Author: Heather Killough-Walden
Date: 2016-02-21 05:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Paranormal; Fantasy; Paranormal Romance; Romance; Mythology; dragons; Magic; Vampires; Fae
Description: “If you believe anything I tell you, believe this. You are my queen, therefore, you are my world. You are the most important piece on the chessboard. Everything I do from here on out will be about you. I will eat, sleep, and drink you. I will breathe you. And I will stop breathing without you… If you go, the game is lost.” Far beyond the easy reaches of the mortal world lies a kingdom of ice and snow. Its glacier mountains reach the horizons of eons, and its cold, hard oceans paint the vastness of its world. It is terribly harsh, and terribly beautiful, and there is only one man capable of rul

The Winter King

- Title Page
- Prologue
- Chapter One
- Chapter Two
- Chapter Three
- Chapter Four
- Chapter Five
- Chapter Six
- Chapter Seven
- Chapter Eight
- Chapter Nine
- Chapter Ten
- Chapter Eleven
- Chapter Twelve
- Chapter Thirteen
- Chapter Fourteen
- Chapter Fifteen
- Chapter Sixteen
- Chapter Seventeen
- Chapter Eighteen
- Chapter Nineteen
- Chapter Twenty
- Chapter Twenty-One
- Chapter Twenty-Two
- Chapter Twenty-Three
- Chapter Twenty-Four
- Chapter Twenty-Five
- Chapter Twenty-Six
- Chapter Twenty-Seven
- Chapter Twenty-Eight
- Chapter Twenty-Nine
- Chapter Thirty
- Chapter Thirty-One
- Chapter Thirty-Two
- Chapter Thirty-Three
- Chapter Thirty-Four
- Chapter Thirty-Five
- Chapter Thirty-Six
- Chapter Thirty-Seven
- Chapter Thirty-Eight
- Chapter Thirty-Nine
- Chapter Forty
- Chapter Forty-One
- Chapter Forty-Two
- Chapter Forty- Three
- Chapter Forty-Four
- Chapter Forty-Five
- Chapter Forty-Six
- Chapter Forty-Seven
- Epilogue

The Winter King

Book 8 in the Big Bad Wolf spinoff series, The Kings

by Heather Killough-Walden

Copyright 2016 Heather Killough-Walden

Smashwords Edition

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Heather Killough-Walden Reading List

The Lost Angels series:

Always Angel (eBook-only introductory novella)

Avenger's Angel

Messenger's Angel

Death's Angel

Warrior's Angel

Samael

The October Trilogy:

Sam I Am

Secretly Sam

Suddenly Sam

Neverland Series:

Forever Neverland

Beyond Neverland

The Big Bad Wolf series:

The Heat

The Strip

The Spell

The Hunt

The Big Bad Wolf Romance Compilation (all four books together, in proper chronological order)

The Kings - A Big Bad Wolf spinoff series:

(in their proper order so far)

The Vampire King

The Phantom King

The Warlock King

The Goblin King

The Seelie King

The Unseelie King

The Shadow King

The Winter King

(future The Kings books TBA; 13 total)

The Chosen Soul Trilogy:

The Chosen Soul

Drake of Tanith

Queen of Abaddon

Redeemer (stand-alone)

Hell Bent (stand-alone)

Vampire, Vampire (stand-alone)

A Sinister Game (stand-alone)

The Third Kiss: Dorian's Dream (stand-alone)

Note: The Lost Angels series (not including Always Angel, Warrior’s Angel and Samael) and the Big Bad Wolf series are available in print and eBook format. All other HKW books are currently eBook-only.

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“Chess is ruthless. You've got to be prepared to kill people.”

-  Nigel Short

Prologue

793 AD, TromsØ, the northwest coast of Norway

Erikk narrowed his gaze and placed his hands above and beneath his eyes, blocking the miniscule sunlight to the south and the reflection of it from the snow below. This far north, the sun appeared for a mere few days before vanishing altogether for most of the year. But of course it would hinder his vision now. Patches left over from the early snow weeks ago had yet to melt and extended directly to the edge of the overhanging cliffs on which he stood.

He watched the waves on the water below for some time before lifting his head and inhaling deeply, drawing in the scents on the breeze.

“There’s another storm on the way, isn’t there?”

Erikk looked down, dropping his arms. His little sister, Ylva, stood beside him, having come upon him as quietly as ever. There was a reason she’d been named for the wolf. “Within three days, perhaps four. Bigger than before. It will mark winter’s beginning and the end of the time of waiting.” Fall to the people across the sea to the west was known as “the time of waiting.” His grandfather, Ohthere had traveled there years ago and had come back to tell tales of their ways. It made sense to Erikk and Ylva, because that was what you did when winter was on the way. You waited. Hence, ever since the stories, brother and sister had referred to fall as such.

But this second storm was coming far too early for the heaviness it carried. The storm would bury them.

“You should tell father. He is having Bjarke lead a ship to go-a-viking by tomorrow’s sunrise. He wants him to go south past the Lapp settlements, and I think he wants you to go as well.”

Erikk bristled. Bjarke was a menace. He hated to have to accompany the brute, but if he didn’t for every trade with the islands, the man would wreak havoc on any crew assigned to him. Bjarke could not be left alone.

“I’ll speak with father.” He turned and left his younger sibling on the outcroppings overlooking the sea and knew she would remain there for some time, her gaze peering toward the horizon and the ice that waited beyond it. She was always looking northward, toward the cold, toward the bears. It was where her heart seemed to reside.

As Erikk neared the camp, another young man in leathers approached. Erikk smiled at him warmly. “Ronald. How do you fare?”

“All healed up and never better. I’m to accompany you tomorrow morning.”

Erikk frowned, glancing at his best friend’s arm, which was still wrapped – and his leg, which was also wrapped. “I doubt it.”

Ronald’s red eyebrows raised, and he made a face. “Aw, let a man be, Erikk. I really am feeling well again. And you’ll need someone on your side with Bjarke at the helm. He has it in for you. He hates you even more now because you bested him four nights ago.”

Ronald Dagfinnr was a medium-sized man the same age as Erikk, ten and six years. He had braids of red hair and the lucky and early beginnings of a beard. Ronald was fairly sure his beard gave him magical powers, and he had been acting a might too brave for Odin’s wisdom of late. The last time they’d gone out fishing together, he’d made the mistake of jumping into the freezing water in order to attempt to wrestle a male narwhal. The beast had speared him in two places before flippantly swimming off again.

Erikk had been forced to haul the bleeding man out of the water before the blood drew unwanted company. Fortunately, the cold of the water caused him to bleed less. On the other hand, he’d lost a toe.

To Ronald’s defense, the horn would have brought a mighty good trade. And what he said about Bjarke was true enough. The brute hated Erikk, not only because Erikk was the chief’s son and next in line as leader, but because Erikk had actually earned that honor. He was admittedly more handsome than most of the men in the camp, and had drawn the attentions of a handful of maidens who were more than content to warm his bed at night. Bjarke had enough reason for jealousy there alone. But at the age of sixteen, a full five years younger than Bjarke, who was twenty-one, Erikk was already larger than most of the men in the camp, taller and broader shouldered. He sported the coveted gold hair of Sif, and eyes of clearest, coldest blue. But most importantly, Erikk had proven himself a more skilled fighter than the other men in the camp, even Bjarke. His command decisions were invariably more intelligent than Bjarke’s, and that didn’t go unnoticed by the swine either.

All in all, he had an enemy for life, if not several. It was a shame, too, because Bjarke’s family was not without value all in all. His older sister, Toril, had been a shield maiden of glorious success. She’d won seven battles before she’d finally fallen beneath the enemy’s blade at the age of twenty-seven. She’d been mighty and honorable. No doubt, Toril had become a Valkyrie upon her death, and now lead other mighty warriors to their final resting place in Valhalla.

“Tell me something, Ronald. How did you know we were to go-a-viking in the morning?”

Ronald shrugged, then winced when the movement no doubt pulled on his stitches. Jorunn was very good with those needles she carved out of bone, but the sinew she sewed into the flesh drew a need for ale none the less. “I’ve been speaking with your mother,” said Ronald. “And of course, she knows everything your father does and says. She’s got Frigga’s eyes and ears, she does.”

Erikk sighed. “Go check on Ylva. She’s by the sea again.”

Erikk’s little sister was another point of contention between himself and Bjarke. Bjarke felt Ylva would be the perfect mate for him. And Erikk, quite simply, did not. The girl was but eleven years, for Odin’s sake.

Ronald brightened at the prospect of seeing Ylva, whom he’d always been fond of. He nodded. “Right.” He began to walk around Erikk, but stopped and turned back. “I’ll be going with you, won’t I?” he asked before Erikk had gone too far.

“There’s a storm coming. We should not be going at all.”

Erikk left it at that and continued into the camp, heading directly for his father’s hut. It was one of the larger in the camp, its pointed roof composed of thatch and running flush with the ground, its facial walls constructed of stripped logs. His people did not use chimneys to vent their fire pits, as Erikk had seen used in some of the buildings belonging to those they traded with. Instead, their roofs were simply ventilated enough that smoke never gathered long.

Smaller huts in the camp bore leather reinforced roofs, and the smallest domiciles were mere tents made of wolf and sealskin. But the chief of the clan, of course, lived in the chief’s house. And that was where Erikk went now.

“Father, I request a word.” He entered the hut by ducking beneath the door’s overhang and shutting the door securely behind him. His mother and father were at the table, speaking quietly.

His father, Rangvald of the Wilds, looked up and met his gaze. Eyes like his own stared back at him, a piercing blue the shade of the ice mountains where they rose from the sea in the north. “Then have it, son.”

“You are sending Bjarke tomorrow with a crew to trade with the islands to the south?”

“Aye. I had expected you to go with them, however. Why do you ask this as if you do not plan to be included?”

“There is a storm coming, and the sea will be angry. We should remain here.”

Rangvald considered him carefully and for a long time. Erikk’s mother, Thyra turned to regard her son as well, her own blue eyes a much deeper hue, like the North Sea itself.

She turned back to her husband and said, “He always knows, Rangvald.”

The chief watched his wife’s face for a moment, then nodded. “Erikk, speak with Bjarke. He is already rounding up the crew. I believe you’ll find him with Sigurd and Ingvar.”

Erikk nodded and left the hut.

*****

When evening came, the camp was subdued, with an undercurrent of resentment that left Erikk feeling as though there were more than one storm on the way.

“He’s been giving you the eye all night, Erikk,” said Ylva softly. “It doesn’t help that the trade was going to bring in more mead. Bjarke is unpleasant if he doesn’t have his drink.”

And she was right. Bjarke was like a bear who’d had his fish taken from him. He wanted a kill, he wanted a meal, and he wanted them both now. To say nothing of the mead. Both ale and mead were running short, made so by the early storm they’d had not long ago. What ale they did possess had soured a little. Either that, or it was a sour taste Erikk had on his tongue as he drank that night.

He did understand the need to make a trade, and soon, but he wasn’t a fool. Nature didn’t care how little mead you had.

The night passed without incident, but Erikk had an unsettled feeling. Every time he glanced at the large, surly Bjarke to find him and his mates staring darkly back, that feeling deepened. By the time Erikk’s head hit his mat, his nerves were alight with worry, and it took a while for sleep to find him.

Chapter One

Present day, Seattle Washington, United States

He was not into coffee shops. Coffee was served either very hot or very cold, and neither had any effect on him unless he willed them to, and then it just felt like too much effort. The people in coffee shops wore Converses and Abercrombie. He wore boots and a leather jacket. The atmosphere was one of sedate money, young ones drawing together to utilize their parents’ wealth by studying for classes their parents bought for them on laptops their parents bought for them. Or it was the old coming together to show off diamond rings when they lifted their mugs and discuss church or wedding preparations or how lovely their vacations were.

Kristopher had no use for money. He was anything but sedate. And the last time he’d been to a wedding, it had been to stop it. Because he’d felt like it. And the guy the bride had been about to marry was a dick.

Winter is not quiet.

And neither was Kristopher.

True winter was not a season. There were people along the equator of Earth who would claim that between the months of November and February, they were in “winter.” They would smile and shrug and say that it was always mild, but in some places, winter was fortunately like that. Then they would don snorkeling gear and get their asses burned laying face-down in the ocean for hours on end.

But that wasn’t winter. That was a joke.

Winter did not always come, and certainly it absolutely ignored some locations. Winter sometimes had a temper. It could be stunningly beautiful and graciously comforting. But when it raged, it blotted out the world and cut it to the bone. And when it died, it did so with unspoken yet seething promise: I will return. And I do not forget.

Kristopher would know. He’d been charged with its keeping. Long – long – ago.

So why the hell he was leaning up against his bike with his arms crossed over his chest, standing across the street from the busiest, most commercial coffee shop in the world was a mystery to him. But apparently, winter was coming. And according to the power that had made him its king for eons, it was beginning here.

Tonight. In this coffee shop.

Kristopher took a deep breath and rubbed his eyes. The dual temperatures fighting for control inside of him sometimes made them hurt. They were blue, the color of the hottest heat and the coldest cold. And right now, they felt like dry ice, torn between burning and freezing.

“I don’t have time for this crap,” he muttered. Winter was fickle, and right now, it was riding his nerves. He had other things to worry about. He’d just received word from his men in the north that the seed storage facility they guarded might be compromised. He’d also just received word that the base of the damned Tree itself had developed a hairline fracture. It wasn’t that hairline fractures in the Tree were especially rare, but they did require attention just in case. The afternoon had gone south really fast.

He had work to do and was needed elsewhere, so it pissed him off more than a little that winter had decided it was going to just up and start right here and now, at this very moment, weeks before the Solstice.

“I don’t understand you,” he muttered next.

You don’t need to understand me, Winter whispered back. You just need to love me.

Kristopher sighed, uncrossed his arms, and made his way across the street to the front door of the enormous building that was the Starbucks Reserve Tasting Room and Roastery. Or something like that. He happened to know that the Shadow Queen was a fan of the place. He half wondered if she was in there at that moment. The Tuath loved coffee, and in the two and a half months since she’d taken her place at the table of the Thirteen Kings, coffee had become a regular staple amidst the food and drinks offered at it.

Plus, he was fairly sure she was from Seattle.

Which increased Kristopher’s curiosity about this location. Why here? Why had winter decided this would be its inception in the northern hemisphere this year?

In the southern hemisphere, he didn’t really have to worry. Winter almost slept through its designated months there. It touched a few peaks here and there, gave a few careless climbers frostbite, and then drew back, as if it were preparing for its real winter. On the other side of the Equator.

On this end of the planet, winter officially began every mortal year on December 21st, the winter solstice. It was the shortest day of the year, and because things took a while to cool off, it was the days following the solstice that were the coldest. That date and its thousands of years of recognition had given birth to generations of customs, and had been adopted by various religions and practices around the world. Kristopher had been there for all of them. He’d seen winter grow and change repeatedly, and yet always stay the same.

The Christmas tree with its bright, warm lights was one of Kris’s favorite adoptions of mortality for this time of year. It had originated in the pagan celebration of the solstice with trees that sported candles lit amidst their branches thousands of years ago. That had been a dangerous practice, if ever there had been one. The more recent electric lights were a much safer bet, and they could be done in a host of colors!

The wreath and the feast he also enjoyed were taken from the celebration of Saturnia, an ancient Roman event covering four or five days, beginning around December 21st and including December 25th, that again celebrated the changing day length associated with the solstice. That one, he was less fond of, if only because it was always a touch too warm in Rome for his liking.

And… he’d known too many Romans.

On and on, the traditions went, dating back far further than most mortals were aware, and all having something to do with the solstice. Why so many revelries? It may have been the shortest day of the year, but in the cold and the dark, people naturally needed something to look forward to. Knowing that the days would now grow longer from this point out allowed them to celebrate the dawning of a “new sun,” and a warmth they equated with renewed hope.

But winter – actual winter – couldn’t have cared less what day on the calendar mortals had decided would be its “first day.” It came when it was good and ready, and it looked like this year, it would be arriving on December 4th.

From the way the people around him, both entering the establishment, and leaving it, were bundled up in their layers of scarves and gloves, it was clear most of them felt it had already started. But if the sensations in Kristopher’s blood were any telling… they hadn’t seen anything yet.

He wasn’t sure he’d ever felt winter coming on quite as strong as it felt right now. There was a stirring in his blood, almost like his cells were crystalizing. It wasn’t painful, not for him, but it was rare. There was a humming at the end of his nerves. And there was a scent to the air….

Just as he reached the front door of the coffee shop, Kris looked up to the heavens. When he did, he exhaled and noticed the steam vaporizing. The air smelled like snow. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky.

He looked back down at the door, steeled himself for whatever he was going to find inside, and went in. The air inside was stifling with humanity. It hit him at once like a wall of anti-magic, and like he usually did, he steadfastly ignored it and walked on through. It was just something you had to put up with in crowds of humans. Magic was dulled around mortals, and the more mortals there were, the more dulled the magic. In enormous crowds, it could feel as if there was no magic left in the world.

It was just after seven at night, and the coffee shop was chock-full of people in the holiday spirit, families out shopping, and those who just enjoyed the night and the cold. Kristopher actually enjoyed the atmosphere; it was filled with life, mortal though it may be. And that life was vibrant.

Because he was who he was, he managed to “find” a table and chair near one of the corners – okay, he just summoned them up when no one was looking, along with a cup of coffee – and he took a seat, anxious to see what Winter had in store.

People came and went, orders were processed and created, and Kris sat back, wove his hands together behind his head, closed his eyes, and tuned his hearing into the crowd.

“… you don’t need to understand me. You just need to love me.”

He opened his eyes and swung his head toward the door. Two women were walking in, one with dark skin and black hair, and the other with lighter skin and multi-hued brown hair. The latter had her back to him, but her scarf was an extra-long knit number filled with so many colors, it grabbed his attention as much as the words she’d muttered. He found himself sitting up straighter, his breath held, his attention fixated – waiting for her to turn around.

And then she did. And his world went tumbling.

Chapter Two

Poppy tried very hard to keep the smile on her face as she entered the coffee shop, despite the pain behind her right eye. But the day had just been crappy from the get-go. This was her absolute favorite time of year, but she was stressed. And stress often brought with it one of the banes of her existence – migraines.

That’s what it had done this morning. She’d awoken to a coffee cup enshrouded in a migraine aura, and right then and there, she’d known it was going to be a bad day. Then her coffee had been cold – like, right out of the coffee maker. Damn thing was on the fritz or something. So she’d tried to microwave the coffee, but apparently the microwave wasn’t working either. The liquid was still cold.

The pain in her head had started in then, right on schedule, settling somewhere in the space between her right eye and the base of her skull on the right side. It was always on the right. Some days, she would pay money just to have the damn thing switch sides.

She’d sighed, pinched the bridge of her nose, and taken two Excedrin on an empty stomach, swallowing it down with water that was so cold out of the faucet, it chilled her teeth. Then, as she’d prayed it wouldn’t give her one hell of a stomach ache, she pulled on her coat, favorite extra long, highly colorful scarf, and favorite boots before she headed out the door to Starbucks.

She really could have used the company of her best friend right about then, but she wasn’t going to bother Violet this time, no matter how badly she wanted to complain to her. The fact was, Violet was on her honeymoon. A honeymoon that came after getting hitched to a freaking king.

Some girls had all the luck.

In short, Violet was out of commission. Way out of commission. Most likely, she wasn’t even in the same realm just then. And she was probably sore from too many orgasms.

Lucky bitch.

That thought made her smile, an action she immediately regretted when the throbbing behind her eye picked up in both speed and severity, and she was forced to grit her teeth. She hated it when the pain on the inside began to show on the outside. She always felt like a freak. No one ever showed their emotions in society any longer. It was only acceptable to keep to yourself, be polite, and make your face a stone mask. As the British said, “Stiff upper lip and all that.”

But a migraine was a migraine, and unlike Violet and the British, Poppy was only human.

So she simply vowed to drink a shit-load of coffee as fast as she could and “nix” this headache like lightning, and hurried her pace to Starbucks. Half way there however, her cell phone chimed. She stopped in her tracks and looked down at the screen.

Her boss.

“Poppy, I need you to re-send that copy for the digital camera to me ASAP. Our file is lost for some reason, and we need to get it to the printer before three.”

Poppy worked as an instruction manual writer for a company that actually did that for a living: RightInWrite. She wrote instructions on everything from video game consoles to blenders to hair dryers. There was never a shortage of need for a new set of directions; things were invented every single day. Hundreds of things. Hell, thousands.

And someone had to tell people how to use them. That was what Poppy did.

It would become too hectic for RightInWrite authors to take items home and use them; their houses or apartments would become overrun with objects far too quickly. So it was customary for the writer to fill their itineraries with seven items per week, use those items in the RIW warehouse rooms, and then type up a manual for each one. Seven a week.

It was a weird job, not one you normally heard of people having, but one she fell into rather naturally. She was just good at understanding people, and more importantly, understanding what they would understand. She knew what would help them comprehend instructions, and how to write it all down so that it meshed. She’d received rave reviews for her manuals and instructions in the two years she’d been working for RIW, and it paid well enough that she had no real desire to change jobs any time soon.

Even so, a call from her boss that morning was the last thing she wanted. This was supposed to be a day off. She needed this day off. She needed it not only because of her pain, but to prepare for what was coming that night:

Dinner with her mother.

But of course Poppy had told her boss she would do her very best. Then she’d turned around, headed back to her apartment, and fussed with her computer until she was forced to admit that she no longer had the copy. It was always like this. You had ten copies of something you didn’t need, and the one bloody thing you absolutely did need would simply up and vanish. She had no idea why. She supposed it was just that kind of life, and it was just that kind of goddamned day.

So, she said a lot of bad words and settled into her chair. Then, migraine and all, she re-wrote the whole thing. Fortunately for her, she had a very good memory and typed 102 words per minute. The copy was twelve pages long. It started out on page one with the words, “Okay guys, here we go. The first thing you’re going to want to do is get a beer. Seriously. Just get one. You’ll need it.” But it was this kind of sense of humor that had reviewers raving on Amazon and had product companies coming back to the company that employed her to get more instruction manuals.

When she was finished editing the piece hours later, she sent it off with fifteen minutes to spare, a note to make sure the instructions were printed in a legible size; i.e., not tiny, and a prayer that she was typing in her boss’s email address correctly, since by that time the screen was covered in the wavy zigzag lightning streaks of a full-on aura.

Apparently, she’d gotten it right because a few minutes later, her boss thanked her, and Poppy again donned her coat and scarf and headed out the door, shooting her coffee maker a dirty look over her shoulder.

But this time when her phone rang around block five, it was her mother. She needed a bunch of stuff for dinner and wondered if Poppy could pick it up on the way over. And since dinner was at five because her mother went to bed around six, Poppy realized she had to go shopping then and there. No time for coffee.

Two hours later, she was sitting down to dinner with her mother and trying her best not to get into an argument that was either political or religious in nature. This was supposed to be a holiday dinner, warm and inviting, filled with companionship and love and what not. Not silent fuming hatred and unshared fantasies about drowning family members in gravy boats.

But then again, that was family. Perhaps especially during the holidays.

By the time she kissed her mother goodbye at fifteen-to-seven, she was a physical mess that was barely capable of keeping down the food her mother had gone to all the trouble to cook. Migraines sometimes made you nauseated. And, so did family.

If she didn’t get coffee soon, she was going to end up using her warlock magic to conjure some, and using her magic in the mortal world was sort of forbidden. It wasn’t like Harry Potter’s shindig, where using it at all would land you in some sort of Ministry jail where you’d have all your powers taken away. It was just that humans couldn’t really handle things they didn’t fully understand, and when people didn’t understand something, they automatically feared it, and that fear more often than not brought violence and evil. So, it was a good idea to steer as clear as possible. Plus, conjuring was advanced and dangerous and would definitely be noticed by Lalura.

On attempted trip number three to the coffee shop, she took her phone out of her pocket and used it to make a call herself so that the damn thing wouldn’t ring again. She called one of her friends, they agreed to meet her just outside the Roastery, and for the first time that day, Poppy was able to take a deep breath.

When she got to Starbucks, Angel was already waiting for her outside. This time, when Poppy smiled, it was genuine. But she was still punished for it by her headache.

“Poppy, you look like something is trying to push its way out of your head through your eyeballs,” Angel told her as she approached. She tossed a lock of her long black hair back over her shoulders and settled warm, chocolate eyes on her with all the compassion Poppy knew she was actually feeling.

“There is. My brain.”

Angel frowned and opened the door for them. “You’ve had a migraine all day, haven’t you?” Angel could just tell. She was like that.

“Yeah.”

“Why are you only getting coffee now? You’ll have to drink so much of it you won’t be able to sleep.”

“I didn’t have time.”

“It’s a migraine. You make time.”

“Long day.”

Angel muttered something behind her as they entered the shop, but Poppy heard it. “Sometimes I really don’t understand you.”

Poppy grinned. “You don’t need to understand me. You just need to love me.”

Angel chuckled. “Fine. You know I love you. Especially since you gave me an excuse to leave the family dinner.”

Poppy glanced back at her as Angel scanned the crowd, obviously trying to find them a place to sit. “You had one of those tonight too, huh?”

Angel shook her head in slight bewilderment. “Everyone had one of those tonight. It’s Friday. And ‘tis the season.”

Chapter Three

They’d ordered their drinks and were standing at the waiting end of the line as the people behind the counter worked like an efficiently oiled machine, turning, grabbing, mixing, blending, and pouring with amazing expertise.

“So… did you get the interview?” Poppy asked out of the blue.

Angel raised a brow. “I did actually. Leave it to you to remember that right now.”

“It’s important. Because if you get the job in Frisco, I’m coming with you.”

“Then don’t call it Frisco,” Angel teased. “I’m told they’re picky about that.”

“Nah.” Poppy shook her head – gently. “I think they maybe used to be, or maybe it was really just kind of a joke. But not anymore. They’ve grown up, I think. They’re adults. Busy building computer systems that’ll be able to take over the world and what not. No one has time to say the whole damn name anymore.”

“Fair enough.”

They got their coffee and somehow lucked out enough to get a seat by the window. It wasn’t by one of the fire places, which Poppy would have preferred, but at seven at night in the busiest Starbucks in Seattle, you really couldn’t afford to be picky.

“So, you want some advice before you head into this interview?” Poppy asked.

“Always,” Angel said, rolling her eyes.

“You’re getting some anyway,” Poppy said. She leaned over the table toward her friend. “My mother tells me that when I was a baby, I never stopped crying. She claims that for the first three years of my life, I couldn’t be satisfied, that there was nothing she could do to make me shut up. She had three kids after me, and apparently my little sister was a walk in the park as an infant. Never made a fuss.

From that moment on, there was nothing I could do right, and nothing my sister could do wrong that would cause my mother’s adoration to shift. I never smoked, never drank, always followed my curfew, and called my parents frequently to let them know I was safe. But regardless of the fact that she engaged in all the vices I refrained from, it was my sister who was my mother’s favorite. And still is.”

Angel’s brow furrowed. She blinked. “Are you… telling me that if you’re a colicky baby, you’ll be paying for it for the rest of your life?”

“No, honey.” Poppy turned her cup in her hands so the little hole at the top was facing her and prepared to take a drink. “I’m telling you that nothing sticks like a first impression.” She raised her cup in a mock toast. “So make sure it’s a good one.”

She took a sip.

She nearly spit it back out again. “What the fuck?” she hissed as quietly as she could. “This is cold.” It wasn’t just luke warm. It was actually as cold as if it had been in the fridge.

Angel made a face and reached across the table to give the outside of the coffee cup a feel. “Bizarre! Mine is too hot to drink, and they were made at the same time.”

They sat there for a minute in mutually confused silence, and Poppy knew Angel was debating offering Poppy her own coffee. She knew she wouldn’t though, because Poppy and Angel had very different coffee tastes and Poppy hated hazelnut. Still… coffee was coffee.

“Girl, either drink it anyway because you desperately need the caffeine, or just buck up and take mine, hazelnut or not.”

Sometimes, Angel reminded Poppy a lot of Violet. The girl had so much empathy, she could almost read minds.

“Thank you anyway,” Poppy sighed miserably, giving her friend’s hand a thankful squeeze. “I’ll just chug this and try again.”

Why did this keep happening to her? She hadn’t been able to have a single warm drink that entire day!

“Maybe if you hadn’t spent so long lecturing me on first impressions, it would still be hot,” Angel joked lightly as she sipped her own steaming coffee. But Poppy knew she didn’t mean it. She was just trying to lighten the mood. “By the way, why didn’t you get coffee at your mom’s?”

“She had a bunch of other stuff sitting out, like cider and eggnog. I know better than to ask her for something she didn’t think of first. She’s way sensitive like that. One time, I was dating this boy who didn’t like Pork and Beans, and of course that’s what my mom offered him for lunch. He made a face, said, ‘No, thank you,’ and she sulked for two freaking weeks over it. Of course, he didn’t have to make a face, either. But boys will be boys.”

Poppy looked down at her cup, gritted her teeth, and swallowed down as much of the cold coffee as she could with a stomach that felt like it did. Then she reached into her handbag and pulled out her bottle of Excedrin, popping two more into her mouth before gulping down the remainder of the coffee.

“There now,” Angel said with a hopeful expression. “It’s going to get better from here on out.”

“Uh-huh,” Poppy noncommittally agreed.

“You… have eaten something today, right?” Angel asked.

“Really?” Poppy shot her friend a warning look.

“Just making sure. That’s a lot of aspirin and caffeine for an empty stomach.”

“I’ve got my mom’s yams inside me,” said Poppy, and a wave of queasiness washed through her. She exhaled slowly, leaned over the table, and placed both elbows on it so she could cradle her head.

Angel’s phone rang. Poppy looked up, surreptitiously glancing at the screen. It was Angel’s mother. She was probably in deep water for having left the dinner.

“You can go, sweetie,” Poppy said before Angel even answered the phone. “I swear I’ll be fine. I’m going to get another cup to go and head home to bed. It really has been a long day and I’m not good company.”

Angel chewed on her lip. “I’m sorta scared to leave you alone.” She glanced out at the darkening streets and lengthening shadows, and Poppy knew exactly what was going through Angel’s head. “You always walk instead of taking a cab, and you’re not exactly at the top of your game.” She tapped silence on her incoming call, deigning not to answer her mother at all.

“I’ll be fine, promise.”

What Angel didn’t know was that Poppy might not be at the top of her game, but what game she did have involved magic. Black magic. And lots of it. “Go be with your family, Angel. Thanks for meeting me.” She smiled warmly, and it was a little less painful this time; the medicine and caffeine must have finally been working. “Say ‘hi’ to your mom, and kiss your abuela for me.”

“She’ll be pissed that I met with you and didn’t invite you over.”

Angel Carona had a very large family, and most of it was likeable. But Angel’s abuela, Calliope, was definitely Poppy’s favorite. She had spunk. She reminded Poppy of a non-magical Lalura.

“Tell her I’m sick. It’s not exactly a lie.”

“True enough.” Angel pushed out her chair and they both stood. They hugged over the table, and Angel headed to the door. “Text me when you get home, okay?”

Poppy nodded and waved as Angel left the coffee shop. Then she sighed, pulled on her gloves, took her cold coffee cup, and dumped it in the trash before making her way back into line to order another one to go.

Once she had it in hand, she hastened outside and stopped just past the door to look up. The winter night was clear and cold. The stars are always brightest when it’s cold, she thought. It was true, even inside the city, where light pollution drowned out 99% of the light reaching Earth’s surface from the outer reaches space.

She gazed at those outer reaches for a few seconds more – then an odd feeling made her lower her head and turn around. The door was shut and no one was there. She was alone on the sidewalk, but she could have sworn she’d felt….

Am I imagining things? She was pretty tired. Migraines will take it right out of a person. She felt a little like a zombie with a gurgly stomach. But she honestly thought she’d felt something like a breath on the side of her neck. A very cold breath.

Poppy used her right hand to push up her left sleeve, revealing the goose bumps that were still there. She blew out a hard breath. Get ahold of yourself. Go home. Put on an episode of Monk and go the hell to sleep.

She nodded and crossed the street. After she’d made it a few blocks, she slowed down and lifted her coffee cup to her lips. Ice cold liquid slid past them to wash over her tongue, far too creamy for the temperature. She made a terrible face and turned her head to spit the liquid out.

“What the –” Something just as cold as the coffee suddenly settled in her gut. She stared down at the cup, confused and unexpectedly, inexplicably, frightened.

But she was also angry. Really angry. All she’d wanted – ALL DAY – had been a fucking cup of hot coffee. Was that too much to ask? This was the last straw.

Without thinking any further, Poppy spun. With all the strength she could muster at that very moment in time, she hurled the completely full paper cup against the brick wall of the nearest building.

Chapter Four

She was staring at the mess she’d made – torn coffee cup, lid halfway across the street from bouncing, coffee strewn everywhere in the biggest splatter she’d ever seen – when she heard the sound of a boot stepping up onto the sidewalk behind her.

“Let me guess,” he said, and she slowly turned to stare up at him. “It’s been a rough day?”

Poppy didn’t answer right away. She really couldn’t. Too many things were chasing each other through her head. For one thing, she was distinctly embarrassed that she’d lost her temper the way she had. For another, the man in front of her looked like a god. It wasn’t an overstatement or a generalization. It was that he actually looked like Thor, the god of Thunder.

Poppy was wearing lace-up combat boots with a good two and a half inch heel on them at the moment, and on her own, she was five-foot-ten. But this guy was still a good five inches taller than her, easy. He had a thick head of dark blond hair that looked as though it might have been professionally cut months ago, but had grown out since then and now brushed his shoulders. As to those shoulders, broad would be an understatement. She was betting if he wanted to, he could lift the Mercedes that was parked a few feet away at the curb. Maybe with one hand.

His chin was strong, sporting a careless five-o-clock shadow that she could tell would grow into a full-on beard within a week if he let it. He was wearing a light blue T-shirt that hugged extremely cut muscles, covered by a black leather jacket that appeared to have been through a war, it was so broken-in. Completing his mouth-watering ensemble were worn blue jeans and black engineering boots, as if he’d just come off a motorcycle. A very big motorcycle.

But it was his eyes most of all that had her standing there completely mute. She could have sworn they were nearly the exact same shade of blue as her own. Except, they seemed to be almost… glowing.

It was like trying to peer through an iceberg where someone was on the iceberg’s interior, shining a lantern back out at you. They were lit from the inside, positively radiant with a keen intelligence she could almost feel.

No, not almost. She could definitely feel it.

“Um… yeah,” she muttered stupidly. “I guess you can say it has.”

He smiled, flashing perfectly white, perfectly straight teeth. The man was an impossibility. He took another two steps toward her, moving with a distinctly non-threatening casualness, and suddenly Poppy had never felt so threatened in her life. But not by him. She felt threatened by herself because she knew that any chances she could have with a guy like this would be ruined by all of her own awkwardness and honest bluntness and the straight-forward no-nonsense personality that people had told her time and again were unladylike.

The stranger turned his ice-blue gaze from her to look at the store front beside them. She followed his gaze to the sign. It was a coffee shop, obviously much smaller than Starbucks, but one that appeared to be older too, and more established. There were plenty of people inside; she could see them through the foggy glass, conversing and laughing.

“I hear you can’t get a better cup of coffee in Seattle,” the man said, turning back to her. “Can I buy you a fresh one?”

Poppy felt the heat of a blush infuse her cheeks, knowing that the evidence of her last cup of coffee was splayed across the sidewalk.

“That honestly sounds really nice,” she admitted. The throbbing at the base of her skull was ever-present, low-grade but there, aching for its continuing caffeine fix. “Let me just clean up my mess really quick.”

The man didn’t even hesitate. He strode to the middle of the street, picked up her lid, then made it back to the sidewalk to pick up her paper cup before she could. He tossed them both into a nearby bin, then opened the front glass door of the coffee shop, gesturing for her to enter first. “After you.” He smiled.

He’s beautiful and he’s a gentleman and he wants to buy me coffee, she mused as she entered the shop and the scent of fresh, hot coffee assaulted her desperate senses. It smelled even better in here than it did in the roastery.

“Thank you,” she murmured.

He entered behind her and moved them toward an open table against the window. The atmosphere in here was different than it had been in Starbucks. The people weren’t here to study. No one was on their cell phone or computer. They sat across from each other and made eye contact. Somehow, despite the lack of expensive fire places and huge, copper-piped roastery, the atmosphere was warmer.

Almost immediately after sitting down, the two were approached by an employee of the establishment. “What can I get you two?” she asked, and Poppy was very impressed at her professionalism. Mainly, in the fact that she wasn’t out-and-out staring at the man across from Poppy. He was so handsome, it was hard for her to imagine people not staring at him. She was trying very hard not to do so herself.

“Just something hot,” Poppy replied honestly. And nervously. “Just hot coffee.”

The stranger chuckled. “We’ll take two cappuccino’s,” he said gently. Then he leaned forward and said, just loud enough for the waitress to hear as well, “It’s the cappuccino’s they’re famous for.”

Poppy grinned. “That sounds wonderful.” And it did. It really did.

The waitress smiled and left, and the stranger turned his attention fully on Poppy. She felt herself shrinking beneath that gaze. It was too intense.

“You want to talk about it?” he asked softly, lacing his fingers together on the table.

She blinked. “About what?”

“The bad day you have so obviously had.”

She smiled self-consciously. “You really aren’t interested in that. And besides, I don’t even know you.”

He watched her closely for a moment, and the gods only knew what he was thinking. And then he said, “My name is Kristopher.” He paused, tilting his head just a little to the side as if to study her even more closely. “What is yours?”

She swallowed hard. Her throat suddenly felt tight. “Poppy,” she said. “Actually, that’s not exactly true. It’s Persephone. But everyone calls me Poppy.”

Something glinted in the depths of his bottomless pools-for-eyes, and he said, “Persephone, the young goddess of spring who is abducted by the cold and hard god of the dead and taken into a world where there is no sun, thereby releasing winter upon the world in her absence….” He smiled a mysterious smile.

“Yeah, everyone knows the story. I’m not sure what my parents were thinking. They’re not even Greek.”

But that mysterious smile only deepened. “I think it’s very fitting.”

Chapter Five

Poppy frowned. “Fitting? How’s that?”

But their drinks arrived just then, and Kristopher turned to the waitress, taking both cups from her outstretched hands. He thanked her and turned back to Poppy, holding one of them out for her.

She stared at it, at the foam expertly decorated on top in the shape of a snowflake, at the steam rising from it promisingly. Almost afraid at this point, she gingerly hooked her finger through the loop of the handle and lifted it out of his grasp. “Thank you.”

“My pleasure,” he said. He raised his in a toast. “To a better night.”

Their eyes met. A chill went through Poppy.

Then she took a sip.

Poppy closed her eyes, barely suppressing a moan. Hot, creamy, perfectly delicious liquid washed over her tongue and down her throat, warming her from the inside out. She swallowed, and said, “It’s hot. Gods, it’s actually hot.”

Kristopher lowered his cup. “You’re surprised.”

Poppy opened her eyes and laughed a little. “It’s just that this is something like the fifth cup of coffee I’ve tried for today, and the first that’s actually been hot. I don’t know what the deal is; it’s truly bizarre.” She gently shook her head just once. “And I really needed it today, because I’ve had this headache that just….” She made a face and splayed her hands like something exploding.

He nodded. “Let me guess, it’s sitting somewhere right about… here?” He reached across the table and she went stiff as he brushed his fingers through her hair until he was touching the base of her skull on the right side.

Instant cold went through that spot, freezing the pain out of her head. The next throb was softer than the last, and the one after that was even softer. Over the course of just a few quick seconds, the headache ebbed to nonexistence, and she was staring into very blue eyes in both relief and shock.

Slowly, Kristopher removed his hand.

“How….” She had been about to ask how he’d done that. But she had a feeling she already knew. It made perfect sense. He was too beautiful to be human. Clearly, he possessed some sort of magic. So the real question she should be asking was….

“Who are you?”

“I already told you.”

“Okay,” she countered, and though she was more grateful than she could really say for the hot coffee and the end to her migraine, her defensive alarms were screeching. “Then what are you?”

He took a deep breath and reclined in his chair, never taking his eyes off her. “What would you say if someone asked such a question of you, Persephone?”

Poppy blinked.

“What would you tell them?” he continued. Another pause. “Would you say, ‘I’m human, of course,” and leave it at that? Or would you say, ‘I’m Persephone Glacia Nix,’ or ‘I’m of Nordic descent,’ or even… ‘I’m a warlock,’?”

A ringing began in Poppy’s ears. The world around her was narrowing, as if she were entering some sort of tunnel. There was only her… and the man sitting across from her.

“You see, questions can be complicated,” he went on. “And their answers, even more so.”

Silence filled the shop. Or, at least it seemed to from Poppy’s perspective. Everything was quiet but for the ringing in her ears. It was persistent, growing louder. And then it was quiet. And then it was loud again.

