His eyes rove across my chest. “I can certainly remove the dress if you’d prefer.”
I instantly give up the search and take a step back. “Stay away from me.”
But Jasper keeps coming toward me and I’m forced to keep retreating from him across the bedchamber, past the glowing fireplace and the discarded winter cloak and the subservient ice nymphs, until I bump into something behind me.
The bed.
I stare up at Jasper’s pale face as he leans down to gaze into my eyes. I can see it in the way he’s looking at me. He doesn’t notice my expression or anything else about me. He doesn’t even see me as a person. Even if I told him I was Gaia, he probably wouldn’t believe it.
All he cares about is the hellfrost in my blood.
That’s all he’s ever cared about.
“Are you sure you want me to stay away from you?” Jasper asks me. His breath is like peppermint mixed with gasoline. “I could take you in that wedding dress. Fill you up the way Aidan will never be able to. Make you scream the way he’ll always be too afraid to. Fuck you until you realize that all your hellfrost means the man you truly love is me.”
My fingers are slowly turning numb. How could someone so pretty be so evil?
“I already said I’d never let you fuck me,” I spit out.
“But you already have, Paige. Again and again.”
Ice nymphs are beginning to stream into the bedchamber. Like the ones that escorted me through the castle, they all share my appearance.
The blood runs cold in my veins as I understand his implication.
He’ll do whatever he wants to me.
He already has.
Without hesitating, I reach behind me and grab the silver tray from the bed. “Telum creare!”
The metal instantly transforms into a silver knife.
I arc the blade through the air, aiming for Jasper’s chest.
His fingers shoot up and seize my wrist in between us.
They tighten like a vise, freezing me instantly.
Jasper grins at me the way he did as a dragon, revealing his pointed teeth like icicles. “You’ll have to try harder than that to kill me, Paige. Let me propose a deal to you.” He opens his other hand to reveal four crimson pomegranate seeds. “I’ll give you my blood willingly if you consume these as proof of your love for me.”
I don’t have to ask to know they aren’t just pomegranate seeds. Each one will do something to me, something terrible, and the cost will be more than Aidan would want me to pay.
But I also know Jasper will be magically bound to give me his blood if I do this. And Aidan is running out of time.
I reluctantly take a red kernel and place it on my tongue.
When I bite down, the seed bursts open in my mouth.
Magic streaks through my blood like fragments of an explosive bullet. The meaning of it sears painfully into my mind.
For one season each year, I’ll be forced by magic to return to the Winter Realm.
If I eat the remaining three seeds, it will be for the entire year.
I’ll never be able to leave.
Jasper watches me, his eyes glittering with satisfaction. “Keep eating, Paige. Prove your love for me.”
“I love Aidan—”
“You love me!”
With a snarl, Jasper reaches out and closes his hand around my throat, his fingers crushing my windpipe. Frost splinters my heart as the silver knife tumbles to the floor.
I can see the truth in his ice blue eyes. He’s breaking our deal. He’ll suffocate me and then raise me from the dead, and after that I won’t be any more alive than the ice nymphs surrounding us.
He’ll force me to be his bride.
He’ll make me watch as he freezes the world.
He’ll wield absolute power over me for the rest of eternity.
“I’ll give you one last chance,” Jasper says coldly. “Accept my proposal.”
“No—”
“If you insist,” he says, and punches me across the face.
It hurts. It hurts like freaking hell.
I reel back from Jasper, my lips tasting of coppery blood. My head is throbbing like it’s about to split open. All around us, ice nymphs are beginning to shapeshift into his form. Most are still caught in between our appearances, but the ones who have fully transformed are approaching and ready to hold me down.
I shouldn’t still be conscious. I shouldn’t even be alive. But the pain has awoken something inside me.
I remember Gaia.
I remember everything.
At the beginning of time, Jasper did this and worse to countless others, including Gaia. As punishment, she exiled him to hell in the barren isolation of the Winter Realm, never dreaming he’d eventually gain so much power. He became consumed with his desire to destroy everything the goddess loved, including the Earth itself.
He almost won.
But Gaia fought to protect humankind and all the realms, and I am her reincarnate.
She bound Jasper once.
I can do it again.
I close my eyes and listen to the beating of my heart. I remember the way I felt every time Summer looked at me. The way I still feel whenever Aidan looks at me. I remember being a goddess and speaking magic from my heart. It wasn’t something I had to learn. It was just something that was able to flow out of me, out of the emotions swelling inside me and my sense of right and wrong in the world.
This is how Gaia was able to write an entire spellbook.
This is how she was able to bind Jasper.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” I say, my voice low but powerful.
I curl my fingers around Jasper’s bare throat and shove him back from me. He makes a strangled sound, his ice blue eyes meeting mine in confused shock. His flesh is melting everywhere we touch. It’s like I’ve been terrified of a lion this entire time, but I’ve finally realized he’s just a scared little kitten.
I won’t let Jasper hurt me or anyone else.
Not again.
I release his throat and stand up straight.
