Spring Frost

by Kailin Gow

  Kian touched my shoulder lightly and I shivered, feeling the ice. “Let me speak to you in private,” he whispered, taking me aside to a secluded recess inside the palace gates. “Listen, Breena, you need this potion and you need it now. There's no use in denying it.” Anguish spread across his face like a fever. “Listen to me, Breena. I can't lose you. Even being near you without being able to touch you properly, as it's been the past few days, has been torture for me. It's been days since we last held each other without pain. I can't give you up. Not again.”

  I wanted to reach out to him, to stroke his face, to take away his pain. His eyes shone brightly with unshed tears, and I wanted to kiss them from his long lashes. I wanted to take him in my arms but I held back, unable to wrap my arms around him as I wanted to, dreading the pain.

  “Breena, this has been difficult for me. You know that. Watching you...it's been torture, knowing another man can feel what I only dream of feeling again. Knowing you care for another. But I cannot bear losing you altogether. No matter what it does, no matter what danger it poses to me, I want you to know that I trust you. I accept it. I accept your doubts, your fears, and your desires: all of it.”

  “Accept what?” But my voice shook and already I knew what he was about to say.

  “Logan,” Kian said, wincing at the sound of his name. “I want you to know that I accept it. I know that you chose me – despite whatever Logan feels for you. Or you feel for him. I've been jealous. I've been unfair. I know that now. But I want you to know that I won't let my own irrational fear get in the way of us, Breena. I want you to be with me because you want to be, not because you're afraid to hurt me, or afraid that I won't...” His voice trailed off. “I want to spend my life at your side, Breena. However you want it.”

  He produced a vial of red-orange liquid from his saddlebag. He pressed it into my hands. “Please, Breena. Take this potion. You need your strength. Feyland needs your strength. We need you to be strong. For Feyland and for us.”

  I couldn't look him in the face. I wanted so badly to drink that potion, to give into his love, to feel his arms around me once again without pain. I wanted to close my eyes and drink in his beauty along with the medicine, to feel his hands caressing my cheeks. But I knew I could not. Defeating Clariss was more important, even if it meant my life was at stake. And with the Dark Hordes emerging from the depths of Feyland, my life wouldn't last long in any case unless we could bring Clariss down.

  “No,” I said gently, brushing Kian's hand away as softly as I could. “I can't, you know that. I need you to...”

  “Bree!” Kian sighed in frustration, running his fingers through his long dark ebony hair. “Must you always be so stubborn? Listen to me, my darling! I have been selfless for so long. I cared only for duty, for righteousness, for Feyland. But now I need to be selfish. Now is the time for me to let my heart rule instead of my head. I would rather a living wife than a dead hero. I want you around with me – alive – with me by your side. I want to spend the rest of our eternal lives together. I want to be able to hold you and kiss you and be with you in every way as husband and wife. I want you here. Now. With me. When you chose to give up your life for Logan...”

  “Please, let's not talk about that...”

  “I want you alive, Breena. And Logan does too. Both of us would rather die than live without you.”

  “Logan's connection with Clariss – it's important. He needs to be alive, Kian. I have to protect him. It says so in the Book of Faeyore: he has a connection with the Sorceress and the Enchantress and the...the third sister. The Magic of Many Colors. Me. And that connection's going to help us find Rose.”

  “Then let Logan use that connection to find her – and don't worry about your own connection. This poison could kill you!”

  “We have to do all we can!” I said. “We can't close off any avenues, not yet.”

  Kian grabbed me, pulling me close. “Forgive me, Breena,” he said sadly, “for what I am about to do. I swore a promise to protect you and to protect Feyland. I won't let you be a martyr. What Feyland needs is you alive, safe, and well.” Before I could protest Kian uncorked the vial and forced it into my astonished, opened mouth. I swallowed automatically before I could resist.

  Immediately I could feel the effects on the poison. My skin began to warm and turn a glowing light pink. My veins began to pulse silver. I could feel warmth and release wash over me. I started to shake; my whole body felt relaxed, relieved. And as Kian pulled me into his arms, pressing his lips against mine, I felt not the savage pain I expected but pure, unadulterated, pleasure: the joy of being with him once again. Only then did I realize how much I had missed him, how much I loved him. The joy of being with him was overwhelming.