Wait….

“Your phone is ringing, Poppy.”

Her eyes widened, and she looked down at her purse. A spear of aggressive irritation spiked through her. “I know.” She shoved her hand into her handbag and pulled out her phone. “And thank you for calling me Poppy.”

She put the phone to her ear. “What?” she asked none too gently.

“Poppy? You okay?”

It was Violet. Poppy sat up straighter and looked across the table at the blue-eyed stranger who hadn’t stopped staring at her. She would give just about anything just then to have a nice long talk with her best friend. She’d had one heck of a day, and now she was having coffee with someone who was clearly of a supernatural ilk, and who knew exactly who and what she was.

He could be dangerous.

Oh, he’s definitely dangerous.

“Um….”

“Poppy, what’s going on?” Violet asked, clearly able to hear her hesitation. If Poppy wasn’t careful, the new Shadow Queen would be here in a few short hops, skips and jumps through the portals of the shadows.

Kristopher smiled.

“It’s nothing,” Poppy lied. “I’m just – I’m super busy. I’ll call you back in a few, okay?” She hung up.

She’d never hung up on her best friend before. It felt so wrong, and she could just imagine Violet on the other end of the line, staring disbelievingly at her phone. But then again, Violet had encased Poppy in a holding spell a few months ago, and that had been the first time Violet had ever cast magic on her, so Poppy still had a ways to go until they were even.

She put the phone on silence and slipped it back into her handbag. “She’s on her honeymoon,” she said.

“And you don’t want to ruin that for her by asking her a lot of questions about what supernatural being could look like me and know who and what you are. Sweet of you, but not very smart. And since I have a feeling you’re very smart, Poppy Nix, I’m guessing you actually hung up on her because you don’t want her involved with the Entity again. She’s already been involved enough, hasn’t she?”

Poppy stood up. Her legs felt strange, but they held her. Fear was driving her.

The Entity was out there; she knew that well enough. Everyone who had anything at all to do with the supernatural factions these days had been made aware of the Entity – and her best friend had gone up against the terrifying being herself. So, Poppy was well versed in how dangerous the world had become of late. The man sitting across the table from her could very well be possessed. He could be the Entity. Or he could be working for him.

Despite those eyes and those muscles, he could be evil through and through, and he’d all but just admitted as much.

She leaned over the table and found her hands shaking where they braced against its surface. She tried to keep her voice down, tried desperately to keep from drawing attention as she hissed, “Tell me who and what you are, Kristopher, or I will walk out of this coffee shop and head straight to the Thirteen Kings to inform them of this exchange. And if you follow me or try to stop me, I won’t care how frowned-upon it is to use magic in the mortal realm.”

His smile became a cold, hard grin. In a voice just as soft but far more powerful, he said, “You do have spirit, don’t you? But you aren’t going anywhere, Poppy. Not without me.”

Chapter Six

Kristopher knew what was happening. But that was different from believing it.

From the moment he’d heard her voice speaking those pointedly portentous words, “You don’t need to understand me, you just need to love me,” he’d been stunned. For a while, all he could do was sit there in his chair at that table and stare at her. He was focused, tuned-in, listening. But he could feel the magic in his body spinning too hard, too fast, and he knew he would draw attention soon. Either the windows around him would freeze and shatter or the air would begin forming indoor clouds or the ground would ice over and people would slip to their untimely deaths.

So he shook himself out of his stupor and morphed his body out of the visible spectrum of those around him. Then he slowly rose from his table and moved in.

That was a mistake. The closer he got to her, the stronger the knowledge was that what he was seeing, what he was witnessing, and what he was feeling, was all real. That reality was like both an icepick through his heart – and a quickly following blowtorch to melt it all away again. It hurt. It felt wonderful.

It was unbelievable.

How many years? How many blasted winters had come and gone to see him occupy his icy throne alone?

No. He was dreaming. He had to be. The Shadow King had thought his realm was uninhabitable? The Unseelie King had thought no woman would want his darkness either? The Goblin King had been positive no queen in the realms would find his world acceptable? They had nothing on him, which became obvious when they all found their mates. Kristopher’s world, on the other hand, was a universe of ice, for fuck’s sake. Ice was literally uninhabitable. Yeah, he was dreaming.

But…

You don’t dream, genius. You never have. Guess what? This is real.

He should have known she’d be mortal. All this time, he was assuming it would take a supernatural queen to withstand the cruelty of his realm. But he was a fool. Of course she’d be human. After all, at one time long ago, he’d been human too.

He dared a distance of a table away, and there, he made the people who were sitting at the table cold enough that they eventually grew too uncomfortable to stay. They rose and left, and he stole one of their seats. He turned in the chair, leaned forward, placed his elbows on his knees, and watched with a keen interest he hadn’t show anything – anything at all – in more than a thousand years.

After her friend left and he followed her outdoors – getting too close at one point – he watched her throw her cup of coffee against the wall in fury, and he couldn’t help but smile. Not only was she perfect in every physical and mental way, she had a temper. Just like Winter.

He knew what was happening with her. He knew why her coffee had been cold all day. The trick now was… how to approach her with the truth.

And so, here he was, sitting across from a positively drop-dead gorgeous and utterly seething future Winter Queen, having fucked it up royally by playing all of his cards absolutely wrong. She was hell bent on having answers here and now, and he was nearly positive that she wouldn’t be able to handle them. She wouldn’t even believe them.

And yet he hadn’t been able to stop himself from playing hardball. There was something about her that made him want to pick a fight with her. To get her riled. He would have seriously given every ounce of gold he owned see what she was like when she was absolutely furious. And naked.

His hands curled against the table top, and his eyes heated up as she slowly straightened. He’d just told her she wasn’t going anywhere. Not without him.

He could see the comprehension dawning in those glacial eyes of hers. She was in trouble, and she was just now really grasping it. What she did next, he was fully expecting, and he let it happen. There was no sense in alarming the people in the coffee shop.

She turned and fled, grabbing her bag and hastening out of the shop in nearly record time. She left her hot coffee on the table, a fact he felt somewhat guilty for. She’d wanted that cup all day, after all. The thing was, Persephone Nix was becoming the Winter Queen, and she had no idea how to handle it. Winter’s power was emanating from her, escaping from her in little magical ways that did things like turn all of her hot drinks cold.

He wondered what else she’d done lately that would have hinted at the transformation. Spells gone awry? Ice forming beneath her feet? He was wondering what kind of shower she’d had that morning. Had it been cold? Or had she been forced to turn it all the way up and get out early?

He laughed softly at that thought, leaned forward, and slowly sipped at his own piping hot drink. He’d learned to control his own winter long, long ago.

Kristopher knew she was probably a good four to five blocks away by now. She looked like the kind of deer that could sprint at a good pace when she needed to, and he was betting she more than felt like she needed to just then. But he had a mark on her now, so to speak. He’d touched her. He would be able to find her anywhere.

Kristopher’s ability to read humans had been granted to him when he’d become the Winter King, so long ago, he barely remembered it now. Winter had chosen him. And because he’d had no choice in the matter, he’d accepted.

When he did, he gained many abilities. Among those was the power to read a mortal on sight. All he had to do was look at a person to know their name and whether or not they were trouble. Good? Bad? Right? Wrong? Only the kings and their queens, once they came to the table, were immune to this particular power of his, which was especially unfortunate now that one of them was known to be a traitor.

For everyone else, Kristopher knew: Was their heart in a promising place, or did it wither and seethe? Were they hurting or filled with joy? He knew it all. And yet with Persephone Glacia Nix, mortal or not she was already so much a queen, all he’d managed to learn was her name, her lineage, and the fact that she was not a normal human. She was a warlock. That was a rarity beyond measure. He’d also learned that she worked with Lalura, a fact she’d more than verified for him when she threatened to take him to the Thirteen Kings.

This, too, made him laugh now as he casually finished off his drink. He looked up when the waitress approached, hands on her hips, sympathetic look on her face.

“Can’t win ‘em all, huh Kris?”

“Maybe not, Neve. But I’ll win this one.”

The waitress pursed her lips and sat in the seat across from him. “So, who is she?”

Kristopher eyed the waitress, a tall, slender, pale beauty with ash blond hair dyed black and light blue eyes framed by too much eyeliner. She did it to hide her looks, and he supposed he could understand that to some degree. She’d never wanted anything but to be treated like a mortal. “What’s it to you, little sis?”

“She’s the first one to ever run out on you. I like her already. A lot.”

Kristopher threw back his head and laughed, and the sound filled the café with magic. The windows frosted over, and outside it began to snow.

“Winter has started.” Neve looked from the windows back to her big brother, her eyes large with knowledge. “She’s your queen, isn’t she?” The question came on a tone of voice that he’d never heard from his little sister before. It was a tone of awe and hope, and even of fear. Most likely the fear that he would royally screw this up. She’d been wanting him to find his queen for centuries.

So he took a deep breath, glanced to the windows and the world beyond, and said, “Yes. She very much is.”

“You’re going after her, aren’t you?”

He turned back to his sister. “Yes.”

“And you’re just giving her a head start for sport, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“You’re a bastard, Kris.”

He grinned. “I know.”

Chapter Seven

793 AD, TromsØ, the northwest coast of Norway

Erikk awoke groggily. His head ached, and clouds of blurriness surrounded his vision. He blinked to clear it and slowly sat up.

“Erikk! Erikk!”

Pain lanced through his senses, starting at his vision to his sense of touch as a terrible suffering began behind his eyes, moved to the base of his skull, and spread through his muscle, bone and tissue, until his skin grew taut with goose bumps in a flush of discomfort the likes of which he’d never known.

But Ylva had just come barreling through the front flap of his tent, her face as pale as the snow.

“Erikk, they’ve gone! They’ve taken the boats, Bjarke and his crew! And mother and father will not wake up!”

Erikk jumped out of bed in the manner he was accustomed to doing, and at once regretted it. The pain that had been sitting and sulking like a waiting monster within his skull awoke and jumped out of its own bed at the same time, roaring with fury. He swayed on his feet, leaned against a nearby chest, and tried not to let his pain show on his face.

“Erikk, what is it? What’s happened to you?” She rushed to stand beside him, her hand on his shoulder to steady him.

Now he knew why the ale had been bitter. It hadn’t been old; it had been poisoned.

“Go to mother and father. Find Jorunn and hurry her to them. They’ve been poisoned.”

Ylva gasped softly and took a step back. A moment later, she whirled around in a flurry and was out the door. Erikk closed his eyes. Snowflakes the colors of the Northern Lights spun behind his shut lids, and sickness roiled in his gut. He gritted his teeth as it tried to rise. There was nothing in his belly to vomit.

Slowly he straightened and opened his eyes. The pain was growing worse, nudged on by the fear thrumming through him. He needed to leave the tent, find Ronald, learn what had happened. Just as he shoved through the tent flaps, a man with bright red hair and a starkly terrified expression approached him.

At least that was a bit of luck.

“Ronald, what –”

“Erikk, it’s worse than you think,” his friend cut him off. He placed his hand firmly on his shoulder and looked him in the eyes. “Your parents do not fare well, and I can see the bastard placed the same herbs in your own drink. But you are stronger.”

“I know,” Erikk said, shaking his head. He already knew about the poison! With the way he was feeling now, as young and healthy as he was, he had a terrible, dread-filled feeling that his parents would not be faring well at all.

But time was passing! He needed to know about Bjarke!

“But that isn’t all,” continued Ronald. “Bjarke took our strongest men and shoved off this morning. He told Ylva that when he returned wealthy beyond measure in several moons’ time, he would take her as his bride and no one would be able to stop him. He bragged that he would be chief.”

There was a silence now as everything Ronald had said sank in. There was so much there.

Several moons’ time meant that he planned to sail far. Wealthy beyond measure meant he didn’t intend to trade. He intended to sack something and take what he wanted. And of course, he didn’t think anyone would be around to stop him from claiming Ylva as his wife because everyone who could have done so would be dead. Poisoned months earlier.

“Son of a bitch,” Erikk hissed. His anger was fueling him, overriding his discomfort and pain.

“Erikk!”

Erikk turned slightly to watch Jorunn running toward him. The wiccan had a body strong as iron for her age. Her hair was the color of dirty snow, but her teeth were white and she was never ill. She was called wise woman for a reason. “You’ve been poisoned, Erikk,” she said when she reached him. “You need this!”

He watched in numb fascination as she took a pouch she’d already had open in her hand, and poured some of its powdered contents into a goblet Ylva held out for her. Jorunn’s wide leather belt bore many flasks and bottles attached to it. She pulled a flask from it and added its liquid contents to the goblet.

Ylva hastily swirled her finger in it a bit to mix it, then held it out to her older brother. “Drink, Erikk! Mother and father have already had theirs!”

They’d been awake to swallow? Was there hope they would survive?

Erikk didn’t question Jorunn’s concoction or his need of it. He simply grabbed the goblet none-too-gently, and downed its entire contents in three swallows. It tasted like bitter berries and dirt.

“Good!” said Jorunn, nodding emphatically as Erikk lowered the empty goblet. “Good,” she repeated, more softly this time. “At least you were able to finish it. We could only get so much down your parents’ throats.”

Erikk turned to her. “You mean they are still –”

She nodded before he could finish, her expression withered. “I’m sorry. We tried to wake them. They are not as strong as you.”

Everyone kept telling him that. He squared the old woman with a hard look. “Is the potion you just gave me going to work?”

“On you, there is no doubt. On them… we can only hope.”

Erikk felt something horrid rise in his chest, not physically, but emotionally. He tamped it down with a fury that was building just as quickly and spun away from Jorunn to face Ronald. “Come with me.”

Ronald only nodded as Erikk stormed through the camp and everyone came out of their tents or gathered in the street to watch him. He dared not look into their faces; he knew what they were thinking. His family had been attacked. There were traitors amongst their own brethren. Some of them had sons who were involved, who had accompanied Bjarke to the sea as part of his crew. The silence in the air spoke volumes.

By the time Erikk reached the seaside to find the two largest and strongest longboats taken, the sky was turning dark, and the air was filling with the heaviness of impending storm. “Help me,” he commanded Ronald.

Ronald assisted him in untying the smaller boat, one meant for no more than four passengers. But as he did, he looked up at his friend. “What can you hope to do, Erikk? He has a long head start and the weather is changing.” He shook his head.

“I know not, but I can’t stay here. Bjarke plans to take the men down the coast. No doubt, he’s been planning this for some time. There’s been talking of taking Lindisfarne.”

“The monastery?”

Erikk nodded, wrapping ropes and throwing them into the boat. “All his talk of riches? He’ll meet up with others in other families who feel the same way about the Christians, and the lot of them will attack the church. It’s been brewing.”

“By Odin. It’ll be messy, no matter what happens.”

Erikk nodded again. As soon as it was completely free, he jumped into the vessel. But when Ronald made to jump in after him, Erikk held out his hand. “No. I need you to stay with Ylva. She needs you to protect her.”

“I need no one to protect me. I’m coming with you.”

Ronald and Erikk looked up along the shore, where the cliffs abutted the sand. Ylva stood atop the nearest rock, her stature proud, her hair blowing about her in a wind that was just kicking up from the sea. Jorunn had accompanied her and stood beside her.

“Very well, then, you need no protection.” Erikk said, knowing his sister was not only smart, but strong. She was also young and stubborn. “However, I need you to protect the people, Ylva. You are the last of us. Should something happen to me and – ”

“And mother and father not awaken?”

Erikk met her gaze. A silent understanding passed between them. Slowly, and with resolution, Erikk finished, “It will all be up to you, Ylva. You need to survive.”

He didn’t wait for her to answer, and could no longer even bare to look upon her, so he turned then, ducked into the boat to grab the oars, and looked at Ronald instead. They nodded to one another in understanding. Ylva was but eleven years. Ronald was being given a load of responsibility, and it was far heavier than was being stated aloud.

“Take this,” Ronald rushed forward, shrugging off his furs to toss them into the bottom of the boat. Jorunn pulled several things from her belt and threw them into the boat as well. Then Ronald shoved the boat off the sand and snow, and Erikk began rowing, trying not to notice the way Ylva’s small white form stood motionless as ice as the moisture in the air clung to his face and braids and the shore grew further and further away.

Chapter Eight

Present day, Seattle Washington, United States

Kristopher had just left the café and made it to his bike when something in the nearby alley caught his eye. Several homeless men were gathered around a burning trash can. People thought that for the most part, things like this no longer happened in the city limits, because police officers normally caught the fires early and had them put out for public safety, sending the homeless to a shelter if possible. But there were areas where people still did this. They just happened a little further in, a little deeper down, and a little more out of human sight. The men gathered around this particular trash can were not mortal.

Kristopher looked at them and immediately knew who and what they were. One was a vampire who’d wasted away to nearly nothing for some strange reason. Vampires didn’t get diseases; there was only one way for one of them to waste away. He wasn’t feeding. It was something Kris could perhaps take up with Roman D’Angelo during the next meeting.

Another was a goblin in human guise, one of the larger kind who’d no doubt been missing from the Goblin Kingdom since long before Diana Chroi had taken the throne as queen. Some goblins just managed to get out and not get noticed by lying low and not causing trouble. They simply preferred the mortal realm to their own.

And the third was an incubus... who’d been banished by their king. He wondered if the incubus knew that Hesperos had been inducted to the Thirteen. Not that it mattered. It was the incubus who set off Kristopher’s alarms the loudest, though even that was a very distant, very faint noise. He wasn’t worried, he was simply curious.

Kristopher watched the three of them a moment or two more out of the corner of his eye, then mounted his bike with smooth grace. It was his favorite motorcycle, and one he only took out of the garage for special occasions. He hadn’t been sure why he’d wanted to take it out tonight – until now. The 1927 Brough Superior SS100 wasn’t necessarily fast, though it certainly had been in its day, but it was rare and it was beautiful. And like so many things, when suped up with magic, it could become a bat out of hell.

Rare, beautiful, and a magical bat out of hell. He smiled to himself as he realized that Poppy Nix possessed the same qualities. It looked like Kristopher preferred his women like he preferred his bikes.

Something in the group of men to his left in the alley caught his attention again. It was either a sound or a movement, but either way, he hesitated in starting his engine and returned his attention to them.

The fire in the trash can between them began to flicker and sputter. Then it poofed upward, and a dancing flame erupted at its center, bouncing energetically.

“Oh! Pardon me! Have any of you seen the Winter King around here anywhere?”

Kristopher’s eyes widened. Even from his distance, he could hear the rather desperate screeching voice of the young fire elemental.

The men around the trash can backed up. “A… fire elemental?” one of them asked. It was the vampire. He shied away even more, no doubt out of fear. Fire was one of the few things that could kill a vampire out-right.

Kristopher dismounted his bike and strode across the street toward the alley. As he neared, the fire elemental continued to spin in place, looking everywhere and speaking non-stop. “I-I’m sorry. I don’t mean to alarm anyone, but I was told Lord Scaul was here somewhere, and I….” He seemed to trail off as the incubus, who was handsome even in his “fallen” state, gave him a dark, wary look. The incubus then raised his head to the stranger that was nearing the end of the alley.

“No worries, little spark,” said the Nightmare in a deep, beautiful voice, which was typical for his kind. “It looks like your call made it through.” He backed up a few steps now too. Kristopher knew the man could sense his power and that it was the waves of influence rolling off him that had clued the incubus into who exactly he was.

The three men had cleared the way a good ten feet in all directions by the time Kristopher reached the trash can, and Pi spun to face him.

“Your majesty!”

“It’s… Pi, right?” Kris had never dealt with the tiny fire elemental personally, but at this point, his interactions with the kings had become almost legendary. “Don’t you work for Chroi?”

“Yes, your majesty, however Miss Chantelle sent me to find you. She said you’d be here at this time, which,” the elemental looked around a little and seemed to shrug, “seems to be true. She wanted you to know that there’s been an update on….” He trailed off a bit and gave the three men nearby a distrustful glance.

Kristopher raised his chin. “I see.” He pulled a lighter from his pocket. Some might have thought it strange for the Winter King to carry a lighter, and perhaps that was exactly why he did it. Because he could and because it was unexpected. He flicked it on. “Hop on and we’ll talk in private.”

The elemental nodded emphatically and vanished from the center of the trash can. A moment later, the flame at the tip of Kristopher’s lighter began bouncing languidly up and down. Its eyes opened, and the flicker smiled.

Kristopher nodded both a farewell and silent warning to the three non-humans gathered in the alley, then turned and headed back toward his bike. He could feel their eyes on his back as he left, and he kept his senses alert.

The snow was forming larger bonds in the air, its flakes growing more substantial. It was beginning to pile on the ground and fill the night with brightness. Kristopher held the lighter close to protect the elemental from the wetness, and when he reached his bike, he glanced once over his shoulder to make certain they were alone.

The fire elemental waited, a questioning look on his tiny, flickering face. Kris gave him the nod to continue.

“One of Lady Chantelle’s seers had a vision of a crack in Yggdrasil.”

“I’m aware of the fracture,” Kris answered, but his forehead furrowed. The fact that the news was spreading was alarming.

“She’s concerned it might be the Entity,” Pi told him seriously, “Perhaps he is going after your foundations. The other vision the seer had was of a darkness eating away at the base of a building.”

A darkness eating away at the base of a building? Going after our foundations…. Kristopher said, “She thinks he wants to destroy what we are from the beginning. From the inside.”

“Yes,” Pi nodded emphatically. “We already know he wants to kill what makes you you. That way you’ll lose your powers and your crowns, and you won’t have time to find your remaining queens.”

“So he can find them first.”

Pi nodded-bounced.

“You can tell Lalura that as far as my queen is concerned, he’s too late on that front. And I’ll be tending to the Tree very soon.”

Pi bounced an affirmative again, and disappeared from the lighter, killing the fire altogether as he left. A small stream of smoke wafted up from the emptiness, and Kristopher watched it for a half a second before flicking the lighter closed once more and slipping it back into his pocket.

He mounted his bike, using his powers to hone in on his runaway queen. She’d made it all the way back to her apartment. He was impressed. She hadn’t even used magic to do it, no doubt because she didn’t want to alarm any of the elders or, worse, her best friend. She’d simply run. And in leather-soled boots in the snow, no less.

Kristopher took a deep breath as he sat back in the saddle and started up the engine. It roared to supernatural life, fueled with far more power than its original engine had been created to exude. It wouldn’t have handled in the snow at all, either, in its original condition. But this was the Winter King’s bike. It could take on a hurricane.

He revved it a few times, sensing the continued stares of the men in the alley. The incubus, in particular, was afraid Kristopher would bring attention to him with the Nightmare King, but Kris could care less about dealing with other kings’ affairs. The man’s secrets, whatever they were, were safe.

He pulled the bike out into traffic, weaving with ease. The depth of cars had lightened up a bit since the snow’d begun. Seattle-ites were accustomed to driving in poor weather conditions, given the amount of rain they experienced, and the number one response to such conditions when they turned worse was to simply get off the road. Most of the tarmac now was taken up by the yellow of taxis, followed by the elongated white of buses.

Kristopher expertly wound around both and mentally steeled himself for what lay ahead. Because he hadn’t been lying to Poppy when he’d told her she wasn’t going anywhere without him. He’d just been turned around a little. The truth was – he wasn’t going anywhere without her.

Chapter Nine

The coffee mug that sat on her kitchen counter still full of undrinkably cold coffee read, I wish I were dead. Though the mug had been a gift from a well-meaning friend who knew how much she loathed mornings, most days it wasn’t really true. Poppy actually loved life. She loved being alive, even if that alive feeling often came at the bottom of a cup of Joe.

However, right now, she was afraid the cup’s wish was going to be granted, whether she wanted it or not. Someone or something out there in the guise of a devastatingly tall and handsome blonde with eyes like ice knew what she was, knew who she was, and had just threatened her in the middle of a downtown Seattle cafe.

You aren’t going anywhere. Not without me.

She played his words over and over in her mind as she frantically tossed off her coat, scarf and gloves and reinforced the wards around her apartment. Then she ran into her bedroom, slammed and locked the door, and dialed Lalura on her cell. Lalura’s phone was a landline – of course – but she had ways of answering, even when she wasn’t home.

Poppy stood in the center of her bedroom and turned in place, eyeing the windows and the door respectively, over and over again, as she waited for the old woman to pick up. But an answer never came, and Lalura never set up any kind of answering machine. It simply wasn’t her thing.

So Poppy hung up and tried again. And again. It was rudimentary, using a phone, but her mind was spinning, and at the moment it was literally all she could summon the faculties to do.

After several fruitless attempts, she finally threw the phone on the bed and closed her eyes, gripping her head in her hands to think. “Okay. You need to get ahold of someone, anyone, who can help you.”

But… was that true?

Maybe she could handle this on her own? Maybe it wasn’t as big a deal as she was making it out to be. Maybe the guy was just some punk supernatural stalker with the ability to detect warlock magic. It was easy enough these days to get someone’s full name – that took little to no effort at all. And warlock magic was the most readily noticeable form of magic, due to its inherent darkness. Maybe this guy wasn’t worth getting everyone all worked up over, especially with all they already had to deal with.

But he knew about the Entity. And about Violet.

“Come on, Poppy, think.” She’d already double and triple-warded the apartment, which might even alert someone to her use of magic, and that wouldn’t be a bad thing at this point. So, she had that. But that was all she had.

“Okay. Sorry, Vi.” She picked back up the phone and dialed her friend, and as she did, she wiped her brow with the back of her long sleeve, and it came away damp. She must be really, really nervous. There was no other explanation, because she’d only been in the apartment a few minutes, and she was already sweating. She never kept the apartment warm, so it couldn’t have been any hotter than about sixty degrees inside.

She frowned to herself as the phone continued to ring. No answer. Her head was beginning to ache again. The call went to voice mail. Poppy took a deep breath. “Vi, I’m so sorry to bother you right now, I know you’re probably off drinking champagne in the tub with Mr. McShadow, but… by the way, what do shadows look like naked? Do they have belly buttons?”

Oh my God. Focus, Pop!

“I mean – I’m sorry.” Her head really was starting to hurt. It was just too hot. “I just wanted to tell you….” What did she want to say? She was having trouble forming the right words. “Um, there’s this guy and he knows who you are and about the Entity and that I’m a warlock and he kind of threatened me just now, if you can call telling someone they can’t go anywhere without them a threat. I mean, I don’t know. Maybe these days that’s what they call flirting or something? Guys are always clueless, so it’s possible. But, so I just….”

Jesus, Poppy.

“Okay, I just wanted to give you a heads up.”

Because I’m a scaredy-cat.

She hung up and placed her hand to her forehead. She was burning up. In frustration, she turned and marched to the thermostat against her bedroom wall. It read 92 degrees.

“What?” She stared at it with wide eyes.

But with the way she was sweating into her clothes just then, she could believe it. She just also couldn’t believe it. The heater wasn’t on, and it was below freezing outside. In fact, as she turned and glanced at the window, she could see big, fat flakes filling the night sky. It was beautiful.

“What the hell?” she hissed as she strode to that same window, unlatched it, and threw it open. Cold, bracing air slammed into her face, and it felt wonderful. She closed her eyes for just a moment, enjoying the sheer pleasure of a fevered forehead suddenly, miraculously cooled.

Then she opened her eyes again and looked down.

The man from the coffee shop – Kristopher – stood with his arms crossed over his broad chest, leaning against a magnificent motorcycle, his glacial eyes a visible, piercing blue even from this distance. They gazed steadily upward, spearing her to the core.

He’s doing this. She didn’t know how she knew, and she wasn’t sure why she was so positive, but she just knew he was the one making the apartment hot. He’s smoking me out.

She glared at him. He smiled.

He was pretty smoking hot himself.

Crap. But that didn’t matter! It certainly wasn’t enough to see her surrender. Her gaze narrowed stubbornly on the man. She did possess the means to fight back. And right about now, she was more than prepared to use them.

“Fine,” she said softly, somehow also knowing that he would hear her despite the distance. “Two can play at this game.”

His smile only widened, and his broad, sculpted chest moved in a chuckle. Poppy growled and spun away from the window, summoning her warlock magic to the fore. She closed her eyes and imagined a plane of ice, her first instinct to use a spell to cool off the apartment. She had things in it, after all, that would melt if it got much hotter.

But then something else occurred to her. If she continued to put Band-Aids on whatever he did to her, he would just keep attacking, striking on different fronts, and she would run out of magic protecting herself one spell after another. If she remained on the defensive, eventually she would become defenseless, and he would win. She needed a better plan.

In a blade-to-blade struggle on the battleground, what better way was there to deal with an enemy than to stop shielding and start swinging your sword? The best defense was a good offense, right?

Right.

She smiled as she at once decided what to do, and the image in her mind shifted from a plane of ice – to a motorcycle. One exactly like the beautiful bike “Kristopher” was leaning against across the street at that very moment in time.

“I’m honestly sorry,” she whispered, speaking to the bike. Then she cast her spell.

Chapter Ten

Kristopher’s smile slowly slipped, and his gaze narrowed. The look of stubborn determination on Poppy’s face hadn’t exactly been conducive to him getting his way in a timely manner. His senses went on high alert, and he straightened, coming off the bike.

As soon as he did, he felt the spike of dark magic shoot past him like invisible lightning and slam into his motorcycle. He spun, naturally reaching out with his arms as if to steady the bike. But it didn’t fall over. Instead, it stayed right where it was – and began leaking.

Kristopher knelt down to get a closer look. It wasn’t oil that was leaking. The interior of the engine had been liquidated and was slowly dripping down the sides of the bike to gather in a puddle that looked like mercury.

The girl had actually changed the molecular structure of the metal. Did she realize how powerful you had to be in order to do that? That wasn’t simple magic, not by any means. Kristopher’s wonder over Poppy’s innate magical abilities was enough to take just a touch of sting out of the prospect of losing his bike.

But only a touch.

It wasn’t that he couldn’t fix it. It was that doing so would require working around her magic, and from the feel of it, that would be no easy feat. She was certainly queen material.

Slowly, he straightened, heart pounding, teeth clenched, every muscle in his body tensing as if for a fight. He turned back around to face the complex housing Poppy’s apartment, his mind working fast. He had to admit that the shock of seeing his bike destroyed had interrupted his concentration on heating up her place. No doubt, the temperature had rapidly plummeted once more, and he was betting she’d turned the AC on.

He was going to have to go in and get her.

Kristopher gritted his teeth. “Fuck it,” he said as he transported from right there in front of his bike to the hallway just outside her apartment. He stopped for a moment and stared at the door before realizing that he hadn’t meant to transport into the hall at all. He’d meant to wind up in her living room.

It’s warded, he thought. Clever girl. He had to smile at that. You could never be too careful in this world.

But then he remembered what she’d done to his bike. His eyes narrowed, taking on a glacial glow. I can get past a few wards.

A full two minutes later, Kristopher finally managed to bypass them, feeling them slide open with a nearly audible click. The door was still locked with a human lock and two deadbolts. Those slid back next with another push of magic, and the door slowly swung open. He took a step back, eyeing the space beyond with wary care.

Then he strode through the front door and into her living room to find the apartment empty. Silence filled the room, made stronger by the muffling power of the snow piling up outside. He caught a hint of some delicate, clean scent – shampoo, probably. The refrigerator hummed to life, snapping his head to the side. Someone suddenly squealed outside; children throwing snowballs in the night.

But there was no sign of Poppy. Traces of transport magic filled in the shadowy spaces in the corners and recesses of the apartment. She’d used his distraction to give him the slip.

“For the love of –” he cut himself off with a curse and threw up his hands as if he were dealing with a crazy woman. Then he ran a hand over his face and sent out feelers of magic to trace her progress.

Latching on to her signature was nearly as difficult as it had been to get past her layered wards. She’d gone to the trouble of crisscrossing her path, which had the same confusing effect that footprints in the snow headed in different directions would have.

But he focused, concentrated, and zeroed in on the set of footprints that was the lightest. She’d want to leave the least bit of trail. She wasn’t stupid.

By the time he locked on to her, he knew she would be at least another transport away, and he was beginning to realize that his queen was more than his match. He felt stupid for underestimating her.

He was going to have to up his game.

*****

She’d sensed a change just before finishing her complicated transport spell. The air in the room felt cooler. It was either the air conditioner, or she’d managed to distract “Kristopher” with her spell after all. She still felt bad about the bike… but desperate times and all that.

Now, she was four portals away and still moving at the speed of light through different dimensions, crisscrossing her path as she went. She was not only hoping it would slow her pursuer down, but that the obtuse use of magic would draw the attention she was normally hoping to avoid. It was like someone who desperately needed a cop choosing to go over the speed limit on purpose for once just to get one to follow them.

She didn’t have the inherent ability to transport like most of the magic users she knew. She was human, and had to cast a spell to do it. Transport magic was powerful. It was sure to get noticed. She just hoped whoever noticed it was on her side.

Poppy saw the exit coming up ahead, a bright circle of light surrounding the darkness of a way out. She bent her legs, getting ready for the impact, and jumped when it came close enough. But she realized, shortly after jumping, she needn’t have been so careful. What she needed, instead, was snow boots.

At least two feet of snow met her impact as she exited the portal. She dropped and rolled, picking up stray flakes as she moved, like a building snowball. When she got to her feet again, she stood still and looked around, her eyes growing wider by the second.

“What… the… hell?” She had been trying to wind up in the study that she, Violet, and Dahlia shared for magic lessons with Lalura. She had not been trying to wind up knee-deep in fluffy, white snow on a vast, seemingly endless plain of white.

The fear that had already been riding low through her body ratcheted up several notches, and her heart began pounding. She was lost. In the snow. And she had no idea at all how she’d gotten here.

Orange-pink rays of newborn sunlight shimmered on the snow top, forming rainbows of crystallized water that bedazzled blindingly. Despite her sudden confusing situation, Poppy found herself transfixed by them. But something about the reflected sunlight struck her as odd. When she realized what it was, her eyes widened again.

The sun was just barely coming up over the horizon, and that shouldn’t have been the case. When she’d left her apartment, it was barely into night, no later than eight or nine. How long had she spent in the portals? Had she somehow skipped time? Or – her fear thrummed hard and spiky at the thought – could she have slipped into another dimension altogether?

She swallowed hard and turned a slow circle, leaving an impression beneath her boots as she did. She looked down, thinking about her feet suddenly, and it occurred to her that they weren’t cold. She was two feet in snow on a plane of ice and her feet, in their lace-up combat boots, weren’t even slightly uncomfortable.

There was a slight wind; it moved her hair around her face. It wasn’t wild, but it was definitely there, caressing her cheek and sliding some of the snow dust across the top of the field of ice. Yet, she wasn’t cold. Not at all. No part of her felt uncomfortable.

“This isn’t possible.” Now she was really scared. Was she dead? Unconscious and dreaming? Had something happened just after she’d cast the transport spell and she’d never made it out of her apartment at all? Had that guy – Kristopher – actually caught up with her and done her in?

The edges of panic tickled at her, its greasy, prickly fingers scraping the tips of her nerve endings with foreboding malice. She began to feel queasy, and a little dizzy, and she realized that her chest was tight. Panic attacks were something she’d unfortunately experienced in the past. Sensitivity to the environment around her tended to bring more than empathy for her fellow man. It brought things like migraines and anxiety along with it too. Little extra surprises that were the “curse” of the “gift” of being a not-all-bad human being.

Poppy felt that rising inside her now, but she recognized it for what it was, and rather than stand there in the snow that wasn’t cold and allow it to consume her, she closed her eyes and turned her attention outward. Not to the snow – but to the multiverse. Slowly, she began to mouth the words to yet another transport spell. She could feel a drain on her already taxed magical resources, but this one was less complicated than the ones she’d cast before, and if it worked, it would simply take her back to her apartment. No one would expect her to go right back to the place she’d left.

Once there, she could call Lalura again, or try to get ahold of Pi by starting a fire in the hearth. She would figure it out. First things first. “Okay,” she said aloud, eyes shut tight, power thrumming through her. “Take me home.”

Chapter Eleven

793 AD, North Sea off the coast of northwest Norway

From the time they were babes, Erikk’s people learned to read the sea. The body of water was a story waiting to be told, and all it needed was to tell it to someone who understood its language. Erikk understood it all too well. Right now, the story was telling him that he shouldn’t be on the water. It was telling him that he was probably going to die on it. Or under it, rather.

The sky had turned wrong in the space of mere moments. It was a sky filled with impending fury. That was the only real way to describe a set of clouds and color that looked like this. It had grown dark, but not a warm dark like that before a peacefully flurry. It was not the dark of true night, as that was still a ways off, even here. And it was not the dark that brings with it the purple and green strings overhead that his people called the Northern Lights. This was a sky owned by Ullr. Winter was coming, and this time around, it was angry.

“I’m a dead man,” he muttered. He was ill. The draught that Jorunn had given him roiled in his belly. He knew it was keeping him alive, but medicine was always a bitter thing. He felt it bring warmth to his heart, and sickness to his gut.

Bjarke’s longboats were nowhere in sight. Their head start must have been substantial, and Erikk had been a proud fool to come after him believing there was anything he could to stop a man so murderously intent on success, he’d poisoned the chief’s entire family. All but Ylva. Whom he planned to marry.

“Over my dead body,” Erikk hissed as if he hadn’t just whined over that particular dilemma only moments earlier.

The boat lurched on a new wave, and Erikk turned to look out over the stretching sea. It was becoming choppy, disturbed. In the distance, the line of the horizon was broken into parallels. He squinted at it, hoping he was not actually seeing what he was seeing.

But he was. There were parallel lines because the horizon was split in two. One line for the bottom of a wave.

One for the top.

“Oh, Magni,” he whispered, as the reckoning came over him. “Give me strength.”

There was no way he would survive the wave. It would smash his small boat to splinters. If he remained within the boat, he would be taken out right along with it, probably speared through by one of the wooden shards, or crushed by the hull or the mere weight of the wave. His only hope of surviving… was to get into the water. Deep into the water.

He would need to dive down far enough that the wave would ride far overhead, sparing him its watery death. He would need to hold his breath for some time. The water was cold. The shock of it would increase his heartrate, which would cause him to go through his air faster. He knew this from experience. The pull of the tide would throw him about like one of Ylva’s seal skin dolls. He might have limbs torn from his body, and he might hit the bottom.

But it’s my only hope. He could merely pray – to Odin or Modi or Ullr, to whoever would listen – that whatever practice his father had forced him to endure in his younger years would now pay off.

Erikk hastily gathered the bottles and pouches Jorunn had tossed into the boat and shoved them into the sewn pockets of Ronald’s furs. Then he climbed out of the hull of the small boat and balanced himself on the carved wood bench that stretched across its girth. He tried not to think about Ylva, tried not to think about what he would do if he even survived out here in the middle of the ocean with no boat and no supplies and land miles away. He tried not to wonder whether his parents had come out of their poisonous sleep or how far Bjarke had gone, or how much the water was going to hurt as he shoved downward through it. He tried not to think of anything but slowing his heart, breathing deeply, and timing everything just right.

Beneath his boat, the water began to pull outward to sea. This is it, Erikk thought. The tidal wave was gathering momentum, sucking the ocean into itself like a hungry beast. He was out of time.

He took a very deep breath, filling his lungs to the point of pain. Then he let the same breath out as slowly as he could with his mind spinning, making sure to push out every last bit of old air from his lungs. When he was empty, he inhaled carefully and deeply, filling the shadowy corners of his insides with the air that was going to have to see him through this ordeal. It would either give him life, or it would be the last breath he ever took. He made it count.

Then, with one last glance at the approaching doom that had now grown like a storm cloud on the water, Erikk jumped off the boat. The water hit his face like a cold slap, and his reflex was to gasp, to intake breath. He squelched the instinct and shoved downward. The furs on his body caused drag, making his work harder, but if he survived this dive, he would need the furs later, so he kept them on.

The cold spread, seeping rapidly through his clothing and into his skin, then into his muscle, and finally into his very bones and the joints that held them together. An ache settled at every one of them, rebelling against the temperature in the water. Already, he yearned to release the air he held and draw more in. But he wasn’t deep enough, and the pain had only begun.

He knew the more he used his muscles, the faster his air would run out, so he allocated just what he needed, swimming downward and westward as quickly as he could without exhausting himself. Once his ears had popped several times and he felt he’d gone far enough, he paused, glanced up, and watched the very distant, very dim light far overhead. He began to count. At count twenty-seven, a darkness began to creep over the faint remaining light.

Impossibly, the water turned colder around him. His lungs pulsed, his heart quickening behind them, sped on by spiking fear. He strained to look up, but as the sea around him turned dark and the tide pulling on him grew stronger, he lost track of what was up and what was down. The cold water stung, rushed past, sucked out – and then hit him like a rock, pounding into his chest and face like a frost giant’s fist.

Erikk knew he couldn’t cry out. He knew if he did, it would be over. But the pain of the ocean’s first angry assault strengthened, becoming unbearable just as the sea drew back and came in for another attack. It punched him again, this time in the side, and the air he had struggled so hard to hold was brutally knocked from his lungs.

