The Winter King (14 page)

“
Did we not leave the
castle?” Poppy asked, voicing his own thoughts.

The room they were in looked remarkably like
the rooms of the Ice Castle, but he had to admit it was just
different enough. He didn’t recognize these carvings. And there was
no magic emanating from the walls. No, this room was in a mortal
dwelling.

“
We did. This is something
else,” he replied, getting to his feet despite the terrible
sensations moving through his body. He was anxious; the feeling
inside him was not a pleasant one. It was as if he were coming
unraveled or had lost a piece of himself. He knew the castle was a
reflection of that, as well as a representation of what was
happening with Yggdrasil.

Yggdrasil… How the hell did it manage to
lose an entire root? He had men protecting it! Giants! Dragons!
Nothing could get past the guardians he’d laid in place a thousand
years ago! Cracks came and went, but this? This would have taken an
all-out attack.

“
Wait,” Poppy said where
she stood and turned a slow circle. “I recognize this! This is that
hotel in Iceland! That one made of ice!” Her smile of recognition
faded into a frown. “But this isn’t where I meant to bring us. I
meant to take us to the cabin where Lalura trains us. My transport
spell messed up again!”

“
It’s the Winter in you,”
Kristopher told her. “It will remain in control of all you try to
do… until
you
decide to take control of
it
.”

She stopped and met his
gaze. Her frown became an expression of stark concern. “You don’t
look so good.” She moved toward him, just close enough to touch him
if she’d wanted to, but stopped short of doing so. She didn’t seem
to know
what
to
do, in fact. He couldn’t blame her behavior. “What happened back
there?” she asked. “What happened to
you
?”

“
We’re under attack,” he
told her frankly. “But Meridian will be fine. Dire Bears can
transport within the Winter Realm.”

“
Excuse me,” came a new
voice.

They both turned to face the door of the
room, which was carved of ice just like the rooms in the Winter
Castle. A young man stood in the doorway, dressed in ski pants and
a parka, the majority of his face concealed by the faux fur around
the parka’s hood.

“
I didn’t know someone was
staying in this room tonight,” he said, his tone confused but also
accusatory. He wasn’t just telling them that he wasn’t aware they
were there – he was telling them that they weren’t
supposed
to be
there.

Poppy pushed around Kristopher, who had
unknowingly stepped in front of her in a protective gesture,
despite how completely messed up he felt. He let her by, and she
proceeded to work a different kind of magic.

“
I’m so sorry,” she said
with the most beautiful smile he’d ever seen. “We’re late arrivals
and we just couldn’t help ourselves; we had to check out the room
right away. We’ve heard so much about this place! Pictures of your
hotel have been plastered all over my Facebook page for weeks now!
You’re famous amongst my friends,” she laughed. “And I guess I just
got carried away when we finally got here.” She giggled shyly,
making Kris’s insides feel squishy with a new kind of desire.
“We’ll head to the check-in desk right now.”

The man’s face broke into a grin, which
Kristopher could see reach his wind-wrinkled eyes. “Oh, it’s no
problem at all,” he said in his heavy Icelandic accent. “It’s no
rush, really. I’ll let the concierge know you’re here and will soon
be checking in. You go ahead and take your time.” He nodded a few
times, he and Poppy exchanged final chuckles, and then the man
left.

Kristopher’s chest ached, his head throbbed,
he could feel a rift in his magic, and he was frankly terrified
about what was happening to his kingdom. And he was also dumbstruck
with appreciation.

“
You just might be the most
powerful warlock I’ve ever met,” he said breathlessly.

Poppy turned that brilliant smile on him,
taking the rest of his breath right away. “Yeah,” she said softly.
“I do kind of rock.”

Chapter Twenty

It had been months since it happened, but
Lalura knew that to Dannai it felt like years. And seconds.

The woman’s entire world had crashed in the
day she crossed the border into the West Bank and entered the Land
of the Dead. Her husband had been killed. She’d been killed. She’d
entered the Duat – the West Side.

