The Winter King (31 page)

She didn’t want to be shoddy about this
however, since she would only have the one shot at it. So she
concentrated further, imagining the corridor beyond the study, and
the passageways and rooms beyond that. She imagined them filling
with ocean water, and their ice walls and ceilings thinning out as
half of their girth melted into water to help fill the space
up.

She used her magic feelers to detect whether
the spells were working or not, and when she was convinced that
they were, she pulled her concentration back to where she was. She
opened her eyes and looked down at herself. It was a little bit of
a mistake – she was covered in blood.

It was unsettling, and for a few seconds,
doubt registered in her mind.

Keep yourself together, Poppy. Finish what
you’ve started. Kristopher is depending on you.

She could no longer tell which voices in her
head were hers and which belonged to Winter. And she no longer
cared. They kept her going, that was what counted.

She nodded to herself and focused. The words
of a shielding spell floated from between her lips, and she felt
her magic weave around her as if it were creating invisible chain
mail. When she felt every inch of herself had been shielded, she
looked up and narrowed her gaze on the floating room beyond.

She wouldn’t be able to come up for air. So
she needed to take care of that as well.

Another spell was spoken, and though it was
a very simple spell, one taught to warlocks in their youth, it was
yet one more act of magic piled upon all the others, and she was
beginning to feel the drain on her resources.

But again, she ignored the discomfort. She
was becoming a pro at that.

When she’d fully gained the ability to
breathe water – a spell parents never forgot to teach their
children because it alleviated their fears that the kids would
drown – she took one last breath of fresh, oxygenated air and dove
in.

And now here she was, frogging it beneath
fifteen feet of water, and she realized that she’d forgotten about
the pressure involved in swimming this deep. Her ears began to
ring, her head felt strange and a little tight, but it wasn’t so
deep yet that it was dangerous. Just uncomfortable, like diving to
the bottom of the deep end of the swimming pool without exhaling
through your nose first.

As she moved, writhing snakes bumped into
her shield. She hated the feeling. She knew that they were dying
and that they were not responsible for their being there in the
first place. She knew the Entity had transported them there while
in possession of the Midgard Serpent’s body.

She felt very real regret for the situation.
They were innocent and she was killing them. But she had no choice.
And sometimes in life… you had to be prepared to kill. That was
just how it was. If she could have transported them all back out of
the castle, she would have. But her magic didn’t work on them.
Simple, drowning water would, however. And when they were dead,
they wouldn’t be able to bite – not even those few older snakes who
would have been able to sink their teeth straight through her
shield.

Poppy focused through the blurry water up
ahead, made it through the study with its floating books and
writhing, dying snakes, and headed out into the hall beyond. More
snakes, more water, and soon she was turning a corner. A fur rug
floated by, giving her a fright. But when she realized what it was,
she shook it off and kept on going.

Swimming like this was hard
work. Or she was out of shape.
Note to
self
, she thought. Have Kristopher install
an ice gym.

Finally, she was in the throne room, and the
two ice chairs were up ahead. She’d been very careful while casting
the melting spell to not include the thrones in its area of effect.
From the looks of it, she’d been successful. However, now that they
were wet, they would probably start dissolving a bit. Time was of
the essence.

By this point, all but a few straggling
snakes were dead or at least unconscious. Again, regret spiked
through her, and again she pushed it aside. She reached the
poppy-carved throne, spun in the water, and took a deep breath of
salted wetness.

And then she sat down.

Suddenly she was not sitting, but standing.
The throne room was gone. The water was gone. The very castle was
gone. In its place and all around her stretched a vast plain of
perfect, undisturbed snow. It stretched into the far reaches of her
vision and disappeared on the horizon. Poppy looked up as something
purple and green caught her eye. The sky was divided by ribbons of
color, streaks of beauty that shifted and melted, reformed and
changed again. The aurora borealis.

“
Welcome,
Poppy.”

Poppy looked back down. A polar bear stood
before her. To the polar bear’s right was a massive white wolf. To
its left was an equally large pure white stag. Sitting in the
stag’s tall antlers as if they were branches was a perfectly white
raven.

Poppy couldn’t tell which
of them had spoken to her, and there was no one else around.
One
of them had.
Right?

“
Umm,” Poppy said, “Thank
you?”

The wolf panted happily and sat down. The
raven hopped from one antler outcropping to another. The polar bear
lifted a paw and placed it back down again.

“
It was all of us who
spoke,” said the voice that had welcomed her. It was definitely
coming from the general vicinity of the animals, but hovered in the
air between them as if they truly had all spoken to her as one. “We
are Winter.”

Poppy blinked. “So you’re the one who’s been
in my head all day.”

There was a pause before the voice said,
“Not only today, Poppy. I have always been with you.”

Again, Poppy blinked. And then she thought
of her childhood, of the voice in her head she had always
associated with her conscience. She thought of the way it had
helped give her strength – strength to face the truth in difficult
situations, and the strength to fight for what was right when it
was being threatened by wrong. It had been there when she’d
defended her friends against the bullies that would have loved
nothing more than to crush their open, intelligent minds beneath
the anvil of judgment and conformity. It was there when she decided
to get out of the car a drunk friend was driving. It was always
there – when she needed it most.

“
To be fair,” said Winter,
“A lot of that
was
your conscience.” The polar bear nodded its massive head.
“You are not a fool, Poppy Nix. In truth, you rarely needed my
guidance. But when you did, I gave it. Because I knew you were the
one.”

Poppy looked from each of them. She looked
down at herself.

