Bitter Frost Read online

  “And you never told me,” I whispered.

  “What could I say?” said Logan. “I was ashamed. I didn’t know what you would think of me, Breena. So many times I had wanted to, but you were getting these dreams, and I didn’t want to scare you. Werewolves are welcome in neither kingdom – they are seen as drifters, rogues, homeless vagabonds. Besides, how strange would such a thing sound? “I'm a werewolf” You would have thought I was nuts.”

  “Did you know I was a fairy?”

  He shook his head. “I knew you were special,” he said. “But you would be special anyway, fairy princess or not. But I felt...a connection with you. I thought...” He sighed. “Never mind what I thought. The connection was because we both originated in the fairy kingdom – that's all.” He looked angry for a moment.

  “And so you've been living back and forth,” I said. “Always?”

  “Always.”

  “Then you must know how to get back!” I said. “How to get back to the mortal realm.”

  Logan nodded. “You made it easy,” he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Your painting – in the art studio.”

  “My painting?”

  “Have you ever seen fairy art?” Logan asked me.

  I nodded, thinking of Kian's paintings in the hunting lodge, of the magic of the fairy waltz. The thought of Kian left a lump in my throat.

  “It's the most magical thing there is,” said Logan. “More magic goes into it than almost anything. Even your paintings of Kian – though you didn't know it – had magic in them. And that magic pulls you into fairyland.”

  I remembered Kian pulling me into the art studio before we arrived in Feyland, and understood.

  “So, to get back, I just have to paint home?”

  Logan shook his head. “Not that simple,” he said. “You'll have to go to the Crystal River. It's far from here – as far as you can go. There are cliffs there – gorgeous cliffs, that look like limestone. And on those cliffs there are paintings – each painting the memory of a spell. And if you paint home there...”

  “Is that what you did? Every day and night?”

  “I told you,” he said, “wolves don't have magic. For us, it's different. We can cross the Crystal River directly – just swim across – and find ourselves in the mortal world on the other side. We have a natural calling towards the mortal world that pulls us across.”

  “Can we get there?”

  “Not easily,” said Logan.

  I could not ignore the lump in my throat any longer. At last I turned to Logan. “But what about Kian?”

  His face darkened. “He was your captor,” he said, “trying to sell you out to the Winter Court!”

  “He was just honoring his kingdom!” I said. “He didn't mean it personally. It was...an affair of state.”

  Logan made a face. “That's just what he said,” he said. “I didn't realize affairs of state made it okay to kidnap innocent girls.”

  “It was just a misunderstanding,” I cried.

  “You're awfully sympathetic,” said Logan, “considering he left this massive gash in my arm.” He pointed to where Kian had cut him with the sword.

  “We can't just leave him there!” I said. “Delano will kill him.”

  “Probably,” said Logan. “And then the Winter Court will be without an heir – a massive victory for the Summer Court.”

  “That's disgusting,” I said.

  “I thought it was just an affair of state!”

  “Kian's not just some prince,” I said.

  “Oh, no, he's special!” Logan looked hurt and angry at the same time. “Bree…” his voice rising in frustration. “I’m here. You don’t need Kian!”

  I had never seen Logan like this before – I didn't like it.

  “I don't see what you're being so petty about,” I said. “Kian risked his life to save me from the Pixies. Both of you did. And I wouldn't leave either one of you behind.”

  “He risked his life to sell you out to the Winter Queen!”

  “I owe him,” I said, firmly. “And I'm going to go back.” I didn't realize what I was going to say until I had said it. “And I'm going to rescue him.”

  “That's idiotic – how are you going to invade the Pixie Castle?”

  “I can do magic,” I said. “I did it in the cell – I can lift things with my mind – cause them to change shape, size, color.”

  “So can all the Pixies.”

  “It's a question of honor,” I said. “If I am a princess after all, then I'd better act like one. And I've read plenty of myths, Logan, and I don't know one where princes and princesses aren't meant to be honorable, brave, and strong.”