I draw my hands into tight fists and the ice nymphs shatter into tiny pieces all around us.
I see right through Jasper, deep into his heart, and reinforce the spell Gaia used to bind him long ago.
“Frigus coercere,” I say in a voice that isn’t quite mine. “Infernus comprimere.”
Jasper stares at me with incredulity, understanding the meaning of the spell. He’s being rebound by magic that’s far stronger than his own hellfrost will ever be. He won’t be able to leave the Winter Realm again unless it’s his turn on Earth, and maybe not even then.
All trace of evil has disappeared completely from his eyes.
For the first time, he looks small and vulnerable.
Human.
“Who are you?” he asks me.
“Didn’t I tell you?” I say, laughing. “I’m the Motherfucking Earth.”
With another spell, I slam Jasper into the opposite wall, restraining his limbs with thorny vines sprouting out of the ice all around us. His handsome face becomes twisted with hatred as he realizes exactly who I am.
“Gaia,” Jasper spits out in disbelief. “I should have known. I would ask how you survived the fire to bind me again, but it doesn’t matter. I bound you first with that pomegranate seed you ate. You’ll have to return to me for a full season every year. Each and every winter, you’ll be mine. So you haven’t won—”
“Maybe not,” I say, cutting him off. “But the difference between you and me is I’ve never really cared about winning. So, no, I haven’t won. But the only thing that matters is you didn’t. And because I ate one of those pomegranate seeds, you’re magically bound to willingly give me a drop of your blood.”
Ignoring Jasper’s enraged screams, I pick up the winter cloak and clasp it around my body, feeling the shield of magical protection envelop me again. With the voice that isn’t quite mine, I cut his flesh to the bone and collect his blood in an ice v
ial.
Without looking at Jasper again, I turn to the empty air and open a portal. I don’t know where it leads, but I know it will take me where I need to go.
It will take me to Summer.
And I step through.
Chapter Eighteen
Aidan
I crash onto my knees on a stone floor, temporarily caught between human and dragon form. My green scales keep shifting into skin and back again, as if sandpaper is being glued onto my body and ripped off repeatedly. Everything burns like fire, not just on the surface but deep inside as well.
The moment Jasper saw the magical cloak, he smirked and ripped it from Paige’s body. I was forced to watch as the Winter Realm faded away from me. As she faded away from me. I expected to wake up in Paige’s apartment, but instead I ended up in a place that’s all too familiar. It’s bittersweet, seeing it again.
The highest room of Tria’s tower.
A glass casket is lying on a thick stone slab at the center of the room, sheltered by the canopy of a magnolia tree infused with lightstorm and mistgreen. Gnarled roots of wildwind are twisting over the stone floor and out through the open window, spiraling around the exterior of the structure.
I haven’t seen any of this in millennia.
Not since Gaia burned.
I climb to my feet and limp over to the glass casket. A trail of scales is shedding behind me, but at least I’m shifting back into human form and staying that way. Ever since meeting Paige, I haven’t felt the need or temptation to remain a dragon. Which is a good thing.
Because when I reach the glass casket, what I see almost makes me shift again.
A naked woman is sleeping inside, her glowing figure protected by a multitude of spells and enchantments.
Gaia.
The goddess is even more beautiful than I remember. Her dark hair is intertwined with ivy and shimmering threads of magic, and her naked breast is rising and falling as she sleeps peacefully in her glass casket. Her entire body shines with ethereal light.
I can’t touch her in there.
No one can.
But even as the thought crosses my mind, the tower shakes with the force of something slamming into it. A burst of hellfrost shoots in through a window, scorching the glass casket.
The magnolia tree goes up in flames.
I should have fucking known.
Jasper is here.
His ice army is surrounding the tower on all sides. Snow wolves are scaling the walls, tearing through the roots of the magnolia tree. Winged demons are breathing in hellfrost through the windows. If I check outside, I’ll find troops of ice nymphs and polar bears and winter elves and countless more.
I’m reliving the worst moment of my existence.
The day Gaia burned.
For longer than I should, I almost believe this is another chance to save the goddess. In my mind I’m already unleashing the full force of summer on anyone and anything trying to get to the glass casket. This time I’ll defend Gaia with everything I have. Shatter every ice creature to pieces.
But when I attempt to wield my lightstorm, I come up with nothing.
I try to open the glass casket and my hand goes right through it.
Just like in the Winter Realm, I can’t physically interact with the world. Which means the only reason I’m seeing anything at all is because of Paige’s magical cloak.
This is pure torture. I don’t know what sick fuck sent me back in time to watch the tower burn again, but I’m useless like this. I won’t be able to fight Jasper. I won’t be able to save Gaia from her glass casket. This chain of events was already set in stone millennia ago, and I can’t change any of it.
But when I glance out the window, there’s a familiar sight in the distance.
An enormous green dragon is flying toward me. His singular focus is on the goddess lying asleep in this tower, but the entire army of the Winter Realm is in his way. As he draws closer, he tries desperately to fend off the ice creatures, but his lightstorm isn’t powerful enough to quell their attack. And yet he keeps fighting tooth and nail until it’s apparent that he lacks the strength and energy to keep going.
