The Winter King

by Heather Killough-Walden

  Her hair was the most stunning transformation, shifting inch by inch from the dirty brown, lanky straggles they’d become – into a glorious crown of blond, wavy locks so very light, they blended with the ice beneath her as they grew and curled like a shimmering, frozen waterfall.

  Beneath her furs, he felt her body fill out. The hard angle of her bones retreated, covered once more as they should be with layers of healthy muscle and flesh. He felt warmth radiating from her where there had only been the chill of impending death before.

  It gave him hope. He waited.

  When all had ceased changing, she lay still in his arms, eyes closed, breathing even. He waited. Then, “Ylva? Ylva, please – ”

  He cut off mid-speech as her long, thick lashes fluttered, and she opened her eyes. The piercing blue they’d once been was lighter now. They were not quite like his, less water and more air. She was the snow in the sky, where he was the ice on the ground.

  “Erikk,” she said softly.

  His heart hammered with joy. “Ylva. What happened, lass?”

  “Jorunn is dead. So is Ronald. I would not wed Bjarke, and I was banished.”

  Erikk stared in silence, but his soul bellowed.

  Like the king he now was, he said, “You’re safe now, Ylva. And I give you my word, Bjarke Stalson will never harm any living being ever again.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Present day, the Winter Kingdom

  It was a while before Poppy said anything. Kristopher had paused in his story, his last words echoing in the room as if they’d been a lingering curse. And perhaps they were. It wasn’t a fairytale, after all.

  As strange as it was, she could honestly tell that he wasn’t lying to her. He wasn’t bending the truth about any of it. Whether someone was lying to her or not was normally something she could sort of decipher in a human. It didn’t matter if they were spinning a yarn for fun or being genuinely deceptive. It was like a sixth sense kind of thing, just part of that gift-and-curse empathetic sensitivity she possessed that gave her panic attacks and the frequent migraine but allowed her to write instructions in a way that ensured every single person on the planet could comprehend them and usually even laugh at them.

  But with Kristopher, there was something else to it. Maybe it was the tone of his voice or the way he looked at her. Or maybe it was the way his words immersed her in the past as if she’d lived his story herself. Whatever it was, she knew he was sharing something with her that he hadn’t shared with many others. If any at all.

  His past was filled with all the pain and loss so prevalent in history itself. He’d been through hell. It seemed to be the human way. And that pain required a moment of silence.

  So it was a while before she spoke. When she finally did, she decided not to focus on what the villain, Bjarke had done to Kristopher and his family, and instead expertly turned her host’s attention to what he obviously liked a good deal more than Bjarke. “She’s the one at the coffee shop, isn’t she?” she asked softly. She was referring to his little sister, of course.

  Kristopher turned away from the flames he’d been staring into and searched her face. When he did that, she felt so exposed. He had eyes like searchlights, blue as the frozen sea. Now that she’d looked into them more than a few times, she realized they were slightly darker than hers. Slightly harder. It was barely noticeable.

  “Yes. How did you know?” he asked.

  Poppy thought back to the young lady who’d been waitressing at the coffee shop where Kristopher had bought her coffee, that first hot, blessed coffee that she’d had all day. The waitress who’d tended them had sported white hair dyed black. That kind of dye job was just obvious. She’d been beautiful, and she’d worn too much eye makeup, as if she were attempting to hide from the world. There had also just been… something about her. Something difficult to put into words.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “There were several things, I guess.”

  He watched her a while longer, and she tried not to heat up under his gaze. Finally, he looked way, smiling. “I’m frankly impressed you remember a waitress that well,” he told her. “Most humans don’t.”

  “I’ve watched a lot of episodes of Brain Games,” she said by way of explanation, and then laughed at herself. It eased her tension a bit to laugh at herself even though he, a king of an entire realm and one of the Thirteen, probably had no idea what the hell she was talking about.

  “I love that show,” he said.

