Forever Frost (Bitter Frost, #2)

by Kailin Gow

  Forever Frost

  Bitter Frost #2

  kailin gow

  Forever Frost

  Published by THE EDGE

  THE EDGE is an imprint of Sparklesoup LLC

  Copyright © 2010 Kailin Gow

  All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the publisher except in case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  For information, please contact:

  THE EDGE at Sparklesoup

  P.O. Box 60834

  Irvine, CA 92602

  www.sparklesoup.com

  First Edition.

  Printed in the United States of America.

  ISBN: 1-59748-899-2

  ISBN: 978-1597488990

  DEDICATION

  THANK YOU TEAM FROST for making this second book in the Frost Series come alive. TEAM FROST is made up of so many people who believe in this series and the power of love. To my editors Tara and Jaya, cover artist and designer Darla, publicity and marketing Dorothy and everyone at the EDGE and Sparklesoup – thank you from the bottom of my heart.

  To my husband and daughter, thank you for showing me what unconditional love is.

  Last, but most importantly, to the readers – thank you for giving Bitter Frost and the Frost Series a chance. It is because of you that I write.

  Prologue

  The world of my dreams had become reality. For sixteen years, I had spent every night wandering the halls and towers and gardens of the idyllic Summer Palace, a place of fairy courtship and fairy lore. I had dreamed of princes – charming princes with wintry cheeks and piercing eyes – and of princesses, of gardens perfumed with ripe fruit and flowering plants, of the soft cadences of the Fairy Waltz. Nothing felt more real to me than those dreams – the melody of a dance, the touch of a princess's hand, the whispering thrill of a prince's kiss. And I spent my mornings, my evenings, my afternoons of Gregory, Oregon waiting until it was time to sleep again. I had never fit in among the “normal” girls at my school – the slender, doe-eyed tormentors that are requisite in every saga of teenage angst – I had spent my lunch hour wandering the woods outside the school, whispering to the wind and the leaves and the twigs and branches, instead of shopping at the local mall outlet.

  And then I had turned sixteen, and everything changed.

  When I turned sixteen, I was visited by the Pixie King with glowing eyes and cruel lips who tried to abduct me, only to be saved by a figure I already recognized – the prince from my dreams. But my salvation was only an illusion; the Winter Court, to which Prince Kian was heir, had been long at war with the Summer Court, which was, I discovered, the land I was destined to rule. And as Prince of the Winter Court, Kian had been charged with stealing me as hostage, using me as a pawn in the political machinations that defined Fairyland.

  Over the next few days I learned many things. I learned that things were not what they seemed – from Kian's original standoffish cruelty that morphed slowly into love, to the beautiful forests that sheltered untold dangers. I learned that the Pixie King Delano sought to have me for his Queen, because I was a half-breed – half-human, half-fairy – possessed of great gifts and unimaginable powers. I learned how to perform magic, to connect with the essence, the magical properties within each creature or object and will it to do my bidding. I learned how to transform bread into metal, how to glow like the sun, how to fight – because fighting, I learned early on, was necessary in a world as dangerous as Feyland.

  I learned about fairy lore and fairy history, about my own unique place in the Fairy hierarchy. My mother was a human concubine; my father was the Summer King – a liaison that had angered the Summer Queen and I found myself facing almost as much danger from my own nation as I did from our rivals.

  I learned too that Kian was a brave soldier and a loyal friend, a principled idealist who loved nothing more than his Winter Court except, perhaps, me. I learned that he was an accomplished cook – for men did the cooking in Feyland – and that he loved to paint almost as much as I did. I learned that we had much still to learn about each other, and that his kiss was the most powerful sensation I had ever experienced.

  And then there were the bad lessons.

  I learned that my best friend, Logan, was a werewolf, a shapeshifting creature that lived between Feyland and the Land Beyond the Crystal River – which they called my world. And, when he was killed in a battle with the Pixie King, I learned that he was a hero, too.

  All these revelations hadn't just changed my life. They had changed me. I was no longer the shy insecure “loser” Breena who had shut out the world outside her own head in the halls of Gregory High School, knowing that the real world would never match my somnolent fantasies. I was a princess, in destiny, if not in power; it was my responsibility to learn about Feyland – its ways, its secrets, and it’s magic. It was the “real world” now – my home, Gregory High, the woods behind the school, were all part of the mythical Land Across the Crystal River in which some denizens of Feyland didn't even believe. It was my responsibility to broker peace between the Winter and Summer Courts – to balance the stirrings of my heart with the needs of a people that weeks earlier I had thought belonged only in the pages of Causabon's Mythology.

  And today I had to make my first choice as Princess. I had been captured by the Summer Queen – who had revealed to me that I, along with my mother Raine, had been exiled from Feyland; we were dangers to the throne. Now I understood why. My mother was in the clutches of the Winter Court, who wished to use her in exchange for the Summer Court's hostage, Kian's sister, the Princess Shasta. And there was nothing more dangerous – for my family, for my kingdom, than my mother in peril. Raine was my father's great weakness – there was nothing he would not do for the woman he loved – and as long as my mother was in the Winter Court's hands, the Summer Court could be annihilated in a moment by a king who loved the mother of his child more than he loved the Kingdom he had sworn to protect.