  I knew then that something icy within my heart – some evil within me – had vanished. The love for him that I felt now was stronger, deeper, more powerful than it had been before. The Dark Sorceress's hold on me had vanished.

  At that moment, I felt the earth shake. We looked up in terror to see the sky itself trembling; it split open like a bolt of fabric, torn straight through. Riding high in the sky was Clariss – still in dragon form – her black scales shining in the light of the twin suns. She breathed fire from her mouth and her eyes were red and filled with cruelty. Three heads emerged from her scaly, spike-lined neck.

  And behind her were the Dark Hordes.

  Kian and I traded glances. Logan had rushed into the fray already, his sword high in the air. Immediately Kian's and my hands were on our swords.

  “So!” A voice filled the air. “You thought you could break our bond, did you?”

  “Looks like we didn't have to go find Clariss after all,” said Logan. “She found us.”

  Chapter 18

  The war had begun again. Once, I had prayed to never again see violence. The price of war had left me haggard and heartbroken too many times. I had seen my comrades slaughtered, one by one. I had smelled the cloying perfume of silver blood that had filled my nostrils and made me gag. I had fought so many battles on these plains; I had thought that I would never have to fight them again. I closed my eyes, trying to shut out the echoes that burned into my brain: the sounds of the dying, the dead. My friends among them. My enemies. Someone else's friends, family, love. I had done my best for Feyland. I had tried so hard to keep us safe. But here was another enemy, another evil. Clariss was charging forth, the most terrifying army I had ever seen at her back.

  At first I thought these were the same Dark Hordes we had seen before: Dark Phoenixes, giants, witches, banshees. But a closer look revealed something else – something more terrifying entirely. The creatures that followed in Clariss’ rail were dark, foul-smelling shadows. But they were not pale and formless the way the dead were. Rather, they were solid: too solid. These creatures were made of the very heart and soul of Feyland itself: its earth. I saw wolves made out of rustling leaves; I saw charging Minotaurs that seemed to be carved from the bark of trees. I saw giants whose legs were enormous pillars of moving soil, and – worst of all – I saw skeletons, creatures made from the decaying bones of my fallen friends. The very thought filled my throat with bile. Were these creatures made from the bodies of those I knew or those I had loved? I felt my gorge rise.

  Clariss called out to me, her high cackling voice emerging from three heads at once. “You think you can break free from my spell, from my poison, O foolish Breena?” She laughed. “Guess again, my pretty one. This is on you, Breena. This blood is on your hands. Your disobedience to me, Breena, sparked this war. Now observe, so-called Queen of Feyland – although not for very much longer, I must add – these may not be the Dark Hordes you think you know. But they are worse. They come from the very depths of my power.” She laughed – a high, long, loud, terrifying laugh. “Let it begin.”

  She reared up, flying into the air. At this motion the creatures began to charge towards us – thousands and thousands of vile bodies whose stench made me sick to my stomach. They smelled like rot,
like decay; they smelled like death.

  “Fight!” Kian cried out. “Do not despair, Knights! We will fight for Feyland, for valor, for its honor. Do not fear – we will die bravely, but we will not let these creatures destroy Feyland.” My heart leaped in its chest. When Kian spoke – with that deep, booming voice of his – I almost had faith. I almost believed that we had a chance at winning this thing. He was so brave, so strong, my King Kian.

  Then the fighting began and my heart sank. No sooner did one knight plunge his sword into the breast of one of the creatures, causing it to explode into the earth, than it rose up again, reassembling from the twigs and leaves and soil that made up the floor of the plain. I gasped as one such re-assembled creature reared up and tore a sword out of its own heart, thrusting it instead deep within the body of its Fey attacker, killing him instantly.

  Logan and I traded glances, our stomachs plummeting. These creatures were unkillable.

  “Retreat!” Kian called. “Retreat!”