  “And stupid!” said Logan. “If you go back to the Pixie Castle alone you'll die.”

  “It's a question of honor,” I said again.

  “You sound like Kian,” Logan scoffed.

  “Well, I am like Kian,” I said. “We're both fairies of the royal blood.”

  “Aren't you special?” said Logan. I could see the wolf in his eyes. “The Fairy Princess and the Fairy Prince. How perfect,” he said sarcastically.

  I got up. “If I do die,” I said, “it's better than going back home as a coward.” How could I go back home, anyway, after all I had seen? After all I had experienced? I thought of Gregory, Oregon, and nothing seemed further away. “And even if I go home, I won't be safe. Delano came last time; he'll come again. So I might as well fight for my friends.”

  “Bree – I'm sorry,” said Logan. He reached out a hand. “I'm really sorry.”

  “Well, you should be,” I snapped.

  “You can't go alone,” he said.

  “I'll darn well go if I want to.”

  “You can go,” he said. He slipped his hand in mine. “But then I'm going with you.”

  Chapter 12

  We set out the following night. I had wanted to go out immediately, but Logan had spoken rationally to me. “If you want to go,” he said, “Get some sleep first – neither of us will be any use until we've cleaned up a little bit, washed out wounds, and had a bit of sleep. Otherwise we're just dead weight, and are more likely to get captured again than we are to free Kian. And we can't go during the day – Pixies will see us. No, we need to go under cover of the night. We'll wait until sundown.”

  Even my passion and worry were not enough to render me stupid; I agreed, albeit reluctantly, and tried to get some sleep, knowing that the more energy I had, the greater chance Kian had of surviving our attempted breakout. It was difficult. I spent the night tossing and turning with horrendous dreams. If before I had dreamed of Feyland while at home in my bed in Gregory, Oregon, then now I dreamed of home. I dreamed of my mother – could not imagine her pain, her terror, her fear when she came home to find the house broken into and her only daughter gone. Would she think it was a burglar, a kidnapper, a serial killer? Or would she be able to sense the fairy presence there! I dreamed of my mother, resplendent in a red gown, sitting on the fairy throne with a faceless, nameless Summer King. She was flirting with him, letting him kiss her neck, laughing.

  I tried to call out to her, ask her for help against the Summer and Winter Queens, against the Pixies, but it was no use. She ignored my pleas and my plaintive cries. “Can't you see I'm busy?” she said, and reclined her head into the Summer King's chest. “Go play elsewhere! I'm on a date!”

  Then I dreamed of Logan, the Logan I had known since I could remember, he and I playing chase as children through the woods near my house, his handsome familiar face laughing with joy, his warm eyes always reassuring, his arms always there to hug me and envelope me with his musky woodsy scent whenever Clariss or another bully harassed me. Suddenly his arms became longer, his hands widen, his fingers extended into razor-sharp claws, and fur the color of Logan’s hair ran up and down his arms ending at the tip of his tail. His tail? When did Logan have a tail? A voice at the back of my dream-state mind asked, perhaps trying to reason with my now present state tha
t Logan has become, has always been a werewolf. He had always known of Feyland, the Feyland of my dreams…of Kian, the Winter Prince when I had only thought it was a dream. While pouring out the details of my dream, rather embarrassingly to Logan, all these years, capturing the memories unto canvas in my paintings, Logan had always known that this Feyland, this strange, but wondrously beautiful land, was real.

  And the emeralds were there, the emeralds of the Pixie Court, each gemstone screaming in agony, tortured by magic. Their screams grew louder and louder, filling my ears, filling the space between my thoughts, and the pain grew greater and greater – for I was feeling the pain too – until at last everything went black.

  I dreamed next of Kian, lying in the dank dungeons of the Pixie King, his silver blood soaking into the bales of hay, the manic eyes of Flaurmaus and the other guards upon him, Delano's cruel teeth contorting into a smile...