Rather than the wail of agony he longed to release, his voice was expelled in a gurgling gasp. Erikk’s eyes widened, terror gripping him. He felt the sea bed scrape along his knees and knuckles, and knew the weight of the sea had thrown him to the ground, as he’d feared. He needed to swim to the surface for more air – but it was now too far.

I won’t make it.

This really was it. He would never see Ylva again, and he wasn’t even going to join his grandfather in Valhalla, for he was not dying in battle. Did Valkyrie even come for a man at the bottom of the sea?

He was thinking odd thoughts, finding a comfortable delirium at the end of his pain. But he still hadn’t inhaled. He had yet to draw in that killing mouthful of water. The tempest roared in his skull, his heart pounded in his throat, and his eardrums were bleeding, he knew it. But he could not –would not – inhale.

There are all kinds of battle, Erikk.

He heard his grandfather’s voice in his head now, comforting him from beyond the boundaries of life and death. Fight until your final breath, and you die in battle.

He supposed that was one way of looking at it. Another was that he was already beginning to lose his mind. Because even as he was listening to Chief Ohthere in his mind, he’d apparently begun swimming. He came into this awareness with a terrible start that nearly broke his surface-bound stride. Not only had he continued to hold his breath, and not only had he made it through the ocean’s brutal attacks with life and limb intact, he’d actually begun swimming upward.

He overcame his initial shocking realization, understood that he’d been in his head because he’d simply been trying to escape the pain, and he kept moving up. His ears screamed. His heart pounded. He felt his chest would explode, for certain. Any moment now. He had to breathe. Any moment now….

Any… moment….

Oh gods!

Like a revelation, his head broke the surface. He inhaled sharply, and cold, clean air slammed into his lungs. It hurt like a knife, sharp and severe, and for just a moment, as he coughed and ached and thrashed in the water, he wondered if he might die after all. But then his lungs adjusted, and the air filled him, and his raw, aching chest settled into a rhythm it remembered and understood.

His eyes adjusted to the lack of salted wet and the new, dimmer light of early afternoon. As soon as he could see clearly, he spun in the water, looking for any sign of the wave or the damage it must have caused, fragments of his boat – anything.

But the day was peaceful. The sky was clear, not the angry and dim sky he had seen over Norway earlier, but blue. Blue. It had been so very long since he’d seen a blue day, a light pure blue that reminded him of the topaz his father had given to his mother for their wedding. And all around him, in the water, rather than a distant shore, splinters of wood, and the frothy aftermath of a rogue wave, Erikk saw more blue.

It was the blue of a calm, cold sea on a bright, sunny day. It was the blue of his eyes.

He had never seen the sea look like that.

When he could finally pull his gaze from the sea and sky, Erikk looked out over the ocean distance to find the shoreline.

However, this was not the shoreline he had left behind in TromsØ. This was not a rocky cliff side, sparse grass, and sturdy, lovely poppy. This was snow, pure and white and cleanly fallen. It came thick and undisturbed directly to the line of the sea.

Beyond the snow, standing like rows of sentries in the water, were two lines of icebergs, stretching out toward him as if someone had rolled out an icy, wet carpet, and they were the guards on either side.

That carpet led up onto the pure, white shore and up a set of equally icy steps, cut clean and straight out of what appeared to be an entire island made out of a single glacier. It wasn’t rare for the north, but it was not what he was accustomed to.

What the steps led to, he couldn’t see. They seemed to lead literally nowhere; they stopped at the top of the mountain and vanished altogether.

“Very well,” he muttered through chattering teeth. He supposed he hadn’t made it after all. He was dead. But if he was lucky, Valhalla was on the other side of that ice mountain.

Chapter Twelve

Present Day - The Winter Kingdom

Kristopher heard her words as if she’d whispered them in his ear. The sound of them, so close, so soft, froze him in place in the middle of the portal that swirled around him. Take me home.

It was almost a plea, a desperate whisper, beautiful. There was so much yearning encompassed within it that Kristopher’s chest literally ached. She was frightened. And instinctively, he wanted to protect her. The crazy thing was, he knew it was him she needed protecting from. The even crazier thing was, despite her obvious fear, the man in him seized the sound of her voice – and the exact words it had uttered – as the clue he needed to finish hunting her down. He knew where she was going. The smart girl was doubling back to her apartment. She was headed “home.”

And he could get there first.

Kristopher looked at the portal around him and considered his options. He could do this one of two ways. He could either transport back to her apartment and wait for her, or he could cut her progress off in the portals themselves by latching on to her by the sound of her voice. The very fact that he’d heard it meant she was close by. He was probably almost upon her.

Why wait? He was pressed for time anyway.

He switched his magic, locked on, and felt his body grow warm. It nearly stole his breath. Just the touch of his magic upon hers had an intense effect on him. Her magic felt like the brush of fur against bare flesh, comforting and warm, but also like the lick of a flame when you got too close to a fire, hot and dangerous.

If her magic feels like this… he couldn’t help but wonder what her body would feel like against his. His hands curled into fists at his sides, and he had to close his eyes. He lowered his head, waiting for the desire roll through him and away. But it didn’t leave. He wanted to jump right into that fire and feel it burn.

“Shit,” he muttered, raising his head and opening a second portal off the first one. He strode into it with purpose and prepared himself for his inevitable second meeting with his queen.

But something in the portal drew his attention, pulling his thoughts outward. The streaming lights around him should have been the colors of the place he was headed into – as multi-hued as the mortal world. However, they were not multi-colored. Instead, they were primarily white. Some of the white was touched with a turquoise blue, so similar to the color of icebergs, Kristopher knew it at once.

It was the color of his eyes. And, as fortune had it, it was the color of Poppy’s eyes.

It was the color of the Winter Kingdom.

Confusion stole over him. He was firmly locked on to Poppy’s trail, and she’d claimed she was headed home. From the feel of it, that was certainly what she was asking her transport magic to do for her. But Kristopher would have recognized the path to his realm even if he’d been stinking drunk on bjorr.

Which he had been. A few times. Well, more than a few. But that was a long time ago.

Okay, that was last week.

The Winter King’s eyes began to glow as he neared his home, and he felt the crisp fresh air of his world greet him as it blew into the portal.

*****

Poppy saw the exit of her final portal coming up and once more prepped for the landing. However, for the second time that night, her transport magic seemed to have betrayed her, because instead of the soft carpet of her apartment, it was the cold, hard, and smooth surface of ice that greeted her boot as she stepped quickly out of the spinning tunnel.

Those leather-soled boots slid for just a second before she willed them to stop, and miraculously, they did. She stood in place and stared at her surroundings as the portal sucked shut behind her.

Quiet surrounded her, long and hollow. Distantly, a cracking sound echoed, muffled and deep. Then it happened again, but smaller. And again. Little by little, she realized it was a background noise to this place she was in, wherever that was. She recognized the sound from winters on the lake with her grandfather. It was a sound you heard often during ice fishing, the noise the ice made as it settled beneath you.

She seemed to be standing in the middle of an enormous antechamber. It spanned out around her in a wide circle of thousands of square feet in every direction. She could have fit basketball courts on either side of her without any issues. The floor, walls, and ceiling were white-blue in color, a beautiful arctic hue. In each wall of the massive room were a set of closed double doors, four sets in all, that led to some unknown destinations.

The palatially high ceilings rose more than a hundred feet overhead, crowning in a huge dome made of an enormous, round pane of glass. This allowed a crystal clear view of the sky above. Through that glass, Poppy could see that the sun that had been merely peeking over the horizon moments earlier was now slightly higher, shedding more orange-pink light into the gigantic room, giving it an otherworldly and warm glow.

Which was an odd thing for this room to have – since it was a room of ice.

The walls and floor of the room were constructed of pure, hard, perfectly carved ice. At least, it was either ice or blue-white marble that looked remarkably like ice. But given the sounds it was making, she was betting on the former rather than the latter. Besides, it smelled like ice too, that clean, cold, and hollow scent that was impossible to describe other than to say it smelled like frozen water.

Carvings in the ice along the walls were deep enough and tall enough that she could make them out clearly even from where she stood at the room’s center. The images that graced the walls were those of majestically detailing dragons and giants, great Viking battle ships atop deadly waves on what was most likely the North Sea, and of lightning bolts on mountaintops and polar bears trekking across vast, flat landscapes of frozen water.

They seemed to tell a story, these pictures that blended perfectly, one into another, and the story was one that felt familiar somehow. She’d grown up in Canada, so the culture of the north and of the cold were not alien to her. But it was more than that. There was something here so recognizable, she could almost begin narrating, as if the words would simply pop into her head and flow from between her lips with flawless delivery.

She turned a full circle, then craned her neck and just looked up at the changing colors the sun made upon the crystal of the glass overhead. Now she knew she was either dreaming or dead. “I’m standing in a Viking castle,” she whispered to herself.

“You’re close,” came a familiar voice, deep and resonant. It filled the massive space of the antechamber and brushed along her skin like a caress. Yet, it also filled her with dread. It was sort of a… delicious kind of dread. Like death by chocolate.

She turned slowly, her mind spinning, her will reaching out for any and all magic she had left in case even in this dream world, she was going to have to throw down with a Norse god.

But he stood at ease, his hands at his sides, and though his exceedingly tall frame and broad shoulders were anything but benign, he made no moves to attack in any manner. Instead, he gestured to the antechamber around them. “This is the domicile of a sovereign,” he told her, his glacial blue eyes glinting, no, glowing, in the early morning light. “It lies in the Ice of Time just beyond the Frozen Sea in a realm reachable only by those with Winter in their blood.” He smiled, his flashing eyes catching hers and gripping tight. “It is the Castle of the Winter King. Welcome to my home.”

Chapter Thirteen

793 A.D. – The Winter Kingdom

Erikk pulled his soaking body out of the water and onto the fresh white snow of the iceberg mountain, and immediately got to his feet. For being a dead man, he was awfully cold. Weren’t you supposed to be comfortable once you were dead? His feet were like ice cubes of their own in his boots, icicles were forming on the ends of his eyelashes and braids, and his skin was thrush with tiny bumps that were chafing irritably against his wet leathers. He needed to get moving, find peat moss for a fire, and light it.

His people always carried flint and iron on their belts for fires. All he needed was something to light. But his expression grew dour as his gaze scoured the landscape to find only thick, bright white. If he wasn’t careful, not only would he not find fuel for a fire – he would go snow blind.

He gritted his chattering teeth to keep them from breaking and placed his hand under his eyes to block the glare of the snow as he trudged through the white and began climbing the smooth ice steps that led nowhere. He’d expected to slide on them, or at least stick to them, given he was completely soaked, but they actually gripped well, and his passage upward was easy. Why he was climbing, he had no clue. Curiosity, he supposed. Plus, the stairs had to have been built by someone. Maybe that someone would have a fire.

At least from up high, he would be able to see further.

He climbed and climbed, and as he reached the top, he slowed before the last two steps. The view from where he stood was vast. The stairs really did seem to lead nowhere, for beyond the final step up ahead, a yawning chasm waited. Erikk could not even see the bottom of it. It was a mighty canyon in the center of an island of ice, and at the other side, far, far way, more white stretched until it once again hit the ocean.

“What in the name of Ullr….” By gazing down into the chasm, Erikk could see that there would be no peat to burn. There was no earth at all. The island was well and truly one giant iceberg. Beyond the iceberg island stretched nothing but sea, a beautiful clear blue the likes of which he’d never before witnessed.

It was possible he had gone mad. Perhaps Jorunn’s medicine had saved his life but sacrificed his mind, and he was standing on the prow of his little boat, looking down into the water, but mistaking it for an ice canyon. Or maybe he’d survived the wave, but had hit his head. The ocean had been brutal, so it was possible.

As he thought these things out, he took the final two steps to the top of the stairwell, if for no other reason than to simply finish the climb.

The moment he reached the very top, however, the view changed. The air before him shimmered. He thought he heard something like chimes, the way ice crystals sounded when the wind blew them where they dangled from tree branches. An odd warmth brushed past him, unfathomably welcome in the terrible cold, and the chasm of ice that was in front of him was replaced by something else.

At first, he thought it was the Northern Lights somehow recessed into the crater at the center of the island. Shimmering colors pulsed and grew stronger, swirled and moved through the giant hole, filling it up. As they deepened in color, they coalesced, drawing together in lines of solidness. The solidness then took on form and shape, and Erikk found himself wanting to take a shocked step back, one stair down to safety. But Erikk Rangvaldson had never been a man to back down, and he didn’t do so now.

Instead, he stood his ground and continued to stare in wide-eyed wonder as the shimmering eruption finally settled into the starkly beautiful, starkly clear lines of a massive, larger-than-life castle.

An ice castle. More beautiful than anything any of the storytellers in his clan could have imagined. More beautiful than a dream. Even more beautiful than Valhalla was said to be.

“Seidhr…” Erikk whispered shakily. He could feel his eyes in his face, wide as the night was long. Seidhr was the Norse word for magic, it was a kind of sorcery that was all that remained when logic and sense fled. It was the work of the gods, perhaps, or of a force the Norsemen had as of yet to discover or understand. It was beyond him.

He continued to stare as the castle formed one last set of stairs that led directly from the spot on which he stood to the palace’s front doors. A moment later, those same enormous double doors of the gigantic ice castle started swinging slowly outward.

All sense of cold was momentarily forgotten in the wake of such a vision. Small bits of ice and snow sloughed off the perfectly carved doors as they lay open, waiting. Waiting?

Waiting for you.

A voice whispered, sounding like a winter breeze through tree tops. He turned on the step, but there was no one behind him. He looked back at the castle and its open doors. Little by little, the cold of his environment made itself known to him again, cutting through his astonishment to burn through his skin, muscles, and joints. He could no longer feel most of his feet at all, and his hands ached steadily.

I must get inside.

Whatever happened now, whether he was insane or not, imagining this or not, standing there in one place would only hurt worse and worse, until he stopped feeling everything for good either way.

Yes, come inside.

The voice again, a gentle hiss that felt oddly warm beside his ear, just as the air around the forming castle had felt.

Erikk hesitated no longer. He moved off the top step and strode forward on his numb legs and nonexistent feet, traipsing like a frozen fur ball up the walk that led to the front doors – and then striding right on through them.

The castle seemed to sigh around him. It settled, the sound of ice cracking deep and low and familiar. As he walked, the smooth, crystalline planes of ice reflected his figure back at him. He was in a sorry state, so he steadfastly ignored that reflection and continued through the massive structure.

“Hello!” he called out. “Who’s there!” His voice boomed through the palatial space, echoing as it then tributaried down various hallways and no doubt through even more various doors. But there was no response. So he kept going, moving further into the castle until he found himself in a massive antechamber. There was no one here, and there were no fires.

He didn’t even pause, therefore, knowing that if he stopped to admire the diamond-like magnificence all around him, he would surely die. It would not be long now before he would freeze to death. Already, he was certain that his toes were unsalvageable. Maybe his fingers as well. Would he ever hold a sword again?

Think not on that, he told himself. Keep moving. No one could live in a place like this without a source of warmth. There had to be something. There had to be someone.

There were four sets of doors that led off the antechamber, but one set was distinctly larger and more ornately carved than the other three. He chose those, hoping his instincts would serve him right.

His steps were long and purposeful as he made his way across the humongous space, but as he approached the double doors, they cracked open. He stopped in his tracks and watched as, once more, a huge set of doors opened for him, swinging slowly outward to invite his entrance. His gaze narrowed suspiciously at the doors as they passed the half-way mark, but then his eyes slid to the view beyond.

It was a room approximately two-thirds the size of the antechamber. However, even the floor here was carved intricately, and at the opposite end of the room stood two massive thrones. One was carved in swirling, flowering vines and blooms, which he recognized as poppies – nearly the only flower that bloomed this far north. The other was carved in more direct lines, spikes and hard angles that reminded him of thorns. It rose very slightly higher than the throne beside it, as if the person who sat upon it was taller than the other.

It was a throne room. The throne room of the ice castle.

“Where the fuck am I?” he muttered now, speaking in the Anglo-Saxon language his people had always used and that the Romans and other conquering nations would hastily do away with as the language of the “conquered people.” It wouldn’t be long before “fuck” was replaced with “copulate,” and “piss” with “urinate” and “shit” with “defecate.” But he had a feeling that his language would endure… somehow. In some way.

Not that it mattered just then at that very moment. His mind was babbling. Because he simply could not wrap it around what his eyes were seeing.

Take a seat.

Erikk jumped and spun. There had been that voice again, that cold sounding whisper that was warmer than it should have been and that moved through his head and by his ear and seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. Once more, there was no one behind him. He was alone.

You are not alone. I am with you.

“Who are you?” he asked aloud, perhaps a bit too boldly.

You will see. As soon as you sit down.

Erikk looked at the thrones, his eyes skirting from one to the other. Then he moved toward the larger of the ice-carved chairs. There was no way in Hel’s Niffleheim he would sit in the flowery one, after all. He approached it, realized with some odd sense of ambivalence that it was the perfect size for him, and then turned around to face the throne room.

He was freezing on the inside now. He could feel the cold reaching his heart at last. He knew it was happening because his fingers and toes were starting to feel warm. It was the last thing that happened to a man before he froze to death.

You’d best hurry, said the wintery voice.

With an exhale of final surrender, he sat down.

Chapter Fourteen

Present day, the Winter Kingdom

“Your home?” Her expression was a befuddled mixture of anger and confusion.

He could tell she was trying to process things. He could tell she was wondering whether she was dreaming or even dead. She was wondering why her magic had brought her here, of all places, rather than her apartment. She was wondering why she was having such a ridiculous day.

He knew. He knew why her coffee had been cold and why when she’d told her magic to take her “home,” it had directed her to the castle. The castle was hers. It knew she was the queen long before she would most likely accept it herself.

He could see every single one of her emotions spelled out across her lovely face as she jumped from one to the other. Hell, he himself was trying to process things. This was happening fast. Very, very fast.

And at the back of his mind, he had a growing uneasy feeling that something was wrong, something he needed to tend to and take care of.

Poppy shifted in place, her weight moving from one leg to the other as she looked from him to the icy walls around them, and finally to the glass-like ceiling up above. It was ice, too, actually. Crystal clear ice.

“As in, you’re the Winter King?” She touched her head as if it hurt and she were dizzy. “Of the Thirteen Kings?”

He was betting she hadn’t even noticed that she wasn’t cold. He could tell she wasn’t, because any other human sucked into the Winter Kingdom and deposited right smack dab in the middle of the Winter Castle would have had frostbite by now. She seemed completely unbothered by the temperature. It was yet another sure sign, if ever there was one.

Not that he needed anymore proof. He’d known the moment he’d locked eyes on her in that coffee shop.

He nodded a confirmation, and her eyes grew wide.

She licked her lips, then touched her forehead again. He wondered if, rather than feeling cold, in fact, she was beginning to feel uncomfortably hot. Feverish with confusion. She was a hard mortal to read, much more difficult than any he’d encountered so far, which he would attribute that to her being a queen, strong and shielded. But if he was reading her right at all, she was a sensitive soul. All of the queens seemed to be. Which would mean she was feeling very anxious right about now, and that had a very physiological effect on the body.

He reached out with his magic, letting it touch ever so slightly up against her face, kissing it with the most tender brush of cold he could manage. A moment later, she blinked a few times, placed her fingers to her head again, and straightened a little.

“I’m… How did you get me here? How did you….” She shook her head and closed her eyes, holding up her hands. “No. Wait.” She opened her eyes and centered them on him. “What do you want with me?”

Kris sort of froze. It was a fair enough question. He’d unconsciously assumed she would ask it eventually. But when it came down to it, any answer he could give her that would be even partly true would sound creepy beyond belief. He’d only met her minutes ago. He knew so little about her, and vice versa. And he was supposed to tell her she was his queen? How exactly did that go?

Um, well, you see, all of the kings are just sort of finding their queens these days, and I just took one look at you and knew that you were destined to be mine, so here we are! Now, let’s go have sex!

Kris almost laughed. But if he’d laughed out loud just then, it would have made him appear even more insane than he knew he already looked, so he kept it inside and squared his shoulders. “Okay. The truth is, I want only one thing from you, and I swear I mean you no harm. And I also swear I didn’t bring you here. Your magic did that.”

She stared at him for a moment, and it was hard to tell whether she was believing him or not. But then she straightened a little and blinked. “My magic?”

He wanted to crow. She was listening to him, and that meant she could be reasoned with. “Yes, your magic. I’m guessing you’ve been experiencing strange phenomena during your casting lately. Tell me,” he posited, shifting the attention to her so expertly, he could almost feel her defenses falter, “have any of your spells gone inexplicably awry? Frozen over? Gone cold, so to speak?”

Now those aquamarine eyes of hers widened nearly imperceptibly and she took a step back. “How did you know that?”

“I’ll take that as a ‘yes.’”

Poppy ran a hand through her thick, luxurious multi-hued light brown hair and glanced around herself at the massive antechamber Kris almost never spent any time in. It was strange that it was the center of his home, the “heart,” so to speak, and yet it was so large, he normally left it vacant. The only time he really came here was when the bears were here and wanted to play, or when Neve felt like kicking his ass at a game of one-on-one hockey. Otherwise, he remained in the cozier wings of the palace.

Perhaps because it felt less lonely there.

“The issue you were having with your coffee today was not the problem, Poppy. It was a symptom. Your magic, for lack of a better explanation… is turning cold.”

Several moments went by while she digested this. Fortunately, he didn’t need Roman’s ability to read minds just then to know what was going through hers. Her thoughts were written across her beautiful face and reflected in the glaciers of her eyes. She knew he was telling the truth, but she’d be damned if she knew what it meant.

“Okay,” she said slowly, running her palms along the sides of her jeans. They must have been sweating. She was nervous.

And she definitely wasn’t cold.

Oh, she’s the one, he thought with wonder. She’s practically on fire.

“I admit, things have been a little wonky. And yes… they’ve been a little cold.” She touched her forehead again, closing her eyes and turning away from him to take several steps in a kind of nervous pace. “I froze and shattered the confinement spell my best friend cast on me a few weeks ago, and then I accidentally froze the water in the scrying pool in Lalura’s training room, and – and – gods, loads of spells have gone wrong like that since then. Even my shower was cold this morning!” She shook her head and turned back to him. “But why?” she demanded. “What does this mean? Why is this happening?” She threw up her hands and gestured to the magnificent space around them. “Why the hell did my magic bring me here?”

He knew her unspoken questions were, “How are you involved? Are you dangerous? Do I need to fight you? Freeze you? Where do you fit into all of this?” And deeper down, he knew that her unconscious questions ran more along the lines of, “Is any of this really happening? Am I dreaming? Am I dead? And why the fuck am I not freezing?”

So it was with some difficulty that he decided which of her questions, spoken or unspoken, to answer first. “This is happening to you because your magic and your body are accepting the path that is your destiny.”

“Which is?” she demanded tightly.

He knew that even as he said it, her soul was already aware of what the answer would be. “This is your destiny, Poppy.” He gestured to the antechamber as well. Then he squared her with a look that said it all. “You are the Winter Queen.”

Chapter Fifteen

He really is insane.

Of course, she knew that already. He was some sort of supernatural stalker, remember? Her magic was going haywire, but it wasn’t for the reasons he’d suggested. Maybe she was under a lot of stress or maybe she was going through some sort of magical puberty or – something. He, on the other hand, was claiming to be one of the Thirteen Kings and telling her she was his queen. Classic psychopathic behavior if she’d ever seen it.

“Riiiight,” she said slowly. “Got it.”

Kristopher laughed. It wasn’t a chuckle, but a deep-throated, very real and deep kind of laugh that had him throwing back his gorgeous head as his massive chest heaved with every expelled breath. If he’d been a foot shorter, eighty pounds heavier with fat, and had a big, white fluffy beard, he would have reminded her of Santa Claus.

“Hey,” he said, shaking his head as he grinned ear to ear. “I totally get it. This is all nuts, and I’m with you on that. After all, I was once standing in the very spot you now stand, and I was thinking pretty much the same thing.”

She eyed him warily. He was so goddamn gorgeous, and so convincing. Was she on the verge of believing him? “Oh?” she asked. “When was that?”

“Approximately a thousand years ago. Give or take a few centuries.”

A thousand years. In her circle of friends and acquaintances, that meant almost nothing. She needed more.

“Tell me about it,” she said then.

He studied her for a moment before saying, “How about I show you instead?” He walked through the room, making a wide birth around her as if she were a skittish animal that might jump and run. Which she sort of was.

She turned with him as he moved and saw that he was headed toward one of four sets of doors, this pair the largest and intricately carved with designs that reminded her of Viking ships. As he approached the doors, they opened for him, slowly swinging outward as if on command.

He stopped in the doorway, and she could see another room beyond him, also the bright white and blue of ice. “If you’d care to come with me?” he said, gesturing for her to join him.

She hesitated. But then she realized that hesitating was pointless. She was in some bizarre, unknown locale, her magic – or his – had brought her here, and if she wanted out of this locale, doing so from one room would most likely be no different than doing so from another. Transport magic was transport magic, after all.

She took a deep breath, shrugged, and walked across the room to join him.

“Cold?” he asked as she approached.

She frowned and looked down at her Seattle city clothing, definitely not the parka and snow boots one would expect to be donning in a palace of ice. “No, actually,” she replied. That was odd. She should be freezing. Her magic couldn’t possibly be protecting her this time; it had been on the cold side for weeks.

“Good,” Kristopher said, nodding to himself. “This way.” He moved through the doors into another large room, and she saw that she’d been right. It too was carved entirely of ice. But this one was more ornately decorated than the antechamber.

And it was a throne room.

“Whoa…” she whispered, unaware that she’d made the exclamation aloud.

“I’m glad you approve.” He walked right up to the dais upon which two thrones sat, one slightly larger than the other, both gorgeously carved of the same ice. “Now I know why this one was carved like it was,” he said, climbing the stairs to look down at the throne that had been carved into flowers.

Poppy slowly climbed the stairs as well, her gaze fixed on the ice-carved blooms. Once she was close enough to tell what they were, she asked, “Are those… poppies?”

“They are,” he said softly. “Poppies are the only flower that will flourish beyond a certain northern point. All this time, I’d thought that was the only reason they’d been added to the throne.”

She met his gaze, and there was no mistaking what he’d left unsaid. She, herself, was trying to register the un-ignorable coincidence the throne’s decorations implied, when something large moved away from the wall behind Kristopher.

Her vision shifted. The object was large and rounded. It rose slowly into view, snow colored and massive, and Poppy felt her heart drop into her stomach. Her throat tightened, her eyes widened, and she tried to speak, tried to warn her companion, but the first sounds out of her mouth were babbling.

Kristopher must have not only noticed the expression on her face, but understood its significance, because he instantly turned and back-stepped, ducking simultaneously as if to dodge a sword or axe swing. In fact, it was an impressively agile move suggesting years of fighting experience. But when he spun to face what his instincts told him was an attacker, he stopped and straightened. And a smile stole his features.

“Ah. Now I see why your coloring was suddenly the same as my sister’s.” He chuckled softly. “Don’t worry, you’re safe. This is Meridian.”

The polar bear rose on its back legs to a height that made her feel dizzy, more than doubling Kristopher’s stature by a long shot, then dropped easily back down onto all fours. He made a low growling-moaning sound that ironically seemed anything but threatening. Kristopher strode over to the giant beast and lovingly tousled his thick white fur. The bear nudged his chest with his black nose, then turned that nose back toward Poppy and sniffed the air between them.

“Meridian, this is Poppy. Poppy, this is Meridian.”

Poppy felt her heart leave her stomach and go back to residing in her chest, though she still took another step back. It was a bear, after all. She cleared her throat and found her voice. “He’s… he’s a polar bear,” she said softly.

“More or less. He once was. Now he’s a Dire Bear. Once they’ve lived in the Winter Kingdom long enough, polar bears grow a few sizes. Then their fur truly loses all of its coloring.”

The bear was certainly larger than Poppy thought Polar Bears were. When it had risen up on its hind legs, it had been more than twice Kristopher’s height. She would imagine that to be around twelve or thirteen feet tall. At the shoulder now, the bear was taller than she was. That was big.

But then again, she had no idea how big polar bears were. She’d never met a polar bear in person, despite her years in Canada. It had just been the way luck played out, she guessed. She’d also never seen the Northern Lights. That one kind of pissed her off.

Poppy looked carefully at the bear’s fur and did notice that there was no difference at all between it and the white of the ice around them. There was no yellow in the fur, as there tended to be in polar bears. The fact that it was so very white was why she hadn’t noticed the bear to begin with. He’d literally blended in with the castle.

“And… he’s yours?” she queried next, just as softly.

“If you mean, is he my pet, no. He belongs to William, if he belongs to anyone. But Meridian is his own bear, aren’t you Mer?”

The bear nodded. Actually nodded.

“Um….”

Kristopher looked up at her as he continued to give the bear’s fur deep strokes. His gorgeous blue eyes were shining. “William Balthazar Solan is the Time King. He frequently visits my kingdom.” He smiled, stepping away from the bear to stuff his hands casually into the front pockets of his jeans. “He says it suits him. I think he likes the solitude, and I know it makes him feel more comfortable to be surrounded with something a little older than the mortal realm. Plus, as I said, the castle is located in the Ice of Time, so it shares a fundamental characteristic William can relate to.”

This was too much for Poppy to mentally digest. It was just too much. “I think I need to sit down.”

Kristopher stepped away from the bear. “Well, it just so happens you have a seat right here,” he replied, moving back up the dais to the smaller throne. “As I’m sure you’ve figured out by now, Poppy,” he continued, pinning her with those crystal blue eyes. “This throne is yours.”

Chapter Sixteen

793 A.D. – The Winter Kingdom

It was a good thing he’d taken the seat when he had, because his legs gave out altogether at that point, plunking him down upon the ice throne none-too-gently. He expected to rapidly decline into oblivion after that, since he’d already been warming up with the final stages of freezing to death. However, the moment his rump hit the chair, things began to change.

He hadn’t realized it until it happened, but his vision had been going in the moments before he sat down. It had obviously been blurred, because now it cleared up, revealing the throne room around him like a diamond someone had finally polished. His joints and muscles loosened up, infused with blood that had previously fled everything but his heart in that desperate attempt to keep him alive. The pain in his fingers and face instantly receded, and he could bend his knuckles once more. He curled his hands over the ends of the throne’s arm rests as even the feeling came back to his feet.

At first, it hurt, but not nearly as much as it should have. Erikk had gone from nearly frozen before to warm as human flesh was supposed to be, and normally, it hurt like hell. First, you’d feel warmth, then heat, then electric zapping, and all three would intensify until you were nearly in tears, and whatever part of your body it was that was warming up turned the color of rubies.

But this time, there was a mere flush of heat, a few short crackles, and within moments, his entire body felt back to normal. He had no time to ponder the transformation however, because when he closed his eyes to enjoy the wave of contentment that stole over him, visions began to flash before his closed lids.

He saw ten thousand things, in ten thousand times. With the visions came the knowledge of what they were and when they were, and why. He watched and he learned and he understood.

It happened in the space of heartbeats, fractions of time. Yet it encompassed generations. Countless memories flashed and moved, countless stories – beginning, middle, and end – were told in the span of a single grain of sand through the hourglass. They moved him, touched him, taught him.

And when Erikk opened his eyes, he was a different man.

Welcome to your kingdom, your majesty.

The voice again. But now he knew what it was. It was the voice of Winter. His whole life, he’d associated winter with a god, perhaps Ullr or Skaoi. No one ever really knew for sure, because gods never conveniently appeared before mortals to clear things up: “Hi there. I’m Ullr, the one you’ve been worshipping your whole life with blind faith. Yep. It’s really me. Guess what? You were right! Everyone else was wrong! I’m real! Congratulations and nice job.” No, it was sort of up to a toss of the dime or a person’s mood or circumstance, so Erikk had never been certain who to associate winter with, if anyone at all.

Well, now he knew. Winter was not associated with anything. Winter belonged to itself – and with good reason.

Why me? he asked it quietly.

There was a period of silence before the voice answered. When it finally did, it was with a tone that hinted at secrets. Not only you, it answered like a cold wisp of wind. Then there was a much longer pause, as if a deep meaning were hidden within the words, and it was Erikk’s job to discover it. But he’d already learned so much that day, and there was nothing Winter could do or say now that would surprise him. So, Erikk waited with a new patience, one he had not had in the youth of his mortality.

But one he had now.

I am lonely, the voice told him. In Erikk’s head, the images, the stories, and the memories Winter had given him flashed again, a loop of remembrance, and he understood. If he’d been Winter, he would have been lonely too. It wasn’t exactly the reason that he himself had been chosen as sovereign of the realm, but it was a reason Winter had chosen anyone at all. For now, it would do.

Erikk was about to ask, “What now?” when the voice spoke again, this time with urgency. Your sister. Erikk blinked. “What?” he said aloud, breaking the silence.

You must go to your sister. She is dying.

Erikk leapt out of the throne, moving with a strength and speed he hadn’t had before he’d walked into the ice castle. At once, he saw an image of his little sister in his head. He saw her face clearly, but everything around her was blurred. He focused on her. Show me, he commanded, not even knowing what it was he was commanding.

In the image, the environment around Ylva cleared up, going from a blurred landscape to a crisp scene of shrubbery and rock, grass and sea. She was at the shoreline, her hair filthy, her teeth clenched, her skin pale and drawn. Her legs were barely moving, her back was bent, and her entire form was hunched in near death.

At once, Erikk wanted to be with her.

And at once – he was.

One moment, he was standing in front of his throne, drawing an image of her whereabouts in his mind, and the next, the ice castle was gone, the Winter Kingdom was nowhere to be seen, and he was standing beside his sister.

He heard her before he saw her. It was a shakily drawn breath, nearly completely disguised by the howl of a wind coming off the water. There was ice coating the rocks along the coastline, and this struck Erikk as odd, but only subconsciously. His entire consciousness was focused on Ylva as she stumbled a final time and fell to her knees in the frozen sand.

“Ylva!”

The young girl whom Erikk barely recognized as his sibling froze in place, her gaze locked on the ground. Erikk knelt beside her, his hands taking her shoulders, his eyes searching her face. But she so slowly swung her eyes up toward his, he could tell she did not believe what she was seeing. She had the look of sickness about her, both mental and physical.

She mouthed his name, just the shape of her pale, cracked lips and no sound.

“Ylva, what has happened?”

He’d been gone only a few hours. A day, at most. How could this wretched creature before him be the same beautiful young girl he’d left in his village at morning’s light? “My god, what happened, Ylva? Speak to me!”

This time, when she mouthed his name, a whisper came out, weak but precious. “Erikk?”

“Yes, Ylva, it’s me! It’s me, sweet girl.” He gave up then, and simply drew her trembling, dying form into his arms. When he did, he felt her bones through her furs. The furs themselves were filthy and covered in muck, worn thin by weather or wear. This was not the sister he’d left behind.

No, it is not, said Winter. She is older now.

Time had passed. He knew this now. The memories, visions, images and knowledge he had acquired had not in fact been given to him in the space of mere moments. The girl before him was years older than she’d been when he’d gone after Bjarke.

Save her, he told Winter. Save her now as you did me or I will leave the kingdom, and you will be alone.

There was only a brief pause this time before Winter replied. Bring her here.

You bring her there! Bring us both right now.

Winter obeyed. Erikk clasped his sister tightly in his arms and blinked. When he opened his eyes again, he was in the throne room of the castle. He knelt at its center with Ylva’s skinny, bedraggled form lying on the floor before him, her head in his lap.

Now save her.

She will become a part of this world, Winter warned.

I understand. He didn’t care. Having his sister be a part of some world was better than a part of none. Do it.

As you wish, your majesty.

Erikk gazed down at Ylva’s face, and it began to change. Little by little, the coloring of her skin morphed from the gray pallor of death to a soft, fair hue nearly as white as snow. Her cracked lips healed over and tinted a gentle pink. Her lashes, which had been barren and thinned with malnourishment began to fill out, lengthening and darkening until they were once more beautifully full.

Her hair was the most stunning transformation, shifting inch by inch from the dirty brown, lanky straggles they’d become – into a glorious crown of blond, wavy locks so very light, they blended with the ice beneath her as they grew and curled like a shimmering, frozen waterfall.

Beneath her furs, he felt her body fill out. The hard angle of her bones retreated, covered once more as they should be with layers of healthy muscle and flesh. He felt warmth radiating from her where there had only been the chill of impending death before.

It gave him hope. He waited.

When all had ceased changing, she lay still in his arms, eyes closed, breathing even. He waited. Then, “Ylva? Ylva, please – ”

He cut off mid-speech as her long, thick lashes fluttered, and she opened her eyes. The piercing blue they’d once been was lighter now. They were not quite like his, less water and more air. She was the snow in the sky, where he was the ice on the ground.

“Erikk,” she said softly.

His heart hammered with joy. “Ylva. What happened, lass?”

“Jorunn is dead. So is Ronald. I would not wed Bjarke, and I was banished.”

Erikk stared in silence, but his soul bellowed.

Like the king he now was, he said, “You’re safe now, Ylva. And I give you my word, Bjarke Stalson will never harm any living being ever again.”

Chapter Seventeen

Present day, the Winter Kingdom

It was a while before Poppy said anything. Kristopher had paused in his story, his last words echoing in the room as if they’d been a lingering curse. And perhaps they were. It wasn’t a fairytale, after all.

As strange as it was, she could honestly tell that he wasn’t lying to her. He wasn’t bending the truth about any of it. Whether someone was lying to her or not was normally something she could sort of decipher in a human. It didn’t matter if they were spinning a yarn for fun or being genuinely deceptive. It was like a sixth sense kind of thing, just part of that gift-and-curse empathetic sensitivity she possessed that gave her panic attacks and the frequent migraine but allowed her to write instructions in a way that ensured every single person on the planet could comprehend them and usually even laugh at them.

But with Kristopher, there was something else to it. Maybe it was the tone of his voice or the way he looked at her. Or maybe it was the way his words immersed her in the past as if she’d lived his story herself. Whatever it was, she knew he was sharing something with her that he hadn’t shared with many others. If any at all.

His past was filled with all the pain and loss so prevalent in history itself. He’d been through hell. It seemed to be the human way. And that pain required a moment of silence.

So it was a while before she spoke. When she finally did, she decided not to focus on what the villain, Bjarke had done to Kristopher and his family, and instead expertly turned her host’s attention to what he obviously liked a good deal more than Bjarke. “She’s the one at the coffee shop, isn’t she?” she asked softly. She was referring to his little sister, of course.

Kristopher turned away from the flames he’d been staring into and searched her face. When he did that, she felt so exposed. He had eyes like searchlights, blue as the frozen sea. Now that she’d looked into them more than a few times, she realized they were slightly darker than hers. Slightly harder. It was barely noticeable.

“Yes. How did you know?” he asked.

Poppy thought back to the young lady who’d been waitressing at the coffee shop where Kristopher had bought her coffee, that first hot, blessed coffee that she’d had all day. The waitress who’d tended them had sported white hair dyed black. That kind of dye job was just obvious. She’d been beautiful, and she’d worn too much eye makeup, as if she were attempting to hide from the world. There had also just been… something about her. Something difficult to put into words.

“I don’t know,” she said. “There were several things, I guess.”

He watched her a while longer, and she tried not to heat up under his gaze. Finally, he looked way, smiling. “I’m frankly impressed you remember a waitress that well,” he told her. “Most humans don’t.”

“I’ve watched a lot of episodes of Brain Games,” she said by way of explanation, and then laughed at herself. It eased her tension a bit to laugh at herself even though he, a king of an entire realm and one of the Thirteen, probably had no idea what the hell she was talking about.

“I love that show,” he said.

Her eyes widened. “You do?”

“I’ve seen every episode. It’s amazing what we take for granted and now much misplaced faith we have in everything we don’t take for granted.” He laughed.

“I… didn’t realize you got cable in the Winter Kingdom.”

“You know it’s not on cable. And I can go anywhere, remember?”

Poppy smiled at that. She and Kristopher were no longer in the castle’s throne room. Instead, they sat in a room carved of ice, as was every room in the ice castle, but on fur rugs that had been laid out in thick piles on the floor in front of a fire pit. The flames that crackled warmly in the pit were the same colors that Poppy had seen in magazines displaying photographs of the Aurora Borealis. They were green and purple and every tourmaline shade in-between. Definitely not your standard fire colors.

They’d been in the room for about an hour now, ever since she’d decided to not sit on the throne with the poppies all over it. She was barely processing the day she’d had, one that had gone from truly abysmal to truly amazing so fast, it left her breathless. And she just hadn’t wanted to do something that felt so very much like a portent or that felt so terribly symbolic.

She needed time. She needed information. She probably also needed sleep and to have her head examined. Just in case.

