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

  “Kian!” For the first time since we had met each other in the woods, Shasta seemed like a teenaged girl again, embarrassed about her brother's teasing. Her white-marble cheeks flushed even redder than before.

  “And...Breena...” Kian's voice grew soft and his cheeks, too, began to flush. I could feel the love pouring out in his voice, the love so visible on his eyes and on his lips. The presence of the others felt too strong, even oppressive. How I wished that we were alone, so that we could fall into each other's arms and whisper words of love!

  Kian walked over to me, taking my hand in both of his and pressing it deeply to his lips. “I thought of you, my love,” he whispered. “Every day.”

  “I thought of you!”

  Suddenly, the others did not matter. Our audience did not matter. There was nobody in the world but us.

  The five of us.

  I pulled away, suddenly, breaking the spell. Logan was still there, leaning against a tree, trying with all of his might not to look at either of us. Kian and I exchanged glances – not now, not yet. But soon.

  Sensing our discomfort, Logan broke the silence with a loud cough. “Well,” he said, his voice stiff and awkward. “We should probably get going. The last thing we want is to be locked in that tower again!”

  “Agreed!” Shasta sprang up. “Come on, let's go!”

  “Err,” Rodney spoke up, his cheeks turning almost the color of his hair. “One thing, though.”

  “What?” Shasta shot back.

  “Where are we going?”

  This silenced us. We realized, with a sickening feeling, that we had nowhere to go – there was nowhere that would welcome the five of us, Summer, Winter, and werewolf, together. My court was dangerous for all of us – and anywhere else was full of other sorts of dangers, from Pixies to wild beasts.

  “We've got to go back to the Summer Court,” said Logan, taking a protective step forward and standing right in front of me.

  “What?”

  “Breena, you can't let Wort rule in your absence. You need to head back, to seek power in your own court!”

  “And risk her life?” Rodney broke in. “I know Wort – when he was Redleaf’s advisor, we all feared him. He's a tricky player.”

  “We must go to the Winter Court,” said Kian. “My mother...she's been worried about me, been waiting. I must let her know how I am. I fear if she does not know the situation she may attack the Summer Court for having dared to imprison me. She believes that the Summer Queen – that Breena – has imprisoned her beloved son and refused to listen to any of her pleas for clemency, that the Summer Queen has sent away all messengers unheard. She is bound to seek revenge, to attempt to attack the Summer Court for her own ends.”

  “You think our mother would act so swiftly?” Shasta shot me a glance. “She knows an outright military attack at this stage would result in at least one Court's destruction.”

  “If not both,” Rodney added ruefully. “You never know – once war starts, it's like a dam being opened up. You can't stop it up again.”

  “Winter has the military advantage,” said Kian – shooting me an almost apologetic look - “I think my mother's the kind of woman who would take that risk.”

  “Especially if her son's life is at stake.” Shasta put a hand on Kian's shoulder. “She cares, you know?”

  A pale pink flush appeared under Kian's milk-white skin.

  “I know you don't think she does – but she...when she found out you were imprisoned, she was...so hurt, angry, upset. She would have burned down all the forests of Feyland if it meant getting you back.”

  “Oh, come now,” said Kian, his voice thick with irony. “That wouldn't be productive.”

  “Even Mother,” said Shasta, “isn't always rational.”

  “Well, that's settled then,” Logan brought in. “It's not safe for Bree to go to the Winter Court. She'd be captured and executed the second she arrived.”

  “Even we can't ensure your safety,” Shasta added. “If you come to the Winter Court, who knows what Mother will do? Even if we try to explain – she'll think it was your responsibility to keep Kian safe. Which it was.”

  “Didn't I help save him?” I responded, my cheeks flushing hot with anger. “Doesn't that count for anything?”

  “I know that,” said Shasta matter-of-factly. “But do you think the Winter Court knows that? Or the people? How will it look to them if the Summer Queen shows up, with the crowd baying for her blood, and then walks away scot-free – back to her kingdom to destroy the Winter Court forever?”

  “I wouldn't do that!”

