King of the Frost

by Elizabeth Frost

  But it wasn’t Storm who stared back at him. It was the elemental who had taken the form he desired most.

  It cricked its neck, turning its head side to side before releasing a sigh. “You know she isn’t a foreign dignitary.”

  “Yes, I gained that much from our conversation.”

  “You must find out why she’s here.”

  Storm didn’t appreciate being ordered around like a child. He didn’t have to do anything the elemental ordered him to do. He was still the king.

  But the elemental was right. Something didn’t add up about this beautiful woman with her light scent and rainbow hair. If she’d come here as a foreign court dignitary, then she would have already asked her questions. She wouldn’t have lingered in this castle. She’d be getting back to her own king.

  And he couldn’t even think of her in another court. She was the same kind of faerie as him. The wind loved her too much for her to be any other element.

  He leaned closer to the glass. “I’ll do so, but in my own time.”

  “There’s no time for weakness, Storm. If she’s here to kill you, then we need to know sooner rather than later.”

  The mere idea was laughable. He tilted his head back and snorted. “Do you believe she could hurt either of us?”

  Black eyes flashed. “Yes, that’s exactly what I think she could do. Underestimating your enemy will only end in your premature death, Storm. And I don’t care if you live or die. I’ll find another, stronger, host. Maybe even her.”

  That wasn’t fair, and the elemental knew it. Storm wouldn’t wish this curse on anyone, let alone her.

  He’d only taken the elemental into himself to avoid the creature hunting down another. He’d been the strongest faerie there. And there may have been some modicum of arrogance driving him. If the elemental wanted the most powerful faerie to host him, then Storm had liked to think it was him.

  But he also remembered the sensation in the room. Electricity had danced like tiny lightning strikes hitting the ground. Faeries had quaked in fear, dropping to their knees before the raw power and praying they were spared from its wrath.

  He had wanted no one to feel afraid like that again. If that meant consuming such terrifying magic, then so be it. He wanted to ensure the people were safe.

  In doing so, he hadn’t realized he would sacrifice himself.

  The elemental watched him in the mirror, well aware of the thoughts dancing through his mind. Black eyes flashed with static power. “You were blessed the day I entered you.”

  Had he heard those words before? Doubtful. No faerie would ever have dared. But they still rang through his mind like the crack of a whip. Stinging down his spine and aching throughout the far limbs of his body.

  Storm wasn’t lucky. He was cursed like all the other hosts of this being. No one could know the pain he suffered every day, and if he had his way, no one else ever would.

  Sighing, he reached out and touched a finger to the cold glass. The reflection rippled like he’d flicked the surface of water. And then the elemental was gone, disappearing into the dark corners of his mind where it would wait for him to falter once again.

  He needed to convince the woman to tell him her true purpose here. Why had she hunted him? And she certainly had. Not a single heartbeat had she given up chasing him through the maze. If she’d had a weapon, he knew she would have thrown it at him.

  Foreign dignitaries didn’t do that. Their weapons were words and hidden threats. Not shouts that were horrific decorum and too loud for courtly honor.

  But she was fae. And the fae couldn’t lie.

  Could they?

  The troubling thought refused to leave him alone. Once it sprung to life, he could think of nothing else.

  She was a faerie. He had seen the way she could walk upon the air and how the wind touched her hair with loving zephyrs. The element was not fond of humans, only their own kind.

  She’d also lied. He’d never seen another faerie like her in any court. That meant she wasn’t from one of them. She had to be a wandering faerie who had come here, or she was from the Court of Air.

  But she couldn’t be. Because faeries couldn’t lie.

  Storm tunneled his fingers through his long hair and tugged at the roots. There was something here. A mystery to be untangled, but he couldn’t quite follow his own thoughts.

  Someone must know something. And if he had learned anything in his long life, it was that if he had questions, a book could answer them.

  Striding across his workroom, he ignored the bubbling concoctions. One was filled with purple petals. Another with swamp water that was green all the way through. Each scent on its own might be a little boring, too strong, or even putrid. Put together, they were the most glorious of scents.

  He stalked past countless glass pipes that swirled up to the ceiling, then back down to give the perfume time to cure. A few of the glass containers even hosted a few smaller air faeries. One, in particular, was little more than glittering wind caught in a jar. He used the small bits of glitter he could steal to make his perfume’s appearance prettier.

  Aesthetic was everything, after all.

  As he walked past the captured faerie, it slammed its tiny fists against the cage. If it screamed something, he’d never know. The glass was soundproof.

  Storm reached the bookshelf at the far end of the room. The dark wood had seen better days. Knicks and dings from a thousand years of use hadn’t ruined its use, however. The books filling its shelves were precious, rare, and couldn’t be found anywhere else.

  He ran his finger down the leather spine of one, tilted it forward, and stood aside as the bookshelf slid to the right. It revealed glass stairs leading up into shadows.

  Ascending the stairs to the secret library gave him a sense of deja vu. He’d done this before, countless times, but never for a woman. And yet... he knew in his soul this was what he was meant to do.

  Somewhere in the library the wind whispered of a hidden secret. Words the woman wouldn’t want him to know.