  Her eyes widened. “You do?”

  “I’ve seen every episode. It’s amazing what we take for granted and now much misplaced faith we have in everything we don’t take for granted.” He laughed.

  “I… didn’t realize you got cable in the Winter Kingdom.”

  “You know it’s not on cable. And I can go anywhere, remember?”

  Poppy smiled at that. She and Kristopher were no longer in the castle’s throne room. Instead, they sat in a room carved of ice, as was every room in the ice castle, but on fur rugs that had been laid out in thick piles on the floor in front of a fire pit. The flames that crackled warmly in the pit were the same colors that Poppy had seen in magazines displaying photographs of the Aurora Borealis. They were green and purple and every tourmaline shade in-between. Definitely not your standard fire colors.

  They’d been in the room for about an hour now, ever since she’d decided to not sit on the throne with the poppies all over it. She was barely processing the day she’d had, one that had gone from truly abysmal to truly amazing so fast, it left her breathless. And she just hadn’t wanted to do something that felt so very much like a portent or that felt so terribly symbolic.

  She needed time. She needed information. She probably also needed sleep and to have her head examined. Just in case.

  When she’d refused to sit down, Kristopher had nodded to himself and lead her into this room. The bear – the Dire Bear named Meridian – had remained in the throne room, deciding to lay out on the ice like a massive, breathing rug. Poppy was happy enough for the time being to leave the beast behind. Not that she had a problem with massive white bears, she just wasn’t ready to invite one to the crazy tea party table she was already hosting in her head at the moment.

  This room was a much smaller room than the throne room, and its walls were lined with honest-to-goodness ice shelves filled with books of every kind. She loved a good study or library, and this appeared to be a cross between both. It was cozy. At once Poppy started to relax.

  Kristopher had then summoned two piping hot, aromatically fresh cups of coffee out of thin air. They’d taken their coffees and seated themselves on the thick rugs around the fire pit. After a few minutes of mutual silence, Poppy set in to asking questions, and in the hour since, Kristopher had gallantly answered everything she’d thrown at him.

  She was more than a little curious about what Kristopher had done to Bjarke, the man who had basically destroyed everyone he loved and then taken over the entire clan as chief. But she also sort of didn’t want to know. Because she knew instinctively that if he told her what he’d done, he would reveal to her the part of himself that scared her to begin with. That part of him that was dangerous.

  That part of him that was deadly.

  “You became the Winter King when you were sixteen,” she said instead. “If you don’t age, how did you get to look like you’re in your thirties?”

  “It happened when I changed.” He laughed, shaking his head. “A good twenty years were stolen from me. And I was given an eternity in exchange.”

  She mulled that over in silence. It sounded like a fair exchange, all in all. But it would suck if the change always added twenty years. If she became queen, for instance, that would mean she’d suddenly age to be fifty-six. “Okay,” she said, forcing herself to think of other things. “When did you change your names?”

  He shrugged. It was a careless gesture that nevertheless managed to show off every toned muscle in his shoulders and arms. “Over the years, we fe
lt less and less like Erikk and Ylva, and more and more like something else altogether. Then one day, Winter suggested two new names. By that time, we were ready for them. Our pasts had been erased as if they were a landscape covered in fresh fallen snow. They were unrecognizable. We were new people, and the names fit.”

  Poppy chewed on her lip a second. “Wait. I thought Neve was stuck in the Winter Kingdom? I thought Winter told you she would become a part of it.”

  “She did. And she is. That doesn’t mean she can’t travel into other realms. It simply means that wherever she does go, she will take Winter with her. Just as I do.”

  Poppy thought of the waitress she’d briefly met and recalled how very pale her skin was. Like snow itself.

  “What does that mean, exactly?”

  Kristopher froze a little, his body going very still, his eyes locked on hers. Poppy realized he knew she wasn’t only asking because of Neve. Poppy was asking because she had a very good feeling that sitting on that flowery throne in the other room was going to make her a part of the Winter Kingdom as well. And she wanted to know what she was in for.