When she’d refused to sit down, Kristopher had nodded to himself and lead her into this room. The bear – the Dire Bear named Meridian – had remained in the throne room, deciding to lay out on the ice like a massive, breathing rug. Poppy was happy enough for the time being to leave the beast behind. Not that she had a problem with massive white bears, she just wasn’t ready to invite one to the crazy tea party table she was already hosting in her head at the moment.

This room was a much smaller room than the throne room, and its walls were lined with honest-to-goodness ice shelves filled with books of every kind. She loved a good study or library, and this appeared to be a cross between both. It was cozy. At once Poppy started to relax.

Kristopher had then summoned two piping hot, aromatically fresh cups of coffee out of thin air. They’d taken their coffees and seated themselves on the thick rugs around the fire pit. After a few minutes of mutual silence, Poppy set in to asking questions, and in the hour since, Kristopher had gallantly answered everything she’d thrown at him.

She was more than a little curious about what Kristopher had done to Bjarke, the man who had basically destroyed everyone he loved and then taken over the entire clan as chief. But she also sort of didn’t want to know. Because she knew instinctively that if he told her what he’d done, he would reveal to her the part of himself that scared her to begin with. That part of him that was dangerous.

That part of him that was deadly.

“You became the Winter King when you were sixteen,” she said instead. “If you don’t age, how did you get to look like you’re in your thirties?”

“It happened when I changed.” He laughed, shaking his head. “A good twenty years were stolen from me. And I was given an eternity in exchange.”

She mulled that over in silence. It sounded like a fair exchange, all in all. But it would suck if the change always added twenty years. If she became queen, for instance, that would mean she’d suddenly age to be fifty-six. “Okay,” she said, forcing herself to think of other things. “When did you change your names?”

He shrugged. It was a careless gesture that nevertheless managed to show off every toned muscle in his shoulders and arms. “Over the years, we felt less and less like Erikk and Ylva, and more and more like something else altogether. Then one day, Winter suggested two new names. By that time, we were ready for them. Our pasts had been erased as if they were a landscape covered in fresh fallen snow. They were unrecognizable. We were new people, and the names fit.”

Poppy chewed on her lip a second. “Wait. I thought Neve was stuck in the Winter Kingdom? I thought Winter told you she would become a part of it.”

“She did. And she is. That doesn’t mean she can’t travel into other realms. It simply means that wherever she does go, she will take Winter with her. Just as I do.”

Poppy thought of the waitress she’d briefly met and recalled how very pale her skin was. Like snow itself.

“What does that mean, exactly?”

Kristopher froze a little, his body going very still, his eyes locked on hers. Poppy realized he knew she wasn’t only asking because of Neve. Poppy was asking because she had a very good feeling that sitting on that flowery throne in the other room was going to make her a part of the Winter Kingdom as well. And she wanted to know what she was in for.

“Well…” he started carefully, “it means a few things. Her appearance changed, as I mentioned.” He paused after this so that Poppy could digest it. If Neve’s appearance changed, did that mean Poppy’s would too? “But that’s only because Winter infused her, filling her to her core with the properties that make it what it is. The color white. The cold. It had to possess her completely to save her life.”

Poppy nodded. Then she asked, “Did her coffee go cold every time she tried to drink it, too?”

Kristopher laughed, and he seemed relieved to be able to do so. It was such a warm sound when he laughed. She could really get used to it. “Not exactly. We didn’t drink coffee back then, and fortunately she’s learned to control the effect by this point, so the coffee she chooses to serve at her shop is never cold.” He shrugged. “On the upside, back then she never had warm ale.”

Now it was Poppy’s turn to laugh. Refrigerated ale a thousand years before refrigeration had been invented was definitely an upside.

Chapter Eighteen

They’d fallen into a companionable silence in which Poppy took every covert opportunity to study Kristopher’s profile. He sat with a straight back, his blond hair seeming to shift from light to dark depending upon the light cast by the fire. His chin was strong, his shoulders broad – he looked every ounce the king he’d become. She wondered whether it was due to the fact that he’d been born a chief’s son, or that he very much behaved like a king. It was in his blood, literally and figuratively.

She realized, as she sat there and digested all she’d been told and all she could take in, that she’d gotten past the point of non-believing. Sort of. She was past the slack-jawed, wide-eyed, frozen in place stage, anyway. But it would take a while for her to truly process what was happening.

The castle made a cracking sound around them. It was so deep in the ice of the construction, it was impossible to tell even which direction it was coming from. “Do you ever get used to that?” she asked.

“Yes. Eventually,” Kristopher responded. Then he twisted on the rug so he could face her. He crossed his legs and placed his elbows on his knees, folding his fingers beneath his chin. “Tell me about yourself.”

Poppy’s brows hit the ceiling. “What?”

He smiled. “I can read almost anyone in the world,” he said. “Their names, where they come from, their inner-most wishes. But with you, it’s blurred and buried in magic. You are my equal, if not better.” He shook his head, his smile both frustrated and oddly – proud. “I know nothing about you, Poppy. So, why don’t you fill me in?”

“Um….” She had no idea what to tell him. “I have no idea what to tell you.”

He chuckled as if he’d heard the echo of her thoughts himself. “Well, what brought you to Seattle? What do you do for a living? What… are your wishes?” His eyes glinted, making her feel strange.

“You do realize how bizarre this is, right? I mean, we obviously don’t even know each other and I’m supposed to live with you forever.” She swallowed hard right after saying the words, because she could feel his power coming off him, and he felt like a fire burning as hot as the actual fire in the room, and she could just imagine what it would be like to join him every single night, in his bed, in this cold realm.

Gods.

She would be so willing to live with him forever, she knew in her heart. He was everything she’d ever dreamed of in a man, from his height to his build to his intelligent mind to his inherent goodness to his voice to his amazing eyes. Not to mention the clothes and the bike and…. He would never grow old. Hell, if she stayed here, she wouldn’t either.

But, she was supposed to be a queen?

She was so not a queen. And she had a feeling that the only reason he still believed she was meant for the job was because he couldn’t read her, as he said. He didn’t know her and how plain she really was. She wasn’t elegant in any respect. She was messy. She was chaotic. She was all over the place.

She wore extra long scarves that were knitted from every color of the rainbow and looked like cutesy patchwork messes, she went stomping around in heeled lace-up combat boots, and she didn’t own a single pencil skirt. In fact, she didn’t have a skirt of any kind to her name. She was just not… girly.

All she could think about was that princess in England, Kate Middleton, with her perfect summer dresses and her perfect smile and her perfect babies and her perfect hair and all the love she garnered with all of that perfection, and how Poppy just didn’t add up. Not to that.

You are so much more.

Poppy blinked. She straightened, and turned where she sat on the fur rugs. The voice had come out of nowhere.

“What is it?” Kristopher asked, clearly having noted the sudden change in her.

“You didn’t hear that?”

He cocked his head a little, and his gaze narrowed questioningly. She noticed that the color of his eyes darkened. So they do change, she thought. “Hear what?” he asked softly.

He can only hear me when I wish him to.

Poppy jumped to her feet and spun in place. At once, Kristopher was beside her, having risen as well. She wanted to be impressed with his reflexes, but someone was talking to her, and only her, and she had no idea what to make of it.

Persephone Glacia Nix, be at peace, the voice said. It is only I – Winter.

“Winter?” she said out loud.

Kristopher seemed to relax beside her, but Poppy wasn’t anywhere close.

Yes. You can hear me because of who you are and have always been. That is worth more than perfection.

“It’s talking to me,” she said tightly.

“Yes, it does that.”

She looked up at Kristopher, craning her neck because he was so tall this close. “I can’t tell if it’s a girl or a boy!”

He laughed, and again that wonderful sound went through her like audible endorphins. At once, a little of her confusion and fear slipped away to be replaced by a sense of calm and ridiculousness. She sort of wanted to laugh too.

“That’s because it’s neither, Poppy. Winter simply is.”

Though if I had to choose, I think I’d go with a guy, said Winter.

Poppy could feel her eyes pushing out of her face. “What?” she said out loud. Why? she asked in her head, even though there had been several times in her life that she would have chosen to be a boy too, if she’d been given the option. Peeing standing up was only the start of it. There was the fact that they were stronger by nature, faster because of that strength, they could eat whatever the fuck they wanted and never gain weight, they didn’t have periods, they didn’t have to go through childbirth, they didn’t have to wax their bikini areas, they could be weak willed and everyone would automatically think they were stronger willed just because they were stronger physically, they got paid more than women, they could date younger girls no matter how ridiculously old they got, and gray hair and wrinkles made men “distinguished,” whereas they basically shelved the self-worth of a woman. Comparatively speaking, it was a goddamned cake walk to be a man.

Why, they’re taller of course, said Winter.

“Oh,” Poppy said. She looked up at Kris, where he stood at six and a half feet. “Yeah,” she admitted. “There’s that, too.”

Kristopher watched her in silence, his expression bemused. He could only hear half of the conversation, and it was a rather one-sided conversation to begin with.

The castle made a cracking sound again, and Poppy looked down, as if she would be able to see a crack actually form in one of the walls of the study. But of course, nothing formed. The settling of the castle was deeper down. “I don’t know if I could ever get used to the ice doing –”

Suddenly, the cracking she’d been hearing intermittently was a hell of a lot louder, starting off as that distant popping she remembered from days of ice fishing on the lake, but rising in volume until the castle literally rumbled around them. Chunks of ice broke off from the ceiling above and crumbled down upon them, and the floor beneath their feet shook enough for her to lose her balance.

Chapter Nineteen

Kristopher reached out to grasp her arms, steadying her.

“What the hell was that?” she cried.

But he couldn’t answer her, because he honestly didn’t know. All he knew was that he felt the sound down deep in his bones, and he’d never been filled with a stronger sense of foreboding. Not even when that wave had been barreling toward him. Not ever. It came sudden and hard, and dread seeped into every ounce of his body.

The sound came again, louder than before, and Poppy squealed in surprise as an actual crack birthed itself beneath their feet. She tried to backpedal, but Kristopher had a solid grip on her. He immediately lifted her instead, jumping her over the crack and onto his side as it widened rapid-fire, going from an inch to an entire foot in a heartbeat.

They both backpedaled now as the crack spread right into the fire pit in the center of the room. The fire crackled and spat when the logs beneath it were shaken loose and they tumbled deeper into the pit. It sputtered; some of the flames went out as sparks went soaring like mini fire-works. Several hit the furs, but sizzled out of life amidst the thick pile.

The crack continued unhindered, racing across the room on the other side to hit the wall with the ice-carved bookshelves. There, it moved up the bottom shelf, cracking it in half as it went, shook the books that were housed there, and continued up the second shelf. On and on it went, dislodging several volumes to send them tumbling to the floor before it struck the ceiling.

Foreboding washed over Kris. We have to get out of here. He knew, somehow just knew, that the entire room was going to come crashing down on them. “Come with me!” he commanded, grabbing Poppy by the wrist before he spun and sprinted out of the small room.

She didn’t fight him; she wasn’t stupid. No doubt, she had the same impression of what the crack’s damage would do. He could feel her move right up alongside him, running at the same agile pace, despite the inherent slickness that ice should have posed to a mortal. She had a firm grip. She was already so much a part of this kingdom, despite not having taken a seat on her throne.

Behind them, in the room they’d hastily evacuated, something crashed noisily to the ground, and Kris felt the impact in his heart. He gasped as pain throbbed through his chest, arresting his breath. He stumbled, releasing Poppy’s wrist so he wouldn’t take her down with him.

Much to his horror, his fated queen stopped with him and knelt beside him as he fell. He wanted her to leave the castle, to get out to safety!

Now he knew what was happening. At first, he’d been confused, but now he was certain. It was a terrible kind of certainty. Poppy had to get out of the castle; her safety was paramount above all else. But he could barely breathe, much less command her to leave him. And the fact that she instinctively wanted to help him was both a promise and a poison to his soul.

“I – can’t – transport,” he gritted through his teeth. It was so hard to talk.

The “cracking” noises in the ice castle were normally the sounds of the ice settling as it melted and re-froze over the course of time. However, this last crack had been much louder and much deeper because it hadn’t been just the castle.

It was the crack in Yggdrasil. And Yggdrasil was the foundation of Winter.

The men he employed to watch over the Great Tree had warned him that there was a hairline fracture in the trunk of the massive plant. However, hairline fractures were not an uncommon thing, merely a nuisance. They appeared every now and then, and were followed by weather anomalies. Winters that barely happened. Or winters that killed hundreds, if not thousands.

The fruit of the Great Tree was unlike any other in the multiverse. Each one was unique, and that was the truth of it. For each fruit was a snowflake; it was where they were born.

Without Yggdrasil, the Guardian Tree of the North, the Bringer of White, the Root of Winter, there would be no winter at all. The Winter Kingdom and Yggdrasil were linked at their core. The very foundation of everything Kristopher had become was tied to the roots of that Great Tree.

And now those roots were coming undone. The crack that had reverberated through the castle was not a hairline fracture. It was a severance.

One of the roots had been cut off.

How has this happened?

“I can transport,” said Poppy. “Stay close.”

Kristopher said nothing, nodding instead. A moment later, a portal swirled around them and they were moving through space and time – but he could still feel the destruction taking place in the palace behind them.

“What will happen to Meridian?!” Poppy half asked and half squealed as the portal opened, and they went shooting out into the room beyond. They landed hard, losing their grips on each other to roll to a stop on a rug not unlike the one they’d been sitting on moments earlier.

Kristopher had just been thinking about the fate of the large bear when she’d asked the question, but now that they had arrived in their new destination, he was temporarily distracted.

“What the…”

“Did we not leave the castle?” Poppy asked, voicing his own thoughts.

The room they were in looked remarkably like the rooms of the Ice Castle, but he had to admit it was just different enough. He didn’t recognize these carvings. And there was no magic emanating from the walls. No, this room was in a mortal dwelling.

“We did. This is something else,” he replied, getting to his feet despite the terrible sensations moving through his body. He was anxious; the feeling inside him was not a pleasant one. It was as if he were coming unraveled or had lost a piece of himself. He knew the castle was a reflection of that, as well as a representation of what was happening with Yggdrasil.

Yggdrasil… How the hell did it manage to lose an entire root? He had men protecting it! Giants! Dragons! Nothing could get past the guardians he’d laid in place a thousand years ago! Cracks came and went, but this? This would have taken an all-out attack.

“Wait,” Poppy said where she stood and turned a slow circle. “I recognize this! This is that hotel in Iceland! That one made of ice!” Her smile of recognition faded into a frown. “But this isn’t where I meant to bring us. I meant to take us to the cabin where Lalura trains us. My transport spell messed up again!”

“It’s the Winter in you,” Kristopher told her. “It will remain in control of all you try to do… until you decide to take control of it.”

She stopped and met his gaze. Her frown became an expression of stark concern. “You don’t look so good.” She moved toward him, just close enough to touch him if she’d wanted to, but stopped short of doing so. She didn’t seem to know what to do, in fact. He couldn’t blame her behavior. “What happened back there?” she asked. “What happened to you?”

“We’re under attack,” he told her frankly. “But Meridian will be fine. Dire Bears can transport within the Winter Realm.”

“Excuse me,” came a new voice.

They both turned to face the door of the room, which was carved of ice just like the rooms in the Winter Castle. A young man stood in the doorway, dressed in ski pants and a parka, the majority of his face concealed by the faux fur around the parka’s hood.

“I didn’t know someone was staying in this room tonight,” he said, his tone confused but also accusatory. He wasn’t just telling them that he wasn’t aware they were there – he was telling them that they weren’t supposed to be there.

Poppy pushed around Kristopher, who had unknowingly stepped in front of her in a protective gesture, despite how completely messed up he felt. He let her by, and she proceeded to work a different kind of magic.

“I’m so sorry,” she said with the most beautiful smile he’d ever seen. “We’re late arrivals and we just couldn’t help ourselves; we had to check out the room right away. We’ve heard so much about this place! Pictures of your hotel have been plastered all over my Facebook page for weeks now! You’re famous amongst my friends,” she laughed. “And I guess I just got carried away when we finally got here.” She giggled shyly, making Kris’s insides feel squishy with a new kind of desire. “We’ll head to the check-in desk right now.”

The man’s face broke into a grin, which Kristopher could see reach his wind-wrinkled eyes. “Oh, it’s no problem at all,” he said in his heavy Icelandic accent. “It’s no rush, really. I’ll let the concierge know you’re here and will soon be checking in. You go ahead and take your time.” He nodded a few times, he and Poppy exchanged final chuckles, and then the man left.

Kristopher’s chest ached, his head throbbed, he could feel a rift in his magic, and he was frankly terrified about what was happening to his kingdom. And he was also dumbstruck with appreciation.

“You just might be the most powerful warlock I’ve ever met,” he said breathlessly.

Poppy turned that brilliant smile on him, taking the rest of his breath right away. “Yeah,” she said softly. “I do kind of rock.”

Chapter Twenty

It had been months since it happened, but Lalura knew that to Dannai it felt like years. And seconds.

The woman’s entire world had crashed in the day she crossed the border into the West Bank and entered the Land of the Dead. Her husband had been killed. She’d been killed. She’d entered the Duat – the West Side.

And she’d met her father.

She’d not spoken of it, not a word, but it was visible in her eyes. What had transpired in the course of that day had haunted her in the time that had passed. Lalura knew she had nightmares. She wondered if Dannai felt she’d never left the Duat, and she wondered if she ever would.

It had taken this long to reach this point here and now, with the four of them at last gathered together, ready to hear what she had to tell them.

Dannai sat across from Lalura, Lily Kane, and Diana Chroi, in the massive study of the Goblin Kingdom castle. In the corner, three bassinets were rocked steadily by little impish creatures who were apparently very good at taking care of the Goblin Queen’s triplets. Four visible cats and probably countless unseen felines rested in varying positions and locations around the room. A baby goat chewed on a leather cover to a book on the bottom shelf of a set of bookshelves against one wall. And two goblin dogs rested comfortably on blankets in front of the fireplace. They were similar to dogs from the mortal realm, but squatter, with shorter snouts, longer ears, an extra layer of hair, and spots of bright purple.

The animals in the room had all been rescued at one point or another and brought here by Diana, who had a soft spot in her heart for animals of all kinds, supernatural or otherwise.

“You remember that only I could cross the river, Lalura.”

Lalura nodded. “I recall.” She remembered that quite well.

When the two of them had entered the Duat together in order to retrieve Lucas Caige’s body from the Land of the Dead so that the warlocks in the mortal realm could resurrect him, it had turned out only Dannai could cross the river that separated the West Bank from the rest of the world. A bridge appeared for her use, but when Lalura stepped foot upon it, it crumbled before her, separating her from her adopted daughter.

So, Dannai had gone on alone and Lalura had been forced to wait for her in the ever-reaching sands on the other side. She could have attempted to use magic in order to go on, but magic was always a gamble. Any wise magic user knew this. Magic in an untried dimension was exponentially so.

“Well, once I crossed the bridge and looked back, you’d vanished. So I’m assuming you couldn’t see me either.”

“You assume correctly,” Lalura said calmly.

Dannai nodded. Then she took a deep breath. “I would rather not go into detail about what happened next. But you need to know this much. My father met me as I entered the City of the Dead. Because of my lineage, I was allowed to bring Lucas’s second body back. But my father also told me what it is the Entity wants.”

This was it. This was the secret Lalura knew was swimming beneath the surface of her daughter’s thoughts. It was a truth that no magic could bring out. The things that had transpired that day were too terrible, and the knowledge was buried too deep. Digging it out forcibly would have caused scars.

The information, no matter how badly the Thirteen Kings wanted or needed it, would have to come in its own time.

Now was that time.

“My mother lies sleeping on the West Bank,” Dannai told them. “But it was not Kamon Re, my uncle, who put her there. It was my father.”

Lalura straightened as this information sank in.

“What?” asked Diana. “I thought Kamon had her under some sort of coma or sleeping spell or something!”

Dannai shook her head. “My uncle can speak with her for brief periods. The blood of a god runs through his veins as well. His power is great. Therefore, he can enter her dreams, and strangely enough, her dreams can enter reality. For a few seconds at a time, she can even appear awake. But my father’s spell is the one that keeps her under. It’s Amon Re who makes sure she remains in the Land of the Dead.”

The confusion was palpable amongst Dannai’s listeners. Lalura waited, but she didn’t have to wait long.

“This doesn’t make any sense,” said Lily. “Why would your father want to kill your mother?”

“Because before he placed her under his spell,” Dannai told them gravely, “she had been possessed by the Entity. She was the most powerful magic user in any realm when he claimed her. She was his end-all, his ultimate body. With her as his host, he could take over the world. But my father recognized what was happening just in time and placed her in a stasis inches from death.” She paused. “Kamon wants her to awaken. Because Kamon works for the Entity. And the Entity wants nothing more than a body – and a magic – like hers to call his own.”

Chapter Twenty-One

“You don’t look so hot.” Okay, that wasn’t actually true. The truth was, he looked very hot, like ridiculously hot, like melt-in-your mouth hot, and she’d never seen a more beautiful specimen of a man. But he also looked as though he’d just finished jiu jitsu sparring with the devil, and Beelzebub had gotten in a few illegal hits below the belt.

He looked like he was in pain. And he looked really, really angry.

He had his hand pressed to his rock-hard abdomen, which carelessly slightly lifted his shirt, exposing an inch or two of his toned midriffs in all their ripped glory. But that hand was clenched, clutching his shirt tightly like he needed to crush something and there was nothing crushable around. Well, except for her. Which is why she stood across the room from him and just spoke loudly.

His breathing was a little too fast for someone who wasn’t in pain. His teeth were clenched behind his closed lips, and she could see the muscles of his jaw tensed and tight just like the rest of him was. But most telling of all was the fact that his eyes were glowing. Not – “Hey, your eyes are so bright and sparkly, they are almost glowing” glowing, but actually glowing. They’d been giving off blue-white light since just after the hotel’s employee had left them alone in the room.

He ignored her comment and made his way to the bed that was against one wall. It was covered with furs that looked remarkably like the ones in the ice castle. With a grunt of pain that he tried to hide but couldn’t quite squelch, he sat on the edge of the bed and closed those glowing eyes. Then he said through those clenched teeth, “I’m the Winter King. Hot isn’t something I’m supposed to be anyway.” Proving he hadn’t ignored her after all.

Poppy took a few tentative steps toward him. “What happened back there?”

Without opening his eyes, he said, “Someone has attacked the tree. Cut off one of its roots. As a result, both the castle and myself have taken damage.”

Poppy frowned. “Tree?” she asked, feeling stupid.

“Yggdrasil,” he said.

“The World Tree?” she asked, remembering the name of the tree from her high school mythology class. In the Norse mythos, Yggdrasil was supposed to encompass something like nine worlds, from the realms of giants and elves to the heavens, where the branches extended. Most believe the name “Yggdrasil” was derived from “Odin’s Horse or Odin’s Gallows,” given that it was this massive ash that Odin, the Norse All-Father god, sacrificed himself upon by hanging. Yggdrasil, in short, was very sacred to the Norse, no matter which interpretation you followed.

Kristopher opened his eyes. They were still glowing. It was especially unnerving that he now settled them on her. “Popular mythology strikes again,” he said derogatorily, but gently and without any real acid in his tone.

“You mean it’s not the World Tree?”

He shook his head, then took the pillows and furs from the bed and piled them up against the wall before settling back against it in a relaxed seated position. His skin color was a little more pale than it had been when they’d first met. And not a single muscle in his body had yet relaxed. “Humans never quite get it right,” he said, “and I say that as a man who was once human myself. For one thing, no matter what our beliefs, we entrust those beliefs to words spoken or penned down by human beings. Humans are by nature fallible. But then we exacerbate the problem by taking our initial beliefs and pushing them relentlessly through time, which changes. Because time changes and we must therefore change with it, we add to our beliefs here and subtract there. Or worse, we refuse to. Over time, the story is either edited so much it loses its meaning, or it forces man to adhere to something downright ridiculous. Either way, the heart of it is blurred by time and human error, and it loses its soul. The plotline and characters are by this point unrecognizable.”

Poppy took a few more steps toward the bed. As she drew closer, she caught strange vibrations in the air. It was the power she’d sensed coming off him before, the power of a king. But it was jagged and disrupted, like a magnificent beast that had been tortured and teased until it was damaged and furious.

“Then… what is Yggdrasil?” she asked cautiously.

She stopped a few feet from the bed, which was a king sized block of ice covered in furs. She wondered if they were real. She hoped not. There was no reason for them to be real here in the mortal realm, not with equally warm substitutes available just about everywhere.

“Yggdrasil is a holy tree. But it is not the World Tree for mortal realms. It is the World Tree for the immortal realms, especially the realm of winter. We know it as the Great Tree. Each fruit appears as a snowflake, and represents the beginning of the season. It is what allows me to move freely between the Winter Kingdom and the mortal realm, because its roots bind the two together.”

She digested this. “And something attacked one of those roots? Who? And does that mean that we can’t go back now?”

He slowly smiled. “Do I detect a yearning to return, my queen?”

She blinked. And blushed furiously. “I never said that.”

“You as much as did.”

Her gaze narrowed. “Don’t call me your queen.”

Now he rested his head back against the wall, closed his eyes, and chuckled. Despite whatever damage he’d taken from the attack on Yggdrasil, nothing bad had happened to that laugh. It was as deeply beautiful and contagious as ever. She couldn’t help but smile at her own give-away.

“I believe it was the Entity that attacked the Tree,” he said when he’d finished laughing. “I can think of nothing else with the resources to get past my guards.” He paused, studied her for a moment, then added, “You know, it’s probably very fortunate that you didn’t take a seat on that throne.”

“Why?”

“Because if you had, you would have accepted your place in the Winter Kingdom and become its queen. What happened with Yggdrasil may very well have affected you too. You wouldn’t have been able to transport us to safety.”

Poppy looked down at the floor, mainly because she couldn’t stand to make eye contact with him any longer; his gaze was just too intense. “I had a feeling I shouldn’t sit down.” The truth was, she’d had a feeling she shouldn’t sit down yet. Meaning, she fully believed in her heart that she would eventually take that throne. She just didn’t feel she should do it at that exact moment in time.

Now she wondered if it was because she’d also known in her heart that something like this would happen. “Why do you suppose it is that I haven’t gone insane in the wake of all this?” she voiced aloud.

Again, Kristopher laughed. She looked up.

“I’ve wondered about the ease with which the queens have found their places in our kingdoms, actually. I’ve come to believe that it’s because each queen is predisposed to believe. And accept.”

“You mean… you think we’re programmed to just blindly take our places as queens? As if whatever we might think we want doesn’t matter?” She was beginning to feel her skin prickle with irritation.

“No,” he shook his head, holding up his hand in an anger-quelling gesture. “No, I mean that I believe each woman who has become queen was born a queen. And she didn’t feel she truly belonged until she was introduced to the kingdom where she did belong. And then she understood.” He shrugged. “Rather like Michelangelo discovering a hammer and chisel for the first time. Or Einstein being introduced to physics.”

Poppy’s irritation dissipated at once. It was hard to be annoyed when someone was comparing you to Einstein or Michelangelo. Especially someone who looked like Kristopher.

He closed his eyes again and she dared to venture a little closer. It was hard not to. He was like a magnet on her. Or maybe she was a moth to a flame.

“So, what do we do now?” she asked softly.

He smiled, but kept his eyes closed. “We wait while I gather up what power I can. Then it’s time to visit Yggdrasil.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

It turned out that the way to Yggdrasil was through the same castle they had just vacated for fear of it crashing down around them. If they even made it to the Tree, they would then have to deal with whoever or whatever had damaged it. Beginning and end, it promised to be a nerve-wracking trip. So Poppy was admittedly nervous about making it.

“I still think we should tell the others,” she said as Kristopher moved his hands before him, manipulating a floating and glowing mix of what looked like Viking runes, equations, and a complicated three dimensional map. The magic made a buzzing sound, and every time he touched one of the symbols or runes, it made a swooshing noise, as if he were brushing it aside. His magic was fascinating, and clearly he’d managed to get some of it back. But she was still wary about the tasks ahead. Especially since she wasn’t yet the queen.

Wow, I’ve just sort of accepted it now, haven’t I?

“That’s exactly what the Entity will be expecting us to do,” he told her calmly, but his attention remained fixed on the symbols suspended in the air in front of him. “The others have probably only just marked me off the list of possible traitors to the Thirteen. The last thing I want to do is turn that vote around by endangering them all.”

“So we’re just going to march straight into mortal danger completely alone and unprepared?”

“Not we,” he said. “You aren’t coming.”

Poppy turned away from him to face the fireplace, and her rising ire caused the flames in the pit to spark with escaped warlock magic. “Bullshit,” she spat, and her vehemence surprised her.

It must have surprised Kristopher too, because the swooshing sound stopped, indicating he’d ceased manipulating the objects in his spell.

Why she felt so strongly about this, and so suddenly, she had no idea. But her words formed themselves on her tongue and forced themselves through her teeth before she could stop them, and in essence, they revealed what it was she was truly feeling. “He attacked the Great Tree, the source of winter. Do you have any idea how precious winter is? Do you know desperate we would be, how lost, how dead without winter? All there would be is a relentless, building heat on the Earth’s surface until everything fried up and all there was left was a vast, molten desert.” Ironically, she shivered at the thought. “Even before we all died, there would be no more cool breezes, no changing trees, no rain, to say nothing of snow! We would all be boiled alive in our own flesh bags!”

The flames in the fireplace rose now, jumping high and full, going from calm flicker to building bonfire. “Goddamn that son of a bitch,” she hissed. “I’m so sick and bloody tired of the Entity. He’s insidious. He destroyed an entire race of gargoyles! He’s hurt so much that I care about, and no one even knows why he’s doing what he’s doing! He nearly killed my best friend. I will not let him destroy my….” She was suddenly at a loss. “My….”

She turned around. Kristopher watched her with keen and quiet interest. “Your home?”

The silence stretched, accompanied by the low, magical hum of the glowing symbols floating in the air between them.

“Spoken like a warrior,” he said softly. The map turned idly in front of him, slowly displaying the multitudinous levels and dimensions of some massive building. “You remind me of my people.”

He seemed lost for a moment, lost in her gaze and probably in the past.

Then he straightened, broke eye contact, and smiled as he turned back to the map. “Very well. I won’t try to stop you. But if you’re going to face off with whatever awaits us, you’d best be prepared. Come here.”

Now it was Poppy’s turn to feel a little lost. She’d just volunteered to face the Entity. What the hell had she been thinking? But it was too late to back down now. And deep down, she didn’t want to. Someone had to deal with that fucker.

She swallowed hard and joined Kristopher in front of the floating spell.

“This is the Ice Castle,” he said, gesturing to the massive building. She almost choked at that. The thing was beyond enormous, far larger and more complex than she would have guessed. Then again, she’d only seen two rooms.

“These are the various portals that branch from it.” He gestured next to what looked like doorways within halls within the castle, and upon those doorways were sigils, symbols made of light that possessed magical significance.

“All of those?” she asked, dumbfounded. There were hundreds.

“Yes. Like I said, the Winter Kingdom is attached to the mortal realm, as if by the roots of a tree.”

“And these are like a tree’s branches,” she said, pointing to the doorways in the map.

“Exactly.”

She could hear the smile in his voice. She looked up to find him grinning at her.

“You’re a quick study.”

Poppy turned back to the glowing map and runes, pretending to make light of the comment. But secretly, she coveted it. She’d never considered herself a quick study at anything. In fact, pretty much all of the lessons she’d ever learned in her life, she’d learned the hard way.

“So, what are we doing with the doors?” she asked, changing the subject.

“Every door that leads from the castle is accessible by the Winter King alone. i.e., me.” He grinned. “However, there are a few through which mortals are allowed to travel as well, so I can take you through with me. In order to get directly to the actual roots of Yggdrasil, you must pass through three linked doorways, one after another. I’m searching for those doorways right now.”

“You don’t know where the doors are automatically?” It was his home. How could he not know?

He shook his head. “What you’re seeing is the latest rendition of the castle. It changes daily as a protective mechanism. Anything with that many doorways to that many worlds has to take every safety measure imaginable, especially when a certain combination of them leads to Yggdrasil.”

“I see,” she said slowly. “So you have no idea where the ones you want are right now, but this spell shows you.”

“More or less. This spell shows me the castle as it would look right now if it weren’t damaged. For all I know, there could be fallen ceilings blocking some of these passages. We just have to hope for the best.”

“Which doors are we specifically looking for?”

“These three.” He made a motion with his right hand, and the diagram froze in place. With his left, he brushed his fingers over three doors. The glowing sigils on each door expanded, their brilliance momentarily increasing. “Jotenheim, Dvalin and Valhalla.”

Poppy’s eyes got big. “You’re serious, aren’t you?” She wasn’t a scholar in the subject, but everyone had heard of Valhalla. Plus, she’d read enough mythology out of curiosity to recognize one of the other names as the land of the giants. These were not places she would casually choose to go.

“There’s a reason I employ guardians from each of these three realms. They watch over the Great Tree in my absence. It isn’t an easy task. However, in exchange, they are given a portal from their realms back through to the Winter Realm. It is an unimaginable boon in times of need.”

She could just imagine. Any world with creatures within it who had brains were sure to eventually use those brains to disagree on something. Hence, any world with thinking minds would eventually have war. And there would always be people who wanted to escape from that war. To say nothing of people who simply wanted to escape – for a myriad of reasons, from slavery to religious oppression to being forced to marry someone you couldn’t stand the sight of.

“You don’t mind having these creatures traipsing through your home willy-nilly?”

He chuckled. Such a magnificent sound! “Our contract dictates that they always gain permission, of course. They can go through the swinging door, but it remains locked until I turn the key. They visit very seldom, to be honest. The portals are used only by dignitaries and royalty, or by those who understand the true power of magic.”

She thought for a moment. “You said it’s a swinging door. So… if we go through these three doorways and end up at Yggdrasil’s foot, we will be able to come back home, right?”

He looked down at her, and his smile held secrets his eyes could not hide.

Poppy swallowed hard as she realized what she’d said. She’d outright called the Winter Kingdom her home. “Fine,” she said softly. “So I admit it.” She shrugged. “What girl wouldn’t love having a home that came with a teddy bear the size of a German tank?”

Chapter Twenty-Three

“They know what it is you’re after now,” said the traitor. That’s how he’d come to think of himself lately. It was how the Thirteen referred to him as he sat smugly amongst them, watching and listening. They were clueless. It was enough to make him laugh, but he kept that laughter to himself and gave nothing away. To give any indication that he was who he was would be a death wish of course, and he wasn’t feeling particularly suicidal.

He was speaking to the Entity, who’d employed him months ago.

They stood in a clearing in a forest. It seemed to be the place where the Entity enjoyed materializing the most. His body was an indeterminate thing when it was not safely and cruelly encased in stolen human flesh. It seemed very long, overtly thin, and there was no real beginning or end to its limbs. But it seemed thus, only when the being materialized altogether, which was rare. Amongst the tall, thin trees of the forest they stood in right now, he seemed almost a part of the dark vegetation. He was that sudden hint of humanoid something that was there at a passing glance, but gone when you looked twice. It was that white face that was a nightmare on black limbs that at a second glance were really tree branches.

The Entity was fear itself. He was that inexplicable form that molded itself out of shadows, out of wild imaginings, out of misgivings and indecision and terror. And what better place for such things than the deep, dark woods?

Beside the traitor, in that small clearing in the forest, stood Kamon Re. Kamon was the so-called god who was the black sheep half of a set of twins that as far as the traitor was concerned, were really just spiteful squabblers with family issues and more magical aptitude than they knew what to do with. Advanced mages, that was what they were. Petty advanced mages.

But Kamon Re was indeed powerful, and he wanted his brother’s wife, and the traitor knew all too well the covetous power of lust. How Kamon could want a body that had been used up by the Entity, the traitor had no clue. Did the man have no inkling of what the Entity was planning to do to her? He would use her. He would take her immense power, use it to make his own body real, and then dump her used carcass like the empty potato sack it will have become.

Of course, the Entity didn’t tell him this. He promised him he would have his love. Kamon Re chose to interpret that as, “I’m getting the girl.”

Whatever.

Getting the girl was only meant for some. The traitor had known full well that he wouldn’t have a queen. And that had all but proven itself to be true in the last year or so. As the other kings happily traipsed into their blissfully married fates, he’d continued to sit alone at the table of the Thirteen, no one by his side but his enemies.

Unfortunately, the kings were intelligent enough to have figured out that the snitch amongst them was one of those few unlucky men who hadn’t yet found their mates. And that number was dwindling. The game would be up very, very soon.

The time to act was now. And the Entity knew it too.

“Yes,” the Entity said, in that whisper-hiss that slithered under the skin and venomously poured into the blood stream. “The old witch and her meddling daughter have been busy bodies.”

The Entity was referring to Dannai Caige, who was not actually Lalura Chantelle’s daughter, but adopted daughter. However, everyone knew what he was talking about. Somehow, Mrs. Caige had learned the truth about her real mother, Amunet. And she’d shared that information with the witch, who had in turn shared it with the Thirteen.

“She needs to be stopped,” said the traitor, stating what was obvious for the sake of getting it out in the open.

“Frankly, I’m surprised you haven’t dealt with her already,” said Kamon. “Or perhaps you’ve tried?” The smirk on his face would hint that he was joking. However, the Entity surely wouldn’t take it so lightly. Lalura Chantelle was ridiculously powerful; reminders weren’t necessary.

“I’ll take her out of the picture,” volunteered the traitor, before the Entity could become agitated. The traitor had been wanting to snuff the old woman out for years anyway. Fortunately for him, magic protected his intentions, his emotions, and his thoughts from Chantelle’s prying powers. She had no idea he hated her. And that of course would play to his advantage.

She needed to die before she figured out what the rest of the Entity’s plans were and blabbed to the Thirteen about those as well. Because if she did, the traitor wouldn’t get what he was promised either.

“No,” said the Entity simply. “I have a much better idea.”

Chapter Twenty-Four

“We shouldn’t go anywhere tonight. We should leave in the morning,” she suggested.

Kristopher turned to regard his future queen. That was how he thought of her, regardless of how tentative she might be. He’d seen what he wanted, and now he was going to get it. He would make sure of it. He just needed to bide his time.

“You said your power will come back to you over time.” She was busy making up the bed in the ice hotel room. It had already been laid with furs and blankets, but she fussed with their edges, moving around the bed to un-tuck the blankets from the mattress, which was stacked upon another mattress, which was stacked upon some thermal concoction to prevent the cold from the ice and the heat from the bodies from mixing.

“What are you doing?”

“I hate the way hotels always tuck the sheets under the mattress. Drives me nuts how tight it is. I always feel like I’ve been mummified.”

“I see.”

There was a couch in the room too, and it was also made of ice, but furs galore, in combination with blankets, pillows, and complimentary parkas had been provided for the comfort of the hotel’s guests. In their case, these remained thus far unused. Though Poppy hadn’t come right out and admitted it, neither one of them had need of extra warmth. Winter was in their blood.

Kris had already agreed to take the couch so she could have the bed alone. It went against every fiber of his being to make the offer, but he did it anyway. And he wondered, as his muscles tensed at the thought of her sleeping a few feet from him all night, whether he was changing as a man.

“So, as I was saying, you mentioned that the longer we wait, the more power you’ll regain,” she continued as she finished up with her mattress adjustments.

“I did.” The truth was however, he’d already regained the majority of his abilities. He could feel the magic swirling into a condensed presence within himself. It was like a tree reacting to an injured root. It simply began pulling extra sustenance through the roots that were not damaged. It was a quick fix, and not ideal, but that was what he’d done, and that was what he would do until Yggdrasil was repaired and all of his strength was returned.

“So, the longer we wait, the better. Plus, if we wait until morning, maybe whoever hurt the Tree will think you’re worse off than you actually are.”

That actually hadn’t occurred to him. He looked side-long at her as she began to re-arrange the pillows now, too. She was amazingly bright. They hadn’t had much of a chance to interact, in all fairness. He’d seen her, followed her, they’d “met,” she’d had a sip of coffee, and then the fit had hit the shan, so to speak. They’d gotten a crash course in each other, but he’d done most of the talking. She knew where he came from. She knew how he’d become the Winter King.

But what had he learned of her? Not very damned much. She’d expertly steered all of their conversations away from herself, and he’d let her do so to put her at ease. But his lack of knowledge about his future queen was more than a little frustrating. Still, he’d seen enough to recognize a quick mind when he witnessed it. She had one.

It was something to make note of, because he had a feeling that if he ever got into an argument with her, he would have to be at the top of his game, or she would make a complete mockery of him.

“Morning it is,” he told her as he took the set of blankets near the couch and brought them to the bed. He had no need for them. “Here. Take these.”

She stopped fussing with the pillows and looked up. “Won’t you need them?”

