The Winter King (13 page)

Poppy nodded. Then she asked, “Did her
coffee go cold every time she tried to drink it, too?”

Kristopher laughed, and he seemed relieved
to be able to do so. It was such a warm sound when he laughed. She
could really get used to it. “Not exactly. We didn’t drink coffee
back then, and fortunately she’s learned to control the effect by
this point, so the coffee she chooses to serve at her shop is never
cold.” He shrugged. “On the upside, back then she never had warm
ale.”

Now it was Poppy’s turn to laugh.
Refrigerated ale a thousand years before refrigeration had been
invented was definitely an upside.

Chapter Eighteen

They’d fallen into a companionable silence
in which Poppy took every covert opportunity to study Kristopher’s
profile. He sat with a straight back, his blond hair seeming to
shift from light to dark depending upon the light cast by the fire.
His chin was strong, his shoulders broad – he looked every ounce
the king he’d become. She wondered whether it was due to the fact
that he’d been born a chief’s son, or that he very much behaved
like a king. It was in his blood, literally and figuratively.

She realized, as she sat there and digested
all she’d been told and all she could take in, that she’d gotten
past the point of non-believing. Sort of. She was past the
slack-jawed, wide-eyed, frozen in place stage, anyway. But it would
take a while for her to truly process what was happening.

The castle made a cracking sound around
them. It was so deep in the ice of the construction, it was
impossible to tell even which direction it was coming from. “Do you
ever get used to that?” she asked.

“
Yes. Eventually,”
Kristopher responded. Then he twisted on the rug so he could face
her. He crossed his legs and placed his elbows on his knees,
folding his fingers beneath his chin. “Tell me about
yourself.”

Poppy’s brows hit the ceiling. “What?”

He smiled. “I can read almost anyone in the
world,” he said. “Their names, where they come from, their
inner-most wishes. But with you, it’s blurred and buried in magic.
You are my equal, if not better.” He shook his head, his smile both
frustrated and oddly – proud. “I know nothing about you, Poppy. So,
why don’t you fill me in?”

“
Um….” She had no idea what
to tell him. “I have no idea what to tell you.”

He chuckled as if he’d heard the echo of her
thoughts himself. “Well, what brought you to Seattle? What do you
do for a living? What… are your wishes?” His eyes glinted, making
her feel strange.

“
You do realize how bizarre
this is, right? I mean, we obviously don’t even know each other and
I’m supposed to live with you forever.” She swallowed hard right
after saying the words, because she could feel his power coming off
him, and he felt like a fire burning as hot as the
actual
fire in the room,
and she could just imagine what it would be like to join him every
single night, in his bed, in this cold realm.

Gods.

She would be
so
willing to live with
him forever, she knew in her heart. He was everything she’d ever
dreamed of in a man, from his height to his build to his
intelligent mind to his inherent goodness to his voice to his
amazing eyes. Not to mention the clothes and the bike and…. He
would never grow old. Hell, if she stayed here, she wouldn’t
either.

But, she was supposed to be a queen?

She was so not a queen. And she had a
feeling that the only reason he still believed she was meant for
the job was because he couldn’t read her, as he said. He didn’t
know her and how plain she really was. She wasn’t elegant in any
respect. She was messy. She was chaotic. She was all over the
place.

She wore extra long scarves that were
knitted from every color of the rainbow and looked like cutesy
patchwork messes, she went stomping around in heeled lace-up combat
boots, and she didn’t own a single pencil skirt. In fact, she
didn’t have a skirt of any kind to her name. She was just not…
girly.

All she could think about was that princess
in England, Kate Middleton, with her perfect summer dresses and her
perfect smile and her perfect babies and her perfect hair and all
the love she garnered with all of that perfection, and how Poppy
just didn’t add up. Not to that.

You are so much more.

Poppy blinked. She straightened, and turned
where she sat on the fur rugs. The voice had come out of
nowhere.

“
What is it?” Kristopher
asked, clearly having noted the sudden change in her.

“
You didn’t hear
that?”

He cocked his head a
little, and his gaze narrowed questioningly. She noticed that the
color of his eyes darkened.
So they do
change
, she thought. “Hear what?” he asked
softly.

He can only hear me when I wish him to.

Poppy jumped to her feet
and spun in place. At once, Kristopher was beside her, having risen
as well. She wanted to be impressed with his reflexes, but someone
was talking to her, and
only
her, and she had no idea what to make of
it.

Persephone Glacia Nix, be
at peace
, the voice said.
It is only I – Winter.

“
Winter?” she said out
loud.

Kristopher seemed to relax beside her, but
Poppy wasn’t anywhere close.

Yes. You can hear me because of who you are
and have always been. That is worth more than perfection.

“
It’s talking to me,” she
said tightly.

“
Yes, it does
that.”

She looked up at Kristopher, craning her
neck because he was so tall this close. “I can’t tell if it’s a
girl or a boy!”

He laughed, and again that wonderful sound
went through her like audible endorphins. At once, a little of her
confusion and fear slipped away to be replaced by a sense of calm
and ridiculousness. She sort of wanted to laugh too.

“
That’s because it’s
neither, Poppy. Winter simply
is
.”

Though if I had to choose,
I think I’d go with a guy
, said
Winter.

Poppy could feel her eyes
pushing out of her face. “What?” she said out loud.
Why?
she asked in her
head, even though there had been several times in her life that she
would have chosen to be a boy too, if she’d been given the option.
Peeing standing up was only the start of it. There was the fact
that they were stronger by nature, faster because of that strength,
they could eat whatever the fuck they wanted and never gain weight,
they didn’t have periods, they didn’t have to go through
childbirth, they didn’t have to wax their bikini areas, they could
be weak willed and everyone would automatically think they were
stronger willed just because they were stronger physically, they
got paid more than women, they could date younger girls no matter
how ridiculously old they got, and gray hair and wrinkles made men
“distinguished,” whereas they basically shelved the self-worth of a
woman. Comparatively speaking, it was a goddamned cake walk to be a
man.