  He could hear the stream of air as it tangled around his shoulders and played with his hair. “She doesn’t want you to know.”

  “What doesn’t she want me to know?”

  It swirled underneath his arm and trailed him up the stairwell into the hidden library. A thousand shelves, all tucked beneath the glass of the palace and hidden by layers of rooms above. Cobwebs stretched in great sheets of white above his head. Every book was bound by magic, sealed to all those who didn’t know how to open them.

  The floor revealed the clouds below his feet. Almost as though he were walking upon the fluffy surface.

  “Where?” he asked the wind as it lifted a strand of his hair and observed it. “Where is the book she doesn’t want me to see?”

  It lifted his hair in a shrug. “I’m not sure. She knows it exists here, and she’s searching for it, but she doesn’t know where the library is hidden.”

  Another curious behavior for a foreign dignitary.

  Storm tilted his head to the side and eyed the wind. “Well, we must find the book before her and discover all her secrets. Shall we?”

  The dark fringe of madness toyed at the frayed edges of his mind.

  8

  Ayla sat still for an entire hour before she launched into frantic pacing. Her backpack swung between her shoulder blades, almost knocking her off balance.

  She’d told him her name. The real one that he could look through the history books and find her with. Her parents had named her Ayla, her blood parents. And she’d lived in this court for a few years before she’d been swapped out with a human child.

  He could so easily find her. She might even still have a portrait somewhere here with the rest of the royals. Sure, she’d only be a baby in the picture, but would that be enough for him to realize who she was?

  “Crap, crap, crap,” she muttered.

  Ayla paced from wall to wall, wringing her hands and trying to slow her breathing. Even if he saw a pic
ture, the likelihood he’d recognize her was slim. No one looked at a painting of a baby and thought, “That’s the woman who just waltzed into my kingdom like she owned the place.”

  And he wouldn’t have kept the portraits up of the old royals, would he? This new king wasn’t from her family tree. And if she had learned anything from the human history books, it was that royals didn’t want to be reminded of other powerful families.

  She had nothing to worry about. He was hidden away doing whatever he did when she wasn’t there, probably trying to ignore the strange woman who’d arrived from another court.

  Why had she lied? Damn it. She knew nothing about the other courts. The few things she knew about the Court of Air was just rumors told to her by the faeries she cornered throughout her life.

  Groaning, she dropped back into the uncomfortable chair at the vanity. “I am so screwed.”

  The thought wouldn’t go away, though. Just because she’d made herself feel a little better, didn’t mean the worry wasn’t valid. There could be something in this castle that would give her away. He’d have a lot of questions if he realized she was faerie royalty, and that she could lie. He’d probably kill her just for being unnatural.

  She stood up from the vanity and strode to the door. “A little peek around the castle wouldn’t hurt. No one is here anyway, and if I’m very careful, the king won’t even see me. He’s probably too busy to patrol the halls.”

  And strangely enough, she’d seen no one else protecting the glass palace. Sure, it wasn’t easy to get to. But that didn’t mean an army couldn’t arrive at any moment and attack.

  Was the king so arrogant he thought the world would remain beneath his feet?

  She opened the door and poked her head out through the crack. To her left, the hall was eerily empty. To the right, a random gust of wind pushed dust from the corners and down the hall like sparkling glitter. But other than that, everything was how she’d last seen it.

  Not a single soul disturbed the halls of the glass palace. That in itself was strange and ominous.

  Ayla stepped out of the room and closed the door quietly behind her. No one was here to listen to her movements, but she still felt like she had to sneak. Her heart thundered in her chest even as she made her way away from the room.

  How was she going to remember how to get back?

  A fairytale main character would leave marks on the floor to remind herself where to go. That was a foolish idea though, and just because she was in a floating glass palace didn’t mean she was the hero in this story.

  And yet...

  Ayla swung her backpack to her front and reached a hand into it. If she remembered correctly, she’d put a lipstick in the zippered pocket the last time she’d taken the twins out to dinner.

  “Ah ha!” she exclaimed with triumph when her fingers closed around the vial.

  She stopped at the end of the hall, opened the lipstick, and drew an arrow pointing back the way she’d come. If the king or any of his servants saw the mark, she’d be in trouble. But, if she got away with this, then no one would know she had explored. She’d clean it up with the wet wipes at the bottom of her bag on her return.

  Lipstick armed and dangerous, she marched through the halls with more purpose. Now, she couldn’t get lost. Now, she could search through the entire palace to make sure nothing here was about to ruin her cover.

  Ayla passed by so many rooms that afternoon, she couldn’t remember them all. So much opulence in an abandoned place seemed like a waste.

  Every room was filled with stuff. Books. Furniture upended and haphazardly thrown about. One room was even filled with just silverware. Thousands of silver forks, spoons, and knives just tossed into the room and spilling out of boxes on the floor.

  Had someone expected to move? She’d seen this kind of packing the first time she’d moved with her brother and his wife. Never filled with so much stuff, of course, but still. It appeared the king had ordered his servants to get ready to relocate, and then no one had. All the boxes were just left for someone else to find.

