The Winter King (12 page)

In the image, the environment around Ylva
cleared up, going from a blurred landscape to a crisp scene of
shrubbery and rock, grass and sea. She was at the shoreline, her
hair filthy, her teeth clenched, her skin pale and drawn. Her legs
were barely moving, her back was bent, and her entire form was
hunched in near death.

At once, Erikk wanted to be with her.

And at once – he was.

One moment, he was standing in front of his
throne, drawing an image of her whereabouts in his mind, and the
next, the ice castle was gone, the Winter Kingdom was nowhere to be
seen, and he was standing beside his sister.

He heard her before he saw her. It was a
shakily drawn breath, nearly completely disguised by the howl of a
wind coming off the water. There was ice coating the rocks along
the coastline, and this struck Erikk as odd, but only
subconsciously. His entire consciousness was focused on Ylva as she
stumbled a final time and fell to her knees in the frozen sand.

“
Ylva!”

The young girl whom Erikk barely recognized
as his sibling froze in place, her gaze locked on the ground. Erikk
knelt beside her, his hands taking her shoulders, his eyes
searching her face. But she so slowly swung her eyes up toward his,
he could tell she did not believe what she was seeing. She had the
look of sickness about her, both mental and physical.

She mouthed his name, just the shape of her
pale, cracked lips and no sound.

“
Ylva, what has
happened?”

He’d been gone only a few hours. A day, at
most. How could this wretched creature before him be the same
beautiful young girl he’d left in his village at morning’s light?
“My god, what happened, Ylva? Speak to me!”

This time, when she mouthed his name, a
whisper came out, weak but precious. “Erikk?”

“
Yes, Ylva, it’s me! It’s
me, sweet girl.” He gave up then, and simply drew her trembling,
dying form into his arms. When he did, he felt her bones through
her furs. The furs themselves were filthy and covered in muck, worn
thin by weather or wear. This was not the sister he’d left
behind.

No, it is
not
, said Winter.
She is older now
.

Time had passed. He knew
this now. The memories, visions, images and knowledge he had
acquired had
not
in fact been given to him in the space of mere moments. The
girl before him was
years
older than she’d been when he’d gone after
Bjarke.

Save her,
he told Winter.
Save her
now as you did me or I will leave the kingdom, and you will be
alone
.

There was only a brief
pause this time before Winter replied.
Bring her here
.

You
bring her there! Bring us both right now.

Winter obeyed. Erikk clasped his sister
tightly in his arms and blinked. When he opened his eyes again, he
was in the throne room of the castle. He knelt at its center with
Ylva’s skinny, bedraggled form lying on the floor before him, her
head in his lap.

Now save her.

She will become a part of
this world
, Winter warned.

I
understand
. He didn’t care. Having his
sister be a part of some world was better than a part of
none.
Do it
.

As you wish, your majesty.

Erikk gazed down at Ylva’s face, and it
began to change. Little by little, the coloring of her skin morphed
from the gray pallor of death to a soft, fair hue nearly as white
as snow. Her cracked lips healed over and tinted a gentle pink. Her
lashes, which had been barren and thinned with malnourishment began
to fill out, lengthening and darkening until they were once more
beautifully full.

Her hair was the most stunning
transformation, shifting inch by inch from the dirty brown, lanky
straggles they’d become – into a glorious crown of blond, wavy
locks so very light, they blended with the ice beneath her as they
grew and curled like a shimmering, frozen waterfall.

Beneath her furs, he felt her body fill out.
The hard angle of her bones retreated, covered once more as they
should be with layers of healthy muscle and flesh. He felt warmth
radiating from her where there had only been the chill of impending
death before.

It gave him hope. He waited.

When all had ceased changing, she lay still
in his arms, eyes closed, breathing even. He waited. Then, “Ylva?
Ylva, please – ”

He cut off mid-speech as her long, thick
lashes fluttered, and she opened her eyes. The piercing blue they’d
once been was lighter now. They were not quite like his, less water
and more air. She was the snow in the sky, where he was the ice on
the ground.

