by Jill Myles
Actually, that would probably solve the problem of having a snow queen in residence, Charlotte thought, but kept that to herself. He was right, she was pushing too hard. She was just so desperate to see any kind of result that she’d been pouring heart and soul into things.
“Let me carry you,” he said, picking her up again and hauling her into his arms. “Come inside and eat. You need your strength.”
“I’ll be fine,” she protested. “I just need a moment to rest and then I can go back to work.”
“No more work for now,” he said firmly. “Rest.”
“We don’t have time to rest.” Her fingers curled into the soft furs he wore and for a heart-wrenching moment, she wished it was his skin she was touching. Just once. “They’re going to be coming for me and I need to show them that I’m not totally evil.”
He shook his head. “Even if you believe this, I’m not sure I do. Regardless, you won’t be able to do anything if you don’t take care of yourself.” He carried her through the icy halls, pausing at each door and opening it. It felt painfully slow to Charlotte, who was used to just melting them along the way, but she suddenly felt weak, exhausted, and tapped out. Maybe he was right.
When they got to Charlotte’s bedroom, Kai gently laid her down in bed. “Just rest,” he told her softly. She felt him press his scorching mouth to her hair and felt the strands lifting as he pulled away. She looked up, startled, and her hair was stuck to his mouth, frozen. For some reason, that struck her as wildly funny and she began to giggle as he cursed under his breath.
“I hate that I cannot touch you,” he swore, furious. “Not even to comfort you.”
Suddenly it wasn’t funny any longer. Charlotte’s laughter died as quickly as it had arrived. For the last week, they’d been in a hellish touch-but-don’t-touch sort of scenario. From their heavy petting session, Kai’s hand had blistered and swollen and taken days to recover. Her own sensitive skin had taken almost as long to heal. Those welts had been a reminder to be careful, and they’d been more cautious in their affection toward one another. They hadn’t gone as far as before – not daring to – but the constant need lingered between them like an unfulfilled ache. Instead, they caressed and petted and touched…all within the safe confines of covered skin.
It was driving Charlotte crazy. And if it drove her crazy, it had to be driving Kai wild as well.
But they were stuck. There was nothing they could do about it.
Sometimes, Charlotte secretly hoped that if she expended enough magic, she’d warm up a few degrees. Just enough for Kai’s skin to touch her own. But no matter how tirelessly she worked, she never seemed to exhaust her magic. Sometimes it sputtered weakly because she’d tapped herself out, but there was always a reserve. And she never, ever warmed up a degree.
So what could she do? She had an ice palace in the middle of a country that didn’t want her there. She had a man she was attracted to and who was also attracted to her…who she couldn’t touch. And in a few days, there would be a murdering mob on her doorstep ready to take said man away from her and possibly end her life…unless she ended theirs first.
All in all, it was a pretty shitty situation. So what could she do? She worked on her plants, she cuddled with Kai, and she did her best not to think about the future.
~~ * * * ~~
Two days before the end of the month, Charlotte was out working in the garden when Muffin returned.
A vision in a puffy pink parka, snow skis, and what looked like yellow cowboy boots, the fairy godmother dug her poles into the earth and skied directly over Charlotte’s poor plants.
Charlotte gave a shriek of horror and tried to coax one berry plant out from under Muffin’s crushing neon pink ski. “What are you doing?”
“I might ask the same of you, young lady!” The fairy godmother sounded irate. “I thought we talked about this? You’re the snow queen. Not Martha Stewart! Now, what’s with the gardening?”
“Get off my plants and I’ll tell you.”
Muffin did, but not before bonking Charlotte on the head with one of her ski poles. “I am not impressed, Charlotte. Not impressed at all.”
Charlotte ignored Muffin’s bad mood and sank her fingers back into the icy soil, pushing magic around the wounded plants to bolster them again. The greens were growing, but were spindly and pale, and needed constant attention. She’d been working so hard on them this last week and they were showing signs of berries. If she just kept pushing them and coaxing them a bit more, they’d get there…
“Charlotte, I am concerned about you.” Muffin tapped on her head with the ski pole again, but gently. “I worry you’re not going to be ready in two days. You do know what happens in two days, don’t you?”