  “Well…” he started carefully, “it means a few things. Her appearance changed, as I mentioned.” He paused after this so that Poppy could digest it. If Neve’s appearance changed, did that mean Poppy’s would too? “But that’s only because Winter infused her, filling her to her core with the properties that make it what it is. The color white. The cold. It had to possess her completely to save her life.”

  Poppy nodded. Then she asked, “Did her coffee go cold every time she tried to drink it, too?”

  Kristopher laughed, and he seemed relieved to be able to do so. It was such a warm sound when he laughed. She could really get used to it. “Not exactly. We didn’t drink coffee back then, and fortunately she’s learned to control the effect by this point, so the coffee she chooses to serve at her shop is never cold.” He shrugged. “On the upside, back then she never had warm ale.”

  Now it was Poppy’s turn to laugh. Refrigerated ale a thousand years before refrigeration had been invented was definitely an upside.

  Chapter Eighteen

  They’d fallen into a companionable silence in which Poppy took every covert opportunity to study Kristopher’s profile. He sat with a straight back, his blond hair seeming to shift from light to dark depending upon the light cast by the fire. His chin was strong, his shoulders broad – he looked every ounce the king he’d become. She wondered whether it was due to the fact that he’d been born a chief’s son, or that he very much behaved like a king. It was in his blood, literally and figuratively.

  She realized, as she sat there and digested all she’d been told and all she could take in, that she’d gotten past the point of non-believing. Sort of. She was past the slack-jawed, wide-eyed, frozen in place stage, anyway. But it would take a while for her to truly process what was happening.

  The castle made a cracking sound around them. It was so deep in the ice of the construction, it was impossible to tell even which direction it was coming from. “Do you ever get used to that?” she asked.

  “Yes. Eventually,” Kristopher responded. Then he twisted on the rug so he could face her. He crossed his legs and placed his elbows on his knees, folding his fingers beneath his chin. “Tell me about yourself.”

  Poppy’s brows hit the ceiling. “What?”

  He smiled. “I can read almost anyone in the world,” he said. “Their names, where they come from, their inner-most wishes. But with you, it’s blurred and buried in magic. You are my equal, if not better.” He shook his head, his smile both frustrated and oddly – proud. “I know nothing about you, Poppy. So, why don’t you fill me in?”

  “Um….” She had no idea what to tell him. “I have no idea what to tell you.”

  He chuckled as if he’d heard the echo of her thoughts himself. “Well, what brought you to Seattle? What do you do for a living? What… are your wishes?” His eyes glinted, making her feel strange.

  “You do realize how bizarre this is, right? I mean, we obviously don’t even know each other and I’m supposed to live with you forever.” She swallowed hard right after saying the words, because she could feel his power coming off him, and he felt like a fire burning as hot as the actual fire in the room, and she could just imagine what it would be like to join him every single night, in his bed, in this cold realm.

  Gods.

  She would be so willing to live with him forever, she knew in her heart. He was everything she’d ever dreamed of in a man, from his height to his build to his intelligent mind to his inherent goodness to his voice to his amazing eyes. Not to mention the clothes and the bike and…. He would never grow old. Hell, if she stayed here, she wouldn’t either.

  But, she was supposed to be a queen?

  She was so not a queen. And she had a feeling that the only reason he still believed she was meant for the job was because he couldn’t read her, as he said. He didn’t know her and how plain she really was. She wasn’t elegant in any respect. She was messy. She was chaotic. She was all over the place.

  She wore extra long scarves that were knitted from every color of the rainbow and looked like cutesy patchwork messes, she went stomping around in heeled lace-up combat boots, and she didn’t own a single pencil skirt. In fact, she didn’t have a skirt of any kind to her name. She was just not… girly.