“
Erikk,” she said
softly.

His heart hammered with joy. “Ylva. What
happened, lass?”

“
Jorunn is dead. So is
Ronald. I would not wed Bjarke, and I was banished.”

Erikk stared in silence, but his soul
bellowed.

Like the king he now was, he said, “You’re
safe now, Ylva. And I give you my word, Bjarke Stalson will never
harm any living being ever again.”

Chapter Seventeen

Present day, the Winter Kingdom

It was a while before Poppy said anything.
Kristopher had paused in his story, his last words echoing in the
room as if they’d been a lingering curse. And perhaps they were. It
wasn’t a fairytale, after all.

As strange as it was, she could honestly
tell that he wasn’t lying to her. He wasn’t bending the truth about
any of it. Whether someone was lying to her or not was normally
something she could sort of decipher in a human. It didn’t matter
if they were spinning a yarn for fun or being genuinely deceptive.
It was like a sixth sense kind of thing, just part of that
gift-and-curse empathetic sensitivity she possessed that gave her
panic attacks and the frequent migraine but allowed her to write
instructions in a way that ensured every single person on the
planet could comprehend them and usually even laugh at them.

But with Kristopher, there was something
else to it. Maybe it was the tone of his voice or the way he looked
at her. Or maybe it was the way his words immersed her in the past
as if she’d lived his story herself. Whatever it was, she knew he
was sharing something with her that he hadn’t shared with many
others. If any at all.

His past was filled with all the pain and
loss so prevalent in history itself. He’d been through hell. It
seemed to be the human way. And that pain required a moment of
silence.

So it was a while before she spoke. When she
finally did, she decided not to focus on what the villain, Bjarke
had done to Kristopher and his family, and instead expertly turned
her host’s attention to what he obviously liked a good deal more
than Bjarke. “She’s the one at the coffee shop, isn’t she?” she
asked softly. She was referring to his little sister, of
course.

Kristopher turned away from the flames he’d
been staring into and searched her face. When he did that, she felt
so exposed. He had eyes like searchlights, blue as the frozen sea.
Now that she’d looked into them more than a few times, she realized
they were slightly darker than hers. Slightly harder. It was barely
noticeable.

“
Yes. How did you know?” he
asked.

Poppy thought back to the young lady who’d
been waitressing at the coffee shop where Kristopher had bought her
coffee, that first hot, blessed coffee that she’d had all day. The
waitress who’d tended them had sported white hair dyed black. That
kind of dye job was just obvious. She’d been beautiful, and she’d
worn too much eye makeup, as if she were attempting to hide from
the world. There had also just been… something about her. Something
difficult to put into words.

“
I don’t know,” she said.
“There were several things, I guess.”

He watched her a while longer, and she tried
not to heat up under his gaze. Finally, he looked way, smiling.
“I’m frankly impressed you remember a waitress that well,” he told
her. “Most humans don’t.”

“
I’ve watched a lot of
episodes of Brain Games,” she said by way of explanation, and then
laughed at herself. It eased her tension a bit to laugh at herself
even though he, a king of an entire realm and one of the Thirteen,
probably had no idea what the hell she was talking
about.

“
I love that show,” he
said.

Her eyes widened. “You do?”

“
I’ve seen every episode.
It’s amazing what we take for granted and now much misplaced faith
we have in everything we don’t take for granted.” He
laughed.

“
I… didn’t realize you got
cable in the Winter Kingdom.”

“
You know it’s not on
cable. And I can go anywhere, remember?”

Poppy smiled at that. She and Kristopher
were no longer in the castle’s throne room. Instead, they sat in a
room carved of ice, as was every room in the ice castle, but on fur
rugs that had been laid out in thick piles on the floor in front of
a fire pit. The flames that crackled warmly in the pit were the
same colors that Poppy had seen in magazines displaying photographs
of the Aurora Borealis. They were green and purple and every
tourmaline shade in-between. Definitely not your standard fire
colors.