  “But that's how it'll look,” said Shasta. “Don't you see that?”

  “I don't care.” I took a deep breath. “It's the only chance I have. It's the only chance I have to talk to the Winter Queen face to face.”

  “Breena...” Kian's voice held an ominous warning.

  “No, I mean it! Call it a diplomatic visit, if you want. But it's the only way I can talk to your mother without worrying that my words might be intercepted by Wort and his advisors. I know that the second I go back to the Summer Court, I'm practically incommunicado. My advisors have been withholding information for me – refusing to tell me about messengers arriving, keeping me in the dark. When the Winter Queen wanted to negotiate Kian's release, they didn't even tell me! Kian could have been executed in there and I wouldn't have even known!”

  “Well, whose fault is that?” Shasta shot back. Even now, her protectiveness of her brother outweighed our friendship. I could tell that she still didn't trust me, even after we'd saved Kian together. As long as I was the Summer Queen, I was a threat.

  “I'm trying to fix it now,” I argued back. “The only way I can. If I'd received that letter Kian would have been freed by now. I would have found a way to get Kian released while still keeping the people happy – exchanged him for land, or for another political prisoner, or something!”

  “But it's not safe!” Logan insisted.

  “I don't care,” I said. “Staying in the Summer Court isn't safe either. Every step I take, every move I make, I know I'm being watched, followed. I have to worry about whether or not my own food is poisoning me! I need to be able to speak for myself. I need to be able to rule – and my job as a ruler is to make peace. The Queen has to see me as an equal, to know that I mean peace now, as I always have. God knows what Wort's been telling her in my absence. Lies. And only I can tell the truth. Only I can perhaps make peace.”

  Silence fell over us all, a still hush that whispered into quietness. The emerald trees shimmered softly all around us in the faint light. At last Logan nodded, his powerful frame becoming softer, gentler as he realized there was no longer any need to protect me. When we had been children together, he had always been my defender, my guardian. But it was now time for me to defend all of them.

  Kian nodded too, brushing his long black hair out of his eyes. “I don't know what to say,” he said at last. “If I cannot keep you safe in my own house, I will have failed you. I cannot guarantee your safety. The Winter Court is a beautiful place, but it is a cold one. When you were there last you came as an honored guest, and my mother extended you clemency. But that was another time. That was another era. That was when you were a princess, daughter of the Queen's friend Raine, and Redleaf was on the throne of the Summer Court. She didn't see you as an enemy – just an outcast – and anyone who opposed Redleaf, as you and your mother did, was a friend to her. But now you are Redleaf's heir, like it or not, and she has heard by all accounts that you have betrayed her. Wort's lies have doubtless infected her brain.”

  “But I can simply tell her the truth!” I said. “She'll have to believe me.”

  “If you get that far,” said Shasta. “How do you know she won't order your execution on the spot?”

  “I'll go unarmed – it would be dishonorable...”

  “And what if she doesn't believe you?” Kian furrowed his brow. “Thinks you're just trying to trick her.”

 
“I have to risk it,” I said. “For peace. For my mother and my father.”

  I sighed as I thought of my father, still lost in the depths of sleep, the result of Redleaf's cruel powers. Would he ever wake up again? I tried to push the question out of my mind. Days ago he had been an image I had barely known – weeks ago I hadn't even known his identity – and no sooner had I met him, begun to feel close to him, than I had lost him again. I’ll have to free him from the spell eventually when I can figure it out. Redleaf was the one to put him under it, she would be the one to break it, but she was no longer here. Yet another complication I had to figure out at Court.

  I could feel my face flush hot red with pain, and hoped that the others – especially Shasta – didn't see. She already thought little enough of me for my inability to protect her brother up to now; Kian's escape may have mollified her somewhat, but the last thing I wanted was for her to think I was some weak little crybaby. She looked so beautiful there – as lovely and gorgeous as her brother – with her strong, harsh cheekbones and the layers of dark hair that fell down to her waist.

