The Winter King (5 page)

Kristopher smiled.

“
It’s nothing,” Poppy lied.
“I’m just – I’m super busy. I’ll call you back in a few, okay?” She
hung up.

She’d
never
hung up on her best friend
before. It felt so wrong, and she could just imagine Violet on the
other end of the line, staring disbelievingly at her phone. But
then again, Violet had encased Poppy in a holding spell a few
months ago, and that had been the first time Violet had ever cast
magic on her, so Poppy still had a ways to go until they were
even.

She put the phone on silence and slipped it
back into her handbag. “She’s on her honeymoon,” she said.

“
And you don’t want to ruin
that for her by asking her a lot of questions about what
supernatural being could look like me and know who and what you
are. Sweet of you, but not very smart. And since I have a feeling
you’re very smart, Poppy Nix, I’m guessing you actually hung up on
her because you don’t want her involved with the Entity again.
She’s already been involved enough, hasn’t she?”

Poppy stood up. Her legs felt strange, but
they held her. Fear was driving her.

The Entity
was
out there; she knew
that well enough. Everyone who had anything at all to do with the
supernatural factions these days had been made aware of the Entity
– and her best friend had gone up against the terrifying being
herself. So, Poppy was well versed in how dangerous the world had
become of late. The man sitting across the table from her could
very well be possessed.
He
could be the Entity. Or he could be working for
him.

Despite those eyes and those muscles, he
could be evil through and through, and he’d all but just admitted
as much.

She leaned over the table
and found her hands shaking where they braced against its surface.
She tried to keep her voice down, tried desperately to keep from
drawing attention as she hissed, “Tell me who and what
you
are, Kristopher, or
I will walk out of this coffee shop and head straight to the
Thirteen Kings to inform them of this exchange. And if you follow
me or try to stop me, I won’t care how frowned-upon it is to use
magic in the mortal realm.”

His smile became a cold, hard grin. In a
voice just as soft but far more powerful, he said, “You do have
spirit, don’t you? But you aren’t going anywhere, Poppy. Not
without me.”

Chapter Six

Kristopher knew what was happening. But that
was different from believing it.

From the moment he’d heard
her voice speaking those pointedly portentous words,
“You don’t need to understand me, you just need
to love me,”
he’d been stunned. For a
while, all he could do was sit there in his chair at that table and
stare at her. He was focused, tuned-in, listening. But he could
feel the magic in his body spinning too hard, too fast, and he knew
he would draw attention soon. Either the windows around him would
freeze and shatter or the air would begin forming indoor clouds or
the ground would ice over and people would slip to their untimely
deaths.

So he shook himself out of his stupor and
morphed his body out of the visible spectrum of those around him.
Then he slowly rose from his table and moved in.

That was a mistake. The
closer he got to her, the stronger the knowledge was that what he
was seeing, what he was witnessing, and what he was
feeling
, was all real.
That reality was like both an icepick through his heart – and a
quickly following blowtorch to melt it all away again. It hurt. It
felt wonderful.

It was unbelievable.

How many years? How many blasted winters had
come and gone to see him occupy his icy throne alone?

No. He was dreaming. He had
to be. The Shadow King had thought his realm was uninhabitable? The
Unseelie King had thought no woman would want his darkness either?
The Goblin King had been positive no queen in the realms would find
his world acceptable? They had nothing on him, which became obvious
when they all found their mates. Kristopher’s world, on the other
hand, was a universe of
ice
, for fuck’s sake. Ice was
literally
uninhabitable.
Yeah, he was dreaming.

But…

You don’t dream, genius. You never have.
Guess what? This is real.

He should have known she’d be mortal. All
this time, he was assuming it would take a supernatural queen to
withstand the cruelty of his realm. But he was a fool. Of course
she’d be human. After all, at one time long ago, he’d been human
too.

He dared a distance of a table away, and
there, he made the people who were sitting at the table cold enough
that they eventually grew too uncomfortable to stay. They rose and
left, and he stole one of their seats. He turned in the chair,
leaned forward, placed his elbows on his knees, and watched with a
keen interest he hadn’t show anything – anything at all – in more
than a thousand years.

After her friend left and he followed her
outdoors – getting too close at one point – he watched her throw
her cup of coffee against the wall in fury, and he couldn’t help
but smile. Not only was she perfect in every physical and mental
way, she had a temper. Just like Winter.

He knew what was happening with her. He knew
why her coffee had been cold all day. The trick now was… how to
approach her with the truth.

And so, here he was,
sitting across from a positively drop-dead gorgeous and utterly
seething future Winter Queen, having fucked it up royally by
playing all of his cards absolutely wrong. She was hell bent on
having answers here and now, and he was nearly positive that she
wouldn’t be able to handle them. She wouldn’t even
believe
them.

And yet he hadn’t been able to stop himself
from playing hardball. There was something about her that made him
want to pick a fight with her. To get her riled. He would have
seriously given every ounce of gold he owned see what she was like
when she was absolutely furious. And naked.

His hands curled against the table top, and
his eyes heated up as she slowly straightened. He’d just told her
she wasn’t going anywhere. Not without him.

He could see the comprehension dawning in
those glacial eyes of hers. She was in trouble, and she was just
now really grasping it. What she did next, he was fully expecting,
and he let it happen. There was no sense in alarming the people in
the coffee shop.

She turned and fled, grabbing her bag and
hastening out of the shop in nearly record time. She left her hot
coffee on the table, a fact he felt somewhat guilty for. She’d
wanted that cup all day, after all. The thing was, Persephone Nix
was becoming the Winter Queen, and she had no idea how to handle
it. Winter’s power was emanating from her, escaping from her in
little magical ways that did things like turn all of her hot drinks
cold.

