Silver Frost (Bitter Frost #3 of The Frost Series) Read online

  My father had cared for these creatures so much that he had left behind the beauty and splendor of the Summer Palace, and spent months at a time in disguise as a lowly knight, roaming his kingdom and learning about what his subjects really needed. Now it was my turn to do the same. But I knew I would miss the Summer Palace. Although my incarceration there had been terrifying, and Wort and his minions still made me feel unsafe and unwelcome at every turn, I knew deep down that I belonged there. I had been dreaming of the glamour and shimmer of the ballroom since I was a little girl, long before I even knew what fairies were. I would miss it, for it already felt like home. I would miss the satin sheets and the smell of oranges floating in from the garden, would miss the exquisite marble statues in the front hall and the glimmering of gemstones from the throne room. Since I had been crowned Summer Queen, it seemed that the palace had begun to gleam more brightly than before, as if the sun itself and all the essence of summer had descended upon the court. I knew that the Court under the reign of the old queen had been a hard and dangerous place, but when my father and I had returned home together it had seemed, however briefly, that a new hope had dawned for the court. I had the power to bring it to its former glory – the glory that I had dreamed about as a child that I remembered from my infancy. I could bring peace and prosperity to the kingdom, and end the old queen's reign of tyranny and fear.

  My heart ached as I left the Summer Palace behind. Would I return to it victorious, ready to be a queen once more? Or would I return to find danger and treachery lurking around every corner, behind every column? If I was to be safe, I knew, I had to win over the hearts and minds of the people – for if I were loved by them Wort would never dare to have me assassinated or incarcerated. I needed the fairies as much as they needed me.

  We rode onwards, my horse and I.

  As we rode, I saw forests so green that they looked like the far end of the ocean, and rivers that bubbled and shone like diamonds. I saw plains of long, tall grass and whistling meadows made alive by crickets. It was as if I were seeing Feyland for the first time – all its beauty coming alive within my eyes, new and glorious. This was the fairyland I had dreamed of – but it was more than that.

  I was the Queen of this entire kingdom.

  This was my country.

  This was my kingdom.

  Chapter 2

  I had been riding all night and into the morning. The dawn was spreading its rosy fingers across the horizon, tracing patterns of gold dust in the crimson expanses. The sun left pink and sienna rays all over the sky, and in the distance I could see the first tentative up-creeping of blue. I was exhausted. Fairy magic and desperation alike had caused me to feel little pain at first – my legs had remained tensed in the saddle – but after twelve hours at last I was beginning to feel the dull ache in my muscles that meant I had gone too far.

  My horse seemed to agree with me. He was giving a low, mournful whinny every time I kicked in the stirrups – and it was in the end that my horse's exhaustion, more than mine, compelled me to stop. We were on the shores of a lake, and the sunrise was reflected large and orange in the water. The second I dismounted, I felt my muscles relax all at once, a single fluid motion that caused me to tumble down onto the soft, sweet grass. My horse, too, seemed to enjoy it. Horses here were not like horses in the mortal world – no sooner had I left his back than he began rushing and rolling in the grass, rather like a large dog, legs in the air and limbs askance. I couldn't help laughing at the sight.

  “Come on, then,” I whispered. “Get some water – we don't have much time.”

  With an indignant neigh, the horse leaped back onto his feet and began treading towards the water. He sniffed tentatively, then began drinking, slurping down great gulps of the liquid with distinctively equine glee.

  Then, suddenly, I saw a bubbling on the horizon.

  My heart stopped – could it be?

  “Back, Coral!” I cried, but the horse was too immersed in the water to hear me. “Back!”

  I put a hand on my sword as the kelpie rushed out of the water, its webbed wings slashing through the air like so many swords.

  A kelpie in a soup was distasteful enough, but alive kelpies were not only rebels but also dangerous. They could live on land or in the sea – emerging from the watery depths to mate with mortal horses to continue their cursed line, and to eat airy children. As a child, I'd been told, I had repelled one of these creatures and proven my worth as a fairy, but at sixteen I had no idea how to manage this fairy magic. I had only my sword.

