The Winter King (11 page)

So it was with some difficulty that he
decided which of her questions, spoken or unspoken, to answer
first. “This is happening to you because your magic and your body
are accepting the path that is your destiny.”

“
Which is?” she demanded
tightly.

He knew that even as he
said it, her soul was already aware of what the answer would be.
“
This
is your
destiny, Poppy.” He gestured to the antechamber as well. Then he
squared her with a look that said it all. “You are the Winter
Queen.”

Chapter Fifteen

He really is insane.

Of course, she knew that
already. He was some sort of supernatural stalker, remember? Her
magic was going haywire, but it wasn’t for the reasons he’d
suggested. Maybe she was under a lot of stress or maybe she was
going through some sort of magical puberty or –
something
. He, on the other hand,
was claiming to be one of the Thirteen Kings and telling her she
was his queen. Classic psychopathic behavior if she’d ever seen
it.

“
Riiiight,” she said
slowly. “Got it.”

Kristopher laughed. It wasn’t a chuckle, but
a deep-throated, very real and deep kind of laugh that had him
throwing back his gorgeous head as his massive chest heaved with
every expelled breath. If he’d been a foot shorter, eighty pounds
heavier with fat, and had a big, white fluffy beard, he would have
reminded her of Santa Claus.

“
Hey,” he said, shaking his
head as he grinned ear to ear. “I totally get it. This is all nuts,
and I’m with you on that. After all, I was once standing in the
very spot you now stand, and I was thinking pretty much the same
thing.”

She eyed him warily. He was so goddamn
gorgeous, and so convincing. Was she on the verge of believing him?
“Oh?” she asked. “When was that?”

“
Approximately a thousand
years ago. Give or take a few centuries.”

A thousand years. In her circle of friends
and acquaintances, that meant almost nothing. She needed more.

“
Tell me about it,” she
said then.

He studied her for a moment before saying,
“How about I show you instead?” He walked through the room, making
a wide birth around her as if she were a skittish animal that might
jump and run. Which she sort of was.

She turned with him as he moved and saw that
he was headed toward one of four sets of doors, this pair the
largest and intricately carved with designs that reminded her of
Viking ships. As he approached the doors, they opened for him,
slowly swinging outward as if on command.

He stopped in the doorway, and she could see
another room beyond him, also the bright white and blue of ice. “If
you’d care to come with me?” he said, gesturing for her to join
him.

She hesitated. But then she realized that
hesitating was pointless. She was in some bizarre, unknown locale,
her magic – or his – had brought her here, and if she wanted out of
this locale, doing so from one room would most likely be no
different than doing so from another. Transport magic was transport
magic, after all.

She took a deep breath, shrugged, and walked
across the room to join him.

“
Cold?” he asked as she
approached.

She frowned and looked down at her Seattle
city clothing, definitely not the parka and snow boots one would
expect to be donning in a palace of ice. “No, actually,” she
replied. That was odd. She should be freezing. Her magic couldn’t
possibly be protecting her this time; it had been on the cold side
for weeks.

“
Good,” Kristopher said,
nodding to himself. “This way.” He moved through the doors into
another large room, and she saw that she’d been right. It too was
carved entirely of ice. But this one was more ornately decorated
than the antechamber.

And it was a throne room.

“
Whoa…” she whispered,
unaware that she’d made the exclamation aloud.

“
I’m glad you approve.” He
walked right up to the dais upon which two thrones sat, one
slightly larger than the other, both gorgeously carved of the same
ice. “Now I know why this one was carved like it was,” he said,
climbing the stairs to look down at the throne that had been carved
into flowers.

Poppy slowly climbed the
stairs as well, her gaze fixed on the ice-carved blooms. Once she
was close enough to tell what they were, she asked, “Are
those…
poppies
?”

“
They are,” he said softly.
“Poppies are the only flower that will flourish beyond a certain
northern point. All this time, I’d thought that was the only reason
they’d been added to the throne.”

She met his gaze, and there was no mistaking
what he’d left unsaid. She, herself, was trying to register the
un-ignorable coincidence the throne’s decorations implied, when
something large moved away from the wall behind Kristopher.

Her vision shifted. The object was large and
rounded. It rose slowly into view, snow colored and massive, and
Poppy felt her heart drop into her stomach. Her throat tightened,
her eyes widened, and she tried to speak, tried to warn her
companion, but the first sounds out of her mouth were babbling.

Kristopher must have not only noticed the
expression on her face, but understood its significance, because he
instantly turned and back-stepped, ducking simultaneously as if to
dodge a sword or axe swing. In fact, it was an impressively agile
move suggesting years of fighting experience. But when he spun to
face what his instincts told him was an attacker, he stopped and
straightened. And a smile stole his features.

“
Ah. Now I see why your
coloring was suddenly the same as my sister’s.” He chuckled softly.
“Don’t worry, you’re safe. This is Meridian.”

The polar bear rose on its back legs to a
height that made her feel dizzy, more than doubling Kristopher’s
stature by a long shot, then dropped easily back down onto all
fours. He made a low growling-moaning sound that ironically seemed
anything but threatening. Kristopher strode over to the giant beast
and lovingly tousled his thick white fur. The bear nudged his chest
with his black nose, then turned that nose back toward Poppy and
sniffed the air between them.

“
Meridian, this is Poppy.
Poppy, this is Meridian.”

Poppy felt her heart leave
her stomach and go back to residing in her chest, though she still
took another step back. It
was
a bear, after all. She cleared her throat and
found her voice. “He’s… he’s a polar bear,” she said
softly.

“
More or less. He once was.
Now he’s a Dire Bear. Once they’ve lived in the Winter Kingdom long
enough, polar bears grow a few sizes. Then their fur truly loses
all of its coloring.”

