Contents
Dedication
Copyright
Other Books by Claire M. Banschbach
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
Chapter Thirty-five
Chapter Thirty-six
Acknowledgments
Adela's Curse
The Wolf Prince
More Books by Claire M. Banschbach
New Adult/Adult Books by C. M. Banschbach
About the Author
For Margaret
Winter Spell
Copyright © 2020 by Claire M. Banschbach
All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction. All characters, places, and events are the product of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, places, or things, is purely coincidental.
Published by Campitor Press
Interior formatting by Rachael Ritchey rachaelritchey.com
Cover by Magpie Designs magpie-designs.weebly.com
ISBN: 978-0-9992203-4-4 (paperback)
The Rise of Aredor Series
The Rise of Aredor
The Wildcat of Braeton
The Faeries of Myrnius Series
Adela’s Curse
The Wolf Prince
———
Books by C.M. Banschbach
The Dragon Keep Chronicles
Oath of the Outcast
Chapter One
“Try again.”
Tonya stared down at the jagged edges of coral. Her long dark hair swayed about her in the gentle current sweeping around the reef. A small orange fish darted out from an anemone, fixing her with a wide-eyed look that she chose to interpret as sympathy.
She looked back at the coral and then at her hands. Mihail sighed again, a faint stream of bubbles scurrying up towards the sun-kissed surface.
Tonya scowled. I don’t need another reminder that I can’t do this. Trying to reach the place of her elusive magic, she bent down to touch the coral.
Instead of revitalizing, another piece cracked off. Mihail hung his head. Tonya buried a scream.
I can’t even fix coral. The easiest job in the entire stupid ocean!
Mihail coughed, gills on the side of his neck opening up for a split second before they vanished.
“Keep practicing until the tide turns,” he said. He spread his rippling wings, more like fins, and swam away, shaking his head the entire way.
Tonya kicked at the coral, breaking another piece off in the process. A hermit crab scurried away from the debris, clicking its larger claw at her in displeasure.
Even the creatures don’t like me.
She held her breath, letting the weight of it send her sinking down to sit cross legged on the ocean floor.
Vibrant colors of pinks, yellows, and oranges surrounded her. Bright flashes darted around the billowing coral outgrowths as the clustered fish swept in search of food. The ocean rocked around her with the waves on the surface hundreds of feet above. Sunlight swayed in time, the golden beams filtering down towards her—the lone spot of white and black in the world.
She frowned at the coral that still stubbornly remained broken and propped her chin on her hand. She couldn’t practice until the next tide. She’d have to go up for air before then.
Other faeries flitted around her, effortlessly in tune with the ocean. Gills exposed themselves on their necks when they needed to draw in a deeper breath. Wings spread from their backs, as delicate and colorful as the fish that swam around them.
But not me. I’m stuck in the space between waves. She pushed to her feet, kicking up more sand than was strictly necessary, and swam towards the surface and her island.
Breaking the surface, she tilted her face to the sun and drew in a deep breath of the warm salty breeze. She treaded water and soaked in the warmth of the air and the sun and the sky.
A white gull dive-bombed the water next to her, splashing her face. Laughing, she wiped water from her eyes and scolded the gull as it resurfaced. It squawked in laughter and retreated.
At least, it sounded like laughter. Land animals were slightly easier to understand, but their language was all a muddled mess.
Like her magic.
She struck out toward the island in the distance, sliding through the waves with ease as long as she didn’t try to use her wings. The sand warmed her feet and she stood for a moment to tilt her face back up to the sun, drawing another deep breath.
Her bones just felt more right on the land. My bones. That’s stupid. It’s just the weight of the land pulling on me without the water to push me up.
She twisted the side of her mouth, squinting one eye before pivoting on one foot. Water rose off her in shimmering droplets. Her black hair floated around her head, wavering as if caught in the waves before the water slicked from its dark surface and it fell back to its slightly disordered mess—completely dry.
Tonya plopped down to the ground, kicking her feet out in front of her to bury in the sand. She scooped sand in her hands, pouring it from one palm to the other in endless motion.
This was the one place that she could be free of judgement. The other faeries didn’t need to come up to breathe. After she’d been brought back to the ocean as an infant, her aunt and uncle had been forced to move their dwelling closer to the edge of the reef so she had a place to surface.
Her aunt had found plenty of ways to express her continued unhappiness at the change, and at having to keep her, over the last seventy years.
Tonya flopped back on the sand and flung one arm over her face to block out the sun. The heat of the day sank all the way to her core, drying her sharkskin trousers and woven kelp shirt in minutes. The sun baked her skin.