The blood was gone. The mess was gone. In
its place was her favorite outfit – a simple white tee-shirt and a
fresh pair of blue jeans with lace-up combat boots. The difference
was that she felt like they were royal robes, because the body they
now covered was surging with power. It rolled through her in
veritable waves. It was like a drug, thick and shimmering and
perfect. Nothing hurt. There was no weakness. There was no
fear.

“
I have to help Kris,” she
said, looking back up at the polar bear. “Please send me
back.”

“
I don’t need to my queen,”
said Winter. She could feel it smile; she didn’t know how, but she
could. “You are already there.”

Chapter Forty-Seven

Poppy opened her eyes. She was sitting on
the queen’s throne in the Winter Kingdom’s ice castle throne room,
and the room around her was still and clean. There was no water.
There were no snakes. The walls, floor, and ceiling were as they
had been the first time she’d laid eyes on them. A chandelier
overhead chimed softly as its ice crystals clinked against one
another. But other than that, all was calm and all was still.

Poppy sat for another second and a half. And
then she leapt out of her throne and ran. She ran through the
throne room, slid around the corner, and sprinted down the long
hallway, which was also devoid of either snakes or water. She
turned another corner and found herself in the study. The ceiling
was in one, whole piece. The books were in their places on the
shelves. And the secret passageway lay open and waiting.

Poppy barely slowed down enough to make the
turn in the stairwell. She took the stairs down three at a time,
basically leaping down the entire staircase until she hit the
bottom and straightened.

Kristopher Scaul lay unmoving in the center
of the room. Nothing had changed about him, unfortunately, and
Poppy knew that if she didn’t hurry, the Valkyrie would find her.
They would find where she’d taken the fallen warrior, and they
would try to claim him once more.

“
Over my dead body,” she
whispered as she walked to the center of the room and knelt beside
the king.

And here was where she faltered.

For a resurrection, a bonfire would normally
have been built. A crystal phylactery would have been created. A
complex and incongruous series of events would have had to take
place before the spirit could be returned to the fallen body and
the breath returned to its lungs.

But Kristopher’s spirit had never left. The
Valkyrie had been denied their catch. His soul was still there,
trapped in that un-breathing form. And bonfires were not for the
Winter King. Not for him. Not for here, and not for now.

Poppy reached down, and with a touch filled
with the tenderness her heart felt for his, she took his chin
between her fingers and turned his head to face her. “My beautiful
Viking,” she said softly. She didn’t have a plan any longer. She
wasn’t behaving on something she had figured out. She wasn’t acting
on logic.

Instead, she surrendered once more to the
instinct that had not betrayed her yet. She closed her eyes and
leaned in. As she did, she felt her magic swirl to frenzied life
around her. A gentle breeze picked up in the nondescript room.

She couldn’t see it; her eyes were closed.
But as she drew closer, the walls of the transportation room began
to change. The smooth, undecorated ice molded itself, dipping down
into reliefs and raising in design.

“
My brave king,” she
whispered, now just a breath away.

Then she touched her lips to his.

The breeze in the room
became a full force gale. It surged through her hair, rushing past
her in a sudden and magnificent swell of unimaginable power.
Somewhere, the laws of physics were changing. She could have sworn
she heard
music
.
It filled her heart, filled her
soul
. She felt as if she were
flying, rising high on the back of a Norse Dragon, reaching the
outer limits of the atmosphere.

Beneath her, the king’s lips parted.

Poppy’s eyes flew open.

But she could not break the kiss to move
away. Kristopher’s hand shoved through her hair to fist gently at
the back of her head, holding her fast. He kissed her hard and deep
and filled her universe with countless exploding stars.

She fell against him in exhausted relief and
let him have that kiss. He was alive.

He was
alive
.

Time held still for them as they embraced.
When the kiss ended, ten thousand uncounted years later, Kristopher
brushed his fingers tenderly through her hair, and she lifted
slowly away.

“
My brave queen,” he said,
smiling. “My beautiful, brave blossom.”

Epilogue

The broken root of Yggdrasil had eventually
been located. It took a while; Yggdrasil is big, to say the least.
But once it was found, with the help of search parties from both
Valhalla and Jotenheim, the lone seed was carefully planted. The
root was now restored. The fighting was done for the time being,
and all was well within the Winter Kingdom.

Now it was time for
a
different
kind
of battle.

The whistle was blown, and the puck hit the
ice. Poppy jerked forward, maneuvering her stick so that it almost
seemed to bend around Kristopher’s. She gained the puck, spun with
it, and turned a full circle, skating around him with quickly
gained speed.

A roar of approval went up around the two
players.

On the sidelines of the massive antechamber,
Neve, William Balthazar Solan, and Meridian the Dire Bear each
cheered on their chosen favorites. For the Time King, it was
apparently Poppy. For Meridian, there was no telling who it was.
Neve cheered them both on, not wanting to pick favorites.

The sound of skate blades was crisp and
sharp in the ice. Laughter emanated from the players, laughter like
magic and warmth and memories. A Dire Bear roared in friendly
support.

Outside, beyond the clear ice dome, a white
stag shook its head, and the white raven perched in its antlers
fidgeted, jumping from one antler to the other. A large white wolf
sat down on its back haunches, gave a low howl, and panted
happily.

Fresh white powder stretched to an
aquamarine ocean, and fat, crystalline snowflakes fell from an
impossibly cloudless blue sky.

Content at last, Winter sighed.

*****

“
Dear
Evangeline,
” the note read.
“
I’m pleased to see that you have advanced
as you have. Though I had hoped you would have a more reputable
tutor at this juncture…. Still, one mustn’t be choosy. I’m proud of
you. You would never believe it, I understand. But I am and always
will be. What’s more important, I love you. This, you must believe.
It is essential. And one more thing.