Cold Dream Dawning

by A. R. Kahler

  The Pale Queen laughs. “After working so hard to reach him? After all he has done to me? And to you? No, my dear. I don’t think I will.”

  It’s then the situation strikes me, like a lance to the heart; I killed my mother to find this woman, and now here I am, minutes later, facing her. My mother died for nothing. I have found the Pale Queen. And even with the Oracle’s guidance, I have no idea how to kill her. No magic to send her packing. Her name is writ in hell. She must die where her shadow began.

  The guards hold my hands behind my back, away from my daggers. But they don’t know about the weapons hidden within my flesh. There is one card I’m holding within my wrist. One I have never used, because I don’t know how it would play out. Judgment.

  I don’t have any other choice. My thoughts are slow as I summon the card from my skin, the paper brushing against the palm of my hand. I can only blink and see my mother’s glowing body. I can only hear her screams.

  And I know that this won’t work. I have no power to fill the card. My mother decreed the Pale Queen’s final moments. There’s no way this is where the Pale Queen began and ended. My life isn’t that easy.

  “Oh, Claire,” she says. Her voice cuts through my sluggish thoughts. “I thought we saw eye to eye on this.”

  She’s at my side in a second. The moment she nears, I can smell the snap and tang of Dream; it fills her, infuses her, as though she is made of nothing more than knit magic and an illusion of flesh. Before I can cast the card into the room, she grabs my hand and yanks it before her.

  When she sees the card, she laughs.

  “My dear. You are hurting, aren’t you? To think this petty magic could harm me.” She plucks the card from my fingers, and it instantly dissolves into ash. Then she notices the ring.

  “Where did you get this?” she asks softly. A single finger strokes the ring, making the metal burn. Even in my daze, I feel the pain. I inhale sharply, trying not to scream.

  “It was my mother’s,” I say. Was. Before I killed her. To find you. To kill you.

  To fail.

  She smiles.

  “Of course it was. Why would she not take it? She would have seen it as fitting.”

  “What are you—”

  Before I can finish the sentence, the queen snaps off my finger.

  I don’t hear the pop, not through the pain that jolts down my arm and ricochets through my head. I don’t even hear myself scream, not until the pain dies down a minuscule amount and she covers the bleeding nub with her finger. Another burst of pain shoots through me, hot and acrid as the scent of my burning flesh fills the room.

  Then she turns, and I am left gasping, my arms limp in their sockets from the stress of the pain. I dangle between my captors like a broken doll. And my finger rests a few feet away on the carpet, charred and ringless.

  “I’m afraid I cannot let you keep this”—she holds up the ring—“lest you become more a nuisance than you already are. I gave you the choice, Claire. I offered my protection. But even my patience grows thin.”

  Oberon chokes something. I can’t make it out, but it sounds a lot like run.

  “Now,” the Pale Queen says, turning back to Oberon, my ring now on her finger. “What shall we do about you?”

  He gasps again, struggles to move. I don’t even budge. It’s all gone to shit. All of it. What could I possibly do to make it better?

  The Pale Queen kneels before him, her robes soaking up his blood in a grisly stain.

  “You think your status makes you invincible,” she whispers. “That power gives you immortality. But I have seen the truth. There is no immortality. Only death, only the oblivion. And it waits for every creature, even the mightiest of the Fey.”

  She leans in close, as if she is about to kiss him, her hand on his chest.

  “And you, Oberon, mightiest of all, toying with the lives of mortal and Fey alike. You, who have believed yourself to be a god. Let your death be a message to all who oppose me. Even faeries can die. Even the immortal must surrender to the void.”

  She presses her hand into his chest, his ribs popping beneath her fingers as she squeezes his heart. He doesn’t scream, but his bloody gagging fills my ears as his body pales. Like a sweeping drought, his skin hardens and cracks away from her hand, until he is nothing but an empty cask of clay. She stands and dusts her hands on her robes, leaving traces of soot and old blood. When she turns away, looking out to the Fey surrounding her, the brush of her robes dislodges his body, dissolving all that is left of the great King Oberon to ash.

  “Let it be known,” she calls out to the crowd, and it’s only then that I realize that the Fey around us aren’t only her minions. There are others lined up in the great hall—dryads and wisps and the like—held hostage by the Pale Queen’s army. “And let my message ring to every corner of Faerie: all who oppose me shall die. Too long have we toiled under the rulings of the elite. Too long have mortals and Fey danced for rulers who play god. We are the gods now. Join me, and live in freedom. Oppose me, and end up like your precious king.”

  There’s a roar of applause and agreement from her minions. But those Summer Fey who stayed—those who would live and die by their king—stare on in silent horror.

  The Queen turns to me then and walks over slowly. When she speaks, I know it is meant for me alone.

  “I could kill you, you know. But unlike your mistress, I do not harm those who are innocent. And so far, you are innocent in my eyes. You have not directly opposed me. And you are certainly not a threat. Remain as such, and I will let you live.” She kneels before me and whispers, “We are not meant to be livestock for the Fey. We are not meant to be their toys. They need us more than we need them. Remember this when you find yourself with a choice. Do you wish to be the pawn, or the hand moving it?”