What would it be like to be cold? To see a snowflake fall? She’d only seen ice once in her life. A small iceberg had somehow found its lonely way from the far north down to their waters, bringing a strange cold that had stirred something deep inside her.
Something that belonged to her father—and the magic of his kind.
She couldn’t touch it, just like she could barely touch the magic her mother had given her.
Caught between the waves. The product of the union of an ocean faery and an ice faery. The unexplainable. The warning to the other young faeries who wanted to try to swim in a monsoon’s fury. Because they might get swept away like her mother, only to be washed up on the ice floes of the far north and found by a wild ice faery.
She sat up in a rush, flinging a handful of sand into the ocean, as if to make a difference in its depth.
I wonder if they could have wanted me? Could have helped me pull out the strands of magic that are knotted up deep inside me? Or if they’d be ashamed of me, like everyone els
e.
It was a hard thing, only having a secondhand story about her parents. Only having everyone else’s opinions of them.
Tonya pushed to her feet, circling the small island. She paused at the northernmost tip, rising up onto her toes as if she could see the icy north. But she could only see the very tip of Myrnius, even if she strained her bits of magic. The shoreline where her mother had last held her, before giving her to the ocean faeries and vanishing.
Three circuits of the island later, Tonya plopped back down to the sand. Thinking about her parents always woke a yearning inside her. A desire to see ice floes, narwhals, and leopard seals. Tundra, and glaciers, and wolves. Even if she had no idea where she’d heard those words before.
She stared out at the endless waves methodically marching towards her. Hemming her in. They always brought things to shore. Never took things away. Like the ocean was telling her that it would keep her here. That she could never leave.
The ache inside her churned restlessly. Half wanting to stay and dance with the waves, the other half wanting to touch them with ice and send it to play across the deep, cold sky. It twisted and turned around her heart so hard that her eyes stung with salty tears.
“I just want to be one thing,” she whispered to the wind. “I just want to untangle myself and be free.”
The wind carried her words away over the water, bringing back only the sighing of the waves in return.
She blinked hard in disappointment. Not like she’d really expected an answer. Not like she ever got any answers.
A shadow fell across the sand beside her. Mihail come to scold her back to the depths. The shifting sand cast the outline of his head into uneven spikes. She almost laughed. Mihail kept his hair in pristine condition.
“I’m going back down.” She sighed.
“No.” A deep, unfamiliar voice answered.
She froze as cold wrapped around her. Comforting at first, then stifling as it burrowed deep inside her and drove away the warmth of the sand.
The tangled thing inside her jerked tighter in response.
She tried to turn, but stiffness melded her joints.
A hand touched her shoulder. Her pounding heart leaped to her throat as she stared at the shadow. The cold wrapped tighter and tighter.
He spoke unfamiliar words. The sand shifted beneath her feet, tipping her over to meet the ground with breath-stealing force. She blinked and the world exploded in ice and cold.
Chapter Two
An ache pounded in Tonya’s head, intensified by a strange cold wrapping around her. The ache migrated to her shoulder, shaking and pushing at her.
“Tonya!”
The ache apparently also had a voice.
“Tonya!”
Recognition pierced the cold. Sophie, her cousin.
Tonya peeled her eyes open, blinking at the harshness of the light against a strange white. Hands helped her sit up, and she stared in shock.
Snow covered the sands. Ice clung to the trunks and fronds of the trees in dripping spikes. It weighed down the scrub bushes, pushing their fronds into the snow. A crab scurried over the small drifts, leaving tiny prints in its wake.
The ocean had frozen in time, leaving a strange silence. Waves reared up, curling over themselves, halting in their tracks.
“What did you do?” Sophie asked.
Tonya met her wide-eyed gaze, an immediate defense leaping to her tongue.
But she sat in a small crater, a radius of snow and ice leaping away from her and spreading out across the island and ocean. I’m the center point.
“I don’t know…” The words stumbled out of her dry mouth.
“What happened?” Sophie shook her shoulder again.
Tonya tentatively touched the snow. Her fingers met the slick of ice before she’d gone very deep. “I don’t know.”
“Whatever happened, you know they’re going to blame you.” Concern shone in Sophie’s eyes. “You’re the only source of ice magic here.”
Tonya shifted her bare feet in the snow drifts. Shouldn’t I be cold?
“Tonya, the Reef Guards will be here soon. They’ll want to know what happened.” Sophie tugged on her arm, helping her up from the crater.
“I was attacked by something. I think.” Tonya slowly turned to look around her. Ice as far as she could see. How did I make this?
“What?” Sophie gave a low gasp and spun to scan the horizon. “Who?”