“As Elsa says, ‘Cold never bothered me – ”

“No, don’t say it.” She shook her head, and held up her hand, stopping him mid-speech. “Just don’t.” Then she took the blankets. “So I’m guessing the Winter King doesn’t get cold.”

He chuckled. He didn’t fail to notice that when he did, her eyes lit up, and her gaze slid to his mouth. He saw the pulse in her neck quicken. He was observant that way.

She liked it when he laughed. Note to self.

“Temperatures themselves have little effect on me,” he told her. “Being the Winter King means having some control over the weather. And weather is not just winter.”

“No, it isn’t,” she agreed. “People always complain about ‘the weather’ when it starts to turn cold, but summer’s worse than winter. It kills more people, actually. It’s heat that brings tornadoes and hurricanes. And you can always pile more clothes on, but you can only take so many off, you know?”

Kristopher swallowed hard as he imagined her taking off those clothes.

She went on. “Weather,” she said distractedly, “is all about temperature in general.” Her tone suggested she was really thinking out loud more than anything else. She had turned her attention back to the bed, fluffing up the pillows she’d placed against the ice wall. “Temperature changes brought on by the tilt of the planet bring on everything that we relate to weather. Wind is the planet’s attempt at balancing out the difference between hot and cold. That same effect gives us barometric pressure changes and things like storms.” She took a deep breath and sighed. “Summer, winter, spring, and fall and everything in-between. It’s all due to changes in temperature.”

“Damn, woman. I love the way you think.”

It just came out. He hadn’t meant to voice his thoughts aloud, but there they were. He really did love the way her mind worked, and it was odd for him to realize as much. He wasn’t actually sure he’d ever felt that way about a woman before. In fact, he wasn’t exactly sure that he’d ever noticed a woman’s mind before.

By Odin, I’m an ass, he thought. His sister was right.

Poppy went very still where she stood half-bent over the bed. Her head turned, her gaze searching out his. He smiled a helpless smile. “Sorry,” he said in a way that was not really sorry at all. “But I do. I love a lot of things about you, Poppy.”

She straightened, turning to face him. After a few seconds, in which Kristopher would have given his right arm to know what she was thinking, she finally said, “You don’t even know me. Not really.”

He shrugged. “You’re right. I don’t. So, why don’t you tell me?” He strode to the bed, and before she could object, he sat down on the edge of it.

She watched him get comfortable, and her expression became a little discomfited. But she sighed, pursed her lips, and said, “Fine. My name you already know. I’m thirty-four years old, I was born in a tiny town in a very frozen Canada, and my birthday is in September. I love fall and hate summer, I adore thunder storms and Honeycrisp apples and hot cocoa and I loathe the sound of lawnmowers. I don’t think swear words are bad words; I think they’re just words and can be used for good or bad, like all words. My favorite scent is the smell of rain, followed closely by the smell of cherry bark and almonds. My favorite movie is probably The Princess Bride, and my favorite song… never mind, I can’t pick a favorite. I have two dental implants, which I got for my sixteenth birthday because for that same birthday, I got to play center in my neighborhood’s ice hockey game. I’m quite fond of the color purple, I firmly believe politics are a losing game, and my first crush ever was on Count von Count from Sesame Street. I was four years old.”

She paused as his head spun and his heart swelled. She looked down at the rug-covered ice floor and pondered something in silence. Then she said, “I have one sister and two brothers. My father is usually the one I get along with. I love my mom, but we butt heads.” She moved to the bed, and seemingly without forethought, she sat down next to him. “We’re both extremely stubborn.”

“What kind of man is your father?” Kris asked, knowing she would probably love to bitch about her mother, but that talking about things she enjoyed would cheer her up more.

Poppy’s face brightened. Her features seemed to soften, and her eyes took on a shine. Still gazing into something he could neither see nor hear, she said, “He’s funny. And he’s done so many crazy things.” She laughed. “He’s the most amazing human I have ever known.”

She stopped and twisted to face him. “Some day, I’ll publish a book about him. I’ve been writing it for a while now.” She laughed as she added, “People are seriously going to think it’s fiction.” Now she did smile, and that smile was fully turned on him, and for just a very real second, he forgot how to breathe.

When he remembered again, he said, “I love the way you smile.”

That also just came out. He had no idea what the hell was wrong with him; it was as if every ounce of smooth cool he’d ever possessed had been severed from him just like that root had been severed from the Great Tree. He was stripped down to pure honesty, and his mouth couldn’t keep that honesty to itself.

Poppy stared up at him, her eyes wide, her lips parted in surprise. Suddenly, he laughed. “I’m sorry,” he said through his laughter. “I don’t know what’s come over me.”

Poppy’s eyes grew just a tiny bit wider, and he saw something in their reflection. Her pupils expanded, her parted lips quivered – and just as suddenly as he’d laughed, she was kissing him.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Oh my God! Her mind spun wildly out of control. She had no power over what her body was doing. One second, she’d been sitting way too close to a man who was way too beautiful, and he’d been laughing in that way that made her insides turn to absolute jelly, and in the very next heartbeat her hands were on either side of his face, and her lips were pressed against his.

There was half a second in which she processed what she’d done and how she’d actually done it. And then, with the force of a hurricane, Kristopher Scaul crashed right back into her.

If she’d had the ability to gasp or squeal or cry out in any manner, she might have done so, it happened so fast and so hard. But he claimed her lips in a take-charge kiss that pried them apart and opened her up without mercy or pause, and she lost all ability to do anything but feel.

She made a small sound, captured hungrily by him as he expertly turned with her on the bed, and she found herself pinned beneath him on the mattress, her chest against his. The weight of his body kept her pressed into the furs beneath them as his hands encircled her wrists.

She opened her eyes as he suddenly eased away, breaking their kiss. Her breathing was ragged, shocked into that fluttering-heart madness that promises pleasure, but threatens fainting spells. But he rose above her, and their eyes met.

His were glowing.

“Holy sh-shit,” she muttered, unable to stop herself. She wasn’t quite sure which sentiment she was expressing – her surprise over the kiss? Or the fact that the glowing eyes were one more reminder that he was supernatural king? Or both?

“I’m sorry,” he said.

And despite the silhouette of him, the rock hardness of a man he was, the odd thing was he actually sounded like he meant it. “But I like the way you taste. And I love the way you moan.”

He shrugged even, just a little, and Poppy felt mystified.

“You really do like a lot of things about me,” she whispered.

He gazed down at her through those eyes that looked like fire-lit glaciers, and then he laughed, and the sound moved deep in his rumbling chest, like the engine of a freight train. Oh gods, she thought helplessly as the sound and movement poured over her like its own kind of magic.

Her heart wouldn’t slow down. His chest was like a brick wall against her nipples, and they were so hard at that moment, they actually hurt. Of course, that could also have been the temperature in the room. It was an ice hotel. In Iceland.

But if he was going to be honest with her, then she might as well do the same. “I admit,” she said rather breathlessly. “I like a few things about you too.” Like pretty much everything.

He grinned, flashing perfect pearly whites. “I know.”

Poppy’s eyebrows rose. Cocky son of a bitch. “Oh?” He laughed again, and she bit her lip. She was going to rip a goddamned hole in it. “You’re awfully sure of yourself.”

“I have reason to be,” he told her frankly, and then he moved his body against hers, just enough to prove his point. His hands tightened around her wrists, his weight shifted where his knee pressed into the mattress between her legs, and the hardness of his ripped stomach against her hip bones all served as unwelcome reminders that the man on top of her was a walking, talking god. The sensation was bewildering. Every inch of muscle, every millimeter of strength throughout his tall, strong form, was predatory above her. He had her pinned. He was in charge.

And her pants would be on fire and hanging from a telephone wire if she dared to claim that she didn’t like it. Because she did. A lot.

She couldn’t stop herself when she made another sound, one of absolute and unrestrained need. But those teeth of hers pressed harder into her lip, nearly to the point of drawing blood. And the sudden pain that made her wince brought her mind back into focus and silenced any further sounds that threatened to escape her rapidly over-heating body.

Above her, Kristopher noticed her teeth, saw what she’d done, and his glowing gaze narrowed as if in challenge.

Chapter Twenty-Six

He leaned in so that his words whispered across her tortured lips. “I want to hear more of those sounds, Poppy,” he told her dangerously. “Why don’t you make some for me right now?”

She closed her eyes, trying to shut him out. He was becoming her world, and she’d only met him hours ago. Who did this? Who jumped straight into bed with a man she’d only just met? What kind of person would she become? This was too much, too soon!

She felt him move above her again, and then she felt the hotness of his breath at her ear – and a hard shiver rode through her.

“I can be cold,” he told her, as if it were a warning. “And I can be just the opposite.”

She remembered, suddenly, what she’d felt when she came out of the Starbucks earlier, just before she’d met him. A cold breath. That’s what it had felt like. It had whispered against her neck, just behind her ear. And now she knew it had been him.

Except now there was no hint of cold about him. The man was a dangerous enigma, one who encompassed an entire spectrum of sensations. Now he was a furnace surrounding her, and she was pretty sure she was about to get seriously burned.

A part of her wanted to cry. It was the part of her that hated her surrender, that helpless part of her that knew her need outweighed her misgivings and there was nothing she could do about it. So what if this didn’t make sense? So what if people didn’t usually sleep together hours after they met? Not in relationships where money wasn’t exchanged, anyway! But this was not a usual situation, and they were not usual people. Kristopher was a king.

And in the end, she knew she would no longer be able to deny it. The writing was on the ice castle walls. It was on the walls of her heart. That kind of writing didn’t take a lifetime to translate. It took moments. Heartbeats.

She was his queen.

His lips parted, and his teeth gently bit down on her earlobe. She shuddered a sudden intake of breath, and that damn chuckle came again – right there where it could do the most damage.

Now she did make that sound he wanted to hear more of. She could almost hear him smiling beside her, his grin declaring his victory. “Now say my name, Poppy.”

She gritted her teeth, her stubborn streak kicking in, despite the fact that her muscles were turning to jelly and blood was flowing hot and fast to certain parts of her body. “No.”

It didn’t even slow him down. In fact, if anything, he seemed to enjoy the fight in her. “What if I threaten to freeze an entire neighborhood unless you do?”

She went still. “You wouldn’t.”

“You’d be surprised what I would do where you’re concerned.” As if to prove his point, he released her left arm just long enough to curl his fingers over the top of her jeans, pulling the top button free. Poppy closed her eyes, squirming as her mind sped into a tailspin once more.

This is really going to happen. More heat flooded her; she was growing wet with a burgeoning and building want. It was more cruel, hard evidence that she had no control over herself just then.

“It’s easy,” he said, and his hand unfastened the second button, his fingers brushing against her exposed flesh underneath. Another shiver coursed through her. “K-R-I-S,” he spelled out for her, speaking each word directly into her ear. The third button went, and the tops of her white cotton panties were no doubt in view.

She took a small breath, ready to surrender then and there, but as she prepared to give sound to his name, his fingers slipped under the denim of her jeans as his hand spanned the flat expanse of her lower stomach. The touch was electrifying, a heat so hot it was almost cold. Like lightning. She inhaled sharply and rose from the bed, unable to prevent her body from pressing further into his touch.

He laughed again, and she cried out in a kind of desperation. But then his hand slipped beneath the band of her panties and sank lower… and lower….

“Kristopher!” she exclaimed. But she cried out his name too late, for he’d already found her hot, slick core – and was pressing his finger into her. She felt it slowly, inexorably slide deeper, and all she could think was that she wanted more.

“There now. Was that so hard?”

He moved inside her, and she felt the nearly painful pressure of a second finger joining the first. “Now that I have your attention, my little blossom, I want you to know that I’m going to strip you down, lay you bare before me, and torture you.”

You already are! she thought helplessly. She hadn’t even realized that her arms had gone around him, and her hands were in his hair, her fingers gripping tight. It was soft hair, not what you’d expect for someone with the rough and tumble appearance he exuded. But there was nothing expected about Kristopher Scaul at all.

“I’m going to make you beg me to stop, and then I’m going to fuck you like you’ve never been fucked before.”

She would have growled with a simple, “Do it already!” but the world tilted just then. Everything changed. The room around them grew bright with blue-white light, the bed beneath them melted away to a cool breeze, and every inch of her clothing vanished into nothingness. She was indeed laid bare, but not on the ice hotel bed.

The portal of a transport spun around them, whisking them through time and space. A moment later, the light dissipated, and the room again solidified. She couldn’t see much of it over the expanse of Kristopher’s equally unclothed and very broad shoulder, but she saw enough to recognize the fancy, intricately carved and dome-type celling she’d seen in the ice castle.

We’re back, she thought in blissful disorientation as he continued to move his fingers inside her, and her body responded with a virtual flood of heat and wetness. It appeared that the king’s powers were back after all. Full of surprises, she thought mindlessly.

The top of the dome above them was clear, just as it had been in the antechamber of the castle. Beyond that clear and probably magical ice, a cluster of Cosmos stretched purple, pink, and black, sparkling like a velvet blanket sprinkled with diamond dust. She saw it in flashes as she thrashed her head back and forth and her body arched off the new bed when he found her g-spot and dug in.

She squeezed her eyes shut tight again, her hands finding the bricks of his arms, and her nails digging deep as he moved downward, trailing kisses. He pulled out of her grip, leaving furrows of desperation carved into his arms, and Poppy squirmed wantonly beneath him as his lips blazed a heated trail across her right breast. He stopped to circle her nipple with his tongue, taunting it into a painfully hard nub before he gripped it pitilessly between his teeth.

She cried out as he flicked his tongue across it, then sucked on it hard, pulling blood and pleasure into one of her most sensitive areas. More heat and wetness flooded her between her legs, coating his fingers and allowing him to go deeper. The air of the room grew thick, and she found it hard to breathe as that pressure built inside her, climbing that mountain to the point of no return.

Kristopher showed no mercy, sucking hard for a few more painful, blissful moments as he brushed his thumb across the hardness of her other nipple, and curled his fingers inside her. She was being assaulted on all fronts, the sensations streaming to her core like electric currents, mixing and mingling in white hot ecstasy that drove her closer and closer to the cliff’s edge at the top of that mountain. And then he withdrew his fingers, slowly and teasingly, and the girth of them left her empty and quivering, desperate for more.

Now, she thought. Oh gods, please let it be him now…. She wanted him inside her – all of him, all the hardness, all the man that he was, and she’d never wanted anything more in her life. But his warning returned to her, his words echoing in the delirious depths of her mind, when he released her tortured nipples, moved further away from her grip, and traveled southward along her writhing body.

When his kisses reached her hip bone, and his hands encircled her thighs, gripping hard to press them further apart, she realized with shock what he planned to do. At once, self consciousness warred with her desire, and she tried to rise. But Kristopher must have known she would do this, because he expertly used his grip on her legs to yank her back down again, and she hit the bed on her back. At once, his arm slid over her torso, his hand splayed across her chest between her breasts, holding her down.

Poppy’s breaths came hard and fast, and she tried to close her legs. But he was having none of it. With ease, he kept her parted and open before him, laid bare just as he’d said he would do, and Poppy inhaled a cry of surprise as he bent his head, and that hot, hot breath of his brushed across her slick, flushed nether lips.

She made an indistinguishable sound as she clutched at the blankets beneath her, grasping them hard in her fists when Kris leaned further in, and his tongue followed his breath. Another helpless cry escaped her when that tongue slowly licked the length of her opening, then flicked teasingly against the flushed-hard button of her clitoris.

She twisted, flailing uncontrollably, but to no avail. He licked her again, and Poppy saw stars beneath her closed lids. Then the hardness of his tongue parted those red, swollen lips and dipped inside, and Poppy’s eyes flew wide open. She saw the stars beyond that clear domed ceiling and noticed something like green or purple ribbons, but the world was beyond recognition. All she was consciously aware of was the sensations she was experiencing beneath the king’s merciless manipulations.

He used his tongue, spreading her lips apart to drink of her with earnest, until Poppy could contain herself no longer. “Please!” she screamed. “Oh gods, Kristopher, please!”

Chapter Twenty-Seven

I’m going to make you beg me to stop… his words echoed in her mind when Kristopher slowly pulled away, laughing that damnable, delicious laugh of his as he rose above her once more, crawling over her as if he were some sort of primordial predator – and she his fresh kill.

… and then I’m going to fuck you like you’ve never been fucked before.

The remainder of his promise rang out like a warning bell as those eyes of his burned blue like the hottest fires, and his muscles rippled like the sinewy structure of an oversized cat. Her hands at once found his shoulders, replete with their red claw marks where she’d gripped him earlier. He was immovable, unnoticing of the pain when she settled her grip over them once more, and pressed against him in subconscious defense. Her heart was hammering, her chest rose and fell in quick succession, and she knew she hadn’t a hope in hell of stopping him.

And she had never been more happy about something than she was about that.

Their eyes met, their gazes locked, and an entire split second passed between them before he once more claimed her lips with his, and that heat that promised to overwhelm her and burn her alive poured over her, radiating off him like a sunburst.

She cried out against his lips as a second heated hardness pressed against her already teased opening, but the size of it forced her into a stretch that threatened to tear her apart. Despite the resistance, he pushed into her a slow and steady inch by inch that pulled a low, tortured moan from deep within her throat. She sank her teeth into his shoulder, her fingers curling into claws as he claimed her with slow, relentless purpose until he could go no further, and she’d never imagined she could feel so full.

Her body quaked, her nerve endings crackling as the warlock magic inside her awakened at the teasing sensations. She felt it glowing around her, releasing uncontrollably as Kristopher pulled back again, stretching her with an even greater mercilessness just before he deepened his kiss – and sank back into her, bottoming out and drawing from her another cry. He ate the sound, as he had her others, smothering her screams beneath the hunger of his kiss.

Poppy’s head seemed to swim, and her mind reeled, and her universe spun into ribbons like the sky above as he repeated his torment, easing out and then shoving back in, his speed increasing with her yearning for more. Little by little, she edged up that mountain, and then the cliff’s edge was in view, and her body was sparkling with the need for release. Small gasps and moans escaped her throat over and over and were swallowed up by Kristopher as his strong form rode deeper and faster, and ecstasy drew her into its universe like an unavoidable magnet.

He broke their kiss, and suddenly the sounds of their harsh breathing filled the room.

“I love the noises you make,” he told her, just as he had before. “I love the way you fight,” he added. And then he nibbled her bottom lip and drove in deep once more as he said, “And I fucking love the way you feel wrapped tight as hell around me, Poppy Nix. I’m going to make sure it happens all the goddamn time.”

The world fractured then, breaking into puzzle pieces that spread out and split up, dozens becoming hundreds, hundreds becoming thousands as he drove in again and again, and that climb of madness inside her lifted her higher and higher and higher – and then life exploded and she was finally thrown over the edge.

She screamed, arching her back to lift herself off the bed, pressing hard against the king as he came inside her and she entered that other blissful dimension and catapulted through space. He matched her call with an animalistic cry that flooded her bloodstream with orgasm-strengthening adrenaline, and white spots erupted before her eyes.

She floated there in that state of painful bliss, utterly and completely free of earth’s bonds, for several perfect moments before she finally rode the waves very slowly back down to Earth.

From that bed in that room on that planet, Poppy looked over her lover’s shoulder and watched the sky move. The night glittered beyond the glass dome. Those ribbons of green and purple remained. As if they were notes played on some celestial violin, they floated, music-like and beautiful, filling the already brilliant sky with impossible spectral beauty. Galaxies and supernovas splayed out before her, pink and orange and shaped like horse’s heads and crabs. She felt like she were close enough to touch them; she’d never seen anything like it in her life.

“It’s something to see, isn’t it?” the king whispered softly in her ear. He was still inside her, and he had yet to grow completely soft. She was sated and floating, filled with endorphins galore. Her entire body tingled. Everything felt right just then.

Slowly and tenderly, he pulled away, then moved gracefully off of her to lay beside her. His strong arm encircled her, warm and possessive as his gaze followed hers into the heavens.

“Is this your room?” she asked softly. Her voice was a touch hoarse from love making.

“This is our room,” he gently corrected. She glanced sidelong at his profile. His eyes were no longer glowing. Instead, the aurora borealis reflected in their blue, giving them new dimension.

“Okay,” she said.

He was still beside her, and at first Poppy wondered if she hadn’t been clear enough in the meaning of what she’d just said. But though it took him a moment to understand, when he did, he instantly looked back down at her. “Okay?” he asked, his eyes wide. “You mean – ”

But she nodded, and her lips broke into a smile. “Yes.” She grinned. “I mean.”

Kristopher remained frozen a heartbeat more. Then his smile matched her own, and he leaned in, claiming her lips in another kiss. The warmth of him was dichotomous with the taste of him like fresh fallen snow, and it was wonderful. The kiss seemed to go on forever, the Cosmos spinning and unfolding above them.

When he finally lifted away, she was breathless again. The tingling in her body had gone from pleasant and sated to hungry, her nipples were hard, and her legs were bent in need.

Kristopher smiled, and this time there was nothing friendly about it. “Let me see if I can take care of that,” he said in a low, predatory drawl. Then he was sliding over her, and his hardness was pressing into her, and Poppy’s mind was once more lost to the desires of her body.

A good while later, she lay partially atop the Winter King, her hands resting on his chest, her ear pressed to his heart, and the master bed had been completely and wonderfully trashed. Kristopher languidly ran his fingers through her long, thick hair, and his chest rose and fell in slow satisfaction. “You know,” he said lazily, “If you’re actually going to become queen, we’ll need to eventually get you out of this bed and onto your throne.”

Poppy thought about that, and something occurred to her. “Do you think it’s still in one piece?” She pictured the throne room and its seats of ice. It all seemed rather fragile.

He hesitated a moment, then rose up on one elbow. She lifted off him as they both sat up. “Only one way to find out,” he replied.

She took a deep breath and nodded. “Okay,” she said for the second time that night.

Kristopher pulled the furs off them both, and Poppy stared down at herself in wonder as her clothes magically reappeared over her body layer by layer. He even got the scarf right – her favorite scarf, long and crazily colored, like a signature piece.

His clothing did the same, and since he was climbing out of bed at the same time, she realized he was doing it without even concentrating. He was quite powerful, even after having one of Yggdrasil’s roots severed.

Would she be like that once she took the throne? She imagined herself using warlock magic without having to speak or move in order to cast spells – without even having to give it much thought! Was it possible? Was she –

She blanched suddenly as Kristopher strode across his massive chamber, and she couldn’t help but notice how well he fit in with his surroundings. He strode tall and strong, smooth and confident. He owned them. Like a true king.

What was she in comparison? Would Winter… what if Winter didn’t find her as deserving?

She swallowed past a tightening throat. Kristopher stopped at his door and turned back. His brow furrowed and his head cocked to the side. “Are you okay?” he asked softly.

“Yeah,” she replied quickly. “Sorry. I just… hadn’t had a chance to look around yet.” She hurriedly joined him at the door, pretending to take in her surroundings as she went. Really, she’d gotten a good look while lounging in his bed. The room was definitely amazing – just as otherworldly and impossibly beautiful as the rest of Winter’s palace of ice. Not the least amazing of which was the bed itself, a massive construct of intricately carved ice, right down to the four ice carved posters and the thin, gauzy impossibly woven ice curtains draped over the ice bars overhead. But if she gave too much thought to how amazing his bed was right now, she and the king would just wind up right back in it.

She made it to the door, smiled sheepishly, and his gaze narrowed. “Mmm-hmm,” he said disbelievingly. To which she simply pushed past him into the hall beyond.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Kristopher watched her brush past him, fighting the urge to reach out and stop her. Something was suddenly bothering her, and that was not the feeling he wanted to leave her with after taking her to bed.

But he really wanted to get her on that throne.

Once she did, she would be queen, and she would have the power that came with it. Power enough to stop anything the Entity might be planning to do to her. It was clear the monster was willing to go to extremes to stop the kings from finding their queens. He wanted to stop them from… something. Hell, that was just it. Kristopher didn’t know what the Entity wanted. No one did.

I need to check in, he thought as he followed her down a long hallway. It had been a while since he’d looked in to see if there’d been any news on the Entity and his little rat, the traitor king who sat amongst them at the table of the Thirteen. Plus, he should probably let them know about the attack on Yggdrasil and the Entity’s likely involvement.

Unlike the other supernatural realms, the Winter Kingdom was ironically both a permanent part of the mortal world – just like Winter was a part of the mortal world – and permanently cut off from it. His kingdom was more powerful in this sense, as things like time and space moved differently here. But it was also more remote, because when spring, summer, and fall visited the mortal realm, Winter was not welcome. It needed a place to escape to, or it would wither and die.

Without his permission, no one could make it into the Winter Kingdom to contact him if something went down, and tiny reliable messengers such as Pi the fire elemental, were not elementally welcome in places such as this. Pi wouldn’t last long. Seconds, perhaps, and that was about all. So, Kristopher was all but cut off from his sovereign brethren until he re-entered the mortal realm.

Kristopher’s thoughts of the Entity and the other kings took a back seat when he noticed that Poppy was moving slowly through the castle, but this time not with fear or hesitation. This time, she walked in wonder, her head moving side to side, her eyes wide.

He’d lived in the ice castle for so long, Kristopher had ceased taking note of how it looked. But now that he was watching someone else take it all in, he recalled the way it had made him feel the first time he’d beheld it. It truly was a stunning sight.

Constructed entirely of ice, from the walls to the floors to the windows to the fixtures and even the clear ice domes in most of the larger rooms, it was a marvel of magic. The smooth, crystalline ice was rock-hard, shatter-proof, and had been carved by the passage of thousands upon thousands of winters. Each one that passed made its beautiful mark on the walls. There were images of man and monster, of nature and of wonders beyond nature. Chandeliers overhead chimed like pixie flight, and shed light that was again magical. Rooms beckoned with firelight that melted nothing but the cold in one’s heart. Rugs that looked like fur, but were actually created with spells, warmed the floors. The windows came to high, pointed arches, the doorways were doubled, and the main doors to the castle were banded in gold.

It was a magnificence. All of it.

And Poppy was taking it all in.

Kristopher found himself smiling as he walked behind her. He felt proud, suddenly, that he could offer something so wondrous to someone like her. At once, he wanted to give her the grand tour. There was so much she didn’t know about the Winter Kingdom. He couldn’t wait to show it all to her!

Kristopher’s brow furrowed a little, and he smiled a small smile as he mulled that over. What was this? Was this what it felt like to actually care about someone?

He may have only met her a few hours ago, but in the time that they’d spent together he’d managed to get past her defensive walls and learn a thing or two about Persephone Glacia Nix. All that she’d told him about herself was true, from the fact that she loved the smell of rain to the fact that she hated politics. He knew this in the same way he knew a person’s name when he looked at them. It just came as knowledge.

But he’d learned more, too. She was also sensitive. She was afraid of germs because she’d been sick before. By the same token, she was afraid to hurt others because she, herself, had been hurt. She was empathetic and kind unless you pushed the wrong buttons. She had a temper like hellfire when pressed. He liked that.

As he’d rested beside her in their bed, all that she was and wanted to be had just opened up for him. He’d suddenly been awash in her. She’d become an open book, and Kristopher had never read a more beautiful story.

Her best friend was even a queen. How perfect was that? Poppy was a human born with a queen’s name and inordinate amounts of warlock power. She’d been fashioned, in her soul, to do great things – and to be great things. He loved the way she saw the world, the way she inherently wanted to fix it, and the strength of will she possessed.

He loved….

“It looks like there’s no one here but us,” she said suddenly, breaking his train of thought, and startling him a bit. “And the room’s in one piece.”

Kristopher glanced up, taking in the throne room. Suddenly he realized that Poppy had found her way through the labyrinthine castle from the master chamber to the throne room all on her own. As if she’d known the way.

He grinned. “Yes, it is.” He moved past her, leading the way to the gorgeous, poppy-covered throne that had lain empty for more than a thousand years. When he reached it, he placed his hand atop the seatback and faced her. “It’s all yours.”

Poppy stood very still for a moment, right there in the center of the throne room. He saw her throat work as she swallowed hard, and he knew she was re-thinking, wondering, and even worrying. So, to ease her fears, he turned away from the throne and took a seat in his own. He lowered himself into it casually, feeling relaxed as a cat. He draped one leg over an armrest and sat back.

The strange thing about the thrones was that despite their being constructed of ice, they were neither cold nor uncomfortable. More magic. But Poppy wouldn’t know that until she sat down.

“Take a seat, blossom.”

She stepped forward. Without warning, something crashed through one of the double doors that led to the throne room. “No! Actually, don’t sit!” a man cried.

Kristopher leapt to his feet as Poppy spun around to face the tall figure that came stumbling out of one of the halls leading to the throne room. Kris recognized the newcomer at once. It was William – the Time King. Kristopher had long, long ago given him a charm that allowed him to come and go through the Winter Kingdom at will.

Bounding directly after the other sovereign was the dire bear, Meridian. The two made quite a spectacle entering the room, one a handsome king who’d obviously rushed as fast as inhumanly possible to get to the ice castle, and the other a massive white bear with magic powers and glowing gold eyes.

They’re glowing, Kris realized just after he noticed it. The dire bear’s normally brown eyes only glowed gold when he was communicating telepathically with his best friend, William.

“Will, what is the meaning of this?” Kristopher asked at once.

William Balthazar Solan’s real name was probably something much different and much, much older, and most people who knew him assumed he didn’t even have a given name. These days however, he went by any combination of these three names at once. Between the Thirteen Kings, it was normally Solan. Kristopher referred to him as Will. And in the dark and the quiet, the Time King was referred to as the Lone King.

At the moment, William skidded to a halt, disheveled and striking, and pinned his currently emerald green eyes on Kristopher’s soon-to-be queen. “Don’t sit down on that throne, Miss Nix. It’s been warded.”

“Warded?” Kristopher asked, striding down the steps leading from the dais to meet Will and Poppy in the center of the room. What the hell was he talking about? What kind of ward? “By who?” he demanded.

William turned to the giant bear that had stopped a yard away from the group. The bear made a few growling sounds, and its glowing eyes flashed. Will turned back to Kris. “Apparently….” He cleared his throat, and suddenly looked very worried. “You won’t believe me if I tell you.”

“I won’t let you live if you don’t,” Kristopher told him firmly. The threat was an empty one; William was impossible to kill. How was that for a super power? It might very well have been his only one, but it was a doozie.

“Fine,” William replied. Then he took a deep breath and squared his shoulders. “Meridian claims to have seen a shield maiden hovering over the queen’s throne after you both departed earlier. He doesn’t know what she was doing to it, however. Before she could spot him observing her, Meridian transported to me.”

Kristopher stared dumbfounded at the Time King. “A shield maiden?” he asked stupidly. There was no way.

William said nothing. The question was rhetorical.

“By ‘shield maiden,’” said Poppy softly, “do you mean a mortal woman who choses to fight beside her male Viking peers, or….” She paused, no doubt feeling a little silly asking the question. “Do you mean a Valkyrie?”

Kristopher felt his jaw tighten. His gut churned with unanswered questions and dark possibilities. “Both.”

Chapter Twenty-Nine

793 AD, TromsØ, the northwest coast of Norway

The year was nearly at an end, and the sun made its appearance for short moments every day, low on the horizon, red-orange in color, faint as the distant moon. It was the time of the Solstice, time of renewal… and for Erikk Rangvaldson the newly throned Winter King, it was a time of revenge.

He stood as a lone figure on the hilltop, wind and snow blowing about him like a cloak. His eyes, which had always been the bluest of blue, were now lighter than before, and glowed eerily with malign intent. Should any of his people have been capable of seeing him up there on that hilltop that overlooked the village, they would not have recognized him. He was older. His hair was lighter and longer. His furs were solid white, and he held a massive longsword literally constructed out of ice. He had grown in stature, as was fitting for a king. And he knew that stature was frightening to behold.

But his people were huddled in their tents and homes. Smoke billowed from every lavvu, smoke hole, and chimney below. The temperatures had dropped. Winter was on its way.

“You have no idea,” he spoke softly.

He’d come while Neve was sleeping. He didn’t want her involved in this. And it was his responsibility, anyway. Erikk’s father had been chief – and no matter what Bjarke Stalson might believe to the contrary, the death of the chief meant Erikk was now in charge. This was something he was going to make certain Bjarke understood very, very well. Right before he died.

Erikk moved down the mountain, walking atop the snow rather than sinking into it as he had when he’d been mortal. The snow moved for him now, supported him, and blanketed his arrival. There was no discomfort in it, no cold, no wet. It was a white, multi-faceted friend that rode the winds Erikk now controlled. All of it, he controlled.

His power surged through his body, through his mind. He could have laid the village low with no more than a blizzardy thought. He could have buried it beneath an avalanche. They were settled near the ocean; he could have drowned the village beneath a rogue wave.

But a confused and quick death would serve no justice. He had other things in mind.

Erikk made it to the main trail leading into the village and walked into the town on quiet malice. He knew where he would find Bjarke, and his eyes settled on that long wood house as the wind picked up around him, a reflection of his mounting fury.

He whispered, so soft he could barely hear it himself. “Come out and face me, Bjarke. Come out and face me right now.”

In the mounting storm, something stirred. It might have been a sound, or perhaps a shadow that passed before the slats between the logs of the house. But he knew Bjarke had heard him, and he waited, his sword in his hand, as the man no doubt grabbed his own weapon and donned his furs and boots.

The wind howled. The flakes of snow around Erikk grew smaller and harder, rolled into hard snowflakes by the building gale. Up on the mountaintop, thunder rolled. Light split the tall, dark snow clouds. They were the mighty bolts of Thor being thrown in a rare, but not impossible thunder snow.

Down below and all around Erikk, more people stirred. He could feel them. It was an odd sensation, being able to almost hear other minds. He knew where each member of his tribe was at that given point in time. But what was more was that he felt who was not there. Not any longer. Because they had been murdered by the man who now called himself their ruler.

Erikk waited.

Finally, the front door of the long house flew open, and the tall, broad form of Bjarke filled the doorway. The man stood there in that passageway for many moments, as he no doubt attempted to process what he was seeing several yards away.

“What are you?” he finally asked, his voice filled with the strain of confusion.

“It is not what I am, but who I am that must concern you, Bjarke Stalson. I am Erikk Rangvaldson. Chief of these people.”

By this time, others had begun emerging from their tents, perhaps arrested from their sleep by the turning of the weather or by a vibration in the air. They knew something was wrong, something was changing, and their curiosity roused them from their beds and brought them out into the troubled night.

“Erikk?” Bjarke’s voice traveled to him, but barely. “No. It’s not possible.” He shook his head.

Erikk knew he was referring to several things in this instance. First, the fact that Erikk’s boat had no doubt shown up on the shore in splinters after that wave had struck him, and Erikk had probably been assumed dead. Second, the man standing before Bjarke just then was a good bit older than the Erikk Rangvaldson that Bjarke had last seen. Erikk had glimpsed his reflection in the smooth ice after he’d taken his place upon Winter’s throne. He had aged. He was no longer a boy, but a man. Winter had made him a king in every way.

“Oh, but it is possible, Bjarke. And it is so. I’ve come to avenge the murders of my brethren and reclaim my people and my home.”

Now Bjarke lifted his sword arm, and his blade glinted in the wetness of the storm. But lightning flashed overhead, and thunder rolled low and long, a warning if ever there had been one. The people who had gathered around them spoke amongst themselves. The night had brought witchery. The storm was brewing, the air was filled with madness, and the son of the chief, long thought dead, was standing before them now, twenty years older than he had been the last time they’d seen him.

But it was him. There was no denying it. He was taller, stronger, different. But still Erikk.

Wasn’t he?

“Come at me, Bjarke,” Erikk said softly, raising his hand to summon his enemy. “Let me give you the only warrior’s death you will have ever earned in your pitiful and meaningless bully’s existence.”

Bjarke muttered something under his breath about sorcerers and the goddess Hel’s infernal reaches, then charged at Erikk with a guttural roar.

Time slowed down for the Winter King. He moved so fast in that moment, he could almost see each individual snowflake around him spinning leisurely in its crystalline beauty. Sound went away. The thunder that had been rumbling overhead grew distant and quiet as a humming filled Erikk’s head, and his body moved of its own accord.

His sword – the sword he’d been given as the Winter Kingdom’s sovereign – sliced like a shark’s fin through water. It moved like winter, like snow and weather and nature.

Unstoppable.

With each slice, the spilling of blood brought with it flashes, images, and knowledge. Erikk learned how Ronald had died; he’d gone in his sleep, his throat slit, his soul denied a warrior’s death. Erikk’s parents had met their ends in the same way. This knowledge spun in Erikk’s head, and his body spun in return. Now his attacks carried out the vengeance he’d come here to deal.

He carved the path of his revenge into the body of his rival, sending into Bjarke the fear, the loss, and the loneliness that each of his victims felt. For Ronald, left with the world on his shoulders and killed in the still of the night. For Erikk’s parents, sickened horribly before they were finally, almost mercifully, done with. For the men and women of the monastery Bjarke and his men had sacked and ravaged. And for Neve, left to wander alone and afraid and freezing because she refused to submit.

These feelings, these emotions and physical agonies, he sent spiking into Bjarke Stalson with all the hatred Erikk felt for him. He returned to an evil man all the evil that man had dealt. And when his sword of ice was done moving, Bjarke lay at Erikk’s feet, barely breathing. His blood soaked the snow beneath him, and his own sword lay broken in two a foot from his motionless body. Thunder returned the sound to Erikk’s world, followed closely by the stark silence of the villagers around him.

Erikk gazed down at his fallen enemy for several moments. They were telling moments. They were moments in which he realized that vengeance was quick – too quick. In those moments, he realized that the emptiness that filled a being’s heart at the loss of someone he loved was not filled again once revenge had been dealt. It remained empty, and it always would.

After those moments passed, the Winter King took a step back. His boot crunched in cold-hardened snow. He looked up, meeting the shocked expressions of his people.

“It be Thor…” someone whispered shakily. Others joined in, nodding or whispering in agreement. Children of the village pushed through their parents’ legs and gazed up at him, pointing at his tall body, ice blade, long ash-blonde hair and unnatural white furs. Never mind he wasn’t carrying a hammer.

“Not Erikk…Thor….”

Thunder rattled overhead. Lightning split the night, and Erikk glanced up. A light speared the clouds overhead, spreading until it was a broad cone of illumination. From this light, several flying figures emerged. Erikk’s eyes widened. He may no longer have been mortal, and his blood and body may have been changed by what he’d become, but the majority of his existence had been spent as a human. And that human part of him knew that the winged figures descending toward the village just then were no other than the shield maidens of Odin. The Valkyrie.

They’re real, he thought.

Then the king part of him took over. He nodded in acceptance and looked back down at the man at his feet. This meant that Bjarke Stalson had stopped breathing. He was well and truly dead.

Erikk glanced at the people around him. They still stared. Not one of them had noticed the Valkyrie coming toward them. That’s right, he reminded himself. Mortals can not see them. Oddly enough, mortals were never allowed to see anything that would justify their faith while they lived.

The two women landed a few feet away, their massive eagle-like wings affording them a graceful touch-down in the snow on the opposite side of Bjarke’s fallen form. At once, Erikk recognized the woman who stood in front. It was Toril… Bjarke’s older sister.

Their eyes met, and unspoken things aplenty passed between them. Then Toril looked down at her defeated brother. Emotion threatened her features. She began to kneel, as she no doubt knelt at the forms of many fallen warriors. However, the winged woman behind her stepped forward and placed a hand upon Toril’s shoulder. Toril glanced back. The other woman shook her head. Just once.

It meant everything.

Toril froze under the command. She would not be allowed to take Bjarke to Valhalla. She spun and met Erikk’s gaze again. Erikk could think of nothing to say. There was nothing to say. The other Valkyrie was right. Bjarke was no warrior. He had not died in battle. He’d died in an execution because he was a cold-blooded murderer.

A long, swollen silence passed between the three. At last, the other woman tugged on Toril’s arm. Toril waited another beat. Her narrowed, angry gaze filled with sparking, hazel-colored promise. Then her wings batted heavily, and she took to the air.

Erikk watched them fade into the sky above as lightning and thunder sung a saga of love and loss. When they were gone again, he took a deep breath and faced the people of his village. They were still frozen in place, their eyes wide, their expressions waiting.

“Where is the sister of Ronald Dagfinnr? Where is Edda? Step forward!” he commanded, allowing the magic in his voice to carry it clear and far.

The crowd rippled, and after a few moments, it parted to allow a tall woman with long red hair and freckles to walk into the small clearing. The woman’s green eyes cut to him like emerald blades, and she raised her chin. “Aye,” she said resolutely. “I am here.”

If she thought he was Thor, she made no mention of it. As any true warrior would, she did not cow. Not even before a god.

Erikk had known Edda for as long as he’d known Ronald. She was two years her dead brother’s senior, and she’d fought as a shield maiden in three battles. A small scar ran the length of the left side of her chin, but did nothing to mar her beauty. She hadn’t spoken to him much in his mortal life, but enough perhaps that she might have recognized him now.

