Snowstorm King

by H L Macfarlane

  Contents

  Copyright Information

  Dedication

  Author's Note

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Copyright Information

  Copyright © 2019 Hayley Louise Macfarlane

  All rights reserved.

  Published by Macfarlane Lantern Publishing, 2019

  Glasgow, Scotland

  No parts of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the copyright owner.

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. Under no circumstances may any part of this book be photocopied for resale.

  This is a work of fiction. Any similarity between the characters and situations within its pages and places or persons, living or dead, is unintentional and co-incidental.

  Cover Art Copyright © 2019 Beth Alvarez

  As with Chronicles of Curses book one, this one’s for me.

  Author's Note

  PLEASE NOTE: Snowstorm King is written in British (UK) English.

  Prologue

  Rumour had it there was a magician staying in Alder for winter. He was from far to the south, where snow never fell. Everyone wondered why someone so used to warm seas and balmy winds would ever wish to stay up in the mountains in the middle of December, when Alder was largely cut off from the rest of the world.

  This winter was particularly bad – the worst the mountain town had seen in generations, if the elderly were to be believed. Supplies were running low, and the winds kept destroying doors and windows and roofs. Food was scarce, and people were starving. The king was at a loss for what to do; he couldn’t help his subjects even as the days of endless night drew themselves like a blanket across the town. It seemed like nobody would survive long enough to see the sun again.

  And yet the mysterious man from the south had somehow made it up to Alder, despite the treacherous, ice-covered paths and the ever-present risk of an avalanche swallowing travellers whole at any given moment. He sought refuge with a tailor and his family, who had been clothing the town in their warmest fabrics at their own expense.

  They’d have no business left if everyone died, after all.

  The tailor had a daughter – a talented young woman named Lily who was destined to take over her father’s shop. He’d had more than a few betrothal requests since she came of age, but he was determined to only accept a perfect offer for his precious daughter.

  Lily had other ideas. She was bored of Alder and its people who all looked the same: blonde hair that flashed gold in sunlight and silver in moonlight; skin as pale as the snow that blustered around them; eyes so blue they put the summer sky to shame. She craved something different.

  For this reason alone her father never should have allowed the magician to stay under his roof. Lily was fascinated by his olive skin, tightly curled, dusky brown hair, and hazel eyes. They were like nothing she’d ever seen before. She spent the long hours of winter showing the man how to sew, and embroider, and work with difficult fabrics. In turn he sneaked into her bed at night, whispering tales of other lands, of different people, and of magic.

  When the magician was called to the king’s castle the people of Alder were suspicious and desperate in equal measure. They feared magic – most all common folk did – but if the mysterious man could bring an end to the deadly winter slowly leeching the life from them then so be it. They could deal with one instance of magic in return for their lives.

  Lily didn’t see the magician again after he visited the king. Some say he was murdered. Some say he merely went on his way, leaving Alder the same way he must have entered it – using a spell. She was heartbroken. But the rest of the town rejoiced, for the storms that plagued the mountainside finally abated. That year spring arrived early, and would continue to arrive early for the following twenty years of the king’s prosperous reign.

  But Lily’s encounter with the magician was not so fortunate. By the time summer arrived she could no longer hide her swollen belly from the people of Alder. Everyone wondered who she had fallen into bed with, for Lily said nothing about him, even to her parents.

  When the babe was born that autumn it became obvious. The little girl had soft, tawny hair, reminiscent of the owls that hunted in the forest. Her eyes were as dark as pine needles, and her skin appeared kissed by the sun even though she’d never been beneath its rays.

  Lily’s parents didn’t know what to do. They had no other children – Lily was their only, beloved daughter. They could not reject her, nor the baby she clutched to her chest protectively. They were a family.

  So though the townspeople shunned the child, and Lily’s marriage proposals ran dry, the tailor and his family continued to live a respectable life in Alder. For people always needed new clothes, and their clothes were the best. They had even sewn clothes for the king’s two young sons, though the youngest was rumoured to be so tempestuous that he set the clothes alight after receiving them.

  Lily’s parents passed away before her child turned ten, leaving her to run the family shop alone. She never married, and was never foolish enough to fall into bed with another man who whispered sweet nothings into her ear again. She stopped dreaming of lands where the sun was warm, the days ever-lasting and the people were kind instead of cruel.

  No. Those dreams were inherited by her daughter, Elina.

  Chapter One

  Elina

  It didn’t matter how inevitable the snow was every winter; Elina was always surprised when the first flakes fell. She hated the snow. She hated it down to her very core, and this year more than most.