  Time seemed to stop. As I saw the kelpie rear up, splashing the lake into a series of torrential waves, I saw in the back of my mind a glimpse of my fairy childhood. I remembered nothing of this life – only the same ball I dreamed of again and again in my sleep – and yet somehow in my mind was a clear picture of this very lake. I was only an infant, swaddled in the arms of my mother, Raine – the Summer King Foxflame's chief consort and true love. We were having a picnic – a tenuous crowd made up of my father, my mother, and my father's wife, the imperious Summer Queen Redleaf, who had borne the insult with brave silence even as she glared daggers at the two of us. I remembered the glistening white and blue sand, the caresses of the nursemaid who fed me and tried to teach me the difference between Feyland's two burning suns as my mother tried, in vain, to make small talk with the Summer Queen – and then that familiar, terrifying bubbling at the edges of the water...

  The Kelpie had grabbed the nursemaid first, clamping down with razor-sharp teeth and dragging her into the murky darkness of the water. I had tumbled from her arms and landed – bruised but ultimately unharmed – on the pillow-soft sands.

  And then the kelpie had come for me. Its teeth had widened over me; I had smelled its rotting breath.

  And then it had gone – and nobody knew why. Even Redleaf had agreed – I was the strongest fairy baby they had ever seen.

  Some consolation, now. This kelpie was definitely not being repelled. Could it be I have lost some of my fairy magic since being raised in the Land Beyond the Crystal River?

  “Coral, back!” By now the horse had sensed the danger, and galloped back from the edge of the lake. But it was too late. The kelpie – with velvety black fur and two horns poised for destruction – was charging straight towards us. Its eyes glowed red and ferocious – its teeth were sharp: at least twenty rows of powerful daggers. Alongside the velvet fur was a series of sharp scales – like the scales of a snake or a lizard – with the unshapely legs of a salamander. The horse's hind legs gave way to a serpentine tail.

  I swallowed hard. Nothing I had seen in the mortal land or Feyland was quite like this. Was this what Feyland was, in the end? A land of danger, of fear? The mortal world, the world of Gregory, Oregon, had never seemed so far away.

  The kelpie clamped down on Coral's tail, and my horse reared and whinnied in distress, eyes flashing like lightning in the rising of dawn.

  “No!” I shouted! “No!” My fear forgotten, I rushed at the kelpie with the sword. My blow was just hard enough to make the kelpie drop Coral's tail – and Coral instantly galloped off into the woods, spurred on by his terror.

  That just left me and the kelpie. I brandished my sword again, striking anew. But this time the kelpie was prepared for me, and caught the sword between its teeth, flinging it away with as little effort as if it had been a toothpick. My blood froze. The kelpie had left the water, now, and was leering at me as it ran on its lizard-like legs, its mouth open and poised to swallow me up whole....

  All I had left was magic.

  I hadn't used my magic since ascending to the throne, but now it was my last hope. I concentrated, hard, summoning the forces of Summer. Your Queen commands you, I whispered, help me.

  Suddenly, a burst of reddish-orange light was thrust out of me – a burning, rolling fireball that glimmered like the sun, rolling towards the kelpie. I could feel the air sizzle with spark and life, my body warming up as the heat emanated through my very core, radiat
ing out through my body and rushing from my fingertips. The beam hit the kelpie straight in the chest, and the smell of burning flesh filled the air as the kelpie was set aflame.

  I took a few steps backwards, watching the kelpie burn, my heart still pounding in my chest, when suddenly a clear, human voice – like a male child's – came from the kelpie.

  “Help me.”

  I stopped. Suddenly the creature before me wasn't a monster, wasn't a danger – but was something like a child – able to plead for its life. Had I just committed murder? I was the Summer Queen – and it was my duty to protect everyone within my kingdom, even the kelpies. But I was wary of going closer – the last thing I wanted to do was end my days in the stomach of the beast.