Why, they’re taller of
course,
said Winter.

“
Oh,” Poppy said. She
looked up at Kris, where he stood at six and a half feet. “Yeah,”
she admitted. “There’s that, too.”

Kristopher watched her in silence, his
expression bemused. He could only hear half of the conversation,
and it was a rather one-sided conversation to begin with.

The castle made a cracking sound again, and
Poppy looked down, as if she would be able to see a crack actually
form in one of the walls of the study. But of course, nothing
formed. The settling of the castle was deeper down. “I don’t know
if I could ever get used to the ice doing –”

Suddenly, the cracking she’d been hearing
intermittently was a hell of a lot louder, starting off as that
distant popping she remembered from days of ice fishing on the
lake, but rising in volume until the castle literally rumbled
around them. Chunks of ice broke off from the ceiling above and
crumbled down upon them, and the floor beneath their feet shook
enough for her to lose her balance.

Chapter Nineteen

Kristopher reached out to grasp her arms,
steadying her.

“
What the
hell
was that?” she
cried.

But he couldn’t answer her, because he
honestly didn’t know. All he knew was that he felt the sound down
deep in his bones, and he’d never been filled with a stronger sense
of foreboding. Not even when that wave had been barreling toward
him. Not ever. It came sudden and hard, and dread seeped into every
ounce of his body.

The sound came again, louder than before,
and Poppy squealed in surprise as an actual crack birthed itself
beneath their feet. She tried to backpedal, but Kristopher had a
solid grip on her. He immediately lifted her instead, jumping her
over the crack and onto his side as it widened rapid-fire, going
from an inch to an entire foot in a heartbeat.

They both backpedaled now as the crack
spread right into the fire pit in the center of the room. The fire
crackled and spat when the logs beneath it were shaken loose and
they tumbled deeper into the pit. It sputtered; some of the flames
went out as sparks went soaring like mini fire-works. Several hit
the furs, but sizzled out of life amidst the thick pile.

The crack continued unhindered, racing
across the room on the other side to hit the wall with the
ice-carved bookshelves. There, it moved up the bottom shelf,
cracking it in half as it went, shook the books that were housed
there, and continued up the second shelf. On and on it went,
dislodging several volumes to send them tumbling to the floor
before it struck the ceiling.

Foreboding washed over
Kris.
We have to get out of here.
He knew, somehow just
knew
, that the entire room was going
to come crashing down on them. “Come with me!” he commanded,
grabbing Poppy by the wrist before he spun and sprinted out of the
small room.

She didn’t fight him; she wasn’t stupid. No
doubt, she had the same impression of what the crack’s damage would
do. He could feel her move right up alongside him, running at the
same agile pace, despite the inherent slickness that ice should
have posed to a mortal. She had a firm grip. She was already so
much a part of this kingdom, despite not having taken a seat on her
throne.

Behind them, in the room they’d hastily
evacuated, something crashed noisily to the ground, and Kris felt
the impact in his heart. He gasped as pain throbbed through his
chest, arresting his breath. He stumbled, releasing Poppy’s wrist
so he wouldn’t take her down with him.

Much to his horror, his fated queen stopped
with him and knelt beside him as he fell. He wanted her to leave
the castle, to get out to safety!

Now he knew what was happening. At first,
he’d been confused, but now he was certain. It was a terrible kind
of certainty. Poppy had to get out of the castle; her safety was
paramount above all else. But he could barely breathe, much less
command her to leave him. And the fact that she instinctively
wanted to help him was both a promise and a poison to his soul.

“
I – can’t – transport,” he
gritted through his teeth. It was so hard to talk.

The “cracking” noises in the ice castle were
normally the sounds of the ice settling as it melted and re-froze
over the course of time. However, this last crack had been much
louder and much deeper because it hadn’t been just the castle.

It was the crack in Yggdrasil. And Yggdrasil
was the foundation of Winter.

The men he employed to watch over the Great
Tree had warned him that there was a hairline fracture in the trunk
of the massive plant. However, hairline fractures were not an
uncommon thing, merely a nuisance. They appeared every now and
then, and were followed by weather anomalies. Winters that barely
happened. Or winters that killed hundreds, if not thousands.

The fruit of the Great Tree was unlike any
other in the multiverse. Each one was unique, and that was the
truth of it. For each fruit was a snowflake; it was where they were
born.

Without Yggdrasil, the Guardian Tree of the
North, the Bringer of White, the Root of Winter, there would be no
winter at all. The Winter Kingdom and Yggdrasil were linked at
their core. The very foundation of everything Kristopher had become
was tied to the roots of that Great Tree.

And now those roots were coming undone. The
crack that had reverberated through the castle was not a hairline
fracture. It was a severance.

One of the roots had been cut off.

How has this happened?

“
I can transport,” said
Poppy. “Stay close.”

Kristopher said nothing, nodding instead. A
moment later, a portal swirled around them and they were moving
through space and time – but he could still feel the destruction
taking place in the palace behind them.

“
What will happen to
Meridian?!” Poppy half asked and half squealed as the portal
opened, and they went shooting out into the room beyond. They
landed hard, losing their grips on each other to roll to a stop on
a rug not unlike the one they’d been sitting on moments
earlier.

Kristopher had just been thinking about the
fate of the large bear when she’d asked the question, but now that
they had arrived in their new destination, he was temporarily
distracted.

“
What the…”