  Ayla wasn’t sure why this made the entire place even more frightening, but it did. Chills danced down her spine every time she looked in another room. Something was watching her, or at least, that’s what it felt like. Observing her reactions every time she saw yet another deserted space.

  This was meant to be her home, it whispered in her mind. The Air Court hadn’t abandoned this place. She had.

  She turned down another hall and left one more lipstick mark. Her shaking hands made wobbly lines.

  Ayla entered yet a new room and felt her heart stutter. This room differed from the others. It wasn’t filled to the brim with things, instead, it was hollow and cold. A ball room, perhaps?

  Glass statues stood by the walls, each more beautiful than the last. The dresses of the women looked as though they had been captured in movement, perfectly frozen as the faeries spun in a dance. She stood before one and stared up at the expression of rapture on the faerie’s face.

  Had she ever felt that mirthful in her life? Ayla wasn’t so sure. She didn’t think so, though.

  “Who were you?” she whispered.

  A persistent gust of wind nudged her shoulders. The wind was so powerful it felt like a fist at her back. It shoved her further into the ballroom, down the long line of glass faeries until it finally disappeared.

  She stood before a pair of glass faeries caught in each other’s arms. They danced together with so much love in the curves of their bodies, it made her heart hurt.

  And they were beautiful. The man’s hair was braided down his back, not a single filament out of place. Ayla knew this because every lock was frozen in the glass, as though someone had spun individual strands and laid them gently in place.

  The woman though, she was the most beautiful person Ayla had ever seen. Her graceful arms were lifted above her head as the man spun her in circles. Her laughter was captured in the sculpture, crows feet spreading out from her eyes. The dress wrapped around her body like a frosty wind revealed a beautiful and strong body underneath.

  These two were quite possibly the most wondrous beings she’d ever seen in her brief life.

  “They’re the old king and queen,” a voice whispered in her ear.

  Ayla gasped and spun on her heel. She turned to stare into the eyes of a figure made of wind. The outline of the woman’s form could only barely be seen, although it was there.

  The newcomer had dark hair once, or at least, that part of her figure was darker than the rest. Her face was a perfect oval and her eyes tilted up like a cat. Delicate hands lifted to adjust the bodice of her dress, drifting in and out of reality as the wind pushed against her form.

  “Are you-” Ayla paused, swallowed, then asked, “Are you a ghost?”

  The woman inclined her head. “If that’s what you want to call it. Some say spirit.”

  So faeries also had ghosts. Interesting. Ayla remembered a faerie telling her they didn’t have spirits or souls, so when they died, they went back to whatever element they came from.

  Apparently, that faerie had been wrong.

  She took a deep breath and tried to wrap her mind around what was happening. She was in a glass palace floating above the ground. A ghost stood in front of her, talking. And the glass statues behind her were of her mother and father, who she’d never seen before.

  Ayla fanned her suddenly hot face. “I need to sit down for a second.”

  “The ballroom was emptied years ago, princess. If you want to sit, you’ll have to sit on the ground.”

  That wouldn’t be a problem. She dropped onto the floor and put her head between her legs. “I’m not a princess. I’m a nanny.”

  The ghost knelt. Ayla could see the other woman’s knees pressed against the billowing skirts that never stopped moving in a wind Ayla couldn’t feel.

  “Whether or not you acknowledge who you are, you are still the princess of the Air Court and you always will be.” The woman paused, then adde
d, “My name is Miku.”

  Ayla felt something expand in her chest, like a great wind but far more powerful than that. It was magic inside her. The deep well ate up the name and devoured the power the ghost had given her just by revealing her true name. As though the being had given Ayla her soul.

  “Beautiful sky.” The words slipped off her tongue before she even realized the thought had formed in her mind. “Your name means beautiful sky.”

  A chilly hand passed over her head, stroking through the strands of her hair. “Yes, princess. And you are coming into your powers.”

  She didn’t want any more power. Ayla could already fly like some kind of superhero. She could hear whispers in the wind no one else could hear. And she could make things levitate from one side of the room to the other. She didn’t want to know what else she could do.

  “Welcome home,” Miku said. “We’ve been waiting for you.”

  “We?” Ayla finally lifted her head and stared back at the ghost. “Who is we?”

  Miku waved a hand and suddenly Ayla could see hundreds of spirits. Ghosts. Whatever anyone wanted to call them.

  They were packed shoulder to shoulder in the ballroom. Countless souls, all staring at her with hunger and hope in their eyes. So much hope it was terrifying. What was she supposed to do? This was exactly why she’d avoided air faeries.

  “I’m not here to take back the throne,” she told them. “And I need to make sure the current king never finds out who I am.”

  Miku folded her legs beneath her and tucked them under her skirt. “If you returned after all this time, why wouldn’t you take back the throne?”

  “I don’t want it.”

  “But you were born to have it.”

  Ayla scooted away from the ghost. “That doesn’t mean I’m obligated to the throne. My parents’ desires are not mine, and I want to be a nanny.”

  The ghost’s eyes narrowed, then looked her up and down. “Do you really want to be a nanny for the rest of your life?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then why did you come back here?”