Crystal Kingdom

by Amanda Hocking

  Dirty snow appeared to move near the front of the house, but when two gray and white drifts began charging toward us, I quickly realized it wasn’t snow. Two massive wolves had been lying outside, but now they were running toward Ulla and me, snarling and barking.

  “I forgot she had wolves,” Ulla said.

  I started backing away, since the wolves were rapidly approaching us. “We should get out of here.”

  “No, don’t run!” Ulla snapped. “That’ll only make them chase you.”

  “Well, I’m not exactly an expert in fighting wolves in hand-to-hand combat, so what do you suggest we do?”

  The front door of the hut was thrown open, and a dark figure stepped out wielding a large shotgun.

  “Magni! Modi,” she shouted, and the wolves halted mere feet from pouncing on us. “Get back here!”

  The wolf closest to me hesitated, growling at me once more, before turning back and running with the other one toward the hut. The home owner was still holding a gun, but she’d called the dogs off, so I took that as a good sign. I slowly stepped closer to the hut, and a second later, Ulla followed me.

  “Who are you? What do you want?” the woman barked at us.

  “I just wanted to talk to you for a minute. If that’d be okay.”

  She was cloaked in thick fur, and a hood hung low over her face, so I could only see her mouth, scowling at me. As she considered my proposal, it seemed to take forever, with the two wolves standing by her side.

  Finally, she said, “You’ve walked all this way. I might as well let you in.” Without waiting for us, she went back into the hut, and the wolves trailed behind her.

  Since I wasn’t actually sure how safe any of this would be, I turned to Ulla. “You can head back to town if you want. I can handle this from here.”

  “No way. This is better than anything that happens in town.”

  I didn’t want to stand out here and argue with her, especially not when someone with a shotgun and wolves was waiting on me. So I nodded and went on.

  Inside the hut, the walls were made of gray exposed wood, and there was a wood-burning stove, small kitchen table, and bed all in the same room.

  It was surprisingly warm inside, and the woman had already taken off her fur and tossed it on the bed. Her long dark hair was pulled back in a frizzy braid that went to her knees. She wore a loose-fitting black dress with wool leggings, and, much like Ulla, she wore many pieces of wood and ivory jewelry.

  When Ulla and I came in, she was busying herself filling up two metal dishes with chunks of meat from an ice chest. I took off my hat and scarf while I waited for her to finish. The wolves whimpered excitedly until she set the bowls down before them, and then she turned her attention to us.

  Her eyes were dark gray, with thick lashes framing them, and without all the fur she appeared rather petite. She looked to be in her early twenties, but with her arms crossed over her chest, she gazed at me with the severity of someone much older and much more hardened by life.

  “What do you want?” she demanded.

  “Are you Kate Kissipsi?” I asked.

  “That’s what they call me,” she replied noncommittally.

  “I was just looking for someone, and Ulla Tulin”—I motioned to Ulla beside me, and she gave Kate a small wave—“thought you might know something.”

  “I live alone with nothing but Magni and Modi.” Kate looked over to where the wolves were chomping down on the semi-frozen red meat. “I don’t think I can help you.”

  “Do you know anything about a Mina Arvinge?” I asked, almost desperately. “Anything at all?”

  Her eyes widened for a moment, but her expression remained hard. Finally, she let out a heavy breath. “Ayuh. You mean my sister?”

  My jaw dropped. “She’s your sister?”

  “I suppose I should make us some tea, then.” She turned her back to us and went over to the stove. “Come in and sit down. You’ll probably have a lot you want to talk about.”

  TWENTY-NINE

  relation

  “Sorry about the gun,” Kate said, glancing over to where the shotgun rested by the door.

  “It’s no problem,” I told her hurriedly, eager to get on with the conversation.

  Ulla and I had taken off our jackets and sat down at the table while Kate prepared the tea. The metal teapot had begun to whistle, so she came over and poured hot water over the tea bags into chipped ceramic mugs.