They’d been in the room for
about an hour now, ever since she’d decided to
not
sit on the throne with the
poppies all over it. She was barely processing the day she’d had,
one that had gone from truly abysmal to truly amazing so fast, it
left her breathless. And she just hadn’t wanted to do something
that felt so very much like a
portent
or that felt so terribly
symbolic.

She needed time. She needed information. She
probably also needed sleep and to have her head examined. Just in
case.

When she’d refused to sit
down, Kristopher had nodded to himself and lead her into
this
room. The bear –
the Dire Bear named Meridian – had remained in the throne room,
deciding to lay out on the ice like a massive, breathing rug. Poppy
was happy enough for the time being to leave the beast behind. Not
that she had a problem with massive white bears, she just wasn’t
ready to invite one to the crazy tea party table she was already
hosting in her head at the moment.

This room was a much smaller room than the
throne room, and its walls were lined with honest-to-goodness ice
shelves filled with books of every kind. She loved a good study or
library, and this appeared to be a cross between both. It was cozy.
At once Poppy started to relax.

Kristopher had then summoned two piping hot,
aromatically fresh cups of coffee out of thin air. They’d taken
their coffees and seated themselves on the thick rugs around the
fire pit. After a few minutes of mutual silence, Poppy set in to
asking questions, and in the hour since, Kristopher had gallantly
answered everything she’d thrown at him.

She was more than a little curious about
what Kristopher had done to Bjarke, the man who had basically
destroyed everyone he loved and then taken over the entire clan as
chief. But she also sort of didn’t want to know. Because she knew
instinctively that if he told her what he’d done, he would reveal
to her the part of himself that scared her to begin with. That part
of him that was dangerous.

That part of him that was deadly.

“
You became the Winter King
when you were sixteen,” she said instead. “If you don’t age, how
did you get to look like you’re in your thirties?”

“
It happened when I
changed.” He laughed, shaking his head. “A good twenty years were
stolen from me. And I was given an eternity in
exchange.”

She mulled that over in
silence. It sounded like a fair exchange, all in all. But it would
suck if the change
always
added twenty years. If she became queen, for
instance, that would mean she’d suddenly age to be fifty-six.
“Okay,” she said, forcing herself to think of other things. “When
did you change your names?”

He shrugged. It was a careless gesture that
nevertheless managed to show off every toned muscle in his
shoulders and arms. “Over the years, we felt less and less like
Erikk and Ylva, and more and more like something else altogether.
Then one day, Winter suggested two new names. By that time, we were
ready for them. Our pasts had been erased as if they were a
landscape covered in fresh fallen snow. They were unrecognizable.
We were new people, and the names fit.”

Poppy chewed on her lip a second. “Wait. I
thought Neve was stuck in the Winter Kingdom? I thought Winter told
you she would become a part of it.”

“
She did. And she is. That
doesn’t mean she can’t travel into other realms. It simply means
that wherever she does go, she will take Winter with her. Just as I
do.”

Poppy thought of the waitress she’d briefly
met and recalled how very pale her skin was. Like snow itself.

“
What does that mean,
exactly?”

Kristopher froze a little,
his body going very still, his eyes locked on hers. Poppy realized
he knew she wasn’t only asking because of Neve. Poppy was asking
because she had a very good feeling that sitting on that flowery
throne in the other room was going to make
her
a part of the Winter Kingdom as
well. And she wanted to know what she was in for.

“
Well…” he started
carefully, “it means a few things. Her appearance changed, as I
mentioned.” He paused after this so that Poppy could digest it. If
Neve’s appearance changed, did that mean Poppy’s would too? “But
that’s only because Winter infused her, filling her to her core
with the properties that make it what it is. The color white. The
cold. It had to possess her completely to save her
life.”