  All she could think about was that princess in England, Kate Middleton, with her perfect summer dresses and her perfect smile and her perfect babies and her perfect hair and all the love she garnered with all of that perfection, and how Poppy just didn’t add up. Not to that.

  You are so much more.

  Poppy blinked. She straightened, and turned where she sat on the fur rugs. The voice had come out of nowhere.

  “What is it?” Kristopher asked, clearly having noted the sudden change in her.

  “You didn’t hear that?”

  He cocked his head a little, and his gaze narrowed questioningly. She noticed that the color of his eyes darkened. So they do change, she thought. “Hear what?” he asked softly.

  He can only hear me when I wish him to.

  Poppy jumped to her feet and spun in place. At once, Kristopher was beside her, having risen as well. She wanted to be impressed with his reflexes, but someone was talking to her, and only her, and she had no idea what to make of it.

  Persephone Glacia Nix, be at peace, the voice said. It is only I – Winter.

  “Winter?” she said out loud.

  Kristopher seemed to relax beside her, but Poppy wasn’t anywhere close.

  Yes. You can hear me because of who you are and have always been. That is worth more than perfection.

  “It’s talking to me,” she said tightly.

  “Yes, it does that.”

  She looked up at Kristopher, craning her neck because he was so tall this close. “I can’t tell if it’s a girl or a boy!”

  He laughed, and again that wonderful sound went through her like audible endorphins. At once, a little of her confusion and fear slipped away to be replaced by a sense of calm and ridiculousness. She sort of wanted to laugh too.

  “That’s because it’s neither, Poppy. Winter simply is.”

  Though if I had to choose, I think I’d go with a guy, said Winter.

  Poppy could feel her eyes pushing out of her face. “What?” she said out loud. Why? she asked in her head, even though there had been several times in her life that she would have chosen to be a boy too, if she’d been given the option. Peeing standing up was only the start of it. There was the fact that they were stronger by nature, faster because of that strength, they could eat whatever the fuck they wanted and never gain weight, they didn’t have periods, they didn’t have to go through childbirth, they didn’t have to wax their bikini areas, they could be weak willed and everyone would automatically think they were stronger willed just because they were stronger physically, they got paid more than women, they could date younger girls no matter how ridiculously
old they got, and gray hair and wrinkles made men “distinguished,” whereas they basically shelved the self-worth of a woman. Comparatively speaking, it was a goddamned cake walk to be a man.

  Why, they’re taller of course, said Winter.

  “Oh,” Poppy said. She looked up at Kris, where he stood at six and a half feet. “Yeah,” she admitted. “There’s that, too.”

  Kristopher watched her in silence, his expression bemused. He could only hear half of the conversation, and it was a rather one-sided conversation to begin with.

  The castle made a cracking sound again, and Poppy looked down, as if she would be able to see a crack actually form in one of the walls of the study. But of course, nothing formed. The settling of the castle was deeper down. “I don’t know if I could ever get used to the ice doing –”

  Suddenly, the cracking she’d been hearing intermittently was a hell of a lot louder, starting off as that distant popping she remembered from days of ice fishing on the lake, but rising in volume until the castle literally rumbled around them. Chunks of ice broke off from the ceiling above and crumbled down upon them, and the floor beneath their feet shook enough for her to lose her balance.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Kristopher reached out to grasp her arms, steadying her.

  “What the hell was that?” she cried.

  But he couldn’t answer her, because he honestly didn’t know. All he knew was that he felt the sound down deep in his bones, and he’d never been filled with a stronger sense of foreboding. Not even when that wave had been barreling toward him. Not ever. It came sudden and hard, and dread seeped into every ounce of his body.

  The sound came again, louder than before, and Poppy squealed in surprise as an actual crack birthed itself beneath their feet. She tried to backpedal, but Kristopher had a solid grip on her. He immediately lifted her instead, jumping her over the crack and onto his side as it widened rapid-fire, going from an inch to an entire foot in a heartbeat.