  “We’ve had problems with nanuqs this year, coming too close to the house and getting more aggressive than normal. The long winter’s been hard on them,” Kate explained as she sat down across from us.

  Nanuq was one of the few Inuktitut words I remembered—it meant “polar bear.” We had plenty of polar bears that lived around Doldastam, but they were almost never hostile. Still, I didn’t want to start my interactions with Kate by doubting her claims.

  “They call me Kate Kissipsi, but that’s not really my name,” she began, staring down at the mug. The larger of the two wolves lay close to the wood-burning stove, while the other lay on her feet. “We came here when I was seven, and nobody here wanted to take in orphaned children.”

  She looked up at Ulla then, who nodded solemnly.

  “Too many babies and kids are dropped off here,” Ulla said. “There aren’t a lot of open hearts or open doors anymore.”

  “None of the Kanin would have us here, but we were eventually taken in by an Inuit family that lived nearby,” Kate said. “That’s when I adopted the name Kissipsi—it means ‘alone’ in Inuktitut, and that seems like the best word to describe my life.

  “Arvinge isn’t really Mina’s last name either,” she added.

  As soon as she said it, it clicked with me. The Kanin had taken to using many Swedish words for official titles and names, even adopting them as surnames. It was so common, I hadn’t thought anything of Mina’s alleged maiden name until now.

  “Arvinge means ‘heir’ in Swedish,” I said, thinking aloud. And then everything began falling into place “And you came here when you were seven? It was in 1999, wasn’t it?”

  Kate nodded, but she hadn’t even needed to confirm it. It all made sense.

  I leaned back in my chair. “Holy shit. You’re Viktor Dålig’s daughters.”

  “‘Mina’ was my dad’s pet name for Karmin,” Kate said. “She was the only one he gave a pet name to, but she was the oldest and his favorite.” She let out an embittered sigh. “As soon as we got here, she started going by Mina Arvinge, trying to separate herself from the bad reputation our real name had garnered.”

  After Viktor had attempted to kill the King fifteen years ago, he’d been sentenced to death, but many felt that the harshest punishment had been saved for his three girls. Since the whole attack had been based on the fact that he felt that his oldest daughter, Karmin aka Mina, was the rightful heir to the throne, King Evert believed that his kids should be punished severely, even though they were only children.

  All three of Viktor’s daughters were stripped of the titles, their inheritance, and banished from the kingdom. Karmin was oldest, and she was only ten at the time. With their mother dead and their father on the run from the law, she had been left in charge of her younger sisters.

  “After we were exiled, we had nowhere to go,” Kate said. “We’d never been changelings. We’d lived our whole lives in Doldastam, and unlike trackers, who are trained in the human world, we knew nothing about it.

  “Before we were sent away, the Chancellor brought us a bag of clothes and some money,” she went on. “He told us to go to Iskyla. He said its people hardly ever followed the rules of the kingdom and no one here would even know who we were. And he was right.”

  The Chancellor at the time had fallen ill, which meant that my dad was working in his place. My dad had been the one to help the girls and send them somewhere safe. Years later, even knowing that he’d tried to help them, Mina would still send Konstantin to kill him in revenge for not crowning her Queen.


  “Our father stayed away for a long time, and honestly, that’s just as well,” Kate said. “I wished he’d never come back.”

  Ulla leaned forward, resting her arms on the table. “Why? I would love it if my father visited, even once.”

  “Your father probably isn’t completely obsessed with revenge,” Kate countered. “To be fair, Mina was already preoccupied with it before he showed up. But once he came here around six or seven years ago, her preoccupation turned into her solitary drive. They talked only about how they would make everyone pay.”

  “How were they planning to make everyone pay?” I asked.

  “I don’t know.” Kate shook her head. “I tried not to pay attention. My sister Krista and I never cared that much for it. Dad tried to get us to join, but Krista eventually fell in love and moved to Edmonton with her boyfriend. I stayed here, but I spent as much time outside and away from them as I could.