  And with a glaring smile, the Summer Queen was asking me – me – a girl of sixteen – what to do about it. If she did not like my answer, she said, she could easily dispense with me, leave me in the dungeons as monster-bait.

  I wanted to be a strong queen, a proud queen – like the Summer Queen – who, for all her hostility, inspired in me a grudging sense of deep respect.

  But I was also sixteen years old. And my mother had just been captured by our mortal enemies, a court of fairies who wanted little as much as to make an example of her to bring down the Summer Court.

  I had to be brave. I had to be strong.

  I had to make the right choice.

  Chapter 1

  I stood before the Summer Queen. She gazed upon me with a cold, unblinking stare – her eyes as fixed and deadly as the eyes of a snake. She was beautiful, even in her cruelty; her golden-red hair was wound up in a series of knots and tendrils, embedded with emeralds and rubies. The scarlet velvet of her dress hung down from the throne and brushed gently the floor. She looked regal, truly – truly like a queen, and for all that I feared her, I nevertheless acknowledged her authority as Queen of the realm. Instinct led me to want to defend my father and my mother, and yet as she looked upon me, I could not help but feel sorry for her, but take her side. How difficult it must have been for her, to rule a country and fight a war, and all the while endure the indignities of having a husband stray from his marriage and find love with another woman. Did she love my father?

  Did I love my father? I had never met him. Until two weeks ag
o I hadn't even known who he was.

  And yet my respect was twinned with an increasing awareness that my life lay in the Summer Queen's hands, that out of caprice or annoyance she could send me deep into the dungeons of the Summer Court as food for the murky-eyed beasts that lived there. This was not a fate that I wanted to meet.

  So I began considering what it was that the Summer Queen wanted to hear, what she wanted from me. She didn't want my mother at the Winter Court, where she could prove a threat, where my father would risk all of Feyland to get to her. But no more did the Summer Queen want my mother – or me, for that matter – at the Summer Court, where my mother would serve as a constant reminder of my father's infidelity, of the dishonor that had been brought upon her by the fact that her husband's heir was a child to whom she bore no kindred sense of blood.

  Plus, there was the question of the Knights. I had seen the Knights of the Summer Court – brilliant, beautiful creatures with golden wings that looked more powerful than that of any bird, and piercing eyes that scanned the horizon with keen celerity. Any knights used for the prisoner exchange surely would be knights that the Summer Court could not spare from its military campaign; the Summer Court was, I gathered, on the verge of losing, and they could not spare a single body when victory was dangling just out of their rivals' grasp.

  I thought, furrowing my brow and swallowing hard. I could feel the Summer Queen's eyes upon me, looking through me, staring into my secret self. I wanted her to know, I thought, that I meant her no harm – that if anything, I respected her all the more for the difficult decisions my family had forced her to make, that I did not want to steal her authority nor her crown nor her husband's love – that I just wanted to stay alive, and for the ones I loved to stay alive, whether beyond the Crystal River or here in Feyland.

  Perhaps with her magic she sensed this; her gaze relaxed, and her eyes grew less terrifying in their coldness.

  “Well?” she said – but her tone was less accusatory than it had been previously.

  “Well,” I said, “here's the thing. I'm not going to ask for my mother to come back here. I'm not going to lie to you, your Highness – she's my mother, and I love her, and of course I want no harm to come to her – and yes, your Highness, I'm a child of sixteen and I want my mother with me. But I know enough to know that she is not welcome here in the Summer Court, nor am I. I am happy to go from here, to take her with me, to leave you be – I am happy, if you should wish it, to relinquish any claims to power I, or my family, have.” She looked stung to be reminded of it and I wondered if I had faltered here. “But I also know that neither you nor I have an interest in leaving her in the Winter Court. While I hear the Winter Queen has little maternal interest in her children, it is not good politically for the Princess Shasta to remain in our custody, and while the Winter Court does not yet realize the extent to which my mother's presence among them is a political coup for them, they may yet realize it – so we want to make the exchange as soon as possible, before they up the stakes, or demand my father abdicate and give up the Kingdom altogether – and if you'll excuse my saying so, Your Highness, from what you've already said it rather sounds like he might.”

  “The silly man would do anything for her,” said the Queen.

  “I can't help that, your Highness,” I said simply. “Two weeks ago she was just my mother, and my father was a man I had never met, whose name my mother told me she didn't know. I apologize for the offense my blood carries, but know I bear such a burden unwillingly.”

  This mollified her somewhat.

  “You are Queen in this realm,” I said, “and I bow my head to your decisions and your statutes. That said, if I may continue...”

  “Continue, yes, girl,” she said, with a wave of her hand.

  “We need to make the exchange as soon as possible,” I said. “But you cannot now spare any knights of the Summer Court; already those you spared to abduct me were lost from the frontier. So let me suggest that I, instead, make the trade.”