And she’d met her father.

She’d not spoken of it, not a word, but it
was visible in her eyes. What had transpired in the course of that
day had haunted her in the time that had passed. Lalura knew she
had nightmares. She wondered if Dannai felt she’d never left the
Duat, and she wondered if she ever would.

It had taken this long to reach this point
here and now, with the four of them at last gathered together,
ready to hear what she had to tell them.

Dannai sat across from Lalura, Lily Kane,
and Diana Chroi, in the massive study of the Goblin Kingdom castle.
In the corner, three bassinets were rocked steadily by little
impish creatures who were apparently very good at taking care of
the Goblin Queen’s triplets. Four visible cats and probably
countless unseen felines rested in varying positions and locations
around the room. A baby goat chewed on a leather cover to a book on
the bottom shelf of a set of bookshelves against one wall. And two
goblin dogs rested comfortably on blankets in front of the
fireplace. They were similar to dogs from the mortal realm, but
squatter, with shorter snouts, longer ears, an extra layer of hair,
and spots of bright purple.

The animals in the room had all been rescued
at one point or another and brought here by Diana, who had a soft
spot in her heart for animals of all kinds, supernatural or
otherwise.

“
You remember that only I
could cross the river, Lalura.”

Lalura nodded. “I recall.”
She remembered that
quite
well.

When the two of them had entered the Duat
together in order to retrieve Lucas Caige’s body from the Land of
the Dead so that the warlocks in the mortal realm could resurrect
him, it had turned out only Dannai could cross the river that
separated the West Bank from the rest of the world. A bridge
appeared for her use, but when Lalura stepped foot upon it, it
crumbled before her, separating her from her adopted daughter.

So, Dannai had gone on alone and Lalura had
been forced to wait for her in the ever-reaching sands on the other
side. She could have attempted to use magic in order to go on, but
magic was always a gamble. Any wise magic user knew this. Magic in
an untried dimension was exponentially so.

“
Well, once I crossed the
bridge and looked back, you’d vanished. So I’m assuming you
couldn’t see me either.”

“
You assume correctly,”
Lalura said calmly.

Dannai nodded. Then she took a deep breath.
“I would rather not go into detail about what happened next. But
you need to know this much. My father met me as I entered the City
of the Dead. Because of my lineage, I was allowed to bring Lucas’s
second body back. But my father also told me what it is the Entity
wants.”

This was it. This was the secret Lalura knew
was swimming beneath the surface of her daughter’s thoughts. It was
a truth that no magic could bring out. The things that had
transpired that day were too terrible, and the knowledge was buried
too deep. Digging it out forcibly would have caused scars.

The information, no matter how badly the
Thirteen Kings wanted or needed it, would have to come in its own
time.

Now was that time.

“
My mother lies sleeping on
the West Bank,” Dannai told them. “But it was not Kamon Re, my
uncle, who put her there. It was my father.”

Lalura straightened as this information sank
in.

“
What?” asked Diana. “I
thought Kamon had her under some sort of coma or sleeping spell or
something!”

Dannai shook her head. “My uncle can speak
with her for brief periods. The blood of a god runs through his
veins as well. His power is great. Therefore, he can enter her
dreams, and strangely enough, her dreams can enter reality. For a
few seconds at a time, she can even appear awake. But my father’s
spell is the one that keeps her under. It’s Amon Re who makes sure
she remains in the Land of the Dead.”

The confusion was palpable amongst Dannai’s
listeners. Lalura waited, but she didn’t have to wait long.

“
This doesn’t make any
sense,” said Lily. “Why would your father want to kill your
mother?”

“
Because before he placed
her under his spell,” Dannai told them gravely, “she had been
possessed by the Entity. She was the most powerful magic user in
any realm when he claimed her. She was his end-all, his ultimate
body. With her as his host, he could take over the world. But my
father recognized what was happening just in time and placed her in
a stasis inches from death.” She paused. “Kamon wants her to
awaken. Because Kamon works for the Entity. And the Entity wants
nothing more than a body – and a
magic
– like hers to call his
own.”