She packed dirt around one listing little plant and gave it an extra push with her magic, and was pleased when it perked up. “Gerda comes here looking for me.”
“Looking for your head on a pike,” Muffin corrected, and lifted one of the ends of her ski-poles and pointed it toward Charlotte’s throat. “And you don’t seem concerned.”
“Oh, I’m concerned,” Charlotte said. “That’s why I’m working so hard on these.” She gestured at the tidy rows of pale little plants. One or two of the heartier ones were even starting to resemble bushes. She was getting there. She just needed more time.
“Where’s your captive boy-toy?”
“He’s out ice fishing. And he’s not my captive,” Charlotte said. “Not any longer. He stays because he wants to, now.”
“Oh, that’s adorable,” Muffin said sarcastically. “Is it true love?” When Charlotte’s cheeks colored, Muffin groaned. “Oh honey, no. I told you to use him for sex. Strap on a big ice dildo and have him call you ‘sir’. Have a good time with him! Tickle his undercarriage! Tweak his manly little nipples! But no hearts allowed.”
Okay, that was embarrassing. Charlotte pressed the backs of her hands to her hot cheeks. “You have a salty mouth for a fairy godmother.”
“And you have weird ideas for a snow queen,” Muffin returned. She nodded at the icy courtyard. “Come. Take a walk with me.”
This was going to be a lecture, Charlotte suspected. Still, Muffin controlled everything here and Charlotte had to obey. She stood, brushed off her hands on her crystalline skirts, and then trotted behind Muffin as she started to ski away.
The fairy godmother skied to one of the outer walls and then began to slow. Her skis changed to snowshoes with a flutter of glitter, and then Muffin began to tromp along the snowy edge. She still had her ski poles, so Charlotte moved alongside her, just out of reach of another thwap with a pole in case her mood was still sour.
“You’ve been here almost a month now, correct?”
“That’s right,” Charlotte said.
“And you knew about Gerda coming the entire time. I filled you in on how the fairy tale goes.”
She didn’t know where Muffin was heading with this. “Right…”
Muffin turned to Charlotte, and her wrinkled, round little face was unhappy. “I give you a hard time, Charlotte dear, but I like you. That’s why I don’t want to see you fail.”
A cold clench moved around Charlotte’s heart. “Well,” she said, trying to keep her voice light. “I don’t really want to fail either.”
Muffin shook her head, took another step forward, and then prodded one of the ice walls of the courtyard with her ski-pole. “What does this look like to you?”
Was this a trick question? “Um…ice? An ice wall?”
“And what is the purpose of a wall?”
“To keep things out?”
Muffin’s ski pole prodded the wall again, this time a bit harder. A chunk of ice fell to the ground and left a fist-sized hole in Charlotte’s wall, where she could see out the other side. “Here’s the thing with ice, sweetie. On sunny days, it melts.” Muffin gestured at the clear blue sky overhead. “You want your ice fortress to remain a fortress? You need to stay on top of things. I thought you were fortifying the
castle?”
“I am! I was. I just, um, got distracted.”
“By plants? Or by the boy toy?”
“Both?” Charlotte grimaced. “But there’s a reason behind the plants, I swear. I—“
Muffin jabbed at the ice wall again and an even larger chunk fell down at Charlotte’s feet. Okay, now she was starting to get annoyed with the fairy godmother. Did she have to do that right now? “Your ice fortress is one good push away from falling apart,” Muffin told her. “And what are you going to do then?”
Charlotte opened her mouth to protest, but another chunk fell from the wall several feet away. It landed with a wet splat. No one had touched it. Frowning, she stepped toward the wall and put her hand on it to patch up…and felt just how weak it was. The ice molecules (or whatever she was feeling when she touched it) seemed sluggish and thin. She gave it a push of her own magic…and was alarmed at the faint sputter of her own response. She’d been pouring too much of herself into the plants and she had nothing left to repair her home. “I…I’ll fix it later. When I’ve rested.”