The bear was certainly larger than Poppy
thought Polar Bears were. When it had risen up on its hind legs, it
had been more than twice Kristopher’s height. She would imagine
that to be around twelve or thirteen feet tall. At the shoulder
now, the bear was taller than she was. That was big.

But then again, she had no idea how big
polar bears were. She’d never met a polar bear in person, despite
her years in Canada. It had just been the way luck played out, she
guessed. She’d also never seen the Northern Lights. That one kind
of pissed her off.

Poppy looked carefully at the bear’s fur and
did notice that there was no difference at all between it and the
white of the ice around them. There was no yellow in the fur, as
there tended to be in polar bears. The fact that it was so very
white was why she hadn’t noticed the bear to begin with. He’d
literally blended in with the castle.

“
And… he’s
yours
?” she queried
next, just as softly.

“
If you mean, is he my pet,
no. He belongs to William, if he belongs to anyone. But Meridian is
his own bear, aren’t you Mer?”

The bear nodded.
Actually
nodded
.

“
Um….”

Kristopher looked up at her
as he continued to give the bear’s fur deep strokes. His gorgeous
blue eyes were shining. “William Balthazar Solan is the Time King.
He frequently visits my kingdom.” He smiled, stepping away from the
bear to stuff his hands casually into the front pockets of his
jeans. “He says it suits him. I think he likes the solitude, and I
know it makes him feel more comfortable to be surrounded with
something a little older than the mortal realm. Plus, as I said,
the castle is located in the
Ice of
Time
, so it shares a fundamental
characteristic William can relate to.”

This was too much for Poppy to mentally
digest. It was just too much. “I think I need to sit down.”

Kristopher stepped away from the bear.
“Well, it just so happens you have a seat right here,” he replied,
moving back up the dais to the smaller throne. “As I’m sure you’ve
figured out by now, Poppy,” he continued, pinning her with those
crystal blue eyes. “This throne is yours.”

Chapter Sixteen

793 A.D. – The Winter Kingdom

It was a good thing he’d taken the seat when
he had, because his legs gave out altogether at that point,
plunking him down upon the ice throne none-too-gently. He expected
to rapidly decline into oblivion after that, since he’d already
been warming up with the final stages of freezing to death.
However, the moment his rump hit the chair, things began to
change.

He hadn’t realized it until it happened, but
his vision had been going in the moments before he sat down. It had
obviously been blurred, because now it cleared up, revealing the
throne room around him like a diamond someone had finally polished.
His joints and muscles loosened up, infused with blood that had
previously fled everything but his heart in that desperate attempt
to keep him alive. The pain in his fingers and face instantly
receded, and he could bend his knuckles once more. He curled his
hands over the ends of the throne’s arm rests as even the feeling
came back to his feet.

At first, it hurt, but not nearly as much as
it should have. Erikk had gone from nearly frozen before to warm as
human flesh was supposed to be, and normally, it hurt like hell.
First, you’d feel warmth, then heat, then electric zapping, and all
three would intensify until you were nearly in tears, and whatever
part of your body it was that was warming up turned the color of
rubies.

But this time, there was a mere flush of
heat, a few short crackles, and within moments, his entire body
felt back to normal. He had no time to ponder the transformation
however, because when he closed his eyes to enjoy the wave of
contentment that stole over him, visions began to flash before his
closed lids.

He saw ten thousand things, in ten thousand
times. With the visions came the knowledge of what they were and
when they were, and why. He watched and he learned and he
understood.

It happened in the space of heartbeats,
fractions of time. Yet it encompassed generations. Countless
memories flashed and moved, countless stories – beginning, middle,
and end – were told in the span of a single grain of sand through
the hourglass. They moved him, touched him, taught him.

And when Erikk opened his eyes, he was a
different man.

Welcome to your kingdom, your majesty.

The voice again. But now he knew what it
was. It was the voice of Winter. His whole life, he’d associated
winter with a god, perhaps Ullr or Skaoi. No one ever really knew
for sure, because gods never conveniently appeared before mortals
to clear things up: “Hi there. I’m Ullr, the one you’ve been
worshipping your whole life with blind faith. Yep. It’s really me.
Guess what? You were right! Everyone else was wrong! I’m real!
Congratulations and nice job.” No, it was sort of up to a toss of
the dime or a person’s mood or circumstance, so Erikk had never
been certain who to associate winter with, if anyone at all.

Well, now he knew. Winter was not associated
with anything. Winter belonged to itself – and with good
reason.

Why me?
he asked it quietly.

There was a period of
silence before the voice answered. When it finally did, it was with
a tone that hinted at secrets.
Not only
you
, it answered like a cold wisp of wind.
Then there was a much longer pause, as if a deep meaning were
hidden within the words, and it was Erikk’s job to discover it. But
he’d already learned so much that day, and there was nothing Winter
could do or say now that would surprise him. So, Erikk waited with
a new patience, one he had not had in the youth of his
mortality.

But one he had now.

I am lonely,
the voice told him. In Erikk’s head, the images,
the stories, and the memories Winter had given him flashed again, a
loop of remembrance, and he understood. If he’d been Winter, he
would have been lonely too. It wasn’t exactly the reason that
he
himself
had
been chosen as sovereign of the realm, but it
was
a reason Winter had chosen
anyone at all. For now, it would do.

Erikk was about to ask,
“What now?” when the voice spoke again, this time with
urgency.
Your sister.
Erikk blinked. “What?” he said aloud, breaking the
silence.

You must go to your sister. She is
dying.

Erikk leapt out of the
throne, moving with a strength and speed he hadn’t had before he’d
walked into the ice castle. At once, he saw an image of his little
sister in his head. He saw her face clearly, but everything around
her was blurred. He focused on her.
Show
me
, he commanded, not even knowing what it
was he was commanding.