  Why wasn't she Queen, I wondered? How was it that I could be a monarch, and she was still a Princess, waiting in the sidelines? She seemed so much more regal than I was, so much worthier of the crown. I still couldn't help but feel that I had disappointed her, somehow.

  I sighed. If I was going to be Summer Queen, I thought, I had to earn that crown, earn that right to wear it. I would bring peace to both kingdoms, be as wise and brave as any of the ancient rulers I had heard stories about. I would make even Shasta proud of me.

  “I am willing to risk my life,” I said, “to do what is necessary for peace.”

  I saw a small smile creep around the edges of Shasta's mouth. “Your paramour has spoken,” she said to Kian, with a wry look in her eye.

  I couldn't help blushing as Kian considered. “I suppose she has,” he said. “I know what this means, then. We must go together – to the Winter Court!”

  Chapter 10

  We knew that we didn't have much time. We had to hurry, riding from the fragrant leaves and orange forests of the Autumn lands to the luscious tropical terrain of Summer, making our way to the frozen tundras of Winter that Kian had shown me once before. And yet, as we traveled through the forests and glens, peaks and valleys of Feyland, I couldn't help but marvel at everything we passed. Beauty rushed past us as we hurried along, and with every corner we turned, every cliff we came to the edge of, only to see the vast panorama of Feyland stretching out at our feet, every expanse of land that came onto the horizon ahead of us, my heart and soul ached to stop and stay a while, to let me stare at the land that was mine, to drink in all its beauty. We passed fruits the size of boulders, hanging from long and tangled branches, inviting us with sweet nectar to bite into the aromatic flesh. We passed cliffs jagged and harsh against the moonlight, made white by the night sky, in stark relief to the stars shimmering above. We passed valleys so green that the sky looked white by comparison, and sunsets so rich and bright that the world around us seemed to be, in comparison, made only of black and white.

  But as we reached the Spring area, the border between Winter and Summer where so many battles had been fought, we saw ugliness to rival our pain. The fresh rosebuds that had once peeked playfully out of the dewy ground had been lopped off from their stems like so many tiny heads. Bushes had been torn apart to make way from trenches, and the Primrose Path that led from the lily ponds to the Rabbits' Warren was lined with the bodies of fallen fey, stained silver with a river of fairy blood.

  I was horrified, but my disgust – visceral and immediate – was nothing compared to the grief I could see on the faces of Shasta and Kian.

  “Our men,” said Kian. “I recognize some of them.” His face was grim, and I could tell that it was taking all of his effort not to look at me, not to search me with his piercing blue-silver eyes and ask me that unspoken question – why had my people done this to his?

  “Fairy blood!” Shasta's voice shook. I was only a half-fairy. My blood did not look like theirs; it ran red. I could not understand the deep, agonizing revulsion that coursed through them at the sight of so much silver. To me it looked alien – strange – a silver river ebbing and flowing through the grass and the buds. To them it was the embodiment of horror.

  As we passed, we saw that the land of Spring slowly turn to Winter – the lightly speckled grass hardening and turning to tundra. The ground froze beneath us, crunching bitterly as we walked and rode, and at last frost appeared, choking the grass into silence. The frost was not clear, as frost was in the mortal world, but rather metallic, shiny. For a moment I thought that the land had been paved with tin.

  And then I realized.

  It was blood.

  Not just a speckle of fairy blood, not just a river, but an icy tundra stained for miles with fairy blood. Summer or Winter – Autumn or Spring – we couldn't tell, only ride through that horrid sea for what seemed like miles. We had been trying to lighten the mood before, with talking and jests, jokes and games, but before this we were silent. Kian and I could not look at each other. Shasta and I could not look at each other. Even Rodney and Shasta, usually so steadfast and sure in their love, were steadfastly avoiding each other's eyes, as if they were afraid that any exchange – even the tiniest one – between them would dissolve into pain, into the realization that his brothers had done this to her sisters, and her men had done this to his friends.