  “The only plan I ever really knew about was when Mina came to me and said she was going to a ball where she would make the King fall in love with her. It seemed ludicrous. I thought for sure Evert would recognize her, but she insisted that she’d only been ten the last time he saw her and now she was a woman of twenty.

  “Not to mention that fact that Evert is our second cousin.” She wrinkled her nose. “I know royals do that all the time to keep the bloodlines pure, but it’s still always seemed so gross to me.”

  “But Evert didn’t recognize her, and he did fall in love with her,” I said.

  Kate snorted. “Much to my surprise. She came back once after the engagement, and she tried to promise me riches and glory. I told her that I didn’t want any of it, and I asked her to let it go. Vengeance never brings people happiness or peace. I said, ‘What kind of life is it to be married to your nemesis?’

  “Mina looked at me, with her eyes cold and hard, and she said, ‘It will be my finest achievement, and I pity you that you’ll never understand that.’” Kate grimaced. “And that was the last thing she’s ever said to me.”

  “Did you know Evert was murdered last week?” I asked.

  Kate lowered her eyes. “No. I’m surprised it took this long, but I guess Mina’s plans are finally under way.”

  “Do you have any idea what she might do next?” I asked.

  “Not anything specific,” she said, looking at me with stormy gray eyes. “But honestly, I don’t think she’ll be happy until everything is suksraungiksuk.”

  I shook my head and didn’t even attempt to repeat the word she’d used. “What’s that mean?”

  “There’s not a literal translation in English,” Ulla explained. “But it means ‘destroyed’ or ‘finished.’”

  “More like obliterated,” Kate said.

  THIRTY

  nanuq

  I awoke just after the sun started to rise, which meant that it was only four in the morning. After sleeping fitfully all night with my usual nightmares, I was happy for the reprieve that being awake provided.

  We’d left Kate’s hut not long after she’d confessed that Mina was her sister. Before we’d gone, I’d asked her why she’d been so open in telling us everything, and Kate had simply shrugged and said, “Why wouldn’t I? Mina’s never been much of a sister to me, and I have no reason to keep her secrets.”

  Ulla had been very excited about everything we’d found out, even though she didn’t understand the implications of much of it. Growing up so isolated, she now fancied herself embroiled in plots of treason and espionage.

  It had taken quite a bit of convincing for me to get her out of my room last night, telling her that I needed to get to bed early. But really, I just needed a chance to process it all for myself.

  Once I did, everything Konstantin and Kate had said fit together perfectly, creating this portrait of a diabolical, unstoppable madwoman. Both Mina and Viktor had been incredibly patient, waiting years for their plan to come to fruition.

  And now that it had, I was certain that Mina would do everything in her power to make sure that nothing got in her way. You don’t plan something for a decade and let it all fall apart at the end.

  I needed to get back to Förening. I thought I finally would have evidence to convince Queen Wendy that the Trylle needed to depose Mina. Assuming, of course, that Wendy believed me, since Kate wasn’t about to leave Iskyla to testify.

  I packed my bag and opened my room door to find Ulla on the landing just outside my room. She’d changed clothes from last night, and she was asleep, using her own bag as a pillow and her coat as a blanket.

  When she heard the door open, she sat up with a start. “Finally. You’re up.”

  “Finally?” I asked. “What are you doing?”

  “I was waiting for you.” She stood up and stretched. “I’m coming with.”

  “You can’t come with. You heard what I told you last night. It’s too dangerous.”

  “I know, but I can help,” Ulla insisted. “And besides that, nobody wants me here. I have no reason to say.”

  “You may not have a reason, but I do. I can’t afford to take you back with me. I have barely enough money to charter a plane and get back home myself,” I explained.

  “I’ve got money. I’ve saved up every dime and nickel I’ve ever made.” Ulla reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out a surprisingly thick wad of cash. “I can pay my own way, and help you out.”

  I sighed. “How old are you?”