  We knew there was no winning this thing – at least, not by physical force. Not even our bravest knights could defeat this kind of magic.

  We rushed back inside the palace, fortifying it as best we could.

  “Hurry!” shouted Logan. “Get them all inside...we need to block them out. Call all the alchemists, tell them to start researching, start looking for a cure...”

  We had never ordered a retreat before – not even in the terrible last days of the last war. But this was different. This magic was different. This was a war about magic. Clariss’ magic from the Dark Sorceress was one we could not understand. An ancient magic before the time of the Fey.

  Thousands of knights – Winter and Summer – poured through the gates.

  “The Hordes are getting through,” Kian cried. “We have to close the drawbridge, now!”

  “But hundreds of knights are still out there,” I protested. “If we leave them out there, they'll die.”

  “If we let them in,” said Logan sadly, “the Hordes will get in – and kill us all. Civilians as well as soldiers.”

  “It is your decision, Breena,” Kian said. “Do we close the drawbridge?”

  I took one final look at the hundred knights still fighting, fruitlessly, for their lives. I saw those that could approach the drawbridge, followed closely by the front line of the Hordes, slaying everything in their paths. Kian was right. If even one such creature got into the Palace, it was only a matter of time before we were all doomed.

  “Can't they fly in?”

  “We have to put up a magical forcefield – nobody can fly in or out of the castle. Otherwise Clariss could get it.”

  It was the hardest decision I ever made.

  I only had a split-second to make it.

  “Close the drawbridge,” I whispered.

  That night I watched all one hundred knights die in the service of Feyland, perishing one by one against the Dark Hordes. Not a single one of them fell.

  Like lambs to the slaughter, I thought bitterly. I wished that I had been among them. They were my men – and they were dying for me – and I did not know how to save them. I did not know how to save Feyland. Alistair and his fellow alchemists ransacked the library, looking for any information, looking for a cure. I read the Book of Faeyore over and over again, searching for an answer. The screams of the dead and the dying outside the window haunted me and Clariss’ laughter haunted me. I knew I would not sleep again until either one of us was dead.

  It was not only seasonal Fey who died. Logan had called up his wolf pack while I was away with Clariss – it was not until we took a roster of the survivors that I realized just how many people had come to help us fight. Delano was there with his pixies – many of them, I knew, were among the ones who had died outside the palace gates on the first night. My father was there, too – his red beard grown gray.

  I waited until nobody was around before rushing into his arms.

  “Father,” I cried. “They're dead – it's my fault...” He held me as I cried – as quietly as I could. I knew that I could not let even one of my men see me in a moment of weakness. I couldn't even let Logan or Kian see me like this.

  “I was never a good king,” said my father. “I avoided those tough decisions – I left them to Queen Redleaf. I thought that it meant that I didn't have responsibility for my actions. Today you made the hardest decision any ruler will ever have to make, Breena. And the fact that you made it – it proves that you are the leader I never was.” He squeezed my hand. “Those men were soldiers – committed to dying for Feyland. And I'm so proud that in you, at last, they have a ruler worth dying for.”

  I spent the night looking out over the castle ramparts, counting the bodies of the dead, trying to identify them at a distance to have something to tell their husbands, their wives, their children...

  And then I saw it. One by one, they were stirring. Their dead bodies were vanishing into the earth, being subsumed into it, and then rising again – malformed, rearranged. Their bones became the basis of new skeletons. Their flesh gave birth to newer, more horrible creatures. I swallowed down my vomit.

  This had gone on long enough.

  “Alistair!” I called. He soon appeared next to me, the Dark Sorceress's book in his hand. I took the book of Faeyore and placed it before him.

  “What is it?”

  I felt a new anger, a new rage coursing through me. The power of a true leader. The power of a Queen. “I command you!” I cried, placing my hands on the book. Tears were running down my cheeks. “Open! Tell me what I want to know.” My rage had gone beyond blue magic and orange magic, beyond Summer and Winter, beyond all divisions, deep into the very heart of things, into the most ancient and atavistic secrets of magic.

  “Tell me how to defeat her.”