  “I. Will. Kill. You,” I hiss, my teeth clenched so tight I’m afraid my jaw will snap.

  She laughs and pats my cheek.

  “Good luck with that, sweet child. I have already died a thousand times over.”

  She nods to her guards as she stands and steps away.

  “Let her go.”

  The guards drop my arms without question. But I can’t attack—my limbs won’t move. They are lifeless as spaghetti. I need to kill her. Have to kill her. Have to avenge my mother.

  “Eli,” I mutter. If I release him from his contract, he’ll kill everyone in this room in a heartbeat; I don’t even care if that includes me. So long as it includes her. “I release—”

  “Not so fast, my dear,” the queen says, her voice tinted with laughter. “You have fire. You’re willing to break the rules. If only you broke them for the right person.”

  “Thirty seconds, Eli, I release you.”

  But before Eli can do anything, she’s there. And not at me. Her hand is around Eli’s neck, her face only inches from his. His skin hisses under her touch, and when she squeezes, small breaks of blue light shatter between her fingertips.

  “I do not think that will be necessary,” she says. She smiles at him, somehow binding him to his body. He should be free. He should be darting around the room like a demon, devouring the souls of everyone here. But he’s bound. Somehow, she trumps even his power. “Unlike you, my dear Claire, this one could be a true threat. I think I will take him with me. He could be of use.”

  She looks at me, her fingers still clenched on his throat.

  “Tell your queen that she has three days to surrender Winter. Or I will destroy everything she owns and loves. Including you.” She winks. “I’ll let you figure out which category you fall under: Does she own you, or love you? Though I think we both know the answer to that question.”

  There’s a pulse of magic, one that reeks of brimstone and smoke. Then she’s gone, pulled from the world in a whirl of ash. And Eli’s gone with her.

  I look around at the Fey still ringing the room. Some begin to leave. Others stare at the space she occupied, as if uncertain what they’ve seen. Even her followers stare at Ob
eron’s remains in silent horror.

  To speak of revolution is one thing. To see it in bloody action is another.

  I try to struggle to my feet but fall over instead. Pain lances through the numbness, and my vision clouds at the edges. I try to turn my head, but all I can see are the ashes of Oberon. All I feel is the ice that drags from the corners of the room, the darkness overhead gathering like the weight in my chest.

  It was all for nothing. All of it. Eli is gone. Oberon is dead. My mother is dead. The Oracle couldn’t save him, and I couldn’t save her. I couldn’t save anyone. All I did was damn them.

  The Pale Queen was right: I was helping her. Whether I wanted to or not.

  Someone kicks me in the back of the head. Hard. My vision swims.

  “What do we do with her?” the faerie behind me grunts.

  “The queen wants her alive,” someone else says. I see boots crunching on dead grass as the speaker picks up my finger. “But clearly not all in one piece.”

  I hear a crunch that I don’t want to believe is the sound of chewed flesh and bone. Nausea floods my stomach and the darkness rings deeper. Just beyond the edge of my vision, someone kicks the ashes of Oberon into a cloud.

  “Well then,” comes the first voice. “Let’s see just how compact we can make her before sending her home.”

  A sharp pain in my side makes my vision flare red. I gasp again, choke on . . . something. Dimly, I realize it’s not Oberon’s ash falling around me.

  As the world fades to black and white, in the heart of what once was Summer, a heavy snow begins to fall.

  Acknowledgments

  I’m constantly amazed by how this story world of dark faeries and circus scandals has grown. If you had told me years ago, when I was writing the first draft of The Immortal Circus for my grad program, that this would become a full series—and spin-off!—I would have called you crazy.

  But here we are, book two (or book five in this world), and the show keeps growing. There are dozens of people to thank. But I’ll try to be concise.

  First and foremost, my deepest thanks goes to my amazing friend and agent, Laurie McLean of Fuse Literary. She’s been my knight in shining armor from the start.

  To my family, for letting me follow my dreams, however crazy they seemed at the time.

  To the entire team at 47North, for putting full faith in this entire series. I couldn’t ask for a better, more innovative crew. A special thanks to Jason Kirk, for helping this story take center stage, and to Nicci Hubert and Rebecca Jaynes, for being such rock star editors.

  To Will Taylor, for helping me hammer out faerie politics and intrigue over enchiladas.

  To Danielle Dreger and Kristin Halbrook, my Seattle writing family, for keeping me on task.

  To the amazing community of circus artists the world over, who have always made me feel at home.

  And to you, the readers and Dreamers, for constantly inspiring me and pushing me to breathe new life into this world. This one’s for you.

  About the Author

  Photo © 2014 Kindra Nikole Photography

  Originally from small-town Iowa, A. R. Kahler attended an arts boarding school to study writing at the age of sixteen. Since then, he has traveled all over the world, earning a master’s degree in creative writing from the University of Glasgow and teaching circus arts in Amsterdam and Madrid. He currently lives in Seattle, Washington. For more information, please visit www.arkahler.com.