  Before I could make a decision, a large, hairy creature leaped in front of me, growling and snarling. It was a wolf. He bared his teeth at the kelpie, giving it an insistent snarl.

  At once the kelpie retreated into the water, its singed flesh sizzling as the water extinguished the flames. “Beware,” it was saying. “Beware, Summer Queen, Queen of Fire. Beware of the curse of the courts.” And then it vanished into the waves.

  I stared at the wolf – its eyes familiar, even in animal form.

  “Logan?”

  Chapter 3

  It had been only a couple of weeks since I had last seen Logan, but it felt like much longer. The last time I had seen him, he was with my mother – at her side, loyal as a wolf even in his human form, accompanying Raine back across the Crystal River, to the land where we had grown up – the land of mortals. A few weeks or months ago I might have called it “my” world. But now it seemed that my true home was instead here. I had told Logan that at the time – told him that it was time for me to remain in Feyland, and follow my destiny. I had told him that we could only ever be just friends, that our time together was limited by our separate destinies. He was a werewolf, and I was a fairy, and I belonged firmly, squarely, in Feyland, while the weres straddled the borders between the two worlds – wanted by neither, belonging in neither. I had feelings for him then, even when I told him that there was nothing between us. It was better, I thought, to cut him off completely than to lead him on, to make him contend with my feelings for Kian, as impossible as they were.

  But now, as Logan began transitioning before me, the smooth silver fur of the wolf vanishing into a tanned, deep olive color – the color of his skin, his muscles, his broad shoulders bare before me, I almost regretted that decision. The eyes of the wolf, loving and longing and loyal, were now set squarely in the face of a man, but they were still staring at me with that same devotion, that same puppyish desire. I could feel my heart breaking quietly as I stared at him – a break that I knew was but the smallest echo of what I had made him feel when I broke his heart by the banks of the Crystal River.

  “I know what you said,” Logan was saying. His voice was wavering, shaking. “That you wanted me to go back to my normal life – my other life. That you wanted me to leave you alone...”

  “I didn't mean it like that!” I started.

  “I know what you said...” Logan repeated. He came closer to me, and as he walked I could inhale the deep and familiar scent of his musk. It reminded me of tree bark and fir trees and pine needles, of the heady scent of the woods behind the high school at Gregory, Oregon. How I missed that scent. It felt safe, felt like home, where my mother was, where Logan and I spent time together exploring the woods, talking about dreams, and worrying about simple things like homework and preserving those woods. Once, those woods had been my favorite place in the world. Logan and I had spent hours walking there, tracing trails, finding secret places and hideaways. The smell brought back so many memories – of the way he had stood by me all through my childhood and adolescence, standing up to the school bullies like Clariss for me, holding my hand when I needed a friend, refusing to let the popular girls mock me for my strangeness, my artistic sensibilities. And then in Feyland, too – he had saved my life time and time again. He had suffered imprisonment and risked death to deliver me from Delano, the Pixie King.

  I sighed inwardly. I didn't deserve his kindness. I didn't deserve his devotion. I felt the pressure – so familiar now – to respond to his love, and against myself I inhaled his scent again. I tried to remember Kian – remember what I'd promised – but Logan’s devotion brought me weak to my knees.

  “We travel back and forth across the Crystal River, we werewolves,” Logan was saying softly. “So you see, I came back. Your mother is safe.”

  I was shaking, trembling as he came so close to me, lightly brushing my shoulders with his fingertips.

  “I heard what happened. With Rodney and the Summer Queen. The former Summer Queen.” Before I could speak he wrapped his strong arms around me, enveloping me in the warmest, safest hug I had ever experienced. I melted into his chest, feeling his sturdy fingers stroke my back, massaging the aching, tensed muscles in my neck and shoulders. That was Logan, I thought. Always strong and silent, always aware.

