Ice maidens would suffer eternally. There’d be so much death on their hands, and all for the sake of their love.
“It is not a sacrifice we can make,” Alador whispered, knowing exactly where her thoughts had led. Her beautiful, wonderful male…so perfect for her in every way.
Gerda and Kai began to sob quietly, and the sound of it broke her.
Her chin wobbling, she moved toward Alador, covering her face with her hands as she wept. “How can I endure your hatred of me? I do not think I could handle it.”
“I’ll never hate you, my heart. ’Tis impossible.”
But she knew his words to be vain lies. The Goblin had thought of everything. He’d fixed every scenario so that even if she won her freedom, she still lost. Either choice was her doom.
He’d won.
And though she thought that maybe the fires of her wrath should be burning hard and heavy in her chest, she was too exhausted for it.
For a month, she’d been surrounded by death, every night losing so many of those nearest and dearest to her…knowing come night, the terror and horrors would start all over again.
Luminesa had lost her taste for violence. All she wanted was to live in peace, secluded from the world with only her lover for company, but even that would be denied them.
Alador grabbed her hand and planted it against his chest. And though every other time, the silver had buzzed angrily when he’d moved, that time, it was as though the spelled fragments understood that victory lay close at hand.
The shards dropped to the ground, harmless, winking almost prettily from the reflection of winter fire.
The Goblin leaned against the corner of Gerda’s bed, his legs crossed at the ankles, and he wore a smug smile of satisfaction. His vengeance complete.
“Withdraw the key,” the Under Goblin said, “and the children shall return to their families unscathed with no memories of whatever happened here.”
Clenching her jaw, she looked back at him. “Will they hate me too?”
“They will not remember you. You will be forgotten by them. Any kindness you shared, warmth, or love…all forgotten like a feather drifting off on a breeze.”
He wiggled his fingers dramatically.
Gerda shook her head. “I don’t want to forget you, Ice Queen. I love you.”
Kai nodded. “Me too.”
With tears streaming down her face, Luminesa was absolutely broken, a shattered woman. If she were selfish, she’d leave the key inside of Alador. But not at the expense of the children’s souls—or his.
The children had died once, and with a surety it could happen again. No doubt would happen again. That place was no oasis, it was purgatory, the worst form of hell that tortured the mind and played with their emotions.
She looked back at the beloved face of her horse. “I love you, Alador, with all my soul and heart.”
His knuckles brushed against the tender flesh of her cheek, causing her to tremble. Had she known that morning would be all they had left, she’d have said so many other things. She’d have taken the time to imprint herself upon his soul so that no amount of dark magick could ever shake her out of it.
“And I, you, my lady of the snow. Always.”
Then tipping her chin up, he planted the sweetest, softest kiss upon her lips, and it wasn’t fair that she tasted forever on them, because in just a few moments, there’d be no forever for her. Just misery.
“Find me again, Luminesa. Do not let me go. Never stop searching for me. Come back for me, Luminesa…come back for me.” He punctuated each word with a hard thump of their twined hands against his chest. His eyes were wide and full of entreaty.
She loved him so much. The thought of losing him that way…it was killing her.
Then tugging the bracelet free of his wrist, he handed it to her. “Keep this. And when you come for me, show it to me. The magic of my people rests within these charms. Even if I don’t know you, I’ll feel it. Do you understand me?”
The Goblin chuckled. “Ah, the plight of the hopeless. What fun.”
Luminesa wanted to cut his tongue out and feed it to the ice demons. But it wasn’t worth losing even one precious minute of her time with Alador.
After taking the bracelet from him, she slipped it high on her bicep. The weight of it settled warmly against her.
Alador turned his palm over. The snowflake pattern that’d appeared upon their joining was gone.
She flipped her hand over. The tiny horse hoof marking was still there. Bringing her hand to his lips, he pressed an ardent kiss upon it.
“Do it now, Luminesa, before I lose my nerve.”
With a cry of pain, she forced herself to do what she did not want to do. Luminesa turned her hand to ice and shoved it through the side of his chest, her fingers curling immediately around a cold piece of metal.
Alador cried out, crumpling to his knees.
And then she yanked the key free.
Epilogue
Alador
A year later
The Ice Queen stood before him, tears in her eyes as he held a spear to her throat. The night was long and pregnant with moonlight, highlighting every luscious dip and groove of her body encased in a gown of ice.
A body she’d used to get what she’d wanted out of him. Gorgeous she might be, but her heart was as hard as the ice she called home.
“You would do well to leave my side,” he snarled. “Do not think I’ve forgotten the evil you committed against me.”
She was brave in the face of his fury, notching her chin high as she shook her head. “If you would just let me give this to you, you would see—”
She moved her hand toward him, but he slapped her hand away, knocking whatever it was she’d held out onto the forest floor.
“Kill me then,” she cried. “Kill me if you can. If I’m as evil as you say, end me.”
Her words so shocked him that for a moment, his arms froze, and all he could do was stare at the face of the woman who haunted his dreams every night.
But the dreams were nothing but lies. The reality was that Luminesa was a bitch, an evil-hearted creature who’d taken great delight in hurting him and the children.