  And in my dream I saw his face – the silvery eyes, flecked with purple quartz, the creamy skin, the long black hair – and I felt that my soul had already gone to him, already fought off the Pixie guards and the Minotaurs and the dangers and terrors of the forest. I was asleep in the werewolf-cave, but it didn't matter. My soul, the truest, most sacred part of myself, was already with Kian. All I had to do was follow it.

  Waiting until sundown was the hardest part. I grew skittish and nervous; I bothered Logan a hundred times as I tapped my foot on the floor, my fingers on the walls of the cave. The tension in the air between us was overwhelming. I could not understand why he was so loath to save Kian, who had after all been my protector, if a rather reluctant one, during my time in fairyland. At the same time I saw the look of jealousy and spite in his eyes, the resentment whenever I mentioned Kian's name, and I realized that I knew the cause of his tetchiness – I did not want to know. I remembered the day of my sixteenth birthday – so long ago now – when Logan and I had run around the house, chasing each other with the canisters of whipped cream. He had helped me wash the sticky mess out of my hair, had wiped it from my cheek and stared into my eyes – we had been so close to...

  But that was before Kian. That was before the forests of Feyland, before I had learned to do magic, before I had been captured by a pixie, before the Minotaurs and the satyrs and summer and winter. It was before I had felt Kian's arms around me.

  He knew why I was silent; I knew why he was silent.

  At sundown we set out for the Pixie Castle again.

  Logan had transformed once more into a wolf; I rode on his back, wrapping his long, flowing fur around my fingers to keep my balance. He was sleek and stealthy in the night, his paws quieter than the breeze as they lightly pushed up against the grass. The wind whipped our cheeks; the moon was huge and luminous above us – a circle of whiteness cut out from the endless night.

  At last we saw the Pixie Castle in the distance. This was the first time I'd looked at it properly – during our escape we'd been so frantic to get out of there that we hadn't bothered to look back. The sight made me gasp. The stones were thick and dark, laid over with shining black quartz, so that the whole castle reflected the night – the inky blackness surrounding it. But the towers! Each tower – and there must have been ten or twenty of them – took the form of a spiral staircase. But they were not made of stone. Rather, they were made of some strange, grotesque gauzy material – nauseating, twitching, weak-colored gossamer that shook under the weight of each Pixie guard on control. At the end of each piece of gossamer there lay a throbbing chunk of what must have been flesh, stained with sticky silver.

  Fairy wings.

  Hundreds, if not thousands of fairies had been slaughtered here; their wings had been ripped out of their back and affixed to thick metal poles, creating the fluttering, twitching spiral staircases. When I was little, I had seen one of my classmates – a boy called Charles Janeway – torture butterflies, capturing them and sticking pins in their wings and laughing gleefully when they strained and strangled against his cruelty. It had made me feel sick, then, and I had rushed into some corner of my kindergarten classroom to cry. This was a hundred times worse.

  “Right,” I said. “Let's go on, then.”

  “They'll be expecting us,” said Logan.

  We could not masquerade as pixies again; since our break-in, we were sure they would be on the lookout.

  We had another plan.

  I used my magic to transform Logan's face into the wintry expression of a fairy prince of the Winter Court, and transformed some of the blades of grass into chains. I had not expected to be quite as good at transfiguring faces as I had been – but in the end it was easy. I only had to picture Kian's face – and everything I tried to transfigure, somehow, took Kian's expression.

  Logan wrapped the chains around my wrist, leaving a loophole for me to pull my wrists out if necessary, and we entered the Pixie Castle by the front gates.

  “Hark,” he said. “I am Snowshadow of the Winter Court, and I have returned with bounty from the Winter Court in exchange for the Princess Breena.”

  I pretended to struggle and yelp.

  “I demand an audience with Delano, King of the Pixies.”

  “And why shouldn't we just grab her here and now?” asked one of the guards. I recognized him from earlier.

  “Because,” said Logan. In a flash, he had put a knife to my throat. “If you don't, I'll kill her now – and a dead Halfling is much less use to your king than a living, breathing one. Dead Halflings don't bear children.”