If she did, she kept that to herself as well. She didn’t care whether he was Erikk back from the dead or Thor, the god of Thunder. He’d defeated Bjarke, and that was all that mattered.

Erikk sheathed his sword, slipping it smoothly into the white leather scabbard at his broad back. Then he slowly approached Edda. She did not back down.

He could see into the woman’s heart. It was a sensation that would be difficult to describe. He simply knew what kind of person she was, and this with no more than a glance. He saw past her eyes and into her soul and knew that she was strong, good, and wise. “Edda Dagfinnr, you are to be chieftain of these people. You will guide them with the wisdom of Odin and Frigga and the strength of Thor and Magni. Keep one another close.” He leaned in, placing his hand upon her shoulder.

She blinked, but did not flinch, and she looked down at his hand before once again meeting his gaze.

He nodded, and just to her he said, “Right what has been wronged.” Then he stepped back, willed himself to return to his palace of ice, and vanished.

Chapter Thirty

Present day, the Winter Kingdom

“So, Toril wants revenge.” Poppy was thinking out loud more than anything. She wasn’t totally in the present, sitting in that library of ice and books with two kings and a massive Dire Bear. Part of her was mentally stuck in the past, in the snow and cold and drama of Kristopher’s tale. It was a book-worthy tale. But unfortunately it was her very real life, and the drama within its telling was about to catch up with her through mere association.

She glanced up to get a covert closer look of the Time King, one Mr. William Balthazar Solan. He was busy ruffling Meridian’s fur while the massive bear slept beside his chair. Staring at the king now, she couldn’t help but wonder if every man who sat at the table of the Thirteen was ridiculously gorgeous. She knew the Shadow King personally. He was hot. She had met Roman D’Angelo once while he was visiting with Lalura. He was hot. She knew the Winter King… biblically. He was way hot.

And now here was the Time King, with his full head of shiny dark brown hair and his eyes that looked like brilliant cut emeralds and his smile that was a little sardonic and a little sad. He was dressed in a charcoal gray three-piece suit that had to it an air of yesteryear, though it was clear the suit was brand new, very expensive, and tailored to perfectly mold to his tall, cut form. There seemed to be not an ounce of fat on his body, and the way he moved, walked, and even sat down in his chair across from her was the epitome of grace. There was something tucked into his front pocket, where a pocket watch would go, but she had yet to get a look at it. She only knew it was there because of the gold chain that was attached to it and one of the buttons on the vest of his suit.

She studied him quietly as he lazily stroked the bear. In his right hand, he held a book in his lap, but there was no way to tell from his reserved expression whether it was a good book or he were even enjoying it. He reminded her of something, a mixture of jaded cruelty tempered by a helpless, grudging empathy. It wasn’t that he wasn’t a gentleman – just the opposite. It was just that there was something about him that looked as though it would not suffer a fool.

He was like a painting of Dorian Gray without the outright murderous evil, or a chance reflection of Narcissus, but quieter, gentler, and more intelligent. He reminded her of beauty that had tacked to it a terrible price. In William’s case, that price was eternity. It was something she was having a hard time wrapping her head around.

“Any… idea what she might have actually done to the throne?” Poppy asked, looking from William, who wasn’t paying attention to her at all, to Kristopher, who had braced himself with one arm against the mantle of the hearth and was staring fixedly into its multi-colored flames.

The Winter King said, “That’s what I’ve been trying to figure out.”

“I guess this means I can’t be queen then, huh?” she joked, adding a little laugh.

Now both men did look at her, and she felt the sudden, substantial weight of their combined gazes. The air in the room gained a vibration, as if someone had plucked the strings of an invisible, inaudible guitar. Her statement had certainly earned their attention.

Poppy shrugged nervously and shrank into her chair a little. “I only meant that –”

“You will be queen,” said Kristopher. His tone was final.

“Um….” She blinked.

In front of her, William sighed. “Miss Nix, you must understand that to one of the Thirteen, a queen means everything right about now.” He glanced up at Kristopher, who shot him a look somewhere between warning and exasperation. William continued. “The threat the Entity poses is ever present.” He snapped his book shut and turned back to Poppy. “You’ve learned of the Winter Kingdom, and it truly does seem as though you’ve come to accept that you belong here. The longer you delay in taking your place as queen, the more danger you place yourself in. And the whole of the supernatural world.”

The Time King’s eyes seemed to cut clear through her, and as she gazed into them, Poppy realized that when she’d said what she’d just said, she hadn’t purely been joking. There had been a part of her that was secretly relieved. And it looked as though both men had caught onto that.

And that kind of pissed her off.

She leaned forward. “Fine,” she said through a tight jaw. “Then tell me your plans. How do you propose we fix this so I can sit down on the goddamn throne?”

“We go to Valhalla,” said Kristopher. “We would have had to visit anyway in order to open the door to Yggdrasil. I have no idea what Toril did to the throne, but it doesn’t matter. I can undo it given enough time; all it would take is a few carefully placed spells. The problem is that as I said, it will take time.”

“There’s that, and… Toril may simply try for revenge again later,” added William.

Kristopher made a frustrated sound. “We will forever be on guard.” He shook his head and pushed away from the fire place, turning to face them. “She must be dealt with once and for all.”

“When you say, ‘dealt with,’ you don’t mean, ‘Let’s get some coffee, sit down and talk things out,’” Poppy said. “Do you?”

Kristopher smiled a tight smile. “The Valkyrie aren’t big coffee drinkers.”

Poppy gave him a dead pan look. Her stomach was beginning to churn. Everything about the idea of visiting Valhalla made her distinctly uneasy. She’d been wary of visiting it in the first place, but now that she knew they were going to actually confront someone there, she really didn’t feel good about it. It was Valhalla, after all. Everyone there was supposed to be dead. She wasn’t dead. She was very much alive, and she really wanted to stay that way.

“She’s going to stand out like a candle in a cave in that realm,” said William, who was still watching Poppy, but whose expression was now one of keen study. “We’ll need to be quick about this, or we’ll start a war that will bring down Yggdrasil for good.”

Kristopher was already moving. He crossed the study in three long strides. “Very well, then let us waste no more time.”

Poppy jumped out of her chair. “But, what if it’s a trap?” She ran to catch up with him as he exited the study and entered the hall. William was beside her at once. “What if Toril knew that Meridian was watching all along and she’s just trying to get you into Valhalla?” Or me, she added mentally. She obviously hates me more than him, or she wouldn’t have compromised my throne.

“She has a point, Kris.”

Kristopher stopped and turned to face William, who had also come to a stop. Poppy wound up between the two men, feeling like the stuffing in a king Oreo.

“What do you suggest?” Kristopher asked.

“Only that we think this out before we go headlong into what Poppy very intelligently pointed out might be a trap.”

Kris stared at him a moment, then took a deep breath. He ran a hand through his hair and paced a few steps away. Then he turned back. “The most important thing is you taking the throne, Poppy. We’ll tend to that issue now and go after Toril later. You can help – when you’re queen.”

Poppy realized she was suddenly biting her lip and forced herself to stop. She stood up straighter and rolled back her shoulders. “Okay,” she said. She nodded, just once. “How do I do that?”

“Sit on my throne.”

Poppy stared at Kristopher, dumbfounded. The double entendre of the suggestion rolled over and through her, and she immediately felt ridiculous for having noticed it in the first place. Before she could ask whether it would actually work, William spoke.

“It’s actually a brilliant idea,” he said quickly. Poppy turned to face him. Excitement had transformed his handsome features, shifting them from something slightly reticent to something that reminded her of an inventor on the verge of a discovery. “Throughout man’s history, queens and kings have often occupied the same thrones. It makes no difference. So long as you are both alive at the same time – you will be king and queen of the Winter Kingdom.”

Poppy looked from one king to the other. Kristopher caught her gaze and held it. “So?” he asked softly, moving closer so that he stood over her, and his presence and magic at once filled her world like a drug. “Will you do it?” His blue, blue eyes flashed, and tingling heat wrapped around her. Her nerve endings began to sizzle with the memory of what he’d done to them only hours earlier. “Will you take the throne and be my queen?”

“Yes,” she said breathlessly. At that moment, she very well might have done anything he’d asked her to.

Chapter Thirty-One

She didn’t hesitate or hold back this time. When they entered the throne room, she kept right on walking toward the dais with its thrones, head tall, shoulders back. The men and the bear behind her grew quiet, probably in anticipation. She made it as far as a foot from the dais, when she heard the hissing sound.

The human body is programmed to respond on a fundamental old brain level to a few vital things. One of these is heights. If our wiring is done correctly, then when we find ourselves at an elevated level looking down on our world, we experience a change in emotion. Another old brain trigger is the smell of death. We possess a reflex to this smell in order to detect rot in meat or spoiled fruit that can kill us and to warn us that there might be predators nearby. There are a few more old brain initiates, some more vital than others. And when Poppy heard the distinct sound of hissing and instantly came to an absolute stand-still, she couldn’t help but wonder whether the noise of a snake was one of them.

She froze in place, her eyes immediately shooting to the ground around her. But nothing moved across the blue-white ice floor or fur rugs splayed about. All was still.

Ssssssssssss….

Poppy’s head jerked up, and her gaze fell on the throne. In the seat of the massive king’s chair sat coiled a rather large serpent. A mixture of blue, white and gold, the snake’s scales were patterned intricately, and were actually quite lovely. But the snake hadn’t been there a moment earlier. It had literally appeared out of nowhere. Its unusual blue eyes stared steadily at her as its head bobbed very slightly back and forth.

The hissing sound came again, this time manifold. Poppy’s gaze slid from the snake in the king’s throne to the floor between the two chairs. More snakes were coiled there, not quite as large as the first. In her throne, the one covered in ice-carved poppies, there were two more.

She tried not to make any unnecessary movements. If they really wanted to harm her, she was within striking distance of all of them.

“What the bloody hell – ”

Poppy recognized William’s voice.

“Poppy, just stay where you are. Don’t move.”

That one was Kristopher. The fact that he was telling her to do exactly what she was already doing made her bristle a little, but she gritted her teeth and bore it in silence.

“I thought the castle was warded, Scaul. Why are there serpents in your chairs?” William asked sardonically. Poppy could just imagine the look Kristopher was giving him in return.

“Obviously something happened when the root was severed,” said Kris quietly. His tone had dropped, his voice had lowered, and she could tell he was closer than he’d been before. He was coming toward her.

She was afraid that his drawing nearer would agitate the snakes. Oh gods, please don’t let me get bitten just because he wants to play hero, she thought. She felt frustratingly helpless. What she really wanted to do was cast a spell, but just like most magic, warlock magic required movement and speech, and she was frankly loathe to do either just then for fear of provoking the snakes.

She almost jumped when she felt a breath at her ear and a very strong presence directly at her back. “I’m going to transport us out,” he whispered. It was a warning, just a heads-up so she knew what was about to come. He gave the warning quickly, and a second later, the space around them melted. The snakes, either agitated by the feel of the king’s magic or alarmed at Poppy’s sudden apparent movement, took that moment to strike.

She cried out in surprise as the larger snake in the king’s throne sailed toward her, able to fly through the air in a way normal snakes could not. She put her arms up defensively, but in the next moment, both snakes and thrones vanished, and she was surrounded by the swirls of a fast-moving portal.

She spun in the portal, pulling out of Kristopher’s grasp. “What the hell was that, and why didn’t you just blast it with ice magic or something?” she asked. She’d always been a stubborn person, and now the fact that someone out there desperately didn’t want her to become queen of the Winter Kingdom was making her want it even more.

Kris shook his head. “My magic would have been useless against them.”

“Those weren’t normal snakes,” said William, who had joined them in the portal.

“What were they, then?” she asked.

“They were the children of the Midgard Serpent,” said Kris.

Norse myth told that the Midgard Serpent was a mighty snake wrapped around the Great Tree from its roots to its highest branches. Legend said that it would be the Serpent himself who brought about Ragnarok, which was the “end times,” for both mortal and immortal alike. Ragnarok obviously wasn’t about to happen, so the Midgard Serpent couldn’t be directly involved with any of this. He must have just had wayward children, and maybe the Entity even got to them somehow.

The portal opened up behind Poppy, and she would have been thrown backward into the unknown if Kristopher hadn’t reached out and wrapped his arm around her at same moment. She stumbled forward against his chest as Kris jumped with agile grace from the portal’s exit. Poppy regained her footing as the portal zapped shut behind all three of them, and they found themselves in a new world.

Kristopher slowly released her a second time, and Poppy turned to get her bearings. They stood atop a grassy knoll, with a view of an entire kingdom.

Poppy took it in with the slow fascination of someone watching an Imax film or flipping through a photography book. “Wow…” she whispered. If ever there had existed a place where the fantasy gardens and forests of artists’ imaginations came to life, this was it. The trees were full and devoid of dead branches or leaves. The floor was carpeted with thick, green grass without dead patches anywhere. There were mushroom rings and wildflowers galore, and there didn’t seem to be any bugs at all.

The sound of a babbling brook beckoned from somewhere nearby. A gentle breeze scented with something mildly sweet brushed through Poppy’s hair. A beautiful cobbled stone walkway cut through the fields and forests, winding its way into the far distance, where a castle of what looked like multi-colored gemstones rose from yet another valley and pierced the heavens high above.

“Where are we?” she asked breathlessly. “It looks like Eden….”

Kristopher joined her side. She felt his arm at her back and glanced up distractedly to find him smiling as if with pride. “This is Dvalin,” he told her. “The land of the Norse Dragons.”

“It’s one of my favorite places to visit too,” said William as the man moved right past them on the path to begin taking it down the hill. Poppy watched him go for a second, but found her feet didn’t immediately want to follow after him. She was rather glued to the spot because her eyes were too busy taking in all the candy, and her head was too busy processing what Kristopher had just said about dragons.

As far as she could see, there was not another living being for miles. At least not a non-plant living being.

“Did you say dragons?” she asked, seriously hoping she’d misunderstood. Kris moved around her so he was standing in front of her. Almost instantly, he encompassed her whole world, pulling her gaze to his.

“I did,” he said. “Dvalin is a beautiful realm Poppy, but there is much more here than meets the eye.” He gently cupped her cheek. His hand was warm. “Stay close and keep wary.”

She nodded. Damn, she thought. She hated it when there was so much more than met the eye. Why couldn’t something beautiful just be beautiful? Why couldn’t chocolate just taste good and not make you fat? Why couldn’t the sun just give you a tan and not skin cancer? And why did flowers and kittens have to come with allergies?

“But why are we here?”

Kris glanced down the stoned path. William had a good lead on them now, but Kristopher seemed unconcerned by the Time King’s wandering ahead. He turned back to Poppy. “The serpents in the throne room were children of the Midgard Serpent. Fortunately for us, so are the dragons in Dvalin. If you’ll recall – ”

“Dvalin was one of the doors we had to go through to get to Yggdrasil anyway,” she supplied, recalling the three realms necessary for activating the gateway to the Great Tree. “So they might be able to help us understand why the snakes appeared on the thrones and we’ll be closer to the Great Tree at the same time. Killing two birds with one stone.”

He nodded proudly. “Exactly. And it just so happens one of the dragons in Dvalin is working for me as a contracted guardian. He’s supposed to help keep an eye on both Yggdrasil, and the seed vault in Norway. Maybe he knows something I don’t about the broken root.”

Poppy blinked. “What? What seed vault?”

Kris’s expression went blank, then he shook his head. “I forgot I hadn’t told you about that yet.” He sighed. “There’s so much to show you…. In Norway, there is a building called the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. It’s just that – a massive, impenetrable building that cuts deep into a mountain and contains within its walls roughly two-hundred and sixty-eight thousand seeds from all over the planet. The seeds in the vault are placed there to protect them from forces that might otherwise lead to their extinction. It’s far underground, and the sub-zero temperature is steady. The idea is that should something happen to threaten the wellbeing of a plant species – drought, plant diseases, whatever – we can start all over again with the seeds in the vault.”

Poppy registered this, and mentally added the Svalbard seed vault as must-visit on her bucket list. “That’s incredible,” she said, meaning it. “But… why would you have dragons guarding it?”

“Because,” he said, and his expression grew serious. “The vault also holds the seed of Yggdrasil.”

Chapter Thirty-Two

In a good portion of the northern hemisphere right now, it was winter. Snow fell in some locations, and in others, it was sleet or slurry or freezing rain, whichever you chose to call it. There were pockets of heat here and there, but for the most part, people donned their long pants, weather proof boots, and jackets. The sky had taken on that low-lying quality that made people think of fire places and sofa throws and hot tea or coffee.

But where Lalura currently sat and waited for her first attacker, it was simply dark and quiet. The middle of the desert tended to be like that at night. All around her, the air was still, the sand was motionless in its dunes, and only the moon and stars above shed light on the land below. She rocked back and forth, creaking quietly in the rocking chair she’d chosen to wait in. That it was capable of rocking in the sand could only be chalked up to magic, of course.

Out here, in a place where peace had become sacred long ago, the only living being for miles was Lalura Chantelle. Out here, no one else could get hurt.

She’d brought a book to read while she waited. It was a good one too. The author had just that sort of story teller quality that pulled you out of the world around you and into another one. Kept you reading. Even while the minutes ticked away on the clock and impending doom drew nearer. Most individuals would have gone slightly mad waiting for their attacker second after second and hour after hour as she was doing. Time would have gotten to them, made them twitch and fidget. They would have given up or done something rash.

But Lalura didn’t mind waiting. Time and the way it moved was something she’d grown quite accustomed to.

Time was a fickle, haughty and punishing entity. Humans thought it to be a constant in the universe. Even as they came to realization after realization that space was not the constant they thought it to be – even as they discovered and un-discovered black holes and dark matter and anti-matter, they continued to believe that time was as they’d always thought it was. But nothing could be farther from the truth.

Mortals didn’t realize that when time “seemed to slow down” in the most boring or miserable moments, it was because time had done exactly that. They didn’t know that when it appeared to “fly when you’re having fun,” it was because time had sped up for exactly that reason. Petty and cruel as the day was long. That was time.

But she’d come to an agreement with time long ago. And now it couldn’t touch her. Not in the way that mattered.

So she sat silently and rocked quietly and read the words that transported her to another dimension until her enemy decided to make his appearance at last. The only thing that surprised Lalura Chantelle this time around was that when her attacker did appear, it was not a he – but a she.

“I hadn’t expected you to be the one do this, my dear,” her greeting softly rasped. She spoke without looking up. She was at a good part in the book.

Several feet away, a pair of purple velvet combat boots stood firmly planted in a fighter’s stance and a set of long, pale but shapely legs supported a woman with fair skin, a smattering of freckles, and waist-length hair the color of lilac-dusted snow. That hair moved in an unseen and unfelt breeze as the rest of the desert lay still and calm.

Light purple eyes gazed at the old woman in the rocking chair. They were an inhuman and impossible color, mesmerizing and unsettling. This was why they were normally disguised by magic, as was the color of her hair. But right now, they were as they’d been born – and they narrowed in anger.

“Stand up and face me, you wrinkled sack of ill-used magic.”

The voice was pure and beautiful. At the sound of it, one would know immediately that it was capable of the purest pitch, and lullabies that would send giants to long, deep slumbers in their massive beds.

Lalura Chantelle laughed. She couldn’t help it. It was a little annoying, because in such a quiet calm, her grating chuckle was louder than ever. But laughter was good nonetheless, was it not? The best medicine, they often said.

Unhurriedly, she summoned a bookmark from thin air and placed it between the pages of the book she’d been reading. Then she closed the novel with a sigh and looked up. “Your manners have improved, I see.”

Those lavender hued eyes narrowed even further, and a perfect set of bright white teeth gritted in mounting fury. “No thanks to you.”

Lalura laughed again. “Oh, of that I have no doubt, little one. I’m afraid I’ve never been a fantastic influence on you. I suppose I just don’t have the necessary instincts.” She took hold of the armrests of her rickety old rocking chair and slowly got to her feet. She may have had an agreement of sorts with time, but no one could escape all of its ravishments. Her knees, hips and back at once felt the weight of her upon them, and pain took hold of her form as it had increasingly done over the last forty decades.

As usual, she pushed past it and focused on the figure before her. “What is it exactly the Entity has sent you to do to me, little one?”

Now it was her attacker’s turn to laugh. The sound was beautiful as ever. It always had been, but the girl had matured into a woman since the last time Lalura had beheld her; her voice had matured as well. “You really are something else,” the woman said through her laughter, and shook her head. “Are you stalling for a reason hag, or are you just that unimpressed with me as usual?”

“Oh, I’ve never been unimpressed with you, my dear.” She took a deep breath and sighed heavily, preparing to use some of the magic she’d had summoned and at the ready for ages. “Quite the opposite.”

The woman watched her in silence for a moment. Then, just like that, she attacked.

Lalura fell back into the dimensional pocket of safety she’d had prepared and shook her head. I suppose this puts and end to the catch-up. She drew her hands together, closed her eyes, and let her magic flow. It shot through the dimensional hole just as her opponent’s magic slammed into the dimensional pocket so hard, it rocked violently around her. Magic strong enough to move a dimension…. But, of course. She should have expected no less.

The old witch managed to keep her balance, allowing a bit of her power to stabilize her inside the pocket, lifting her away from its boundaries so that no part of it touched her body any longer. Then she opened her eyes and watched beyond the pocket’s clear window as the magic she had sent out encountered a shield of sparkling violet hue and runic symbols.

Mmm, she thought. She’s learned to shield. Good girl.

But there was so much more to learn. There always would be. In fact, Lalura knew well that most of life was about learning lessons. Some people only learned them the hard way.

Lalura would know.

The wind that blew through her opponent’s thick, shimmering hair picked up in speed, lifting the topmost layer of sand from the desert’s floor to send it flying. The woman’s purple eyes began to shed light, flickering as if purple flames had been lit behind them. It was stunningly beautiful. Everything about her was.

Lalura touched her hand to her heart and resolved to do what she had to do. She’d known the attack would come eventually, but she hadn’t wanted to truly harm her enemy unless it was absolutely necessary. Most people were salvageable. Even at her age, she still firmly believed that.

The woman outside attacked again, this time piercing through the dimensional pocket with spears of hardened air. They had bits of sand in them that interrupted the air’s iridescence. It looked almost like ice. Lalura used her agreement with time and slowed down a bit to take a single step back, saving herself from the razor-sharp point of one of these spears by a few millimeters.

She looked down and watched the long, pointed cone of hardened air slowly turn in place.

“Very well,” she said softly.

The old woman drew her hands together one final time, called for the magic she had hoped not to use, and sent it hurling through the window at her attacker. She both saw and felt her magic beat up against a shield, this one stronger than before. But her power pushed stubbornly past it just enough to touch the woman behind it.

A brush of darkness, and the spell was done.

Quiet once more claimed the desert. Lalura dissolved the dimensional pocket and stepped out. Even now, the remnants of the stranger’s magic were so strong, a breeze continued to whisper around the tall, pale woman’s fallen form. It picked up strands of her violet-white hair and brushed them gently across her beautiful face. Lalura approached the body and said softly, “Scribo Vale.”

A scroll tied with a violet ribbon appeared before the woman’s body.

Then Lalura closed her blue eyes and transported away.

Chapter Thirty-Three

“But I thought Yggdrasil’s seeds were snowflakes?”

“The Great Tree’s fruit is snowflakes. It has but one seed. It was all Yggdrasil could create. The Tree gave it to Winter long ago for safe keeping. Just in case.”

They caught up with William as the trail began to cut through a forest. It wasn’t as gradual a transition as it would have been on Earth. In Dvalin, there were plush grass and wild flowers one step, and in the next, the grass was split by the trunks of trees so tall, they reminded Poppy of the redwoods back home. The branches reached far overhead, shunning the sunlight and providing a shaded, eerie feel to the forest’s depths. Poppy tried to see completely through the forest in order to determine about when they would be popping out the other side of the woods, but somewhere in the crowd of trees, all light was lost and the trail pretty much disappeared.

“These are the kinds of woods people write fairy tales about,” she said softly as they moved deeper into the thick. Their boots made that wonderful leather-on-stone sound Poppy had always adored, and suddenly she realized something. She was at that very moment living every dream she’d ever had. But for a bit of private and thrilling tenderness between her legs, nothing hurt her right now. She felt tall and beautiful and powerful. She was wearing her favorite outfit – her best jeans, her most flattering white top, and her colorful scarf – and favorite pair of boots. And she was walking on a cobbled-stone path through unbelievably beautiful, dark and spooky woods, escorted by two drop-dead gorgeous men, one of which she’d actually slept with.

She glanced up at that particular gorgeous man and a shiver went through her at the study of his outline. She imagined him on his throne, calmly formidable. She imagined him in that final battle, wielding that sword of ice as if it were an extension of him. And she pictured him on that motorcycle she’d first seen him leaning against – the one she’d obliterated.

She found herself grinning ear to ear. It doesn’t get better than this.

He suddenly came to a stop, and his arm snaked down, his hand spanning her abdomen to bring her to a halt. “Wait.”

Beside him, William stopped as well, and his head cocked as if he were listening. Poppy really wanted to ask, “What is it?” but that would probably utterly defeat the purpose of standing very still and listening. It was obvious they didn’t know what it was. They were trying to figure it out.

Poppy listened as well. She strained as she very slowly looked through the forest around her. Once, years ago, she’d been given a 1,000 piece puzzle as a gift for Christmas. It was one of those puzzles that had four different ways in which you could hang it, meaning there were four different bottoms, depending on which image you wanted as your “main” image. Her favorite of the four had been a forest with a path through it. The forest had been so flawless, with straight, tall trees growing up from a smooth grassy forest floor devoid of underbrush or sticker bushes or anything else that could mar its perfection. The path had been white stone and clean, free of trash or weeds. It had been the ultimate fantasy setting, which was the only reason she actually went through all the trouble of putting the damn thing together.

That scene was almost exactly what she looked into now as she peered hard into its far shadows and attempted to make out what could have brought Kristopher to a stand-still. After what must have been several full minutes, she finally looked back up at him and was about to ask him what was going on.

And then he spun, and she was shoved behind him and into William’s arms as Kristopher moved so fast, he literally blurred. His figure flashed, shifting from black leather jacket-wearing hottie to Thor-like god, replete with a massive sword of ice in his right hand. Crackling ice spread like wildfire from the path and across the grass with terrifying speed. Within milliseconds, it had climbed up the trunks of the nearest trees.

Something had been behind them, something very large and indescribably quiet, since no matter how hard she had tried, Poppy had not been able to hear it approach. But Kristopher’s sword swung a single arc and stopped – and everything came to a stand-still once more as the enormous brown figure that had been behind them on the path shifted forms as well, and the tip of Kristopher’s mighty weapon finally rested threateningly in the hollow of a skinny young man.

Less than a full second had been all the time it took for the ice to spread, for Kris to change, and for this stranger before them to go from giant monster to small, harmless looking man.

The first thing that went through Poppy’s mind upon seeing the stranger was the word “brown.” He had thick brown hair, large brown eyes, light brown skin, and wore plain brown clothes, all of the same hue. His boots even managed to be brown, and Poppy could not tell exactly what material they were crafted from. She hadn’t really seen anything like them before.

“Your majesty,” the man greeted Kris, giving a very slight bow of just his head. He couldn’t move much more than that, though he also seemed completely unworried that there was a blade so close to his throat. “I apologize for approaching in my natural form. I had not known you were visiting.”

Kristopher relaxed, lowering his sword. “Elmheart.” Relief washed over his handsome features. “No, I’m the one who should apologize. I’m here without warning this time.” He sheathed his sword of ice, and it made a wicked sound as it slid into its scabbard. Then Kristopher’s form flashed once more, and he was again dressed in his normal mortal-looking clothing. The ice on the forest floor began to retreat from the nearby tree trunks, shrinking back toward the stone path.

“How do you fare?” Kris asked conversationally.

“Quite well, thank you,” replied the small man. His brown eyes shifted from Kristopher to Poppy. “Who might your lovely new companion be?”

“Elmheart, this is Poppy Nix.” He paused, just a beat. Then, with a big smile, he added, “She is my queen.”

Elmheart’s eyes grew very wide. Now he bowed with his entire body and not just his head. “My lady. It is my undying pleasure to make your acquaintance.” He looked up from his bent position, and a teasing gleam took his eyes. “I had begun to believe Kris was lying about his prowess with those of the female persuasion. He’s been waiting for the right girl for more than a millennium, you know.”

Poppy sucked in her lips.

Kristopher crossed his arms over his chest.

Elmheart stood back up and grinned. “I’m so pleased you’ve proven me wrong for beginning to doubt! I can’t wait to show you to the Dragon Council,” he said to Poppy. “Eweness owes me thirty seed. You’ll be happy to hear, Kristopher, I bet on you and not against you where this is concerned.”

“You placed bets on whether he would ever take a queen?” asked William, his smile quietly bemused.

“Oh yes,” nodded Elmheart energetically.

“It means nothing,” said Kristopher darkly. “The Sapplings have a gambling problem. They bet on everything.” He gave Elmheart a reprimanding look, then said, “Speaking of seeds, I must talk with Dvalin. The matter is urgent.”

Again, Elmheart took on a wide-eyed expression, and he nodded. “Oh dear, of course! Follow me!” He turned and began running down the path, further into the forest.

“Elmheart!” called Kristopher.

The man skidded to a halt and turned to face them. Kristopher shook his head. “Don’t you think it would be a lot faster if you took us there in your true form?”

Elmheart’s face lit up. “Oh, yes! Right!” He nodded.

Poppy gasped as the forest’s trees suddenly shifted further away from the path. They actually seemed to move – to just slide to the side, away from the stone trail. A second later, she realized that the extra space had been necessary.

Elmheart’s small, skinny stature swelled, and his figure morphed. Poppy stared in wonder as the tiny man that had been standing before them a moment earlier grew by leaps and bounds to become an honest to goodness dragon. Now she knew why so much of him had been brown. In dragon form, he looked to be made entirely of wood.

Kristopher looked down at Poppy; she could see and feel him staring at her. But she couldn’t take her eyes off Elmheart’s new form. Beside her, Kristopher chuckled. “This is Elmheart Everwood,” he told her through that laughter. “The forest dragon.”

Chapter Thirty-Four

I’m riding a dragon.

She forced herself to take another breath, because she kept forgetting to do so and she kept not breathing.

I’m freaking riding a freaking dragon!

What she’d thought earlier, while she’d been walking on that path through the woods. What she’d mused about life not getting better than that – well, she’d been wrong. It could totally get better than that. And it just had!

She laughed out loud, barely refraining from giving a massive whoop as Elmheart dipped beneath her, making her stomach ride up a little into her throat. Her face was grinning so hard, her cheeks were starting to hurt.

The wind whipped through her hair, her eyes were watering, and her hands were clasped so tightly in Elmheart’s fur, she didn’t know if she’d be able to get them unclenched again. It was like being in an airplane with the dips making the seat leave your ass and the rises making you sink further into it, except there were no walls to protect you from the elements.

Oh yeah. And there was one more very important difference. Whereas, it would take a syringe filled with surgical anesthesia to get her on a plane, Poppy wasn’t terrified of this. Magic, good and strong, kept her on the dragon, and there were no engines that could suddenly give out on either side of her. So there was no chance of her falling off and very little chance of the plane falling out from under her. And that made all the difference in the world.

Kris had even let her sit in the front. Of course, that might have just been because he wanted to keep an eye on her. His steely arms had yet to leave their places firmly wrapped around her mid-section.

“Let us down in the courtyard!” Kris called, speaking over Poppy’s shoulder. The dragon gave a nod of its enormous head and took another dip. Poppy gasped as her stomach again took up brief residence in her throat and the winged beast angled for the castle below. It was the same castle she’d seen in the distance from their vantage point atop the hill where they’d first come through the portal.

It really is made of gemstones. She’d thought it might have been a trick of the light, like sequins under the sun. But there was no trick. The castle was literally built out of what looked like one gigantic single piece of multi-hued sapphire. It rainbowed from green to blue, blue to purple, from purple to red and into orange and yellow before starting the pattern all over again. She wondered why she wasn’t going blind from some kind of glare until she realized it was because the castle seemed to be absorbing light rather than releasing it.

“Amazing,” she whispered aloud.

“It’s alive,” Kris whispered in her ear.

Poppy’s brow furrowed. “What?” she asked over her shoulder.

He grinned. “You’ll see.”

Elmheart let them down with incredible gentility. One second, he was hovering above the thick grass of the courtyard, and the next, he was at a full stop and Kris and William were sliding off. Kristopher got off first and reached up, taking Poppy around the waist to ease her down. She let him. Sometimes it was nice to be the girl.

“Dvalin is in the inner chambers,” said Elmheart. He shifted back into his human form and began walking toward the glittering double doors of the castle. Each door stood well over fifty feet high, and must have weighed several hundred tons.

A man stood beside each door. As the party approached, both men reached forward and took hold of the ring on their side. They pulled, and the doors swung open.

“They’re stronger than they look,” Poppy muttered.

“That’s rather what dragons do,” William said. “Go around being stronger than they look.” She shot him a look, and the three of them followed Elmheart into the inner sanctum of the dragon castle.

Five minutes and ten thousand marvels later, Poppy found her breathless self sitting at a crystalline table beside a window in a veranda-style room high up at the top reaches of the castle. The crystal table was apparently one more part of one absolutely enormous but single crystal that grew and shifted and changed in order to create the castle around them. That was how it was alive. Like any crystal, it continued to grow over time. But in this realm, the speed with which it did so was exaggerated, and the shapes it made did not adhere to a strict symmetrical pattern. There were rooms with crystal swimming pools… rooms with miniature crystal forests… rooms with small streams flowing through them and crystal flowers growing from the floor and even rooms with countless dangling figurines dangling from the ceiling, each one a prism cut into a different animal or plant, each one extraordinary and unique and impossibly detailed. The castle was a living treasure trove of absolute wonder.

Poppy sighed happily and gazed out the window that spanned the length of the room they’d finally settled down in. The view from this height made the one she’d originally had atop that hill in the distance pale in comparison. Here, she could see to the far reaches of the realm. Literally – the edges of the realm shimmered with an iridescence, like the skin of a giant bubble.

“Dvalin is a beautiful realm, but it’s a small one,” said the dragon they’d come there to see. It just so happened the realm was named after him. His name was Dvalin too. King Dvalin of the Dragon Realm.

“I wonder what the Dragon King back home would think about you,” Poppy said suddenly, changing the subject. She hadn’t meant to say it out loud, it was just that she’d been thinking it. She’d been wondering whether the king who sat at the table of the Thirteen even knew this dragon king existed.

All three kings looked at her. She felt conspicuous at once. “What?”

Dvalin’s eyes twinkled.

“She has a point,” said William with a small smile. “Arach doesn’t even know Dvalin exists. The land or the king. I bet he’d blow a fuse.”

“Short tempered, is he?” asked Dvalin in an unusually high-pitched voice. He gently placed his delicate, tiny tea cup back into its saucer and batted his long eyelashes. Poppy never would have pegged the man for a king. A queen, maybe.

Dvalin’s shoulder-length paper white hair was striped with conspicuous blue streaks, massive stag antlers rose from his skull to a height of at least three feet, and his red-gold eyes possessed symbols of some sort floating through their irises. But other than these three very obvious tells, the man looked positively normal. Well… as normal as a cross-dressing ash-blonde man of six-foot-something can look, anyway.

Okay, so there was nothing normal about him whatsoever.

“You’re fascinating,” Poppy whispered. Oh shit. She hadn’t meant to say that either! It had just come right out! What the hell is wrong with me? she wondered as her cheeks grew hot and she tried to sink into the crystal of her chair. What’s with all the sudden candor?

Dvalin threw back his head and gave a full-bodied laugh that utterly belied the femininity he was trying so hard to convey. But when the laughter died down, he wiped his eyes with a tissue, as a woman would, and cleared his throat. “My dear, so are you.”

Kristopher laced his hands together on the table top and squared the dragon king with a hard look. “What Dvalin means to say, Poppy, is that people find it difficult to be anything but outwardly honest around Dvalin. It’s one of his powers. And he finds it refreshing that your honesty isn’t judgmental or cruel, as it happens to be for so many humans.”

“And I happen to think I would make a wonderful queen too,” said Dvalin with a wink.

Poppy’s blood now dropped right back out of her cheeks, and she grew cold. “Can you read my mind?”

“That’s another one of his powers,” said Kristopher. His gaze narrowed on the Norse Dragon king, which caused Dvalin to chuckle again.

“Now, now,” said Dvalin. “You’ve come here to discuss Yggdrasil. So let’s get down to business and do so. As Mr. Solan would no doubt put it, the clock is ticking.”

“Ticking is what it does,” said William quietly. There was a distinct note of weariness in his tone, but servants came forward then to clear the table, and a weathered piece of blank parchment was laid out between the four of them, and Poppy forgot about it.

“Whose watch was it when the tree’s root was compromised?” asked Kristopher.

“That would have been Cobalt, Adriel, and Drayhem.”

Kristopher nodded. “A rock dragon, a sky dragon, and a sea dragon,” he explained aloud, most likely for Poppy’s benefit.

Dvalin nodded, but his expression grew dour. He waved his hand over the parchment, which began to fill with the lines of a topography drawing. There were lights all over the map, pulsing with life. But three lights were off to the side, as if to represent they were not in the world at al. “All three have yet to return from their watch. Therefore, I’m afraid it is safe to assume….”

“They’ve been killed,” supplied William. It sounded a little cold when he put it bluntly like that. Poppy felt that coldness in her gut.

“It’s quite alright, Miss Nix,” said Dvalin gently. He must have noticed her discomfort. “My dragons knew what they were contracting for when they took the job. They were well aware of the risks. While the forest dragons may delight in such pastimes as games and gambling, the rock, sky, and sea dragons tend to enjoy battle more than anything. And protecting Yggdrasil is a task worth dying for.”

He turned to Kristopher, gestured at the map, and the parchment rolled itself back up. He changed the subject with the expertise of someone who had been in charge of discussions like this for eons. “You are also concerned about a cluster of serpents who apparently appeared in your throne room.”

Kristopher glanced at Poppy, then back at Dvalin. “I suppose coming to see you with a human in tow completely negates the fact that you can’t read either my mind or William’s.”

Dvalin grinned. Poppy caught the hint of fangs. “It does.”

“Very well,” Kristopher nodded. “They were direct offspring of Jormungand. And since you’re related to him as well….”

“You thought I might have an idea of why they were your throne room, as well as how they got there.” Dvalin’s smile was quite pleased.

Kristopher sighed. “That’s about the whole of it.”

Poppy remembered just enough of her study of Norse mythology to know that Jormungand was the Midgard Serpent. It helped that one of her parents was of Nordic descent.

“Well, my answer is, I have absolutely no idea. On either account. However… I’m betting it has something to do with that Valkyrie your future queen is so worried about. Odin’s shield maidens are a lofty bunch, I admit. But revenge will clip any angel’s wings.” He looked pointedly at Kristopher, as if to refer specifically to the Winter King’s own personal bout with revenge. “I wouldn’t put it past the Valkyrie to contract with Jormungand in this case.” He paused then added, “Especially since the Serpent was already involved.”

Those at the small crystal table grew very quiet and very still as Dvalin calmly lifted his porcelain tea cup, took a ginger sip of the steaming liquid, and returned it to its saucer. Finally, Kristopher leaned forward. Poppy could see from his expression and the hardening of the ice in his eyes that he was figuring out exactly what she was figuring out. That the Midgard Serpent was –

Kristopher asked, “Are you telling me it was Jormungand who – ”

“I’m telling you it was the Midgard Serpent himself who sank his fangs into Yggdrasil’s root and severed it from the Great Tree.”

Holy hell, Poppy thought. The Midgard Serpent is involved after all.

“Well, that’s not good,” said William.

Chapter Thirty-Five

He’d really thought the Entity had been at the core of all this trouble. What else could he have believed? The Entity was at the core of all trouble these days, and this was the root of Yggdrasil. But it wasn’t him after all.

In truth, going up against the Midgard Serpent was not something Kristopher had ever thought he would have to do. The only time anyone of Norse descent would ever expect to have to come face to face with Jormungand was during Ragnarok. But Ragnarok was a myth, and as relevant to everyday Norse life as the apocalypse was for Christians – in other words, it wasn’t. It was this vague, ironically inconsequential threat that didn’t really mean anything because it wasn’t ever actually going to happen.

Because life went on. It just did. Every day. And it would keep doing so for another 5 billion years, until the sun went Red Giant and swallowed up the planet. And by then, humans would probably have moved on to the outer planets anyway, if not other solar systems – and so life would still continue, regardless. There was no apocalypse. There was no Ragnarok.

Not only that, but as he’d told Poppy, legends and myths tended to botch their facts now and then, and the Great Tree actually had nothing to do with Ragnarok after all. It was the source of Winter and it bound Winter’s immortal realms to the mortal realm.