“I should end you,” he seethed. And though he knew he should, though he remembered every awful thing she’d done with startling clarity, he couldn’t seem to make himself commit the final blow.
“If you don’t, I’ll only return again. You made me promise you, Alador. Remember what he’s done. Remember me.”
Her words haunted him, had hot ghostly threads of some alternate memory come sliding to the surface. Memories of her laughing, smiling at him, whispering of her love and fealty…of him telling her the same.
He roared and settled back on his hind legs, his front hooves kicking out, nearly taking her head off.
“Go!” he shouted. “Go away and never return!”
With a cry that seemed ripped from her soul, she turned into a pillar of snow and headed toward the spot where whatever she’d been holding had been flung.
Alador slung the spear at her retreating form. His strike could have been true, should have been true, but at the last moment, he threw wide, hitting the base of a tree instead.
“Go!” he shouted again, shaking the very heavens with his cry.
And when she was nothing but a memory once again, he wiped at his cheek, only to discover it was wet with his tears.
Luminesa
Five years had passed since that night she’d extracted the key from Alador’s chest. Five long, miserable years.
The Goblin had lied about nothing.
Every night, she visited the children, peeking through their windows, watching them grow and mature and ripen into beautiful humans before her eyes.
Once, Kai had caught sight of her, or so she thought when she’d seen a grin spread upon his lips. She’d thought that maybe, somewhere deep down inside, he had remembered, but the grin had faded as quickly as it’d appeared. He’d turned from the room and wal
ked away as though he’d never seen her at all.
Luminesa had visited Gerda by a frozen pond two winters ago, walking upon the waters toward the girl as a pillar of snow, one of the many forms she’d taken around the children time and again.
Even Baatha had accompanied her, winging proudly through the sky.
Gerda had grown so much bigger, maturing into a lovely young woman with eyes of deepest blue and hair like Rumpelstiltskin’s spun gold. The child had looked up at the bird, and her brows had scrunched into a tight furrow, as though a memory tried to leak its way through…but just as had happened with Kai, seconds later, she’d shrugged and continued down the forest trail to home, looking right through Luminesa as though she did not exist.
And while their disinterest hurt, it was nothing compared to the pain and torture she felt each time she visited the centaur herd. Because unlike the children, Alador had remembered Luminesa.
Remembered her as being a cold-hearted, cruel witch who’d used them all mercilessly.
Throwing that spear at her back hadn’t been the only thing he’d done to her. Another time, there’d been an arrow with its tip lit on fire. Madness had contorted his features, and she’d not even been able to get close enough to him to show him the bracelet.
And slowly, she’d stopped visiting quite as often, coming only to the barrier between her lands and theirs as she gazed down upon the herd with her heart trapped in her throat.
Today was such a day. She stood upon the windy bluff, surrounded by a tower of funneling snow. Her bare feet crunched in the ice beneath as her tears crystallized on her frozen cheeks. Majestic pines covered her on almost every side, so one would have had to squint to see her there.
Baatha’s claws gripped tightly to her shoulder, bloodying her gown in deepest crimson. But she didn’t care. In fact, she hardly felt the pain at all.
When she’d first met Alador, Luminesa had been void. A woman with no emotion, no feelings…empty of life. But then he’d come along, and he’d sparked a fire in her. Awakened her and brought her back to life.
Luminesa sobbed as she remembered what she’d once been to him, clutching his bracelet tightly to her breast as she gazed upon the laughing and jeering centaurs below.
The winter that year had been milder than the year before, and the year before that…ever since she’d returned from that world the Goblin had dropped her into.
It wasn’t that she was no longer powerful, but all that power…she kept it inside herself, trying in vain to lock it all away again. Trying to forget the passion…the love. The fire he’d brought to life inside of her was slowly gutting out.
Luminesa wondered if it were possible to die of a broken heart.
Baatha’s beak nuzzled her cheek, the sharp tip of it slicing through so that yet more blood spilled. But again, she felt nothing. Maybe one day, she’d turn into snow and simply cease to be…
No one would care. Not even the Goblin. He’d never set foot upon her lands again, his revenge complete. He’d broken Luminesa. Yes, she’d survived his riddle, but he’d stripped her of everything that mattered.
Gray curls of smoke circled like writhing masses of snakes below as the centaurs ate and drank, singing bawdy songs of war and sex. But she gasped when she finally caught sight of the wintery, feminine curves of Haxion. Alador’s sister was looking up at Luminesa, as though knowing intrinsically where she was.
Every year, and only on Yule night, did the centauress come to meet Luminesa.
The first year, it’d been to warn her with threat of pain to leave her brother alone. The second, to plead that whatever enchantment Luminesa had placed on him, to take it off because he screamed and cried during the night, spouting nonsensical words of love, hatred, and utter devotion. The third year was to tell Luminesa that Alador would be hand fasted by order of their shaman, and that a bride had been selected for him. The fourth to say that Alador had refused, punching out the brother of his soon-to-be bride so forcefully that he’d nearly killed the stallion with a single blow to the temple.