  For this winter was the worst anybody had experienced in twenty years. Elina might have thought this an exaggeration, had she not just turned twenty herself. She had lived through each and every one of those winters and could attest to the fact that this one, by far and away, was the worst.

  Some said it was because the king had died, leaving his youngest son to take over the throne. Everyone had wanted the elder son, Gabriel, to inherit, but Gabriel was at war protecting their country from foreign invaders. So that left his younger brother sitting on the throne until he returned – something nobody wanted.

  Kilian Hale had developed a bad reputation as he’d grown and it had only gotten worse when he reached adulthood. That was what everyone said, at least. It wasn’t as if Elina had ever met her new king…not that she wanted to, anyway. But she was no stranger to rumours, and
the rumours surrounding the younger Hale brother were even more prevalent than the ones surrounding Elina.

  A playboy. A drunk. A terrible temper. Prone to disappearing for days on end on some hedonistic, self-serving quest. In truth Elina envied this – the prince could go wherever he wanted and do whatever he wanted no matter what people said about him.

  But now that prince was regent and he could no longer leave the mountainside on a whim. Not that he could have with the winter weather having hit Alder so viciously, of course. The snowstorms that plagued the area had already half-buried the town, and the paths leading down the mountain were death traps. The road leading to the castle itself was only just barely kept clear because of the forest that enveloped the twisting path, but the boughs of the dark, foreboding trees were growing heavy. Eventually they would be able to hold onto the snow no longer, and the road to the castle would be cut off, too.

  “Are you sure you don’t want me to come with you, Elina?” her mother, Lily, coughed. They’d closed their shop early for the day, as the town was holding a meeting about the bad weather. Supplies were beginning to run low so, as a collective, they needed to decide how Alder was going to get through the winter.

  “Of course not, mama,” Elina soothed, brushing her mother’s hair out of her face and readjusting her blanket. Lily had been sick for a few weeks now, though apparently it was nothing she couldn’t handle. Elina wasn’t convinced. Though her mother was still one year shy of forty, and retained her elegant good looks that had been the talk of the town once upon a time, she had grown decidedly frail. The mild winters of years gone by ensured that she had never truly gotten sick, but this year was different.

  “You can’t go to the town hall all by yourself, Elina,” her mother protested. “You know what they’re like. They’ll –”

  “It’s nothing I cannot handle,” she smiled. “And besides, it’s on their own heads if they ignore me. They need us to keep making blankets and jackets and leggings and gloves, and for that we need materials. They can’t possibly snub me at the meeting.”

  Lily looked unconvinced. The town had only gotten worse in their treatment of her daughter since her own parents died. It didn’t seem to matter how obedient or talented Elina was – her tawny hair, forest-coloured eyes and eternally sun-kissed skin marked her for what she was. The daughter of an outsider. A strange man. A magician.

  Though some people didn’t really believe the foreigner from twenty years ago had been blessed with magic, Lily knew the truth. For how could she not? But she had never spoken much about the man to Elina, in part because it pained her to talk of him and in part to save her from knowing just how shameful her mother had been.

  But Elina wasn’t deaf. She wasn’t blind. She wasn’t stupid. She heard what the townspeople of Alder said, and she saw how they looked at her. She knew she was different, and for that she was hated. But she loved her mother fiercely, so not once did she ever consider blaming her for the way she was treated.

  Elina kissed her mother on the forehead then wrapped herself up in her favourite blue cloak, made of fine, soft material that matched her dress. She pulled up the hood. “I won’t be long, mama,” she said as she opened the door, letting a blast of bitterly cold air through that had her wincing immediately. “I love you.”

  “You too, Elina.”

  The town hall wasn’t far from the Brodeur tailor shop. If the ground hadn’t been covered in a layer of thick, grey ice Elina would have reached her destination in under five minutes. But it was covered in ice, and Elina was always wary of walking on it in case she tripped and broke her neck, so by the time she reached the town hall the meeting had already started.

  When she crept into the hall and tried to hide in the shadows at the back of the room a hundred eyes followed her.

  Oh, wonderful, she thought. I haven’t even said anything and already I’m in the wrong.

  But to her relief nobody commented on her lateness. Apart from the occasional glare here and there Elina was ignored as the town head, Frederick, continued with his speech, for which Elina was grateful.

  “It’s not simply a case of rationing what we already have,” Frederick said. “This winter seems set to last far longer than any winter we’ve had in twenty years. At this rate we won’t make it past the end of January.”

  “This is all because the king died!” someone called out. “He had that magic from the foreigner, but it must have gone to the grave with him. We’re all doomed!”