  “Fourteen and a half.” She stood up straighter, as if that would make her seem older. She was already taller than me, with slightly broader shoulders, probably thanks to her Omte genes. “I’m mature and strong for my age, though. I can help you.”

  I was about to tell her no, but the desperate, heartbroken look on her face finally made me cave. With everything that Ulla and Kate had told me about what it was like to grow up here, I didn’t think it would be good for anybody.

  “Fine, but if you slow me down, I’m leaving you behind,” I said, which was more of an empty threat than I wanted to admit.

  Ulla almost squealed with delight, but I silenced her and then walked past her and headed down the stairs. Taking her with didn’t seem that bad, since I was just headed back to the Trylle. Ulla should be safe with the Trylle, and they could help her find a place in this world.

  It wasn’t until we’d taken the snowmobile to the nearest town that I realized that Ulla had never been outside of Iskyla before. She was amazed and entranced by every little thing, and I had to constantly remind her that we were traveling incognito and that she needed to stop making a scene.

  Surprisingly, she handled the plane better than I did. Somehow the ride managed to be even more turbulent than it had been last time, and the pilot told me it was thanks to an incoming freak blizzard.

  Our landing was twice as rough this time, but at least we made it alive. The pilot was right about the storm, though. A brutal wind was coming from the north, bringing with it heavy snow. Ulla suggested we get a hotel for the night and head out in the morning, but I suspected that she just wanted a chance to see more of the city.

  I, on the other hand, didn’t want to waste any time. I had information that I needed to get to the Trylle as soon as possible. Everyone in Doldastam was depending on it, whether they knew it or not.

  So, despite travel advisories telling me not to, I rented an SUV and headed south. For her part, Ulla actually didn’t seem to mind the storm or the slow going. I think she would’ve been thrilled by just about anything I did, though.

  The first hour or so into the drive went okay. I barely went above thirty, but we were moving. And then we weren’t. We hit a snowdrift so large, the SUV just couldn’t get through it. We were stuck.

  “Don’t worry. I got it,” Ulla said. She’d taken off her kamiks while I was driving, but now she slipped them back on, along with her heavy gloves.

  “What do you mean, you got it?” I asked, but she was already opening the car door and hopping out into the snow. “Ulla!”

&nb
sp; I wasn’t about to let her disappear into the snowstorm, so I jumped out after her. She’d gone around to the back of the SUV, and she’d put on what reminded me of old flight goggles. They were strapped on underneath the earflaps of her hat, and while they were comical-looking, they probably worked well at keeping the snow from stinging her eyes.

  “What are you doing?” she asked me, like I was the one who had leapt out of the vehicle without explanation. “Is the SUV in neutral?”

  “No. It’s in park. Why? What are you doing?”

  “I’m gonna get us unstuck.” She flexed her arms.

  It sounded ridiculous, but she did have Omte blood. She may not have been the size of the ogre Torun I’d seen in Fulaträsk, but she should have some of his strength.

  “Be careful,” I told her, but I left her to it.

  I got back in the vehicle and put it in neutral. I adjusted the rearview mirror so I could watch. Her head bent down as she pushed on the back, and the SUV jerked forward a bit.

  Then nothing happened at all for a few seconds, and suddenly it lurched forward, going straight through the snowdrift. Snow flew up around the vehicle, and it skidded to a stop on a clearer stretch of highway on the other side of the drift.

  As soon as the SUV stopped, I put it in park and jumped out to make sure Ulla hadn’t been hurt. After all, that had been an awfully big push.

  “Ulla!” I shouted when I didn’t see her right away, and I charged through the drift.

  She was standing in the middle of the road, staring off to the right of her, but she didn’t appear injured.

  “Ulla,” I repeated. “That was amazing.”

  “We should probably get out of here,” she said flatly.

  “What? Why?” I asked, and I looked to see where she was staring.

  There, a few feet off the road and almost invisible in the snow, were two small polar bear cubs. The bigger, fluffier one hung back, but for some reason the smaller one thought it would be a good idea to trot toward us—its big eyes wide and excited.