  The guard nodded.

  I shuddered; it was a good thing they had not decided to call Logan's bluff.

  The guards led us into Delano's antechamber, which was all too familiar.

  “Well,” said Delano. “Well done.”

  “I come from the Winter Court,” said Logan. “I am the knight Snowshadow. I wish to exchange the Prince Kian for Princess Breena.”

  Delano considered.

  “My guards tell me you have threatened to kill Breena should I refuse the exchange.”

  Logan nodded curtly.

  “Impressive show – for a fairy. Bring out the Prince!”

  The guards dragged in Kian. He had been beaten – his face and body were covered with silver bruises. My heart leaped when I saw him.

  “Princess – you've run away...”

  I decided to feign terror. “Please don't kill me!” I said. “I'll be your wife – I'll be your Queen – only just don't kill me!”

  Kian's eyes blazed with anger. “You!” he cried to Logan. “Knight of the Court! How dare you act so dishonorably to a woman! I shall have you executed at once when I am freed!”

  Logan could resist. “Come now, Prince,” he said. “Did you yourself not capture the Princess to trade her to the Summer Court?”

  “I would have returned her to her rightful home!” cried Kian.

  Calm down, I thought. Kian, it's all right.

  I don't know how it worked, but I saw Kian's shoulders slump; his expression became more relaxed. He had heard me.

  “Unhand him,” said Delano, and the guards removed Kian from his chains and shoved him forth. Logan kicked me down to Delano's knees; I began causing a distraction, wrapping my hands around Delano's ankles and blubbering, begging for mercy, promising to marry him.

  In the meantime, obscured by my histrionics, Logan handed Kian a sword...

  “Now!” Logan shouted, and immediately I loosened myself from my chains, retrieving a dagger I had hidden in my skirts and holding it up to Delano's neck, focusing all my magic, all my energy, on keeping in there.

  I heard a powerful flapping sound as Kian unleashed his wings – thank God they hadn't cut them off yet, I thought.

  “Don't move,” I cried out to the guards, digging my dagger a bit further into Delano's neck. His blood was yellow – the color of pus. They remained put on the other side of the room.

  Kian grabbed Logan with one hand and me with the other, his wings flapping as we made for the window...

  Once I had l
eft Delano's side, our strategic position was lost – the guards began rushing towards us.

  Kian's wings lifted us off the ground, towards the window, but we were slow...

  “We're too heavy,” cried Logan!

  The guards were coming closer; one of them caught hold of my foot, and I shrieked as I kicked him away.

  “Come on.”

  “Let me go!” cried Logan, as Kian's wings struggled against gravity. We had made it out the window, now, but we could see the archers lining up on the parapets, waiting to let loose their arrows.

  A whir of arrows flew past us; one of them struck Logan in the shoulder and he howled.

  “Let me go – otherwise we'll all die!”

  “It would be dishonorable,” cried Kian.

  “Screw dishonorable!” cried Logan, and bit down upon Kian's wrist as we flew. Kian opened his hand in surprise, and Logan fell – down, down, down until he landed with a nauseating thud onto Delano's balcony. I heard the crack of bone, saw the guards rush to him and raise their spears...

  I looked away as they brought the blade down.

  We flew faster and faster into the night.

  It was the bravest thing I had ever seen a man do.

  Chapter 13

  Kian and I flew into the night; I kept my eyes squeezed shut, unable to stand the tears squeezing through them. Be strong, I thought to myself. Be strong, Breena. But it was no use. I could not stop the tears from flowing down beneath us into the night, could not stop my guilt. It was my fault, after all. I had insisted we go back for Kian – and we had – and Logan had died to protect us both: the woman he cared for, and the man he despised. I tried to tell myself that I had no way of knowing what would happen, no way to assess the risks, but it made no difference. I had made my choice – and I had decided who would live and who would die – and I had as good as killed Logan myself.