  And yet, as we saw the tundra frozen with shining, silver frost, we felt all together that something had to be done. Our parents had caused this – my father, Kian and Shasta's mother – the old generation of fairies had allowed this war to happen. Not anymore, I thought. We had to be the ones to end this, to put an end at last to the death and the pain, the sadness. Had Kian and Shasta lost friends they loved, I wondered? Had Rodney?

  Logan stood skulking on the outskirts of the group as we rode. It was clear that he felt separate from us. He did not look us in the eyes; he did not stand with us as we mourned. If I felt like a bit of an outsider, as a half-fairy who had not grown up in Feyland, then Logan felt more alien still. These were not his people; these were not his kin or his kind, and he could not share in our grief.

  We came across a vale strewn with the silver-coated golden shields of Summer soldiers, my own knights and fairies. The Winter Court must have won a serious battle here. I sighed. I could not resist kneeling, letting my knees sink into the silver liquid, and paying my silent respects to the knights of the Summer Court. “Brave men died here,” I whispered.

  We set up camp in that vale, a morbid combination of respect and necessity, for night had come upon us. Logan and Rodney had gone to cook – for in Feyland cooking was the traditional provenance of men. Shasta had gone into the woods to forage for berries and herbs. I was alone, tending the fire we would use to roast our finds. I felt a soft hand caress my cheek, my neck, my shoulders.

  “Kian?” I turned around to see him staring at me, his eyes penetrating through to my pain, my fear.

  “You were brave to come,” he said. His voice was soft, but strong – fortified with hidden steel. “To risk everything...”

  “I believe in this,” I said. “I believe in peace.” War had separated me from Kian for too long; it had separated Rodney from Shasta, Winter from Summer. If it could only end, if it could only stop, if the blood could only stop running like silver rivers through the streams and valleys of my country, it would be so easy to succumb to him, to let him take me in his arms without worrying, without wondering, if this would be the last time...

  Kian let his hands trail down, his fingers brushing my shoulder-blades, then slowly lingering down towards my wrist, finally brushing against my fingertips. The feeling was electric, a shock of longing coursing through me. I gasped under my breath.

  “Breena, I never thanked you,” he said. “For saving me.” His gaze was still fixed upon my face, alive with the expression of his love, as hot and dynamic as a cr
ackling fire. “You saved my life.” He took me into his arms, pressing his fingers into my back, releasing the iron-hard tension in my bones. I sighed softly as his lips met mine, pressing all his love, all his adoration, into me. His lips were sweet against mine – tasting of nectar, of fairy fruit – and as his tongue found mine all thought disappeared, so that there was nothing in the world, no war, no pain, only the feeling of his mouth on mine, and his arms wrapped tightly around me.

  It was only when he pulled away that the familiar fear began – could we do this? Could we survive this war? What if my Court found out? What if his Court found out?

  He saw my face – the flush of worry that came over me.

  “It's dangerous,” I conceded. “I'm...”

  “Breena,” he said again. “Before I met you, I knew what my duties were. I would have gone into battle when called to do so, acted without mercy, without regret. I would have spilled the silver blood of my enemies – of your people. It was my duty to kill as many members of the Summer Court as I could. The lines were so clear, then. Winter was Winter. Summer was Summer. Winter was virtuous and Summer was scum. And when I dreamed of you – of a Summer Princess I had once loved as a child – I did what I could to put you out of my mind. I wanted to hate you. I wanted to destroy you – the heir to the throne of my enemies. But as your sixteenth birthday grew closer, as my dreams grew stronger and more vivid – then...” He sighed deeply. “I realized I could not. I could defeat many enemies on the battlefield, but I could not destroy the challenges of my own mind. I no longer wished to shed fairy blood. I never wished to hurt you. From the moment I met you, I knew that my love for you was stronger than my duty. My feelings were stronger than my ability to fight them. You were stronger than I was.”

  He touched my face lightly, leaving a trail of warmth where his fingers met my skin.

  “We are meant to be.” He pressed his lips to mine again; against myself, against my worry, I once again succumbed to the power of his kiss. “I know that now. Our love is stronger than magic, stronger than the laws of all Feyland. It will survive this...whatever the future brings.”