Hell, there were times when Kris would have believed the Serpent wasn’t even real, if it weren’t for the fact that the Norse Dragons were its living descendants, and some were old enough to have met their father personally.

So Kris truly hadn’t expected to have to deal with the Serpent. Ever.

But apparently Jormungand was tired of waiting. Maybe he was lonely. Maybe he was a little pissed that the Fates had determined he would be utterly ignored until the end of the fucking world. Maybe he was throwing a temper tantrum.

He’d certainly gotten Kristopher’s attention.

The Winter King had no choice now but to face him. And the other ironic thing was that in order to confront the Midgard Serpent, Kris would need all of his strength back. The very strength Jormungand had severed when he’d cut off the Great Tree’s root. Who knew what the Serpent would do next? Sever another root? Cut the Tree down entirely?

“One doorway down, two to go,” sighed William once they’d transported back to the ice castle and were again standing in the study. They were clustered in the middle of the room, facing one another.

“We’re heading to the seed vault first,” said Kristopher. He found the nearest table and used a bit of his magic to summon food and drinks for them. Bread, cheese, fruit, sweets, and teas of varying flavors appeared across the coffee table. “And you have no reason to accompany us, William. This isn’t your fight.”

“Right,” Will said. “Because saving the world has nothing to do with me.”

Kristopher met his gaze. Steady emerald stared right back.

“In fact,” continued Will undaunted, “I am not opposed to the idea of letting some of the other kings in on this. We could use all the help we can get.”

Kristopher shook his head. “If it is a trap, I won’t be responsible for compromising any of them.” Especially not now, he added mentally, when so many of them are finally finding the happiness they deserve, and the rest are on the verge of doing so.

“Forgive me for changing the subject,” said Poppy as she made her way over to the coffee table perhaps a little too quickly to hide her immediate interest in it. It was just as he’d suspected; she was hungry. She was mortal still. That was why he’d made sure to include Honeycrisp apples amidst the dishes. She’d told him she adored them. “But how did Dvalin know that the Midgard Serpent had been the one to damage Yggdrasil if his three guardians had yet to return from their watch?”

“The Serpent and his children are connected at a fundamental level,” he told her. “The eldest of the dragons in Dvalin, such as Dvalin himself, are capable of gleaning information about him, such as this. But only the most basic knowledge is passed on. The rest is a blur.”

Poppy took one of the apples from the bowl of fruit he’d magically placed there and rubbed it on her shirt. “Okay,” she said before taking a giant bite. Then, around that giant bite, she asked, “Why dow he dwess ike he dow?”

Kristopher tried not to smile, and failed. Both the subject matter and the way she was asking about it were funny. She wanted to know why Dvalin dressed the way he did. “Dvalin is ancient and sometimes he gets bored. But believe me, today was all an act.” He chuckled. The things he’d seen the dragon do over the years would bewilder anyone. At this point, Kris very much doubted there was anything Dvalin could do that would surprise him. But in all the multiverse, there were few creatures more powerful than the Norse Dragon king. Almost all of them were gods. One of them was Lalura Chantelle. “He is connected to his realm by blood,” he explained. “It was literally his blood that seeded the realm’s creation. When someone enters it, he feels it. No doubt, he sensed the arrival of an unknown mortal and decided to play it safe.”

Poppy finished chewing her enormous bite and swallowed. “You mean by mystifying me?”

He laughed again. “Perhaps. By confusing you, to say the least. It’s difficult for most mortals to think of someone who behaves and dresses in that manner as being strong or powerful. Judgments annul wisdom. What better defensive tactic than to force your enemy to underestimate you from the get-go?”

“So why didn’t he drop the act when he realized I meant him no harm and couldn’t have even if I’d wanted to?”

Kris grinned. “By that time, he was just plain having fun.”

Poppy shook her head, ran her free hand through her hair, and looked down at the food. He could tell she wasn’t really seeing what was there on the coffee table, though. She really was mystified. This had been a lot for her to take in. She was just lucky she’d already been familiar with the idea of magic and other realms before fate had dumped her lot in her lap.

There was a flash behind Kristopher, and he turned to find that the Time King was no longer standing in his study. Odd.

“Well, that happened,” Poppy said.

William didn’t possess the ability to transport on his own, but he’d lived long enough to acquire plenty of other means for using magic. It was certainly a little strange that he hadn’t given them a warning, though.

“I thought he didn’t have any magical powers?” Poppy asked, looking up from where she’d moved to the opposite side of the coffee table. Her non-apple hand now had two cookies in it. Chocolate chip, of course.

“He doesn’t. Well, not internally anyway. Actually….” He frowned, his mind churning through the scenarios of time and space.

“I see you’re thinking the same thing I am,” said Poppy. She smiled and took a big bite out of one of her cookies. He wondered if she knew how to take anything but big bites, and for some bizarre reason, that turned him on.

“What are you thinking?” he asked, curious.

She shrugged, moving her cookies to her apple hand so she could pick up a fresh croissant. “Well, I mean, think about it. If you lived forever, literally forever… wouldn’t it be probable that given that amount of time, you would learn a trick or two? Wouldn’t it be impossible not to? How long would a normal mortal have to survive before discovering magic, and not only discovering it, but learning to control it – inherent magical ability or not? A thousand years? Ten thousand years? A hundred thousand?”

Crunch. Poppy carved into her apple again with her perfect white teeth. He could watch her eat all day. She didn’t delicately nibble or take tiny pieces and leave three-quarters of her meal on her anorexic plate. She ate like a warrior. It was actually turning him on.

But what she was saying garnered attention too. Normally, being a mage didn’t work that way. It truly was a gift a person was born with and learned to hone over time. But she was right. And he had been thinking it, if only now and quite suddenly. He’d always assumed that when William flashed from one transport location to another, he was using a ring or a pendant or some kind of charm. And he’d assumed William was able to access the Winter Kingdom because of the charm Kris had given him long ago.

But now Kris could see that he hadn’t given the Time King the credit he perhaps deserved. After all, William had learned to communicate with the Dire Bears. That was no small feat. What else could he do?

Kristopher pondered it for exactly 4.6 seconds further. Until Poppy winked at him from behind her juicy, half-eaten apple, and he decided he had an appetite of his own to satisfy.

Chapter Thirty-Six

“Is there any way of tracing where she’s been in other realms?” Violet asked anxiously. She’d been pacing back and forth on the other side of the spell casting table for what felt like forever now, and Lalura’s fascination with whatever concoction she was working on in that pot of hers was beginning to aggravate Violet to no end. Why wasn’t she as concerned about Poppy as Violet was? Why wouldn’t she say something that would make Violet feel better? Something like, “Abracadabra, and here she is in my scrying spell!”

After that odd phone call from her friend two nights ago, Violet had hung up feeling a little off. She’d tried to shrug it off, but not a whole hour had gone by before she’d checked her phone to see that Violet had left a message. Once she heard the message, she’d known she was right to be worried.

She’d called her friend back immediately, but the phone had done this strange crackling thing and the call was never connected. It wasn’t that it went to voice mail. It was that it simply didn’t work. Not one time out of the fifteen times that Violet tried. And it was obvious to her that the reason it wasn’t working was magical in nature.

So she fell back on her new powers as the Shadow Queen. She sank into the Shadow Realm and began asking around. No one in any of the shadows covering the mortal realm had seen Poppy Nix since earlier that night, when she’d transported out from her apartment bedroom and into some other realm, of course taking her shadow with her.

Apparently, she hadn’t fallen asleep since then either, because that damn shadow of hers had been just as inaccessible as Poppy herself. Which meant it was still attached – ergo, she was awake.

Violet’s next attempt at locating her friend had been a scrying spell. But she’d never been particularly fantastic with them, not without Lalura’s help, and she came up empty-handed. All she saw in the damn scrying bowl was snow. Snow! Tons and tons of goddamn snow. But it was snowing in so many places right now, including Seattle, which was where Poppy lived. So that was a waste of time and magic too.

Finally, the next day she’d come to see Lalura.

She didn’t want to show the powerful witch any disrespect, but Violet had come to her in a kind of desperation. She needed help with a scrying spell that could see into the other realms and dimensions, and Lalura claimed to be working on something far too important to put away just then. Violet told her that was fine and that she would wait.

But whatever it was, she’d been doing it for an hour and a half now. Why wouldn’t she hurry it up?! Why wasn’t she more concerned?!

Violet stopped dead in her pacing tracks. A thought had suddenly occurred to her. It felt like a knot inside that was slowly unwinding, un-knotting, to reveal itself for the thread of realization it was.

Lalura wasn’t concerned. She wasn’t hurrying. And that was just it. That was the most telling thing Lalura could possibly have done in this situation.

Slowly, Violet faced the ancient witch behind the spelling table. Lalura hadn’t looked up. Like one of Shakespeare’s three crones, she simply continued to nonchalantly stir whatever it was that was inside that cauldron.

“Oh my God,” said Violet. “I know where she is.”

Lalura said nothing. But there was an instant and opposite sensation in the magic around her that told Violet the old woman was listening.

“It’s just like when Poppy wanted to follow me into the Shadow Kingdom and you wouldn’t let her. And then I wouldn’t let her.”

Silence. Stir. The fire in the hearth crackled.

“She’s with her king, isn’t she?”

Lalura snorted. “It took you long enough, child.”

Violet stood there for some time, her hands on her hips, her expression one of outright awe. Lalura always seemed to know! She knew about everything! How did one woman manage all of that?

“What are you making, anyway?” an exasperated and bewildered Violet asked.

“It’s more lifeblood for your sister.”

Violet’s eyes grew even wider. “Lifeblood” was what they called the magical potion Lalura had created for Dahlia, who had been turned into a vampire by the Entity. As long as she drank one every now and then, she would not be compelled to attack anyone for their blood.

“You mean to tell me I’ve been standing here for an hour and a half, worrying my brains out while you cooked up a leisurely batch of what amounts to magical sugar water for Dahlia? But she makes that herself! Almost every day!”

“True. But she says she’s tired of the grape flavor. So I’m making her some that tastes like root beer.” The old woman smiled, leaned forward, and took a long whiff of the steam rising up from the pot. “That’s perfect. Root beer’s one of my favorites.”

There were several seconds of shocked silence before Violet finally exploded. “How on Earth is that ‘far too important’ to put away?” she squealed.

Now Lalura did look up. And all at once, Violet was reminded of just how powerful and influential an individual she was. She felt the blood leave her face and a lump form in her throat as Lalura stared her down.

“My child, you try going more than a month with a single, sweet taste on your tongue and I promise you will very quickly find out for yourself.”

Chapter Thirty-Seven

They’d spent an irresponsible but blissful amount of time learning even more about each other on a very personal level on the couches and rugs in the study, and then Poppy had gone back to the food on the coffee table.

She’d eaten until she was full and Kristopher had remained seated across from her in the study, telling her stories of his past. She’d been content to just listen and chew, and he’d genuinely seemed content to just open up to her. There was so much about the history of the Norse that he could clear up, so much about its mythology and culture and language that he would be able to set historians straight on. Alas, his only proof was his life. And it just wouldn’t work to walk into a professor’s office and say, “Hey, you wanna know what that thousand year-old text really means? I’ll tell you. I was there.”

“How are you feeling?” he suddenly asked as she finished off the last of her tea.

“Honestly?” She put down her cup and turned her attention inward. She was sore in all the right places and sated in every possible way. “I feel really good.”

Kristopher’s eyes flashed. “You know, it’s been two days and almost three nights since we left Seattle.”

Poppy blinked. “What?” There was no way. That much time had not passed.

“Time moves a little differently in the Winter Kingdom. But even so, if you weren’t… who you are,” he smiled meaningfully, “you’d be dead tired right about now.”

Poppy chewed on her cheek. “You think I still need convincing that I’m meant to be here.”

“Nah,” he said, shaking his head and leaning back in his chair to lace his hands behind his head. “Just driving the point home.”

Poppy gave him a look.

“Now,” he said, changing the subject smugly, “I think we should head to the vault.” He dropped his hands and jumped out of the chair, surprising her with a sudden display of agility.

“What? Now? Don’t you think we should wait for William?”

“No, I don’t.” He moved past her to the bookshelf that was behind her. Once there, he pressed in a series of books, and the cracking sound she’d been hearing in the settling ice of the castle grew slightly louder.

“What the –” She jumped out of her own chair and stared as the books he’d touched sank further into the bookshelves and something automatic somewhere began to whir like a steam engine.

“We’ll go this way.”

“You have a secret passageway behind a set of bookshelves?” she asked incredulously. “Activated mechanically? Why not just use magic or transport?”

“Because that is exactly what others would expect me to do,” he said as the bookshelf began sliding outward and she took a step back. It moved out about nine inches to the sound of ice scraping against ice, then slid to the side to reveal an opening in the ice wall behind it.

Poppy shook her head. “Just like in the movies.”

Kristopher turned a smile on her. “This is where I go when I don’t want my signature traced. Like now.”

Poppy eyed him warily. “You really don’t want William following us, do you?”

Kristopher’s expression darkened just enough that Poppy had her confirmation. But he didn’t say anything. Instead, he stepped past the bookshelf and started his descent down a flight of stairs. She hurried to follow him.

“Are you thinking he’s the traitor?” she asked.

“I hope not.”

“So do I,” she admitted. “I like him.”

The wall of the winding staircase down supported sconces holding torches at varying heights. The torches lit up as Kristopher passed each one, and the fire they displayed was the same rainbow-hued fire that had been in the hearths upstairs.

“Even if he’s on the level, coming with us can only ruin his chances of finding his queen. I wouldn’t willingly do that to anyone.”

The steps going down were ice, just like the rest of the castle. However, unlike the rest of the palace, they were laced with something black and gold. “What is this?” Poppy asked.

“Runes. They will erase any trace of us as we descend. Should give us a little time to get to Yggdrasil before anyone is the wiser.”

Poppy’s gut tightened. Something unsettling found its way to the base of her spine. He was suddenly taking an awful lot of precautionary measures. “Kristopher, what’s going on? What is it you aren’t telling me? Is it the Entity? Is he involved after all?”

He paused on a step below her, and she barely kept herself from running into him. He turned to look up at her. “I’m not sure,” he said. “And that’s the truth. But better safe than sorry.”

She caught his gaze, and something passed between them.

“Poppy,” he said, coming back up a few steps until they were head to head on the staircase. “If you believe anything I tell you, believe this. You are my queen, therefore you are my world. You are the most important piece on the chessboard. Everything I do from here on out will be about you. I will eat, sleep, and drink you. I will breathe you. And I will stop breathing without you.” He cupped her cheek, and electric warmth surged through that touch and into her body, rushing through her like a drug. She closed her eyes and pressed into his hand, savoring the feel of it.

He leaned in, so his next words were whispered across her lips. “If you go, the game is lost, my queen. So I’m not going to do anything I believe will put you in danger. Do you understand?”

She nodded. She did understand.

Right then, in that moment, on those stairs, she understood better than ever.

When his lips touched hers, she opened them to him, and when he pulled her against him and tasted her deeply, it was more than her lips she was offering him. It was her understanding, her acceptance, and her ultimate surrender. She kissed him back with all of this and more, and he held her so tight it hurt.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

When they came out of the transport, it was dark and still. They were standing in the snow on a road made of compressed ice, in a barren and empty landscape of white. Directly in front of them stood a mountain, also covered in snow. Coming out of that mountain, like a space age doorway to another dimension, was a large rectangle-shaped entrance that Poppy would guesstimate at about thirty feet tall. Near its top, it seemed to be decorated with shards of glass or metal that almost glowed in the blue-white light coming from lamps placed strategically in the concrete of the doorway.

The mountain was called Spitsbergen, as was the Norwegian island it created. The global seed vault cut half-way into the mountain, and according to Kristopher, it then broke into three different rooms where the seeds themselves were stored.

“This is the mortal entryway,” said Kristopher. “Believe it or not, it’s also the immortal entryway. I laced one over the other as a further safeguard. In order for any supernatural being to slip through the wards, they’ll need to pass through the door. That includes us.”

“Do you have a key?”

Kristopher laughed, and it was a little self-deprecating. “No. Once I hid the seed inside, I figured I would never be back to claim it. Making a key would have been a good idea.”

“No problem,” said Poppy. She grinned. Breaching magic just happened to be some of the warlock magic she was best at. “I can get us in.”

“Well… I was going to just melt the locks,” Kristopher said with a smile, “but if you’ve got a better idea, then by all means.”

At first, Poppy wondered why he wouldn’t decide to freeze the locks and break them instead, since using cold magic took less of his strength than heat did. But then they approached the door itself, and she could see that the lock on the door was completely frozen over already. And she realized that freezing locks would have been something the builders took into account in the first place.

“Right,” she said, speaking to herself. She turned to Kristopher. “Here goes.”

He smiled reassuringly. Poppy placed her bare hand over the white frozen lock and closed her eyes. She began to speak, giving voice to a kind of magic that slipped into the smallest cracks, infiltrated the most secret spaces, and twisted things around. The air around Poppy became agitated. There was a popping sound, a thunk, and what sounded like metal sliding against metal.

Poppy opened her eyes and took a deep breath. “We’re in.” She reached for the handle, but Kristopher stopped her with a hand over hers.

“Remember the wards.”

“Oh. Right,” she said again, letting her arms drop.

Kris pulled her a few feet from the door, and his eyes lit up. He began to whisper ancient magic of his own in a language she didn’t recognize. She watched his blue eyes take on an eerie, wicked glow, and suddenly blue-white runes began to appear around the Svalbard doorway. They floated in the ice as if floating on water, but as Kristopher’s words rose in volume, they unwound from their initial shapes, floated around some more, and re-shaped into new runes.

Kris opened his eyes and stopped speaking. The runes vanished, fading back into the ice and concrete. “It’s safe.”

Poppy reached for the door handle and pulled the door open. It swung outward just like any door to any building, and the two stepped inside.

Just as he’d described, the interior of the vault was quite plain and very simple. Directly before the front door was a long hallway. Built into the hallway were three metal doors, two on the side, and one at the end. Each door would lead to a separate room containing stored seeds.

The feel of the place was cold and hard. Poppy could imagine that if anyone spent any real length of time here, depression would set in. It reminded her of a prison cell with its white wall on one side and locked doors on the other, and nothing else for the eye to see but the gray of the concrete ground.

Something was amiss, however. She couldn’t put her finger on it exactly; the place just felt disturbed. “Where are your guards?” she asked. Kris had told her he employed more guards to protect the seed vault as well as Yggdrasil.

Kristopher’s expression was grim. “That’s exactly what I was wondering. They would have remained invisible to human workers, but I don’t even see them.” He moved to the second door on the side, which was effectively the middle door. “This way.”

But when they approached the door and were afforded a closer look, Poppy could immediately see what was amiss. The lock on the door was not frozen as the other two were.

“Someone has been here,” Poppy whispered, speaking quietly on the off chance that whoever had been there was there still. “It would have had to be very recently.” The temperature in the vault was cold enough to ice things over in minutes flat.

“Stand back,” he told her, keeping his voice low and motioning for her to step out of the way. By his stance, Poppy could see that he fully planned on breaking the door down, probably to catch whoever was on the other side by surprise.

“Wait,” she said. “I have a better idea.” He looked at her questioningly. “Breaching magic is something I happen to be very good at,” she told him. She glanced back at the door down the hall that they’d just come through, and raised a brow.

“I see,” Kristopher said, and a smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. “Let me deal with the ward, then.” Just as he had done for the main vault door, Kristopher drew the protective runes of his ward out of the building’s construction and rearranged them. When he was finished, he gestured to the door. “Your turn.”

During their lessons, Lalura had often muttered to herself that if she didn’t keep Poppy on the straight and narrow, one day she would wind up working for someone as a world class thief. Dahlia, on the other hand, was good at summoning magic. And Violet had been good at improvising. They all had their talents. Right now, Poppy was pretty happy this happened to be hers.

This particular spell was one of Poppy’s favorites, and truthfully, she hadn’t thought she’d ever have a chance to use it. It was sure to draw attention here on the mortal realm. It took a lot of strength to cast it.

She stared at the door and the wall around it and imagined that they were pervious, made of something like bubbles or water. As she imagined this, she felt her body change. One second, she was standing before the door, fully formed and solid. The next second, she looked like a ghost of herself, transparent and wavering.

Kristopher looked her up and down, and his smile broadened. “Impressive,” he admitted.

She wasted no time, however. There was no telling how long the spell would last. She grabbed ahold of his hand, making sure that rather than force her hand to be solid, the contact instead forced his hand to become transparent like hers. With a bigger push of her magic, his arm took on the same transparency – and then his entire body.

At once, Poppy was stepping through the door, passing right through it and on to the other side, Kristopher in tow. She felt Kristopher’s initial hesitation beside her, but then his trust won out, and they were both through.

As it turned out however, there was no one on the other side to surprise.

Up against the opposite wall were metal shelves. Stacked three-high on each shelf were small metal and plastic boxes. Poppy assumed these contained the seeds Svalbard was famous for. Hanging on the wall adjacent to her were hooks with parkas, rubber gloves, and hard hats. The storage space was boring and nondescript, just as was the hall outside. The only thing out of the ordinary, in fact was the massive hole and rubble directly in the center of the room – and the dead body lying four feet away from it.

Chapter Thirty-Nine

“Gargoyles,” Kristopher muttered after feeling the body for a pulse. There was none. The man had been dressed in the same jacket and gloves that were hanging on the wall. Clearly, he’d been one of the humans in charge of taking care of the seeds.

“I thought they were all dead,” said Poppy. “Except for some kids?”

“Clearly the Entity thought to ‘save’ a few for himself. No doubt, they’re working as his slaves now.” He stood up, shaking his head. “It makes sense that he would use them here. By coming up through the ground, they were able to bypass all the wards I placed on the walls. I didn’t even think about warding the ground.”

Poppy felt strange inside – squishy. It was hard to describe, but it was not a good feeling. “Did he get the seed?” she asked.

“No. I’d originally hidden it amongst the potato seeds here from Ireland. It’s no longer here, but I can feel that it’s still in the vault, somewhere nearby. My guess is one of my guards moved it before they disappeared to wherever they disappeared to.”

“Can you find it?”

He nodded. “Yes. It’s a part of Yggdrasil, so we’re connected. Give me a few seconds.” He closed his eyes and turned slowly in place. Then he opened his eyes and nodded at the door.

From their side, it was unlocked, so they simply turned the handle and stepped back out into the hall beyond. “It’s down there,” he said, nodding at the door on the far end of the hallway. They moved quickly but cautiously, as if every step they took might blow up underneath them. They had no idea where the gargoyle was that had killed the human. For all they knew, he could still be there, in the walls or ground, watching them.

They reached the door, where Poppy did her thing with the lock and Kristopher dispelled the wards, and they turned the knob and went in. It would have been wise for them to proceed through this third door in the careful manner with which they’d gone through the other doors, but they didn’t. So Kristopher took the full force of the punch the gargoyle threw at his face when he came through the other side.

Poppy screeched and tumbled to the side as Kristopher’s heavy form flew past her and out into the hall beyond the storage room door. She watched him hit the ground, but then turned her attention immediately to his assailant.

“Freeze, asshole!” she yelled, raising her hands in an offensive warlock’s position. He was in human form, dressed up as a man of medium height and medium build, and his disguise even wore a pair of glasses. But she knew better. She knew he weighed a ton, his punches had the force of heavy stone behind them, and that there was practically nothing she could physically do to that stone to bring it any harm.

The gargoyle faced her. There was really no point to waiting. She’d only told him to “freeze” to make him think she was going to wait to attack, and to give her that extra half second lead on him.

She funneled her power, pulling it in like Luke Skywalker harnessing The Force, and felt it infuse her hands to the tips of her fingers. “Lapis ut carnem!” she yelled, releasing the magic all at once.. A pulse of thick, dark power escaped from her palms and slammed into the gargoyle.

The gargoyle was surprised by the sudden attack, but he didn’t go flying backward as Kris had. Instead, he looked down at his chest, where the spell had struck him. Shimmers of dissolving magic cascaded over his chest and then fizzled out. The gargoyle’s brow furrowed. He looked back up and shook his head, smiling darkly.

“Well, it was pretty,” he said. “I’ll give you that.”

Poppy smiled right back. “Wait for it.”

The gargoyle’s smile slipped a little. He blinked, clearly trying to figure out what her game was. But then his eyes grew very wide, his skin rippled as if there were bugs underneath it, and he opened his mouth to scream.

No sound came out; it was choked with pain as his skin gradually shifted from flesh toned to the gray of stone and finally back again. When it had finished moving and switching through the color spectrum, the gargoyle stumbled backward and hit the wall, breathless. He slid a little, his knees buckling under him, and stared wild-eyed at Poppy.

“What the hell did you do to me?” he cried desperately.

“I leveled the playing field,” she said. She walked toward him.

“Poppy, step away from him,” commanded Kristopher, who stood in the doorway, looking as though nothing had hit him at all except for the fact that his eyes were glowing again.

Poppy smiled reassuringly from where she stopped a foot away. “Why? We’re good here,” she told him. Then, without looking back at the gargoyle, she raised her leg forcefully and kicked him square in the balls.

The gargoyle went down like a sack of potatoes, unconscious before he hit the floor. Poppy stepped back to allow the man’s sleeping form to sprawl. For a moment, she wondered if she’d done serious, permanent damage. She even wondered if she’d killed him.

She started to kneel in order to take his pulse, but Kristopher’s fingers slid around her wrist, holding her back. She stood up and faced him.

“Well done, blossom. Just promise me you’ll never try that trick on me.”

“That trick wouldn’t work on you, your majesty,” she said with a smile. “It was a stone to flesh spell.”

Kris’s blue eyes slowly lost their glow, but his smile was predatory through and through. “You’re right,” he said. “It wouldn’t work on me.”

Poppy swallowed hard. She hadn’t missed the entendre. His hand was very warm and very firm on her wrist.

She forced herself to look back down at the fallen man and cleared her throat. “It’s not permanent. So we should get going.”

“Fine. But if you think I’m going to let you fight all my battles for me little one, think again.”

Poppy stared him down, a hard smile on her lips. Screw being demure. “If I recall correctly, you said you wanted a queen as your mate. And the queen is the most powerful piece on the board.” She glanced at his lips and then back at his eyes. They were that impossible light turquoise-aqua color, like clear icebergs. Yet his body was very warm so close to hers. “Remember? Without me the game would be lost?” she said, repeating the words he’d told her not an hour earlier.

“Oh I remember,” he said. His tone had lowered. He gave a gentle but firm tug on her arm where he had her, and she was forced to move up against him. He kept her there as he leaned in closer, and she held her breath. “And I meant it,” he said. “Thank you for reminding me… my queen.”

The words were said with a ringing that could no doubt be heard throughout the multiverse. It was final and resounding. The Winter King was naming her, claiming her, and worshipping her, all at once. And if they didn’t have a Valkyrie to confront, Midgard Serpent to stop from destroying the world, a gargoyle passed out a few feet away, and a seed to fucking plant, she was betting he would have shown her exactly how much he meant it – right there on the floor of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault.

Chapter Forty

They had the seed, which looked to Poppy like a massive uncut diamond. It was tucked safely into the inner pocket of Kristopher’s leather jacket. Their next stop was Jotenheim, the land of the giants.

Before transporting, Kristopher filled Poppy in on what to expect. It turned out that far from being the dangerous, angry, crag-filled place that comic books and movies would have it out to be, Jotenheim was actually no more than a mirror of the human world, but with giants. And the giants were not the Earth-shaking, stomping and furious twenty-foot-tall beasts legends had them out to be either. At least, not all the time.

Apparently, giants had three different forms. In Jotenheim, they could appear either slightly large or very large. Because appearing very large took a lot of magical energy, giants preferred their more natural form, which happened to be about the size of the aptly named Andre the Giant. They were big, but not Goliath big.

The most surprising thing Kristopher told her about them was that it was in the human world where giants took on their third form. In the mortal realm, giants were in fact on the small size. Poppy scoffed at this, but Kristopher swore that if you ever met a giant in the human world, he was guaranteed to be on the shorter side of normal. And the skinnier side of normal.

“You’re kidding, right?”

He just chuckled and shook his head, making the sign of a cross over his heart.

“Jeez,” she said. “It’s like… the opposite of all these guys with tiny penises who are drugged up on vein-popping, ball-shrinking steroids and blowing their tops at the slightest provocation. Real giants, on the other hand, are enormous but appear small.” She laughed. “I love it. You know, I’ve known quite a few skinny guys in my time. I wonder if any of them were giants?”

“Were they smart?”

“I don’t associate with idiots.”

Kristopher laughed again. It was starting to get to her. What was it about his damn laugh? “Then your chances are good,” he said. “Also unlike the perception Hollywood and even my own mythos have attempted to foster, giants are not the bumbling morons they’re made out to be. Quite the opposite, in fact. They’re highly intelligent.”

Poppy stared at him a moment. “What you’re telling me is that giants are nerds.”

“Yep.”

“Oh my God. The quarterback on the football team is a shrinky-dink, and the math tutor is from Jotenheim.” She threw back her head and laughed as she recalled all of the chess club geniuses she ate lunch with in high school. She may have been dressed in torn jeans and combat boots, and she may have had a few rebelliously colored streaks in her hair, but when it came down to it, she simply could not stand to surround herself with anything but open minds and quick wits. So she’d hovered around the geeks. “All that time, I was kicking people’s butts for picking on my friends, and they didn’t need my help at all.”

“Believe me, in this world, they’re as physically helpless as they appear. You were probably their very own shield maiden. At least, that’s how they would have seen you.”

She stared at him. “Really?”

“Really.”

“But…how? Why didn’t any of them ever just, I don’t know, transform? Or at least tell me what they were? And why would they even come here to begin with?”

“Like I said, they’re highly intelligent. They crave education. When a child is born to a couple in Jotenheim, they make the decision to either have them tutored by former mortal realmers in the giant’s realm or send them to live with the mortals, where they can learn alongside humans. I will say one thing for humans. They may be closed-minded on the whole, but a few of them are brave enough to focus on the problems of the universe and seek answers to those problems. While everyone else is far too wrapped up in things they can’t prove, the great ones, for now, continue to share the things they can prove. When they stop doing so, whether by choice or because they’re forced into silent submission by their peers….” Kristopher took a deep breath and blew it out quickly with a shrug. “Well, the giants will probably stop coming then. There will be no point any longer. Humanity will have regressed into the stone age.”

“So giants haven’t always come to the mortal realm?”

“Gods, no. This is a recent development, more sixteenth century and beyond. And at first, they couldn’t manage it. When they finally developed the magic that would allow them to do so, it came at a cost. Here in the mortal realm, they would lose what made them giants. It was the sacrifice they had to make. Their strength and stature would vanish. In return, they would be allowed to live in the mortal realm until they’d learned all they could learn. Then they would return to Jotenheim and become teachers themselves.”

“About how long does a giant live?”

“I’d say around a thousand or so of your years. I know of one who lived to be a thousand, three hundred.”

Poppy digested it all and they prepped to transport through Jotenheim. Kristopher referred to it as transporting “through” the realm rather than “to” the realm because they were running short on time. Concern over what the Midgard Serpent might do next was elevating with each passing minute. If Poppy wanted to, she could always visit the realm later. She had a lot of realms to decide whether or not to visit.

Wow, she thought. Life was opening up to her. She felt like man on the verge of flight… new worlds were available to her now, and if and when she became queen, she would have an immortal lifetime with which to explore them.

“Wait,” she said, holding up her hand to place it on Kristopher’s arm just as he was making the motions of calling up a portal.

He froze. “What is it?” he asked, at once concerned.

“I’m sorry, I just – I’ve been wanting to ask you something. If I become queen, will that make me immortal like you? Or will you just have to get another queen in fifty to sixty years?”

Kristopher laughed a relieved laugh, and of course she absolutely loved the sound of it. “You will live as long as you wish, blossom. Immortality is relative.”

“It is?”

“Just ask William.”

Poppy frowned. Then she shook her head and asked, “And when I do, will I age twenty years like you did? I mean… living forever is a grand idea and all, but I’d rather do it from my age and not my mother’s. If I’m being honest.”

He laughed again. He laughed easily. Poppy’s eyes dropped to his lips. Every damn time he laughed, she wanted to kiss him and swallow the sound up. It was like he was laughing cookies or something.

“Winter turned me from a boy to a man because no king should be frozen in eternal adolescence. You on the other hand, will remain as you are. If anything, you’ll feel younger than you do now. The surge of power that comes with taking the throne is indescribable.”

Poppy’s eyes widened a little. She imagined herself sitting on that throne now, absorbing that power. Feeling younger! Would that mean… no more pain? No more headaches?

Kristopher leaned in, chuckling softly. “I see it in your eyes now, blossom,” he said as he slid his arm around her waist and wound his other fingers through her hair to gently grasp the back of her neck. “You can’t wait, can you?”

She kissed him. Because it was the laugh that did it.

He kissed her back. Because that was how he was.

And when they parted a full minute or so later, she asked breathlessly, “What the hell is it about your laugh that gets me so damn hot? It makes me… I don’t know! I feel like I just got a new car for Christmas or something!”

Kristopher’s lips slid into a slow, knowing smile. “Well, in all honesty, that makes a lot of sense.”

“What? How?!”

“The name Winter gave me is Kristopher Scaul,” he told her. “Every now and then, I add an ‘e’ to the last name, just to keep smarter people doubting. But even then, the resulting name is a homophone of the real one – if you scramble the letters up a little….” He trailed off, turned away, and began opening the portal.

“Scaul,” she said softly to herself. “S-C-A-U-L….” In her head, she unscrambled them and placed them back together in different orders. Once. Twice. Third time was the charm. Her heart began pounding as she said the name in her head. Her ears started ringing. “Oh my God,” she whispered.

As the portal swallowed them up and took them into another world.

Chapter Forty-One

For all intents and purposes, they really did pass through Jotenheim, transporting to a forested location outside one of Jotenheim’s cities and transporting back out again before anyone could notice them there.

They headed back to the castle to regroup before opening the third portal they would need to activate a gateway to Yggdrasil.

“Now for Valhalla,” said Poppy. She’d hoped to keep the worry out of her tone, but she failed miserably. She was worried. Someone in Valhalla wanted her dead. Which meant she had two options. She could either stay here and let Kristopher deal with that someone himself, or she could look her problem in the eye and deal with it too.

“She doesn’t really want you dead, Poppy. She just wants to get even with me.”

Poppy looked up at Kristopher. It was as if he’d read her mind.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “You’re my king. I’m your queen. So this is my game.” She nodded to herself and peered deep into his aqua blue eyes. “And sometimes you just have to take people off the board. That’s the nature of chess.”

Kristopher didn’t smile. He didn’t laugh. But there was something different, something deep and indescribable in his eyes. He didn’t take them off her as he summoned up the portal. And when the passageway was complete, he stepped aside to allow her entry first.

Poppy rolled her shoulders back and stepped into the portal. Time and space swirled around her, shifting and pulling and shortening and straightening until the exit opened up on the other side. Before it had even fully formed, she was stepping out.

Once again, it might have been wise to proceed into a new environment more warily, and this was something that shot through her mind just after a fist connected with her jaw, her head snapped to the side, and her body followed sluggishly after.

She hit the ground in some indeterminate manner, so numb in shock from the attack that she literally couldn’t tell what part of her hit the ground first. But half a second after she hit, she started to get her bearings. She was on mixed turf, grass and dirt. She was rolling, and the rocks bruised where they contacted bone. Her face hurt, but the attack had impacted her jaw, not her teeth. That was fortunate; dental implants were not fun. Someone was yelling; she recognized Kristopher’s voice and the voices of several women. She continued to roll and forced herself to her feet.

More pain instantly assaulted her, radiating out from just beneath her ear, where her jaw joints met. Probably they were torn, hopefully not broken. She decided to ignore the pain in that certain way that only people in the middle of a fight could do.

She was standing in a man-made clearing amidst a forest of giant trees that looked like a cross between Aspen and Redwoods. They were as tall as Redwoods, but their bark was white as snow. The ground was soft brown dirt covered in patches of thick, green grass. At the center of the clearing was what looked like a fire pit.

Several yards away, on the opposite side of the fire pit, the portal came to a close and vanished. Feet from where the portal had been, Kristopher stood tall and strong, and held a woman out at arm’s length, one of his hands wrapped firmly around her neck.

The woman’s feet were a foot off the ground. Otherwise, Poppy guessed she’d have stood approximately the same height as her, more or less. She had long light brown hair streaked gold by the sun, and she was dressed in what seriously looked like “Amazon warrior” armor. There were half a dozen other women in the clearing, all dressed similarly. It was as if they’d transported directly into a filming set for Xena, Warrior Princess. She knew these were the Valkyrie. This was Valhalla, after all. But not one of the women was sporting a set of wings.

Poppy turned her attention back to the woman Kristopher was choking. She had both hands wrapped around his wrist, and by the color of her face, it looked like Kristopher’s grip was tightening.

That’s Toril, she thought. And he’s going to kill her. Poppy opened her mouth to call out to him and try to make him stop, but before she could say anything, someone else did.

“Erikk! You know the fight is no longer yours now!” said one of the women. Poppy gingerly touched her chin and moved forward to get a better look at whoever had spoken. The small group of women parted, and a seventh warrior moved forward into the clearing.

Kristopher’s eyes glowed hot with anger, and Toril’s face was turning the color of beets. “She attacked my queen,” he stated through clenched and bared teeth.

“Yes, she did,” said Poppy suddenly. Oh my gods, what the hell am I doing? Every Valkyrie in the clearing turned to look at her. “She attacked me,” she continued. “That means she’s my problem.” Her heart hammered. There was a ringing in her ears. She could not believe what she was saying, especially since she was saying it with an unwavering voice while standing in a fighter’s stance. “Not yours.”

Kristopher glanced over at her, eerily burning eyes and all. He’s so beautiful, she thought as he speared her through with that hellish gaze.

“I’m the one she wants to hurt,” he said simply.

“Quite frankly then,” said Poppy, “it’s unfortunate she doesn’t have better aim.”

Kris eyed her for a long, silent moment. No one in the clearing spoke. Toril continued to choke. Then, ever so slightly, the corners of Kristopher’s mouth turned upward. He slowly lowered his arm until Toril’s booted feet frantically touched the ground, kicking up clouds of dust as they found their footing. The ring of Amazonian women backed up a little, and Kris released his grip on Toril’s throat.

The Valkyrie instantly began choking, doubled over to frantically inhale wheezing gulps of air. No one touched her, and no one offered to help. It was as if interfering in any capacity would have gone against some sort of rule or law.

When Toril seemed to have finally caught her breath, Poppy took a deep breath of her own and stepped forward. “Toril Stalson, it’s time to finish this once and for all.”

Toril straightened and turned her light hazel-colored eyes on Poppy. “How do you know me?” she asked. There was malice in her tone, but there was also genuine curiosity.

“Word gets around,” said Poppy as she finished stepping to the center of the clearing.

Toril’s gaze narrowed. She faced her completely. “And you’re the new Winter Queen.”

“I am,” said Poppy confidently.

“Really?” Toril asked. “I sense otherwise. Your king radiates Winter. But you?” She snickered, smiling a smile that was more of a snarl. “You radiate mortality.”

Poppy just shrugged. “Yeah well, the thing about us mortals is we’re real scrappers.”

If growing up playing ice hockey in the neighborhood lake with a bunch of hard-hitting boys had taught Persephone Nix anything of any value, it was that when you were in the game, it was the game that mattered. Everything else could be dealt with later. If you weren’t going to play to win, don’t play. Putting in less than your all was an injustice to everyone else there.

Just as Poppy had known she would, Toril chose that moment to strike. She lunged forward, going low with a punch that she obviously assumed Poppy would attempt to duck under. But this wasn’t Poppy’s first rodeo. She side-stepped, bringing her elbow down square in the center of Toril’s back.

Toril let out a grunt of pain, stumbled forward a few steps, and spun with a backhand. This one, Poppy did duck under, and when she came back up, she made sure her undercut struck Toril’s solar plexus.

Again, Toril grunted, this time a little louder than before. She backpedalled, hand to chest, before rushing forward again. But this time, she reached over her own shoulder and pulled the sword from the scabbard at her back. It made a shhhick sound as it came free and gleamed wickedly in the sunlight.

Oh shit, thought Poppy.

Chapter Forty-Two

The Valkyrie’s sword glinted in the sunlight, and Toril’s smirk of a smile was firmly back in place.

“Fine,” said Poppy. Two can play at that game. She raised her arms and flooded her palms with waiting magic. She’d been wondering whether she would have another chance to use her warlock skills. She’d been secretly ecstatic to find that when she’d cast the breaching spells and the stone to flesh spell in the seed vault, they hadn’t somehow turned icy like all of her other attempts at magic had lately. She wasn’t sure what to make of it, but at the moment, it didn’t matter. If it was working like it was supposed to, that was good enough for her.