“Charlotte, honey, this is such a bad idea! Can’t you see that? I’m worried about you. Just because you accidentally landed as the bad guy doesn’t mean that I want you to fail.”
Why was Muffin so sure that Charlotte was going to fail? It was making her uneasy. “But things are different this time. I’m going to talk to Gerda. Show her the plants I’m growing. It’ll make a difference, I know it will. We can all come to peaceful terms over this—“
Muffin shook her head solemnly.
“—what?”
“Honey.” Muffin’s little hand patted at Charlotte’s icy sleeve, and then stuck there. The fairy godmother frowned, blew a cloud of glitter at her hand, and unstuck it. She shook her fingers in the air, as if restoring circulation. “I keep forgetting about that.”
“I didn’t,” Charlotte said in a wry, sad voice. It made her feel more despair every time someone reached to touch her.
“Honey,” Muffin said again. “This is not my first go-around in this fairy tale. I’ve had my share of Snow Queen stories. And while I admit this is the first time I’ve been working from the other side, there is one consistent factor in things.”
Charlotte’s stomach gave an uneasy little flip. “What’s that?”
“No one ever loses against the snow queen. Gerda always wins. Always. Always.” She gave her head a little shake, the puffy pink parka rustling. “Why do you think we have the interns start with this sort of fairy tale? Because it’s a ‘gimme’ for them. It’s training wheels. You set your girl as Gerda, and Gerda always, always defeats the snow queen. Later on, we move them to something more challenging.” Muffin wrinkled her nose, thinking. “Might be a while before Fifi moves on to something challenging, I have to admit.”
She swallowed hard, that sick feeling in her stomach growing. “But if I’m the first snow queen, maybe I can be the first winner.”
The look Muffin gave her shut that concept down. “By, what? Tossing those weak little plants at her?”
“I want to show her that I’m here to do good—“
“And you think she’ll stop in her avenging rampage long enough to listen? As you continue to hold Kai captive at your side?”
“He’s not my captive!”
“He’s still here, isn’t he? He’s not home, helping them with the hunt or feeding hungry families? Because you know there are hungry families. His people aren’t used to the cold. Look at the tan on that boy. That’s not the mark of someone who spends his days tromping through the snow.”
Charlotte swallowed. Bent her head in defeat. “I…just wanted things to be different. I didn’t want to be the bad guy.”
“I know sweetie.” Muffin gave her another little pat, this time with a gloved hand. “You mean well, and I get that you’re trying to make the best of a bad situation. I get that. I really do. But you’re better off preparing the fortress for the invaders instead of trying to grow flowers. I’m just trying to help because I hate to see you go down without a fight. And the way you are headed? You are in for a quick and humiliating defeat.”
Charlotte nodded, head bent. Tears pricked at her eyes but she struggled to keep them back. She didn’t want to cry in front of the fairy godmother.
“As for that boy toy of yours. It’s clear to see that you’ve become attached. I know you’ve been lonely, darling, but you need to cut the cord before someone gets hurt.”
Too late, Charlotte thought. But she forced herself to swallow the knot in her throat. “Cut the cord?”
“Yes. Let’s extrapolate our future scenarios for a minute, shall we?” Muffin’s mittened hand soothed Charlotte’s bent back. “Let’s say Gerda shows up two days from now, as we know she’s going to. There are two possible outcomes. The most likely one is that you lose, right? And what do you think is going to happen to that boy when he sees his childhood friend cut your head off and raise it on a pike at the castle gates?”
Charlotte gasped and put a hand to her throat. “She’s going to what?”
Muffin blinked, looking alarmed. “Hyperbole! We don’t know that’s going to happen. Maybe she’ll just burn you at the stake like a witch or something more dignified. It varies depending on the flavor of Gerda.”
“Great,” Charlotte enthused tonelessly.
“Either way, how do you think that boy’s going to feel?”
Charlotte said nothing. She didn’t want to think about how Kai was going to feel at the sight of her dead. If he really, truly cared for her…he’d be devastated. As devastated as she would be if he got hurt in the upcoming inevitable battle. “He’ll be safe either way, won’t he?”
