty.

  “Oh, no,” says Delano. “Not at all. We can't kill him. Besides, when Princess Breena hears that her werewolf is still alive – which she will, then nothing will stop her from coming back here to fetch him.

  “And then nothing will stop me.”

  *******

  Breena, Kian, and Logan’s story continues in

  Book 2 of Bitter Frost

  Forever Frost

  Excerpt from

  Rise of the Fire Tamer

  The Wordwick Games™

  Book 1

  kailin gow

  Prologue

  The deadline slipped past, as deadlines tend to. Around the world, hungry eyes pinned themselves to computer screens, waiting for news. When it came, it came in the form of a simple video file, which when opened showed the familiar head and shoulders of Henry Word, the owner of Wordwick Inc. As heads went, it wasn’t too bad. Although he had hit forty, there weren’t any signs of gray in the sandy-blond hair, and the cleft chin was still as defined as ever. In the second or two before he started speaking, there was a twinkle in the green eyes that said that Henry Word was enjoying the suspense.

  “Well,” he began, “you’re probably all waiting with baited breath for me to announce the winners of the Wordwick Games Contest, designed to find our ultimate fans. After all, you probably want to know who’s getting the prize of spending a week in the castle you all know and love from the game.” A mischievous smile flickered across his features for a moment. “Well, simply telling you would hardly be much fun, would it? Instead, I think I’ll keep you all in suspense just a little while longer, and our winners…” Henry Word raised a remarkably old-fashioned pocket watch to eye level and spun it like a carnival hypnotist. “Well, our winners should be finding out very soon indeed.”

  Tumbleweed didn’t twist its way across the ranch, because that would have been too much like something happening. Stieg Sparks had learned many things in the past seventeen years, and one of them was that nothing much ever seemed to happen on days when you really wanted them to. Particularly not on his parents’ ranch. A few cattle, though not as many as there once had been, stood and stared at Sparks as he sat on the front porch, and he stared back, more for something to do than from any particular interest in them.

  The cows were probably getting the better end of the deal, since underneath his sandy-blond hair Sparks had the casual good looks that came with being his school football team’s star quarterback, while cows were just cows.

  Of course, Sparks knew could probably find something to do, if he set his mind to it. He could do most things once he set his mind to them. He could, for example, go and take a look at the broken crop sprayer that his father had sworn would never work again, before they ended up paying out more money the ranch didn’t have. He would probably find a way to get it working. Or he could go inside and log on to the Game, though his mother had started to say he was spending too much time on it.

  He could even hurry over to football practice. It was certainly what he was supposed to be doing. He might even make it in time not to earn any extra laps from the coach, if he really rushed. Somehow, the thought didn’t spur him to action. In fact, put like that, even staring at cows seemed better.

  It occurred to him that they weren’t staring back at him any more. Instead, they were busy watching a figure that had somehow managed to walk halfway up the drive to the house without Sparks noticing. Sparks couldn’t blame them. The figure wore what could only be described as a robe, the cowl up and obscuring their face. Sparks was so surprised by the arrival that he didn’t say anything until the figure was just a couple of feet away.

  “Hi. Are you lost?”

  In answer, the hooded figure held out a hand. It took Sparks a moment to notice that there was an envelope in it. Sparks took it without thinking. It was an odd sort of envelope, jet-black and sealed in a very old-fashioned way, with a blob of red wax that had a seal pressed into it. The seal formed a capital W. A very familiar capital W, since Sparks had seen it online practically every day for months now.

  He ripped it open and read the contents in one go, then looked up to ask the hooded figure about it. Sparks found himself staring at empty space. Well, not exactly empty. There were still the cows. There were always cows. There just seemed to be a complete lack of any gray robed figures to go with them.

  This apartment was a lot smaller than any ranch, and there certainly wasn’t room for any cows, except possibly in the refrigerator. There was hardly space for Rio, his little brother and his grandmother. Sometimes, especially when his grandmother started saying things like “Rior
dan Roberts! What trouble have you got yourself into this time?” he thought that there might not even be enough room for all three of them.

  Or at least not for him. The dark hair and olive skin he’d inherited from his mother were fine with his grandmother, but the piercing blue eyes he’d got from his father weren’t so ok. Not after what happened. It didn’t strike Rio as very fair that she’d bring it up whenever there was trouble, especially when it was never Rio’s fault. Well, not most of the time, anyway. It certainly wasn’t down to him that practically everything in East LA seemed to be trouble in Nana’s opinion. As far as Rio could see, taking a few things for Nana and Tomas shouldn’t really count. He was only looking out for them.

  Currently, he was sitting in front of about the only luxury the apartment had, a tiny computer that Nana had insisted the two of them should have for their schoolwork. For once, Rio was using it for just that, and not the Game. He looked up at the sound of soft footfalls behind him, expecting to see Tomas. It wasn’t.

  “Hey, who are you?”

  The figure in gray didn’t say anything, and Rio lunged forward to try and wrench the hood of the robe back. If someone was going to break in, he wanted to see their face. He got a brief glimpse of a face almost completely hidden by wraparound sunglasses, before the robe pulled out of his hands, leaving Rio trying to keep his balance and failing. He looked up from the carpet, and the figure was gone. All that was left was a black envelope left precisely on the floor in front of him like the figure had known where he would fall.

  It occurred to Rio that, in Grams’ book, this would definitely count as trouble.