  “You?”

  “I will escort Shasta to the Winter Court – I have a feeling through connections there that they will not harm us.” I thought of Kian and hoped I could get in touch with him in time. “Once the exchange has been made, my mother and I will return home, beyond the Crystal River, back into exile, and you need never worry about us again. The Winter Court will be more willing to let us go when they realize we have nothing to do with their wars or their fighting.”

  “Perhaps,” her lips curled into a smile. “If they believe you have no claims on the throne.”

  “I wish only to remain in good health and serve the current ruler of the Summer Court,” I said, bowing deeply.

  “Well then,” she said, considering. “I cannot deny you have impressed me somewhat,” she said. “You speak like a royal, even if you don't yet act like one.”

  It would get me home safely with my mother and perhaps help the war come closer. And, maybe, just maybe, it meant that I would be able to catch a glimpse of Kian again. The idea of going beyond the Crystal River for good pained me; despite the dangers of Feyland, I had come to love it, to feel at home in it in a way that I had never felt at home in Gregory, Oregon. But I would rather be alive in Gregory than dead or Pixie-bait in Feyland, and certainly I wanted to save my mother's life at any cost. Still, the thought of leaving Kian for good stung me, and some tears rose in my throat and appeared in my eyes.

  “What is it, girl?” said the Queen.

  I could not tell her about Kian. Yet I raised my head. “I cannot lie to you, my Queen,” I said. “I love Feyland; I have come to love it and will miss it. Surely you cannot deny me that. After all, as Queen, you have done so much to protect and preserve this land that is so beautiful, so inspiring. Please take it only as a compliment to your rule.”

  “You do have the gift of speech,” she said.

  “I was on the debate team at my high school,” I said, “beyond the Crystal River. It was the sort of thing I did.”

  “Strange place, that land,” said the Queen.

  “Almost as strange as here,” I said.

  She conceded the point.

  “And what will a fairy princess like yourself do in...Gregory, Oregon, was it?”

  “Well,” I said to her, bowing deeply, “I'd like to start by staying alive.”

  Chapter 2

  “Well,” said the Summer Queen. “I must admit you have some of your father in you after all. Fairy blood.” She gave me an arch smile, as elusive as a cat's.

  “I aim to serve my Queen,” I said.

  “You're no fool,” she said, “but you're also diplomatic. Certainly better than many of the young chits flocking about the Fairy Court in hope of being made the Summer Court's next main concubine.” She scoffed. “But your father wasn't a bad man, you see. Not altogether.”

  My curiosity was piqued. I realized then just how little I knew of my father – I didn't even know his name.

  “Before he met your mother...” The Queen's voice trailed off. “Oh, what a great ruler he was then!” There was a note of warmth and sympathy in her voice. “What a great ruler! He was handsome – he was always handsome – but he had such a regal bearing. The way he held himself. The way he handled royal and court affairs. The way he could light up a room with his smile – if anyone could bring peace to the Summer and Winter Courts, it was your father. He could smile with that inordinate charisma he had, and make every party at the table – from our Fairies to the Pixies – believe that their interests were being represented, that he truly cared about them. It was a very special gift.”

  “And then what happened?” I asked her.

  “Your mother,” she said, her lips curling with disdain around the world. “He fell in love, in a way that we don't fall in love in this Kingdom – and now you know why. His duties – forgotten! His cares – secondary! The only thing that mattered to him was interludes in the rose garden and sumptuous diamonds to grace your mother's swan-like lips. And, of course
, you – his beloved baby girl. It made him weak, distracted. Of course, he had the luxury to be distracted. He could play his little childlike games, go in disguise beyond the Crystal River, make eyes at your mother from behind the rose bushes, because he had a wife who was content to sit at home and run the country! Perhaps I was lucky. Many wronged wives have no distractions but their own heartbreak. But I had little time to think of my dishonor or my pain. Instead, I was forced to think of the pain of the whole nation – which your father should have been thinking of, too!” Her voice grew loud with anger.

  “I had to protect his reputation, you see, Breena.”

  She used my name; I couldn't help but feel closer to her.

  “Whatever he did, whatever he said, whatever foolishness clouded his mind – I had to stand there with my face to the public and deny it, deny everything. I could not let our king be made a laughingstock. And so I bore my shame and pain alone – allowed my husband to take credit for my victories, my diplomatic treaties, and border-controls, and military campaigns, knowing that the Court could not survive his humiliation made public.

  Of course, I was not entirely successful. Ask around in any drunken tavern or bawdy-house and over a few jugs of fairy fruit wine you'll find at least some soldiers willing to bet that something's a bit off with old King Foxflame.”

  At the sound of my father's name, my heart leaped despite itself! I knew that what she was saying was true – I couldn't help but sympathize with her side of the story. And yet the word Foxflame seared itself into my tongue.

  She noted my surprise.

  “Child, what is it?”

  “It's just...” I swallowed deeply. “I didn't know that was his name.”