“Well,” Muffin hedged.
She turned an alarmed look at the fairy godmother. “Won’t he?”
“I’m not going to lie to you; sometimes things go badly in the final battle. I’ve seen some incarnations of Kai trapped in the ice palace when the Queen goes down and he’s buried alive. I’ve seen him accidentally stabbed by his own people’s spears in the heat of the battle. I’ve seen the queen kill him out of spite. But a lot of the time he lives.” Muffin gave her a bright smile. “Mostly. It just depends on how this story plays out.”
But she was always doomed. And her doom might affect Kai. In addition to hurting his heart, she might cost him his life. She needed to fix that. “I see.”
“I think you’re starting to,” Muffin said. “Now, let’s extrapolate some more, shall we? Let’s say that we roll the dice and you fight Gerda and you hit that one in a million chance and win this thing. Wouldn’t that be nice?” Muffin beamed at her, but Charlotte couldn’t even muster a return smile. “Then, we whisk you out of here, lickety split, and set you in your nice, new, cozy reality where you’ll spend the rest of your life.”
Wait…what? “New reality?”
“Well, yes. You didn’t think you were going to stay here, did you? Once the fairy tale is over?”
Actually, she had thought that. Charlotte sniffed. “W-what happens if I win, then?”
“You get a new, fresh start in an entirely new place. Just nice, normal you in a nice, normal place. No fairy tale, just the happy ever after part. Think of it as Charlotte 2.0.”
She blinked repeatedly, unable to process this. No more snow queen? No more endless winter and ice and powers? No polar bears for mounts. No unseen servants to serve her and no icy boudoir to sleep in. No ice gowns. She’d be normal. She’d be able to be touched and be loved, and to touch and love back.
But…Kai. “I…what if I want to stay here?”
“Not possible.” Muffin pinched her cheek with a mittened thumb. “You don’t really think these people are going to want a snow queen around forever, do you?”
“I’d kind of hoped…”
“Don’t be silly.”
She licked her dry lips. “What…if I win, does the old snow queen take her body back over again?”
“That’s need-to-know information, Charlotte d
arling, and you really do not need to know.”
That didn’t sound good. Oh, Kai, Kai. Would he even know it wasn’t her before it was too late? Or would he end up trapped all over again?
Oh dear lord, what could she do to fix this? Charlotte looked around at her crumbling, melting walls. At the patchy ice that had – two weeks ago – been the start of a rather fierce and forbidding ice fortress. At the limp plants in neat rows that she’d spent so much time and energy on.
Boy, she’d really fucked this one up, hadn’t she?
Charlotte stared blankly at the walls. “I’ve got a lot of work to do in the next two days.”
Muffin beamed at her. “I can see my little pep talk helped. You scrape yourself off the ground, Charlotte dearie, and you get back to work. There’s always hope, right? And you’ll want to go down swinging.”
“I’ll get started,” she said, an ache in her throat that wouldn’t go away. “You can count on me.”
“Good job,” Muffin said, and waved one of her ski poles in the air. “I’m out of here, then. See you in a few days!” She vanished in a puff of glitter.
Charlotte sank to her knees, a small moan escaping her throat.
What could she do? She had two days and her ice castle was crumbling around her. Her ice magic was ebbing low, because she’d sunk so much of it into her plants. Those stupid, stupid plants. If she wanted a shot in hell of sticking around to become Charlotte 2.0, she needed to redo her ice walls. Make them stronger, thicker. Maybe create some icy pit traps around the courtyard with some ice spikes at the bottom…
She shuddered, mentally picturing someone that looked like Kai stumbling into an icy pit trap. Could she do that? Could she embrace her evil side in order to survive? She had to – if she didn’t, she’d be annihilated right out of the afterlife. The cards were stacked against her no matter what she did.
And oh God. What if she hurt Kai in the process? She looked back at her ice castle, not seeing it as a glimmering, secure fortress but an icy creation one strong gust of wind away from collapsing. What if one of the icy crenellations collapsed under the heat of the sun and pinned him underneath? What if the entire thing came crashing down when she bit it?