He wondered what else she’d done lately that
would have hinted at the transformation. Spells gone awry? Ice
forming beneath her feet? He was wondering what kind of shower
she’d had that morning. Had it been cold? Or had she been forced to
turn it all the way up and get out early?

He laughed softly at that thought, leaned
forward, and slowly sipped at his own piping hot drink. He’d
learned to control his own winter long, long ago.

Kristopher knew she was probably a good four
to five blocks away by now. She looked like the kind of deer that
could sprint at a good pace when she needed to, and he was betting
she more than felt like she needed to just then. But he had a mark
on her now, so to speak. He’d touched her. He would be able to find
her anywhere.

Kristopher’s ability to read humans had been
granted to him when he’d become the Winter King, so long ago, he
barely remembered it now. Winter had chosen him. And because he’d
had no choice in the matter, he’d accepted.

When he did, he gained many abilities. Among
those was the power to read a mortal on sight. All he had to do was
look at a person to know their name and whether or not they were
trouble. Good? Bad? Right? Wrong? Only the kings and their queens,
once they came to the table, were immune to this particular power
of his, which was especially unfortunate now that one of them was
known to be a traitor.

For everyone else, Kristopher knew: Was
their heart in a promising place, or did it wither and seethe? Were
they hurting or filled with joy? He knew it all. And yet with
Persephone Glacia Nix, mortal or not she was already so much a
queen, all he’d managed to learn was her name, her lineage, and the
fact that she was not a normal human. She was a warlock. That was a
rarity beyond measure. He’d also learned that she worked with
Lalura, a fact she’d more than verified for him when she threatened
to take him to the Thirteen Kings.

This, too, made him laugh now as he casually
finished off his drink. He looked up when the waitress approached,
hands on her hips, sympathetic look on her face.

“
Can’t win ‘em all, huh
Kris?”

“
Maybe not, Neve. But I’ll
win this one.”

The waitress pursed her lips and sat in the
seat across from him. “So, who is she?”

Kristopher eyed the waitress, a tall,
slender, pale beauty with ash blond hair dyed black and light blue
eyes framed by too much eyeliner. She did it to hide her looks, and
he supposed he could understand that to some degree. She’d never
wanted anything but to be treated like a mortal. “What’s it to you,
little sis?”

“
She’s the first one to
ever run out on you. I like her already. A
lot
.”

Kristopher threw back his head and laughed,
and the sound filled the café with magic. The windows frosted over,
and outside it began to snow.

“
Winter has started.” Neve
looked from the windows back to her big brother, her eyes large
with knowledge. “She’s your queen, isn’t she?” The question came on
a tone of voice that he’d never heard from his little sister
before. It was a tone of awe and hope, and even of fear. Most
likely the fear that he would royally screw this up. She’d been
wanting him to find his queen for centuries.

So he took a deep breath, glanced to the
windows and the world beyond, and said, “Yes. She very much
is.”

“
You’re going after her,
aren’t you?”

He turned back to his sister. “Yes.”

“
And you’re just giving her
a head start for sport, aren’t you?”

“
Yes.”

“
You’re a bastard,
Kris.”

He grinned. “I know.”

Chapter Seven

793 AD,
Troms
Ø
, the
northwest coast of Norway

Erikk awoke groggily. His head ached, and
clouds of blurriness surrounded his vision. He blinked to clear it
and slowly sat up.

“
Erikk!
Erikk!
”

Pain lanced through his senses, starting at
his vision to his sense of touch as a terrible suffering began
behind his eyes, moved to the base of his skull, and spread through
his muscle, bone and tissue, until his skin grew taut with goose
bumps in a flush of discomfort the likes of which he’d never
known.

But Ylva had just come barreling through the
front flap of his tent, her face as pale as the snow.

“
Erikk, they’ve gone!
They’ve taken the boats, Bjarke and his crew! And mother and father
will not wake up!”

Erikk jumped out of bed in the manner he was
accustomed to doing, and at once regretted it. The pain that had
been sitting and sulking like a waiting monster within his skull
awoke and jumped out of its own bed at the same time, roaring with
fury. He swayed on his feet, leaned against a nearby chest, and
tried not to let his pain show on his face.

“
Erikk, what is it? What’s
happened to you?” She rushed to stand beside him, her hand on his
shoulder to steady him.

Now he knew why the ale had been bitter. It
hadn’t been old; it had been poisoned.

“
Go to mother and father.
Find Jorunn and hurry her to them. They’ve been
poisoned.”

Ylva gasped softly and took a step back. A
moment later, she whirled around in a flurry and was out the door.
Erikk closed his eyes. Snowflakes the colors of the Northern Lights
spun behind his shut lids, and sickness roiled in his gut. He
gritted his teeth as it tried to rise. There was nothing in his
belly to vomit.

Slowly he straightened and opened his eyes.
The pain was growing worse, nudged on by the fear thrumming through
him. He needed to leave the tent, find Ronald, learn what had
happened. Just as he shoved through the tent flaps, a man with
bright red hair and a starkly terrified expression approached
him.

At least that was a bit of luck.

“
Ronald, what –”

“
Erikk, it’s worse than you
think,” his friend cut him off. He placed his hand firmly on his
shoulder and looked him in the eyes. “Your parents do not fare
well, and I can see the bastard placed the same herbs in your own
drink. But you are stronger.”

“
I know,” Erikk said,
shaking his head. He already knew about the poison! With the way he
was feeling now, as young and healthy as he was, he had a terrible,
dread-filled feeling that his parents would not be faring well at
all.

But time was passing! He needed to know
about Bjarke!

“
But that isn’t all,”
continued Ronald. “Bjarke took our strongest men and shoved off
this morning. He told Ylva that when he returned wealthy beyond
measure in several moons’ time, he would take her as his bride and
no one would be able to stop him. He bragged that he would be
chief.”