Toril’s smirk turned to a snarl. She couldn’t see the magic flooding Poppy’s palms, so she obviously assumed Poppy was unarmed, and therefore rather helpless. She ploughed forward, swinging her sword in a high arc.

Poppy lifted her right hand and spoke a few fast words of a spell. It was meant to steal speed from an opponent, slowing them down as if they were moving through sludge or mud. However, when it struck Toril, rather than simply slow her down, it covered her with an instant layer of frost. White-blue rime coated her boots, her hands, and the killing edge of her sword. Her skin bloomed with crystals of ice, and when she exhaled in exertion against the slowing effects of the spell, her breath was visible before her lips.

From the sidelines, the Valkyrie began to murmur. “Bifrost…” they muttered, repeating the word amongst themselves. Poppy also heard the words “winter” and “queen” amidst the babble.

She tried to block out the noise and focus on her enemy, who was glaring at her like mad at the moment. “Sorcery,” the shield maiden hissed. “I should expect no less.”

Poppy didn’t respond. There was no need. She’d done what she’d had to do.

Toril growled, and that growl became a scream, which became a roar. The spell around her shimmered and wavered, and Poppy could feel it begin to go. In her mind’s eye, she saw the magic shatter, splintering around her like the cracks in an ancient Chinese vase before it just exploded. Useless shards of magic rained down onto the ground around her.

Toril’s body lurched forward, freeing itself from its frozen slowness. She staggered a few steps, regained her footing, and wasted no time in attacking again.

This time, she swung the sword in a downward but angled arc, giving Poppy nowhere to go. Poppy did the only thing she could think to do. She acted instinctively rather than intelligently, her right arm coming up, her hand opening to meet the sword. Pain, sharp and true, spiked through her palm as she literally caught the sword mid-air, and her fingers wrapped solidly around it.

Everything came to an immediate stand-still then. More murmurs rose up in the crowd, which sounded bigger than before. Poppy stared at her bleeding hand where it was wrapped so firmly around the Valkyrie’s blade. Red lines dripped down her wrist and striped her forearm. But the pain ebbed rapidly, and the second thing she noticed was the ice once more spreading across Toril’s sword. It crackled from beneath Poppy’s grip, racing across the metal of the blade like Kurt Vonnegut’s Ice Nine.

She watched it rush straight to the hilt, rapidly enshroud the pommel, and begin coating Toril’s gripping fingers. The shield maiden gasped at the touch of the ice, and Poppy knew her instinct was to let go of the sword. But she fought the instinct and maintained her hold, all too aware that if she let the weapon drop, the fight would be over.

The red streams that striped Poppy’s arm now dripped from her elbow, and the slightest hint of queasiness threatened her belly. She gritted her teeth, allowed her pain to make her angrier, and forced the anger to turn into strength. She gripped the sword blade harder.

At once, the ice that threatened Toril’s fingers reacted to Poppy’s power, pushing forward to cocoon them within seconds flat and move on to her wrist. The Valkyrie’s gritted teeth parted as the woman began to keen in pain.

Poppy knew how much ice could hurt. She’d hit the frozen lake at home in Canada enough times with her face, elbows, knees, and butt to know that it was hard and unforgiving. She’d had enough snow balls stuffed into her clothes to know that it was bitter and biting. How long could a person place their hand in a bank of snow before pulling it out again? Ice could cut you to the bone. It could freeze you to the marrow.

Heat was deadlier. But cold hurt like hell.

Toril’s entire arm was encased now, and the woman had gone very, very pale. At last, she tilted her head back and let out a terrible cry. Her frozen fingers crackled as they stiffly and painfully released the grip of the sword, leaving its entire weight in the tortured clasp of her opponent.

At once, a cheer went up through the crowd. Poppy, again acting on instinct, raised the sword high over her head. Before her, Toril Stalson fell to her knees and bent her head in shame and surrender.

Poppy looked down at her. Slowly, she lowered the sword, taking the grip in her other, non-injured hand. “Toril,” she said.

The Valkyrie remained where she was, head bent.

“Look at me,” Poppy commanded softly.

The Valkyrie finally looked up, slowly raising her head until their eyes met. Hers were shining with stubborn unshed tears.

“I am sorry for what happened with your brother,” said Poppy. “But he chose his wars. His battles are no longer yours to fight.” She shook her head. “They never were.”

Toril stared at her, and a sob escaped her throat. She shook her head and lowered her gaze once more. Poppy turned the sword around in her hands until the hilt was facing the kneeling shield maiden. “Take it.”

“I don’t deserve to wield it.”

“That’s just stupid. Of course you do. Take the sword, Toril.” She shrugged. “The gods know I can’t keep it. Clearly I don’t even know which end to hold it from.”

Toril’s head snapped up, her expression shocked. Poppy smiled in amiable jest. It was the instinctive thing for her to do. And wonder of wonders, it looked like it was the right thing to do, too. Because Toril Stalson reached up, took the sword from Poppy’s hand, and without looking away, she slid the weapon into the scabbard at her back.

She was still kneeling. And though Poppy knew she was destined to be the Winter Queen, the fact of the matter was, she wasn’t quite ready to have people kneel before her just yet. So she offered Toril her hand.

It was the injured hand, covered in fresh red blood.

Toril looked down at it, her eyes taking in the damage her blade had done. Then, resolutely and firmly, she took the offered hand in her own firm grip and allowed Poppy to pull her to her feet.

The group of onlookers around the two had grown since the last time Poppy had seen it. To the side, Kristopher still stood tall and broad, his arms crossed over his chest, his presence radiating oodles of power. But his eyes were no longer crackling with electric-blue heat. Instead, they’d settled into a stunning aquamarine, impossible and gorgeous. And right now, they were watching Poppy with a mixture of emotions that included a very obvious amount of pride.

“What do I call you?”

Poppy turned back around to face Toril.

The Valkyrie made a helpless gesture. “I don’t even know your name, my queen.”

My queen…. “The name is Persephone,” said the queen. “Persephone Glacia Nix.” Then she smiled, and may the Fates help her, she actually felt like laughing. “But please call me Poppy.”

Chapter Forty-Three

The remainder of their time in Valhalla had been spent tending to Poppy’s wound. The way this was done in Valhalla, however, was by drinking. Heavily.

Valhalla was composed of two different and separate sections. One was the gated home of the Valkyrie, the shield maidens of Odin. The other was the rowdy, riotous, impossibly large drinking and fighting hall that all Norse warriors lived their lives hoping they would be fortunate enough to wind up in when they died. It was the latter that Kristopher and Poppy had to visit in order to heal Poppy’s wound. Because only the ale of Valhalla could mend a wound dealt by a Valkyrie’s sword.

Fortunately for her, Poppy very much felt like drinking at that point. To say that she was in pain would have been a ridiculously gross understatement. Quite frankly, she wanted to rip her arm off at the shoulder just so she wouldn’t have to feel her hand any more.

But as soon as one of the fallen warriors from the hall handed her a full mug of ale and the liquid passed her lips, she understood why the warriors in Valhalla were said to fight every day until their deaths and simply wake up the next morning to do it all over again. The ale was a healing drought like no other. As long as it was in your system your wounds would rapidly heal, and apparently it lasted a good long while.

“Too bad we can’t bottle this stuff up and take it back with us,” Poppy murmured while she watched the deep wound in her palm seal back up and smooth itself out until it vanished altogether. “Think of the lives we could save.”

“Aye,” said Kristopher. “But the moment you attempt to take the ale past the boundaries of Valhalla, it vanishes. It cannot exist in any other realm or dimension. This is it.”

Poppy nodded solemnly. She was happy that she’d at least had the chance to use it herself.

While they drank, Toril assured Poppy that she hadn’t managed to put any wards on her throne after all. She’d barely managed to make it into the Winter Kingdom with some transport spell magic she’d stolen from the Valkyrie Queen, who kept it for emergencies. But after that, she was out of power and could sense she was out of time, so she’d transported back to Valhalla. Meridian had seen her by the throne, probably in those last moments before Toril had turned back. Poppy thanked Toril for telling her and shared a mug of ale with the shield maiden.

Poppy was also told that a Valkyrie’s wings only emerge when she descends to the mortal realm to acquire a fallen warrior.

And Winter had secretly told her, by whispering it into her mind, that her magic was behaving now because Poppy had accepted her place as queen. The only reason the slowing spell had iced over was because Winter thought it would be prettier that way.

Poppy had taken it all in stride. She’d just bested a Valkyrie. She could handle anything.

When she finished healing and they both finished quenching their thirsts, Poppy and Kristopher transported out of Valhalla, back to their palace of ice. At once, Poppy could see that something had changed.

“Something’s wrong,” she said after the portal closed behind her.

Kristopher didn’t say anything, but Poppy could tell he was on high alert. His gaze slowly combed the warded safe room they’d been transporting from. There was nothing in the room, no furniture to speak of and no decoration. There were only the four walls around them and the floor they stood upon, so there was no obvious, visible sign that anything was different. It was just a feeling she had.

Using that same instinct she’d used in the fight against Toril, Poppy made her way to the winding stairs and began ascending. Half-way to the top, she heard it. It was the same hissing sound she’d heard just before attempting to take her seat on the throne.

“What the –”

“Stay behind me,” Kristopher said. He’d come up beside her, and now passed her on the staircase. Poppy watched him climb. With each step he took, something about his figure changed. First it was the boots. Then the jacket disappeared. Then he had a sword strapped to his back.

By the time he reached the top with her right behind him, he was in full-on Viking mode, bare from the waist up other than his sword, tight leather breeches hugging every deliciously muscled curve from the waist down. She would have given just about anything at that moment to be able to sit back and enjoy the view. But unfortunately, the slithering, undulating mass of snakes just beyond the first step of the hidden passageway drew her attention instead.

“Oh my God,” she whispered. There were thousands of them. They were obviously more of the Serpent’s children; their brilliantly colored bodies filled the study two-feet deep. “I think I’m going to be sick.”

It wasn’t that she didn’t like snakes. In fact it was just the opposite. She did like snakes. She thought they were a little cute with their kinder schema – their enormous eyes and tiny mouths. To her, they looked like anime characters or babies. But seeing them piled up possibly a million deep was unsettling on so many fundamental levels, she couldn’t help her physical reaction. Not only that, she was pretty sure the ones on the bottom were suffocating or being completely squished by sheer weight. And she hated cruelty to animals.

Kristopher looked down at the line they seemed unable to cross. “The wards are keeping them out of the stairwell. He leaned to the left and craned his neck to see around the study door and into the hall beyond. “They’re in the hall too.”

“So it’s safe to assume they’re all over the castle.”

Kristopher sighed. “That would be my guess.”

Right about then, it would have been the norm to ask “So what do we do?” but the question seemed pointless. Obviously, he was trying to figure that out. And she was too.

Transport magic would take them throughout the castle, but they wouldn’t be able to land anywhere. It also wouldn’t do any good to wrap personal shields around their bodies since they still wouldn’t be able to push through the snakes without great effort and without killing a whole lot of them in the process.

Poppy knew that the only reason they would bother venturing out of the transportation room anyway would be so that she could take her throne and gain her queen’s powers before heading into whatever trouble the Midgard Serpent had waiting for them. If they couldn’t walk through the throne room or take a seat on the either of the icy chairs, then leaving this stairwell would be pointless.

Then again, it seemed to Poppy that they didn’t need to transport into another realm in order to face something Jormungand had waiting for them; the Serpent had literally brought it to their doorstep.

“I think I should try transporting onto the throne,” she said. If they aimed just right, she could stand on it or something, and maybe they could protect her legs from any bites or –

“I know what you’re planning, but it won’t work,” Kris told her. “Those teeth out there will sink through anything, even metal. Some are old enough that they can bite through magical barriers, like armor spells. And the poison they carry kills almost instantly.”

Poppy took a deep breath and ran a hand through her hair. Her fingers caught on a knot, and pain made her wince as she ripped several strands out at once. Apparently, she’d made a bit of a mess of herself during that tousle with the Valkyrie. She wanted a shower right about then. She would seriously love a bath. Especially if Kris joined her in it….

The very beginning embers of an idea sparked somewhere in the dark recesses of her mind. But she had no time to fully develop it, as Kristopher turned around and pushed past her again, heading back down to the warded transportation room.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“We’ll have to deal with this at the source,” he told her. “I’m going to face Jormungand. I would ask you to stay here, but –”

“But you know that’s pointless.”

He smiled, and though it was a proud smile, it was also very tight and didn’t reach his eyes. He was clearly frightened for her sake. “Please at least stay close and stay behind me?”

“You are always telling me to stay behind you, Kris. What’s up with that?”

“I’m very proud of my ass,” he said, and now his smile spread, and a bit of it actually did touch his eyes.

She shook her head. “Okay, fair enough.” She descended the stairs and joined him at the center of the room. “Bring on the snake.”

Kristopher chuckled, and goose bumps covered Poppy’s arms as warmth rushed through her middle. “I love it when you talk like that,” he said.

Chapter Forty-Four

They came out of the portal once again in the center of a forest.

“If there was this much forest left on Earth, there wouldn’t be enough room for the oceans,” Poppy muttered. She’d never seen as many different kinds of trees as she had in the last few hours of her life. This time, they were shorter than the Valhallan trees, but the leaves were purple and red, and the bark was spiked like the outer layer of a cactus.

“Stay away from the needles,” Kris warned. “They’ll put you to sleep.”

“Right.” She made a mental note. They turned in a slow circle. “What are we looking for?”

He shook his head. “I’ve never been here before. I know of the Slumber Saps from stories that have been told of them in other realms. But everything else is new. If we’re lucky enough to find the broken root before we find the Serpent, we can plant the seed. Otherwise, anything we go up against will have to be done without –”

The ground shook beneath their boots. Poppy, completely unprepared for the disruption, toppled to the side. Kristopher caught her at once, bent and lifted her into his arms. The ground where she’d been standing the second before split violently in two.

Kristopher took several long cautionary steps back, hugging Poppy tight to his chest. Hands clasped firmly around Kristopher’s neck, Poppy stared dumbfounded as the fissure continued to spread, widening to reveal a deep darkness beneath.

The ground stopped shaking. The world grew still but for the sound of their ragged, nervous breathing.

Then something rose from the crack.

At first, it was a slow reveal of scales and something that looked like leather stretched between wire. The scales were gold and white, beautifully iridescent. The leather was stretched taught, tan where it was thick at the wire, but nearly transparent at its most extended. They watched it in awe-struck silence as it continued to climb, emerging and taking shape. It rose further and further. Up and up.

Then, just when they figured out that the scales were the side scales of a massive head, and the leather was the skin of a massive wing, the Midgard Serpent erupted from the crack in full and shot straight up into the air.

I guess we fight without the extra strength of the healed root, Poppy thought. It was a distant thought though, almost drowned out completely by the insanity of what she was seeing.

The power with which the monster took to flight was so strong, the backlash of wind knocked Kristopher to the ground. They rolled together, Kris being careful not to smash Poppy’s much smaller body beneath his. He gathered his wits before she did, and as she came up to her knees, Kris shoved her backwards hard, one hand on each shoulder.

Her head snapped forward and she went flying to land twenty feet away, where she rolled to a stunned stop. “Stay out of the way!” she heard him bellow, but the last of his cry was drowned out by a mighty roar that filled the world with terrifying sound and got inside her, making even her soul cower in its fleshy hiding place.

Poppy rolled to her stomach and pushed herself up on her elbows, but she was definitely stunned. She looked up, feeling the soreness in her neck from Kristopher’s rough shove. But when she saw what was in the ground exactly where she’d been kneeling a few seconds earlier, she understood his sudden treatment of her.

The ground had been hollowed out where she had knelt. It looked as though it had been struck by an asteroid; a massive crater had been carved into the ground, and its edges crackled with slowly dying fire. Kris had managed to get her out of the way just in time.

And now he faced off with the Midgard Serpent, and Poppy found herself staring at a scene that meant everything in her world. It meant the end of all that was good… or the saving of it. Her entire future was there, in the mighty figure of the Winter King and his even mightier enemy, the Midgard Serpent.

The monster dove at Kris, then he coughed fireballs at him, then he slashed at him with the length of his serpentine body, and with each dive and each attack, time slowed down, giving Poppy a surreal perspective as the Viking warrior dodged, rolled, cut, sliced, and used the magic of Winter against his opponent.

Poppy forced herself to stay where she was on the sidelines. She desperately didn’t want to be the typical distraction that got a man killed while in battle. She knew this was not her fight; Kristopher – Erikk – really was the proverbial Thor with his hard, frozen weapon in hand, blue eyes sizzling with electricity, and long blond hair whipping around in a magical frenzy. This was his battle – until it wasn’t any longer. Pending that moment, should it come, all she could do was watch.

She’d seen renderings of Jormungand when she was younger. She’d looked through books her teachers had given her, and the images she’d studied were indeed impressive. The Serpent was drawn as a massive sea serpent with spikes running all down its back, or it was drawn with a head resembling some sort of lizard, with the spikes splayed out around it like Dracula’s cape. She’d seen paintings where the scale of it was meant to be so large, each spike encompassed a mountain range. It had been drawn in every color of the rainbow, both winged and without wings, in the sea and in the sky.

And now Poppy knew, gazing up at the terrible monster who would one day bring about Ragnarok, that they were all right. And they were all wrong.

There was no end to the Serpent. It came out of the chasm and soared what must have been half a mile high. But the rest of its long, long body remained in the hole from which it emerged, hidden from sight. Therefore, there was no telling how large it actually was. Its body was covered in shimmering scales of all colors, and as it moved and dove and swung around in its attempts to strike Kristopher down with its fangs, those scales shimmered and shifted, changing colors like a crystal moving through the visible spectrum.

The Serpent definitely had wings. But when the snake dove for its opponent, the wings pressed against the side of its body and vanished, blending into the scales like a chameleon’s skin. She could see how some accounts of the beast would claim it was wingless and others would insist on the opposite.

Once the Serpent had made its attack, the wings emerged to lift it back into the sky. They spanned the length of a football field on either side…. At least, that was as much of them as Poppy could see. They disappeared behind the trees blocking her view, so they might have been much larger. Each wing was constructed like a giant kite, with a support system of bones or cartilage that fanned out, six long rods on either side. Between these poles of support stretched the Serpent’s skin like tanned leather. This was the only part of the Serpent that was monochromatic, and when his wings were fully extended, the sun shone directly through them, proving Poppy’s theory as to why. They were thin, colorless, and nearly transparent in order to better blend in with its scales when they were folded in.

Each time it rose up, wings out, length of body coiled beneath it like a partially drawn rope, it opened its mouth and revealed its fangs. There were four rows of teeth, two in the front on the top and bottom, and two more behind those, rather like a shark’s back-ups. At the incisor location on either side were two long fangs, four fangs in total. Each set of fangs possessed one very, very long fang, and one only slightly shorter. They were so sharp, their tips disappeared into the thin sheerness of something too sharp to see the end of. There would be no stopping those fangs, and if the snakes in the ice castle truly were the Serpent’s children, she could understand how some of them would even be able to bite through magic.

But it was the monster’s eyes that held Poppy’s attention the most. There was something… off about them. Granted, she was staring up into irises the size of pickup trucks, and that was probably odd enough. But it was more than that.

They were as multicolored as the beast’s scales, slipping from red to orange to yellow and down into the blue end of the spectrum. They reminded Poppy a bit of the eyes of Dannai Caige, rainbow-hued and luminous. But at their centers, where there should only have been the black of the Serpent’s pupil, there was something else.

Poppy frowned, squinting to try to get a better look. Whatever it was that caught her attention, it was out of scale with the rest of the giant snake. It wasn’t as large as it should have been. It didn’t fit. It was as if the thing she saw were hiding there in that darkness, not wanting to be seen or noticed. And that was exactly why she had noticed it, and why she tried all the harder to see it.

She inched forward, staying well out of their wide ring of combat. But just when she thought she could make out what it was that was wrong, the dragon roared, tilted its head back, and breathed a spray of ire-laced acid that filled the air around them. Poppy screamed, running and jumping for cover behind a particularly thick tree as the spray flew into the trunk and sizzled.

A half-second later, her heart leapt into her throat and she shot out from behind the tree, her only concern whether or not Kristopher had also found cover.

He had. A shield of ice melted slowly around him like a thick, clear igloo. He was crouched down behind it, but his eyes were on her. Once he saw that she, too, was safe, he nodded. She smiled at him and hoped it was reassuring.

Kristopher waited another beat before spinning and rising, using his sword to shatter the shield he’d created. It exploded brilliantly, and shards of the ice went flying outward toward the Serpent. As if by sheer dumb luck, or perhaps because the Fates deemed it to be so, the longest and sharpest of the shards shot straight for Jormungand’s throat. It struck between its scales and sank deep. Blood that looked like blue goo mixed with pixie dust began spewing outward with gusto.

He hit an artery, thought Poppy. She began to feel something akin to hope. The fight would soon be over.

The Serpent lurched backward, its mouth wide open, its fangs glistening, a terrible cry of fury erupting from its long, long body. More blood splayed outward, and Kristopher barely managed to avoid being drenched in it.

Then the ground shook again. More fissures opened up in the dirt around Kris. He looked down just in time to jump in order to avoid falling into one of them. And as he was looking down, the Serpent struck final and true.

Kris’s head shot up just as the Serpent’s fang descended.

In that moment, Poppy at last saw clearly what it was she’d noticed in the monster’s eyes. Kristopher’s sword rose in defense, in one final attack, and pierced the Midgard Serpent beneath his jaw. The icy blade of the weapon sank deep into the beast’s skull just as the Serpent’s tooth pierced Kristopher’s heart.

Chapter Forty-Five

Poppy could feel it in her own chest. She froze as it took her breath away, and she watched as her entire world fell to his knees in a clearing a few feet away.

“No.”

She shook her head. No, no, no, no, no….

The Serpent tried to wail again. It tried to scream. But the sound came out garbled, strangled and drowning in the blood that now seeped and boiled up exuberantly from the hole in its head. Kristopher’s sword had gone straight through, and she could see the very tip of the ice blade poking out from the top of the Serpent’s skull.

Kristopher had fallen to his knees. The snake’s fang had gone through him as well; its razor-sharp point went clean through the Viking’s chest to emerge on the other side before it curved downward and back, nearly piercing him once more. Red blood soaked his chest and drenched the ground beneath him, yet he maintained his grip on his sword, fighting to the end like a true warrior.

No…. She’d only started; they’d only started. This was all still brand new. She hadn’t had a chance to do anything yet. Neither of them had. There was so much to learn, there was so much to do.

She wasn’t seeing what she was seeing.

Yes you are, Poppy. You know you are.

No, I’m not. She shook her head again and closed her eyes, willing it to go away.

Yes you are! Now grow up, see what is there, and fucking do something about it!

Her eyes flew open again. Her inner voice had always been particularly harsh when she was doing something wrong and knew it. Like she was right now.

Somehow she forced her feet to move. They took one step, two, and then they were running, and finally she was sliding into the red mud beside her lover, and her arms were going around him. She caught him just as his strength gave out, and he slumped into her embrace.

The Serpent’s fang receded, pulling from Kristopher’s chest as Jormungand slid heavily and limply back into the abyss. The hole left behind by its massive tooth oozed more blood, but its flow was slowing. He was dying.

“Kris,” Poppy whispered.

Beside her, the ground shook one last time. She ignored it, though. It wouldn’t dare swallow her up right now. It wouldn’t dare! The multiverse would not fucking think about messing with this precious moment! “Kristopher, look at me.”

She heard the sound of a blade through flesh. She felt something wet coat her right arm and the right side of her body. She felt more rumbling, heard the scrape of stone on stone, and she knew what was happening. Kristopher’s sword was pulled free of the Serpent’s head. Jormungand was falling. His blood was drenching everything around him. The ground of Midgard was swallowing it back up. It was all happening, really happening, and Poppy couldn’t take her eyes off the man in her arms.

His hand dropped to the side, and his sword skittered to the ground inches from his loosened grasp.

She leaned in, her lips a breath away from his. “Look at me!” she yelled.

Blue eyes opened. She moved back a little as they focused on her. “You killed him, Kris. You defeated Jormungand.”

“Of course I did,” he said softly. His voice was weak. He tried to speak again, but his words hitched, and a trickle of blood fell from the corner of his mouth. “I can do… any…thing,” he told her. “Because… I’m….”

Thor, she thought. I know.

He smiled. “Santa Claus.” He chuckled, the sound for once as terrible as it was wonderful.

And then his eyes shut again. His body became heavier in her arms, and all that was impossible became reality. Right there, in that moment – when Kristopher Scaul’s heart stopped beating and the poison of the Serpent took his life.

“Kris… no, no, open your eyes. Kris! Kristopher, look at me!”

Her voice rang out hollow and helpless in the stillness of the clearing. She tore her eyes off the man she clung to and looked around as if searching for something that would make it all untrue. The ground was destroyed, broken into pieces like a shattered puzzle. The Midgard Serpent was nowhere to be seen.

She knew now why the Serpent had attacked the Tree. She knew everything. The thing she’d seen in its eyes, the thing that didn’t fit, had been a long, ghostly white face. A stretched out visage nearly without features. The Serpent had been possessed by no other than the Entity. And now the Entity had taken her king.

“Bullshit,” she spat, unable to look back down at Kristopher’s fallen form. She looked up instead – and when she did, she saw the hole in the clouds and the ray of light shining down from it, and the half dozen winged figures that began descending toward her in that brilliant beam. “No,” she said. “No!” she screamed. “Bullshit!” she bellowed at the tops of her lungs.

You’re a warlock. Warlocks can resurrect.

Her breath hitched. She went still and looked back down at the man in her arms. And just like that, she realized the voice that kept speaking in her head wasn’t actually her own.

Winter.

Yes, Poppy, said Winter. It’s me.

I have to bring him back. How can I bring him back? she demanded, her eyes as wide as a crazed person’s.

Resurrect him.

I can’t! A warlock has to be more powerful than the one they’re resurrecting! She was not more powerful than the Winter King. She had nothing on Thor.

Yes you can. Make yourself more powerful than him, Poppy.

But how…. But even as her mind whispered the question, she had the answer. An image of the throne room appeared in her head. She saw her throne. And she saw a chessboard, broad as the face of the world. And she knew the queens on that board were the most powerful pieces of all.

Suddenly, the idea that had sparked to life while she was in the transporting room back at the castle re-kindled and grew, catching ablaze like a bonfire. She realized what she had to do.

She threw her body over the Winter King and hugged him tight as she called up a portal and commanded it take them both home. She felt the wind pick up, saw the swirling colors in the sides of her vision, and waited for it to finish its job. When she no longer felt or saw movement, she rose to a seated position and glanced around the room. It was blurry through unshed tears, but otherwise, it was the plain, unfurnished room she’d been expecting. No sign of snakes. No sign of Valkyrie.

Good, she thought. I did that right. Let’s see if I can continue the streak.

She gingerly moved back, releasing her hold on the Winter King so that he rested still against the ground. She couldn’t stand to see him. She did it all without looking down. Besides, there would be blood – lots and lots of blood of all fucking colors – and she couldn’t stand to see that either. She couldn’t afford to lose her nerve now. What she was about to do would take all of her warlock strength and more.

She rose on legs that were completely numb but somehow still moving. She made it to the stairs and began climbing. Halfway to the top, as she’d expected, she heard the hissing. But she continued until she reached the final step and gazed out over a two-foot-deep sea of slithering Serpent children.

She bared her teeth, narrowed her gaze, and began to whisper. As she whispered, the air around her charged with dark magic. She felt it funnel through her, in from the world in general, out through her pores. She sent it into the ice that was the castle’s only building material. And there, it got to work.

Conjuring was powerful magic. It was the kind of magic that got noticed right away and from a great distance. The reason for this is that it took a lot of strength to conjure. Even so, conjuring magic was the second kind of magic Poppy Nix had always been good at. So if she’d wanted to, she could have called the very waters of the ocean to her. And they would have come.

But she needed as much strength as possible for what would come later. So rather than pull in water from elsewhere, she turned to transmutation and decided she would simply change the water she already had.

The first sign that her spell was working was the quicker, agitated movement of a few of the snakes on the top layer of the undulating pile beyond that top step. She looked up to see that the ceiling was dissolving. Streams of water were dripping off the dome overhead and falling on the snakes down below. But it was happening too slowly. She needed it to work faster. She needed to get these goddamned snakes out of her way right now.

Time for the conjuring magic after all. If I combine the two, it will spare me a little strength. And her hope was that once she sat on that throne, whatever strength she had remaining would multiply as she became queen.

It was not just her hope, but her only hope.

Chapter Forty-Six

Well, that worked better than planned! was her rather crazy thought as she dove directly into the floor-to-ceiling swimming pool the ice castle had become. She’d realized the transmutation was working too slowly, she’d altered her magic to invite in the conjuring, and suddenly the study had flooded with so much salt water, she could only stand there stunned as it poured in. Within seconds, the snakes were floating around helplessly, and there was plenty of room for someone to make it from the hidden staircase to the study door.

She didn’t want to be shoddy about this however, since she would only have the one shot at it. So she concentrated further, imagining the corridor beyond the study, and the passageways and rooms beyond that. She imagined them filling with ocean water, and their ice walls and ceilings thinning out as half of their girth melted into water to help fill the space up.

She used her magic feelers to detect whether the spells were working or not, and when she was convinced that they were, she pulled her concentration back to where she was. She opened her eyes and looked down at herself. It was a little bit of a mistake – she was covered in blood.

It was unsettling, and for a few seconds, doubt registered in her mind.

Keep yourself together, Poppy. Finish what you’ve started. Kristopher is depending on you.

She could no longer tell which voices in her head were hers and which belonged to Winter. And she no longer cared. They kept her going, that was what counted.

She nodded to herself and focused. The words of a shielding spell floated from between her lips, and she felt her magic weave around her as if it were creating invisible chain mail. When she felt every inch of herself had been shielded, she looked up and narrowed her gaze on the floating room beyond.

She wouldn’t be able to come up for air. So she needed to take care of that as well.

Another spell was spoken, and though it was a very simple spell, one taught to warlocks in their youth, it was yet one more act of magic piled upon all the others, and she was beginning to feel the drain on her resources.

But again, she ignored the discomfort. She was becoming a pro at that.

When she’d fully gained the ability to breathe water – a spell parents never forgot to teach their children because it alleviated their fears that the kids would drown – she took one last breath of fresh, oxygenated air and dove in.

And now here she was, frogging it beneath fifteen feet of water, and she realized that she’d forgotten about the pressure involved in swimming this deep. Her ears began to ring, her head felt strange and a little tight, but it wasn’t so deep yet that it was dangerous. Just uncomfortable, like diving to the bottom of the deep end of the swimming pool without exhaling through your nose first.

As she moved, writhing snakes bumped into her shield. She hated the feeling. She knew that they were dying and that they were not responsible for their being there in the first place. She knew the Entity had transported them there while in possession of the Midgard Serpent’s body.

She felt very real regret for the situation. They were innocent and she was killing them. But she had no choice. And sometimes in life… you had to be prepared to kill. That was just how it was. If she could have transported them all back out of the castle, she would have. But her magic didn’t work on them. Simple, drowning water would, however. And when they were dead, they wouldn’t be able to bite – not even those few older snakes who would have been able to sink their teeth straight through her shield.

Poppy focused through the blurry water up ahead, made it through the study with its floating books and writhing, dying snakes, and headed out into the hall beyond. More snakes, more water, and soon she was turning a corner. A fur rug floated by, giving her a fright. But when she realized what it was, she shook it off and kept on going.

Swimming like this was hard work. Or she was out of shape. Note to self, she thought. Have Kristopher install an ice gym.

Finally, she was in the throne room, and the two ice chairs were up ahead. She’d been very careful while casting the melting spell to not include the thrones in its area of effect. From the looks of it, she’d been successful. However, now that they were wet, they would probably start dissolving a bit. Time was of the essence.

By this point, all but a few straggling snakes were dead or at least unconscious. Again, regret spiked through her, and again she pushed it aside. She reached the poppy-carved throne, spun in the water, and took a deep breath of salted wetness.

And then she sat down.

Suddenly she was not sitting, but standing. The throne room was gone. The water was gone. The very castle was gone. In its place and all around her stretched a vast plain of perfect, undisturbed snow. It stretched into the far reaches of her vision and disappeared on the horizon. Poppy looked up as something purple and green caught her eye. The sky was divided by ribbons of color, streaks of beauty that shifted and melted, reformed and changed again. The aurora borealis.

“Welcome, Poppy.”

Poppy looked back down. A polar bear stood before her. To the polar bear’s right was a massive white wolf. To its left was an equally large pure white stag. Sitting in the stag’s tall antlers as if they were branches was a perfectly white raven.

Poppy couldn’t tell which of them had spoken to her, and there was no one else around. One of them had. Right?

“Umm,” Poppy said, “Thank you?”

The wolf panted happily and sat down. The raven hopped from one antler outcropping to another. The polar bear lifted a paw and placed it back down again.

“It was all of us who spoke,” said the voice that had welcomed her. It was definitely coming from the general vicinity of the animals, but hovered in the air between them as if they truly had all spoken to her as one. “We are Winter.”

Poppy blinked. “So you’re the one who’s been in my head all day.”

There was a pause before the voice said, “Not only today, Poppy. I have always been with you.”

Again, Poppy blinked. And then she thought of her childhood, of the voice in her head she had always associated with her conscience. She thought of the way it had helped give her strength – strength to face the truth in difficult situations, and the strength to fight for what was right when it was being threatened by wrong. It had been there when she’d defended her friends against the bullies that would have loved nothing more than to crush their open, intelligent minds beneath the anvil of judgment and conformity. It was there when she decided to get out of the car a drunk friend was driving. It was always there – when she needed it most.

“To be fair,” said Winter, “A lot of that was your conscience.” The polar bear nodded its massive head. “You are not a fool, Poppy Nix. In truth, you rarely needed my guidance. But when you did, I gave it. Because I knew you were the one.”

Poppy looked from each of them. She looked down at herself.

The blood was gone. The mess was gone. In its place was her favorite outfit – a simple white tee-shirt and a fresh pair of blue jeans with lace-up combat boots. The difference was that she felt like they were royal robes, because the body they now covered was surging with power. It rolled through her in veritable waves. It was like a drug, thick and shimmering and perfect. Nothing hurt. There was no weakness. There was no fear.

“I have to help Kris,” she said, looking back up at the polar bear. “Please send me back.”

“I don’t need to my queen,” said Winter. She could feel it smile; she didn’t know how, but she could. “You are already there.”

Chapter Forty-Seven

Poppy opened her eyes. She was sitting on the queen’s throne in the Winter Kingdom’s ice castle throne room, and the room around her was still and clean. There was no water. There were no snakes. The walls, floor, and ceiling were as they had been the first time she’d laid eyes on them. A chandelier overhead chimed softly as its ice crystals clinked against one another. But other than that, all was calm and all was still.

Poppy sat for another second and a half. And then she leapt out of her throne and ran. She ran through the throne room, slid around the corner, and sprinted down the long hallway, which was also devoid of either snakes or water. She turned another corner and found herself in the study. The ceiling was in one, whole piece. The books were in their places on the shelves. And the secret passageway lay open and waiting.

Poppy barely slowed down enough to make the turn in the stairwell. She took the stairs down three at a time, basically leaping down the entire staircase until she hit the bottom and straightened.

Kristopher Scaul lay unmoving in the center of the room. Nothing had changed about him, unfortunately, and Poppy knew that if she didn’t hurry, the Valkyrie would find her. They would find where she’d taken the fallen warrior, and they would try to claim him once more.

“Over my dead body,” she whispered as she walked to the center of the room and knelt beside the king.

And here was where she faltered.

For a resurrection, a bonfire would normally have been built. A crystal phylactery would have been created. A complex and incongruous series of events would have had to take place before the spirit could be returned to the fallen body and the breath returned to its lungs.

But Kristopher’s spirit had never left. The Valkyrie had been denied their catch. His soul was still there, trapped in that un-breathing form. And bonfires were not for the Winter King. Not for him. Not for here, and not for now.

Poppy reached down, and with a touch filled with the tenderness her heart felt for his, she took his chin between her fingers and turned his head to face her. “My beautiful Viking,” she said softly. She didn’t have a plan any longer. She wasn’t behaving on something she had figured out. She wasn’t acting on logic.

Instead, she surrendered once more to the instinct that had not betrayed her yet. She closed her eyes and leaned in. As she did, she felt her magic swirl to frenzied life around her. A gentle breeze picked up in the nondescript room.

She couldn’t see it; her eyes were closed. But as she drew closer, the walls of the transportation room began to change. The smooth, undecorated ice molded itself, dipping down into reliefs and raising in design.

“My brave king,” she whispered, now just a breath away.

Then she touched her lips to his.

The breeze in the room became a full force gale. It surged through her hair, rushing past her in a sudden and magnificent swell of unimaginable power. Somewhere, the laws of physics were changing. She could have sworn she heard music. It filled her heart, filled her soul. She felt as if she were flying, rising high on the back of a Norse Dragon, reaching the outer limits of the atmosphere.

Beneath her, the king’s lips parted.

Poppy’s eyes flew open.

But she could not break the kiss to move away. Kristopher’s hand shoved through her hair to fist gently at the back of her head, holding her fast. He kissed her hard and deep and filled her universe with countless exploding stars.

She fell against him in exhausted relief and let him have that kiss. He was alive.

He was alive.

Time held still for them as they embraced. When the kiss ended, ten thousand uncounted years later, Kristopher brushed his fingers tenderly through her hair, and she lifted slowly away.

“My brave queen,” he said, smiling. “My beautiful, brave blossom.”

Epilogue

The broken root of Yggdrasil had eventually been located. It took a while; Yggdrasil is big, to say the least. But once it was found, with the help of search parties from both Valhalla and Jotenheim, the lone seed was carefully planted. The root was now restored. The fighting was done for the time being, and all was well within the Winter Kingdom.

Now it was time for a different kind of battle.

The whistle was blown, and the puck hit the ice. Poppy jerked forward, maneuvering her stick so that it almost seemed to bend around Kristopher’s. She gained the puck, spun with it, and turned a full circle, skating around him with quickly gained speed.

A roar of approval went up around the two players.

On the sidelines of the massive antechamber, Neve, William Balthazar Solan, and Meridian the Dire Bear each cheered on their chosen favorites. For the Time King, it was apparently Poppy. For Meridian, there was no telling who it was. Neve cheered them both on, not wanting to pick favorites.

The sound of skate blades was crisp and sharp in the ice. Laughter emanated from the players, laughter like magic and warmth and memories. A Dire Bear roared in friendly support.

Outside, beyond the clear ice dome, a white stag shook its head, and the white raven perched in its antlers fidgeted, jumping from one antler to the other. A large white wolf sat down on its back haunches, gave a low howl, and panted happily.

Fresh white powder stretched to an aquamarine ocean, and fat, crystalline snowflakes fell from an impossibly cloudless blue sky.

Content at last, Winter sighed.

*****

“Dear Evangeline,” the note read. “I’m pleased to see that you have advanced as you have. Though I had hoped you would have a more reputable tutor at this juncture…. Still, one mustn’t be choosy. I’m proud of you. You would never believe it, I understand. But I am and always will be. What’s more important, I love you. This, you must believe. It is essential. And one more thing.

Your world is about to change, young one. Everything you think you know, everything you believe you believe is going to alter before your very eyes. Be ready.”

Evangeline’s lavender colored eyes read the words once, then twice, and finally a third time, before she finally glanced down at the post script. A gentle breeze blew through her lustrous and long white-violet hair as she read Lalura Chantelle’s parting words to her.

“P.S. I love the boots. But the skirt could be longer.”

Heather Killough-Walden Reading List

The Lost Angels series:

Always Angel (eBook-only introductory novella)

Avenger's Angel

Messenger's Angel

Death's Angel

Warrior's Angel

Samael

The October Trilogy:

Sam I Am

Secretly Sam

Suddenly Sam

Neverland Series:

Forever Neverland

Beyond Neverland

The Big Bad Wolf series:

The Heat

The Strip

The Spell

The Hunt

The Big Bad Wolf Romance Compilation (all four books together, in proper chronological order)

The Kings - A Big Bad Wolf spinoff series:

(in their proper order so far)

The Vampire King

The Phantom King

The Warlock King

The Goblin King

The Seelie King

The Unseelie King

The Shadow King

The Winter King

(future The Kings books TBA; 13 total)

The Chosen Soul Trilogy:

The Chosen Soul

Drake of Tanith

Queen of Abaddon

Redeemer (stand-alone)

Hell Bent (stand-alone)

Vampire, Vampire (stand-alone)

A Sinister Game (stand-alone)

The Third Kiss: Dorian's Dream (stand-alone)

Note: The Lost Angels series (not including Always Angel, Warrior’s Angel and Samael) and the Big Bad Wolf series are available in print and eBook format. All other HKW books are currently eBook-only.

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