At that moment…slowly and surely, the centauress made her way up the steep face of the mountain to where Luminesa stood. Her raven-colored mane with that stripe of purest white whipped like a banner in the arctic breeze behind her.
Luminesa said nothing when the centauress finally joined her nearly an hour later, breathing heavy from the exertion of climbing up so high into air so thin.
“You’re here,” she said matter-of-factly.
Luminesa wouldn’t look at her, because she spotted Alador below, and the pain of seeing him, mingled with the indescribable pleasure, was like a blade to the heart.
His hair had grown out as long as it’d been when she’d first seen him. He was still big and brawny and muscular but no longer the gregarious male she remembered. He kept himself apart from the herd, and they from him.
When a centauress approached him with a tankard of ale, he snapped at her, snatching it out of her hands and saying something that caused the mare to turn and dash away.
Her bottom lip trembled to see him thus.
“Why would you think I wouldn’t come?” she whispered like an automaton, her eyes full of only one male.
“Maybe because I’ve begged you every year to keep your distance from him. To leave him be. Because you’re a monster, Ice Queen.”
Her lashes fluttering, Luminesa told herself not to cry. That she wouldn’t cry. But she was soul-sick, and she was broken.
Forcing herself to rip her eyes off him, she finally turned toward Haxion. The mare had grown even prettier, if that was possible.
What had Alador ever seen in Luminesa? She was a cold-hearted, pathetic spinster who’d squired herself away from the world.
But he’d brought warmth into her life, brought her out of her shell and, slowly, back to life.
She ached for his fire again. For the touch of his tender hands. For the way he whispered of his devotion to her on the few nights they’d had to themselves with no threat of ice demons threatening to tear down their doors.
There were times, like the present, when she wondered if they’d made the right decision.
But all it took to convince her all over again that they’d made the right choice was when she saw the children with their parents, smiling, happy, and free. Luminesa and Alador had lost everything, but the children at least had a future.
“I will not return again,” Luminesa said slowly, proud that her voice did not quiver. “That is why I’ve come. To tell you that this is over now. I have released your brother, and whether he believes it or not, all I wanted for him, all I’ve ever wanted for him, was his happiness.”
Haxion looked as though she’d been slapped. Her green eyes, so like her brother’s, widened sharply, and she shook her head with a helpless sort of gesture.
“Why would you say that? After all you did to him? To them?”
Luminesa had tried in the very beginning to explain to Haxion that it’d all been a lie concocted by the Under Goblin and aided by the dark magick of Baba Yaga. Her plea had been desperate for Haxion to understand, but it’d been for naught.
The centauress had whipped out a blade, bringing it tightly to Luminesa’s throat so that when she swallowed, it’d nicked her and had threatened to end her if she so much as sneezed in his direction again.
Of the two of them, Luminesa was the strongest. They both knew it. Knew that if she’d really wanted to, she could have ended the mare with a mere flick of her fingers.
But Luminesa hadn’t wanted to. It hadn’t been Haxion’s fault for defending her brother as she had. In fact, Luminesa had been proud that Alador had someone who clearly cared for him as she did.
Without any of the impassioned fire she’d displayed last time she’d said it, Luminesa said, “Because I love him. And I always have. Everything he believes is a lie. He was once mine, and I was his.”
A small smile played along her lips as she remembered their few and precious stolen nights together.
<
br /> Haxion shook her head, but unlike last time, it lacked the fire or the heat of fury. There was nothing save for confusion and bewilderment.
“But surely he’d remember that?” Haxion’s words didn’t actually seem to be for Luminesa at all, but she answered anyway.
“You said he once cried out for me. Professing his love and—”
Haxion’s hands covered her face as she murmured sadly, “He still does, Ice Queen. Every night, he screams out for you. He hardly sleeps, and yet when he does, he’s haunted by memories of something that couldn’t possibly have happened.”
His sister’s eyes looked broken and full of sadness. Luminesa could see the struggle, the fear that maybe, just maybe Luminesa had never lied to her at all…that what they believed had been nothing at all like the truth.
Not knowing what to say, Luminesa looked away, back to the spot where Alador had been last, but the place was empty, and he was gone.
“I am leaving now, Haxion. I cannot bear the sight of this place any longer.”
“Where will you go?” she asked softly.
She shrugged. Did it matter? To anyone? “I do not know. But away. Far away.”
That was the first time the centauress had ever actually deigned to carry on a conversation with her that didn’t involve the threat of pain to her person.
Luminesa might have been tempted to call it progress, but the flame of life that’d burned so brightly before was by then nothing but a slowly extinguishing tinder.
Soon, she’d be the woman of ice again, frozen, heartless, and emotionless.
And that time when it happened, Luminesa wouldn’t fight it. She would simply wait to fade. Maybe then her spirit would finally find its peace.
“Since you do not seem inclined to rip my head from my neck this time, I wish to give you something I’ve hung on to for far too many years. I no longer need it. Remember the payment we spoke of in the beginning, when you came to me asking my help to retrieve Alador?”
Haxion nodded. “I have not forgotten.”
Reaching beneath her breastplate of ice, Luminesa tugged the bracelets of hair free. Both of them.
Alphas for the Holidays Page 156