  It felt good to surrender, for a change. Since the murder of the old Summer Queen, since my coronation, I had been called upon to be so strong. I had to be a firm ruler, a brave ruler, one that never faltered. Any mistake I made could cost thousands of Summer and Winter fairies their lives. The assassination of the Summer Queen had only made matters worse – tensions between the two kingdoms were at an all-time high. And it was my job to negotiate the tensions. My father lay in perpetual sleep, under the unbreakable spell of the former Queen, and Kian was imprisoned, thrown and shackled under the darkest, tallest tower of the prisoners of the Summer Court. In the past few weeks, I felt more alone than ever before.

  I remembered those high school bullies. How silly, how immature they all seemed to me now. I had once worried about Homecoming Queen; now I was a Queen proper in a land where my dreams and nightmares converged! There was more than crowns and glory as queen. There was the duty to your people.

  Even so, it was nice to feel protected.

  “Breena,” Logan laughed. “You really did a number on that kelpie just now. You're finally getting the hang of that whole fairy thing…” His voice trailed off.

  “Ever since my coronation – being Summer Queen.” I stopped. The words still sounded strange to me. “I've been stronger. At least that's how it feels. It was when I wore the Crown of the Summer Queen, that I felt more like a fairy.”

  “Not just any fairy,” Logan broke in. “The daughter of one of the strongest, best-loved kings in Feyland. The magic of the other fairies recognizes your royal blood – it responds to it.” He paused. “Royal coronations are serious stuff here in Feyland, Bree. It’s not just a figurative transfer of power, it is a literal one. Whatever magic the last Summer Queen had, it goes to you. With that, how could you be anything but so much stronger now? Exponentially stronger, even!”

  “I don't know,” I sighed. “It's all happening so fast.”

  He touched my nose lightly. “I guess you don't need my protection anymore. Not like the old days.” He let the side of his hand brush against my cheek; I felt it tingle.

  “How about a friend instead?”

  “I could always use a friend,” I laughed. “Especially now. I can't say I have too many of those in the fairy courts.”

  He looked me up and down, considering my outfit – the shining armor of a fairy knight.

  “I'm going to take a wild guess,” said Logan, “and say you're on a journey somewhere?”

  I nodded.

  “But what kind of Queen takes a journey without her royal entourage, her bodyguards?”

  “Maybe a Queen who doesn't want to be found,” I said.

  “Feyland is dangerous,” said Logan, sighing. “Beautiful – but still dangerous. What's so important that you're willing to take that risk, Your Highness?”

  I didn't answer.

  “If you don't know what you're up against, Breena, Feyland could be more dangerous still. I've seen creatures so deadly, so dangerous that I'm s
till waking up with nightmares. And compared to the creatures I haven't seen – but have only heard of – the ones I've seen are nursery rhymes. Your strength and magic won't do you much good without knowledge. That kelpie just now – it was trying to get to you. If you'd so much as touched it with your bare hands, you would have been stuck to it – the scales emit some kind of glue. You would have been pulled into the water to drown.”

  I stopped and took a deep breath. How close had I come to feeling pity for the creature?

  “Wow, I didn't know that,” I said. “Thanks, Logan.”

  He gave me a wry smile. “Anytime, Breena,” he said. “I don't want to see you dead anytime soon.”

  “I can't believe I didn't know that!” I felt so stupid.

  “You're not expected to, Breena,” said Logan. “You're human after all – or at least, you grew up as one. I know Kian tried to teach you as much as he could about Feyland.” He made a subconscious grimace when speaking Kian's name. “But it's not like you can really get a handle on this stuff without, you know, having grown up here.”

  “Like you,” I said. How strange – it had always felt as if Logan had grown up with me. How many secrets had he kept when we were growing up?

  “The best of both worlds,” said Logan. “Human and fairy – all rolled into one. Or the worst of both worlds.”

  “And werewolf,” I added.

  “And werewolf,” Logan said.

  I sighed. “I know my mother was only trying to protect me,” I said. “But I can't help it. I'm angry. I wish I knew all these things earlier – so I can protect myself now.”