Tonya lifted her hands in a helpless gesture. “What do I tell them?” She pressed her hands to her cheeks. “What will everyone say? I’ll have to go before the court…” Dread twisted her stomach.
“I’ll stay with you,” Sophie promised, touching her arm.
A bit of warmth sparked in Tonya’s chest. Sophie had been a friend, a little bit of family among the whispers and glances and muffled comments of “half-breed.”
But I can’t just run.
“What if they want you to undo it?” Sophie whispered.
Tonya’s heart weighed heavy at the lingering doubt in Sophie’s voice. She’d never be able to undo—whatever had just happened. The magic didn’t work for her.
She shrugged. “I guess they ship me off to some other deserted island to live out the rest of my six hundred years in non-magical isolation.”
Sophie shook her head. “How is that different from how they treat you anyway?”
Tonya rubbed a hand across her sleeve. “How did you get out?”
“I wore a hole through the ice.” Sophie pointed at a hole a few yards from shore. She could control currents with the touch of her hands, so it would have been the work of a moment for her to break through. But the hole was already icing over.
“Did I really freeze the whole ocean?” The question whispered from Tonya.
“It goes as far as I can see. Look.” Sophie led her around to the northern shore. The ice crusted the waves all the way to Myrnius, and Tonya had a feeling beyond that as well.
“What did I do?” She sank down to her knees. How did this all come from me? I don’t have this kind of power!
Sophie knelt beside her, her brow furrowing the way it did when she was trying to come up with the best possible argument.
“You said something attacked you? Maybe it caused this and you didn’t at all.”
“But ice?” Tonya lifted a hand to gesture around them. “We all know I’m the only one with even a hint of ice magic around here.”
“All right.” Sophie tossed her head. “Maybe it’ll all melt, and we won’t have to worry about anything.”
Tonya managed a weak smile. Somehow, she knew it wouldn’t melt. The warmth of the sun should have already sent the pristine crystals into watery puddles, but the ice and snow remained crisp, and the waves as frozen as ever.
A sharp crack echoed behind them. Tonya flinched. The Reef Guard had broken through.
“Just tell them about being attacked,” Sophie said.
Tonya nodded, any scrap of bravery shriveling away into panic. What if they don’t believe me? What if this is their excuse to finally get rid of me? What-ifs threatened to overwhelm her and only Sophie’s tight grip on her hand kept her anchored to reality as two Reef Guards emerged from the ice and stalked closer, shark-tooth spears at the ready, their crusted armor casting bulky shadows over the shimmering ice.
“Tonya Freyr-dottir.” The deep voice of one of the guards stumbled a little over the harshness of her name. The only thing she had of her father. The name her mother declared she had before giving her away.
“Yes?” Her voice trembled, and the iron face of the guard softened a fraction.
“You realize what this looks like?”
She nodded mutely, and Sophie’s grip tightened around her fingers again.
“You’ll need to come with us.” His voice left no room for argument or pleading.
Tonya drew a shaky breath, darting another quick look around her. Whatever happened, at least she’d finally seen ice and snow.
*
Faeries had begun to gather around the reef, gazing up at the sheen of deep blue coating the surface and distorting the light. A chill threaded through the water, sending fish darting away to hide among the coral.
The closer they swam to the center of the reef more and more faeries began to notice them. Tonya ducked her head as faeries clustered in groups, darting venomous glares at her.
It won’t even matter to them that I was attacked. I did this.
“Tonya!”
She jerked her head up to see her aunt and uncle rushing towards them. Small currents from their wings swirled around her as they halted. Sophie shared their same angular features and light hair, though the hardness around her aunt’s green eyes wasn’t quite replicated in Sophie or her uncle when they looked at Tonya.
Her aunt grabbed her arm. “What happened? Where are they taking you? Did you do this?”
“Something attacked me. I don’t know!” The answer bubbled from Tonya in a rush, the panic returning like a crashing tidal wave.
One of the Reef Guards swam back, gently pushing her aunt away. “We’re taking her to the king. As her guardians, you will be allowed to come.”
Tonya swallowed. Somehow their presence made it even worse. They’d taken her in, but against their will. They didn’t approve of her mother’s choice. Her father’s blood was an irreversible taint upon her.
But her aunt and uncle nodded and fell in beside her. Sophie took that as an invitation to dart forward and swim next to Tonya. Sophie grabbed her hand again and squeezed. Tonya mustered a smile and they followed the Reef Guard hand-in-hand.
Apprehension bubbled higher in her chest as they approached the twisting columns of coral that marked the entrance to the palace. Reef Guards stood beside each pillar. They fixed her with narrowed glances, then returned their attention to the reef.
Winter Spell Page 1