  The Book of Faeyore began gleaming with a rainbow light, a light that grew larger and stronger and brighter with each moment. The light began to expand, covering the Sorceress's book within its radius. Alistair dropped it in surprise and jumped backwards, as if burned.

  “What's going on?”

  We looked down. The Dark Sorceress' book was turning over, shaking, trembling. Its leaves were rustling; its pages were turning of its own accord, sending a cloud of dust into the air.

  And then it hit me. The dust had a shape. The tiny grains were taking on a form – a body, a shape, a face...

  A face I knew. Rose.

  She was standing before me. But this wasn't the Rose I knew. Her hair was long and white; her eyes were whiter still. She shone with a brilliant, pure light.

  And she looked mad as hell.

  Chapter 19

  We stared at Rose in shock. Her body and face were the same as before, but power flowed through her veins – power deeper and more ancient than any I had ever known. Something within me, some deep part of myself, told me the truth: I was in the presence of the full Enchantress at last. She had been present within Rose as an echo – but now her strength had broken through. This was one of the Three.

  “How long?” Rose demanded, her voice booming and echoing through the library. “How long has this been going on?” Her voice had weight, authority. I heard in her the power of centuries. Meek, shy, kind Rose had vanished; this new, regal figure had taken her place.

  But I was not afraid. This was my sister – one linked to me by magic, if not by blood. “Too long,” I said, taking her hand. “Many days, Enchantress.”

  “So you recognize me,” the Enchantress nodded. “Good…” She looked over at Logan. “Come,” she said, signaling to him. “Both of you. We must speak.”

  Logan looked up at me in confusion. “Me?” His mouth dropped open.

  “Yes, you. It's the prophecy, Logan. The one that was foretold in the Book of Faeyore. You're part of this too, Logan.”

  His face told me this wasn't making much sense to him, either.

  “Listen, Logan,” I said. “I am feeling just what you're feeling – same as you. I'm confused too. Scared. But we have to
work through this together. You're part of this just like I am. You have this connection with me, with the Enchantress, with all of us. And now we'll finally find out how.”

  “There is no time to waste,” said the Enchantress, cutting us off brusquely. I marveled at her. Where was Rose – deep down within this body? This wasn't Rose's voice. This wasn't Rose's face. But I knew I had to trust her. I reached out and took her hand; echoing me, Logan did likewise. Immediately we felt the force of magic sear through us. We stood together in a circle, and Logan's touch filled me with that same familiar warmth as he and I linked fingers.

  “I cannot defeat the Dark Sorceress alone,” said the Enchantress. Her voice shook with the force of her power. “The Dark Sorceress has summoned all the darkness of Feyland to her aid. Her pain, her wrath, her anger are so great. She has taken all the cruel things of Feyland – betrayal, hurt, anger, jealousy, death, decay – and used them to channel her power. It was this wrath that imprisoned me – until together with Breena I was able to break out. It was not until Breena learned to harness her magic, and the magic of the Fey Queens, that I was able to be free. Meanwhile, the Dark Sorceress is charging against Feyland itself: turning the very soil and earth into grotesque murderers.”

  She turned to me. “You must use that magic, child. Use the magic you have within you. Use it to help me and Logan fight off this darkness before Feyland is consumed with it and becomes a permanent place of Darkness.”

  Logan nodded. “It's about Feyland,” he said. “It's always about Feyland. It's not about my connection with Breena or Rose or her relationship with Kian or any of it. This is so much bigger than just us. This is between light and dark, good and evil.” He sighed. “I've been so blind. Worrying about my feelings when this connection means...so much more.”

  “You know the power of Feyland,” the Enchantress said. “It is a place with magic beyond measure. Those who harbor that magic, that power, will soon burst past the boundaries of the Crystal River, and control not merely this world but the mortal world, and indeed all worlds. Ultimate power, Logan,” the Enchantress said. “That is what this is about. That is the true story of Feyland. As Feyland goes, so goes all. You think you can escape to the Land Beyond the Crystal River? You cannot. There is no escape. What happens here ripples through the very fabric of existence.”