Chapter Twenty-One

“
You don’t look so hot.”
Okay, that wasn’t actually true. The truth was, he looked
very
hot, like
ridiculously
hot, like
melt-in-your mouth hot, and she’d never seen a more beautiful
specimen of a man. But he also looked as though he’d just finished
jiu jitsu sparring with the devil, and Beelzebub had gotten in a
few illegal hits below the belt.

He looked like he was in pain. And he looked
really, really angry.

He had his hand pressed to his rock-hard
abdomen, which carelessly slightly lifted his shirt, exposing an
inch or two of his toned midriffs in all their ripped glory. But
that hand was clenched, clutching his shirt tightly like he needed
to crush something and there was nothing crushable around. Well,
except for her. Which is why she stood across the room from him and
just spoke loudly.

His breathing was a little
too fast for someone who wasn’t in pain. His teeth were clenched
behind his closed lips, and she could see the muscles of his jaw
tensed and tight just like the rest of him was. But most telling of
all was the fact that his eyes were glowing. Not – “Hey, your eyes
are so bright and sparkly, they are almost glowing” glowing,
but
actually
glowing. They’d been giving off blue-white light since just
after the hotel’s employee had left them alone in the
room.

He ignored her comment and made his way to
the bed that was against one wall. It was covered with furs that
looked remarkably like the ones in the ice castle. With a grunt of
pain that he tried to hide but couldn’t quite squelch, he sat on
the edge of the bed and closed those glowing eyes. Then he said
through those clenched teeth, “I’m the Winter King. Hot isn’t
something I’m supposed to be anyway.” Proving he hadn’t ignored her
after all.

Poppy took a few tentative steps toward him.
“What happened back there?”

Without opening his eyes, he said, “Someone
has attacked the tree. Cut off one of its roots. As a result, both
the castle and myself have taken damage.”

Poppy frowned. “Tree?” she asked, feeling
stupid.

“
Yggdrasil,” he
said.

“
The World Tree?” she
asked, remembering the name of the tree from her high school
mythology class. In the Norse mythos, Yggdrasil was supposed to
encompass something like nine worlds, from the realms of giants and
elves to the heavens, where the branches extended. Most believe the
name “Yggdrasil” was derived from “Odin’s Horse or Odin’s Gallows,”
given that it was this massive ash that Odin, the Norse All-Father
god, sacrificed himself upon by hanging. Yggdrasil, in short, was
very sacred to the Norse, no matter which interpretation you
followed.

Kristopher opened his eyes. They were still
glowing. It was especially unnerving that he now settled them on
her. “Popular mythology strikes again,” he said derogatorily, but
gently and without any real acid in his tone.

“
You mean it’s not the
World Tree?”

He shook his head, then took the pillows and
furs from the bed and piled them up against the wall before
settling back against it in a relaxed seated position. His skin
color was a little more pale than it had been when they’d first
met. And not a single muscle in his body had yet relaxed. “Humans
never quite get it right,” he said, “and I say that as a man who
was once human myself. For one thing, no matter what our beliefs,
we entrust those beliefs to words spoken or penned down by human
beings. Humans are by nature fallible. But then we exacerbate the
problem by taking our initial beliefs and pushing them relentlessly
through time, which changes. Because time changes and we must
therefore change with it, we add to our beliefs here and subtract
there. Or worse, we refuse to. Over time, the story is either
edited so much it loses its meaning, or it forces man to adhere to
something downright ridiculous. Either way, the heart of it is
blurred by time and human error, and it loses its soul. The
plotline and characters are by this point unrecognizable.”

Poppy took a few more steps toward the bed.
As she drew closer, she caught strange vibrations in the air. It
was the power she’d sensed coming off him before, the power of a
king. But it was jagged and disrupted, like a magnificent beast
that had been tortured and teased until it was damaged and
furious.