  Several pairs of eyes darted towards Elina. She ignored them. She knew this story by heart: her father had been a magician who, after impregnating her mother and bestowing the gift of magic to the king, disappeared forever. She never understood how the king could be so revered for this supposed deal whilst Elina’s mother was scorned for bearing the magician’s child. The double standard would have made her laugh, if it hadn’t made her life so bitterly lonely.

  “Let’s not base our current situation on rumours and suspicion,” Frederick said, ever the diplomat. “We need a solid plan to get us through –”

  “Isn’t there that travelling couple staying in Gill’s tavern?” someone else interrupted. “You know the two. The woman’s a healer, but the man – if ever I were to wager a man were a magician I’d place my bets on him. Perhaps we can convince him to broker a deal with the new king and –”

  “Enough with the magicians!” the town head roared, finally reaching the end of his patience. “We cannot hope for magic to save us! We need to ask the prince regent to provide for us, like he should.”

  “Ha!” Daven the woodcutter spat out. “Have fun with that, Fred! I’d like to see our new king provide for anyone but himself.”

  Fred winced. “Prince regent,” he corrected. “And we have to at least ask. It is his duty to hear us out.”

  “And will you go to barter with him?”

  He shook his head. “I fear he will not listen to me. His Royal Highness is young, and impulsive. I believe it better to send a more attractive messenger.”

  Everyone knew what he was getting at – he planned to send a woman. A young, pretty woman who might tempt Kilian Hale into helping them on a whim. A whim was all they needed, after all. And rumour had it that he was just as handsome as his father had been in his glory days. The problem was, of course, his horrible attitude. When it came right down to it the woman of Alder loved Gabriel, his older brother, and not Kilian, who was as likely to imprison a woman as he was to bed her.

  And so it was that nobody in the hall seemed very enthusiastic about volunteering to be a messenger, something which Elina wholeheartedly agreed with.

  Clearly the town can’t solve anything until someone has spoken to the prince regent, she thought as she silently made her way to the door. I’m not needed here. I’ll just slip out and –

  “Send the magician’s girl!”

  Elina froze. She dared not turn, for she knew all eyes were on her.

  “Yes, send Miss Brodeur!” Daven agreed enthusiastically. “She’s certainly pretty enough, and her link to the magician can’t hurt.”

  Of all the times for someone in Alder to admit that Elina was attractive to look at, she would not have picked this moment. She’d been used to everyone ignoring her – for men to barely spare her a glance because of her bastard status and foreign appearance. It was something which she had loathed before. It had made her feel unwanted and ugly.

  To be told she was pretty enough to be used as bait for Kilian Hale was not what Elina had wanted to hear. But the general murmur of agreement filling her ears told her the town had already made up their mind. Reluctantly she turned, keeping her expression as blank as possible as she took in the faces of the people in the hall. Most of them were looking at her with their usual distaste, though there was a sick layer of satisfaction behind their eyes at the idea of sending their least favourite townsperson to do their dirty work that hadn’t been there before.

  Frederick raised an eyebrow at her. “Miss Brodeur, woul
d you be willing to do this?”

  Elina wanted so badly to say no. But what would that achieve? She and her mother would only further be ignored. They needed to maintain a steady stream of business if they were to afford the medicine required to stop her mother’s sickness from growing worse.

  And Elina was sick herself. Sick of being lonely and ignored. If she could somehow convince the prince regent to help the town then surely she would not be so hated. She might become liked. Respected, even. She’d settle for merely being acknowledged.

  So she nodded. “I can leave now, if it pleases you,” she said demurely, though inside she was fired up and ready to shout at them all to see what she was doing for people who did not care for her.

  See how selfless I’m being! Elina wanted to scream. See what I’m going to do for the ungrateful lot of you!

  She said neither of these things.

  With a sigh of relief at how easy and painless choosing a messenger had turned out to be, Frederick smiled at her. Elina couldn’t help but flinch – nobody ever smiled at her, least of all the town head. She ran off without another word, knowing that if she spoke she’d say something she’d regret.

  I can’t disappoint them, she thought as she made her way towards the forest. If I disappoint them I’ll be in an even worse position than I was before. To improve my status I have to succeed.

  Elina stopped by a patch of ice and inspected her face. Her hair was braided and wrapped around her head, which was how she usually wore it. A few curly tendrils had broken loose; she used her fingers to shape them properly. In the permanent grey of winter her hair seemed dull and dark compared to the rest of the people of Alder, but Elina could do nothing about this.

  She stared at her reflection for another few seconds, the green of her irises as bottomless as the pine trees she was about to pass under. She would never look like she belonged in Alder.

  She’d have to earn her place there instead.

  Chapter Two

  Kilian