At which point he folds in his wings and dives straight toward this room.
I hastily back away from the window, not sure what to believe.
Right before the dragon collides with the tower, he shifts into human form and tumbles through the window.
He crashes onto the stone floor.
It’s me.
What the fuck?
I don’t remember any of this. In my memory, I never actually enter the tower. I just keep fighting the ice army outside, unable to regain the presence of mind to shift back into human form as it all burns to the ground.
By the time I understand what’s happening, only ashes remain.
I knew Gaia altered my memories, just like she did with her own and who knows how many others, but I didn’t realize the extent of it. For so long I’ve hated myself for not trying to save the goddess in a way that truly mattered. But now, after all this time, it turns out I might have.
I’m finally seeing what really happened.
I draw closer to my past self, understanding what he’s going through right now. He’s struggling with the desire to shift back into dragon form, not to mention an excruciating hangover from all the lightstorm he’s been wielding. His head is pounding so loudly he hasn’t even noticed the magnolia tree is on fire. War and politics have become like a distant dream to him.
He’s suffering withdrawal from a high that’s lasted for millennia.
I can’t help him.
The magnolia tree is already dropping scorched flowers and leaves through the air. I’m becoming impatient as I wait for my past self to do something about it. Dea suscitatum. That’s the waking spell to rouse a goddess. He’s the only one who can speak it without kissing her. If he doesn’t, Gaia will never be able to reincarnate herself and escape the fire. We’ll never meet in the future as Aidan and Paige.
But my past self just keeps flexing his shoulder blades instinctively, as if he’s still trying to fly. I can see it in his expression. He’s more dragon than human now. He’s realizing too late that he can’t remember how to walk on two legs.
He can’t be a man when Gaia needs him to be one.
He can’t speak her name. Jasper’s name. Even his own.
Nothing about this world makes sense to him anymore. But if he doesn’t act soon, the fire will burn everything in the tower.
Including the glass casket.
“Hey,” I say to my past self, but I don’t have a voice here. I reach out to him and my hand goes right through his shoulder.
My fingers clench into fists at the same time his do.
That’s when a portal from the Winter Realm opens next to us.
A cloaked figure stumbles out and I reel back in shock.
It’s her.
Paige.
What the hell is she doing here?
Icicles are clinging to her dark hair and snow is covering her pale skin. For some reason she’s wearing a wedding dress beneath her cloak, and her lips are stained deep red like berries. Five types of magic are whirling around inside her, building upon themselves over and over again until I don’t understand how she doesn’t just explode.
It’s millennia before she exists, but she ripped open a portal and stepped through time and space to arrive here. She’s clutching a vial of blood in her hand, which means she did it.
She made a deal with Jasper in exchange for my life.
I try to call out to Paige, but she can’t hear me. It looks like she was prepared to come here, though. She doesn’t seem surprised or even slightly thrown by the presence of Gaia’s glass casket or Jasper’s ice army. Her focus is only on my past self, who’s naked and still crouching on the floor.
I’m suddenly ashamed that Paige is seeing me at my weakest moment. I tried so hard to hide this part of myself from Gaia, and now it’s all out there in the open. Paige is s
eeing me on the verge of collapse. She’s seeing the reason I wasn’t able to save the goddess millennia ago.
And yet she doesn’t seem to mind.
Her eyes are filled with empathy instead of pity. Never pity. How could I have thought otherwise?
Paige closes the portal behind her and steps forward, kneeling down in front of my past self. She raises his head with gentle fingers as he stares into her blue and green eyes with confusion. From his perspective, he’s seeing Gaia outside the glass casket, fully clothed and entirely different. He’s seeing Gaia in a completely human form, a Gaia who sees him for who he is.
He doesn’t understand any of it.
But he falls in love with her that instant.
Paige smiles and kisses him, and the connection between them is so powerful I don’t know how I ever forgot any of this. But I guess I must have remembered her, even when I thought we hadn’t met before.
I was always in love with her.
We were always inevitable.
“Memoria novare,” she tells him. “Orbis amare.”
The meaning of what she’s saying hits me hard. My past self is the one who speaks the reincarnation spell, not Gaia. Earthwater and lightstorm are interwoven to create a world where we’re changed but our love survives, allowing us to remain together while also protecting all the realms.
This is how Gaia escapes the fire.
This is how Paige is born.
My past self seems to recover for a moment. He climbs to his feet and towers unsteadily over Paige, looking down at her with incredulity as she rises to face him. He cradles her face in his hands, then glances at the woman in the glass casket who shares the same appearance, making sure he’s seeing things correctly.
“Gaia wants you to do this,” Paige says, and her voice resonates with the power of the Earth. She’s undoubtedly the same woman lying in the casket, just slightly different. Slightly more. “It’s her gift to you. Her gift to both of us. I’ll start out human and become like you, instead of the other way around. We’ll be able to understand each other. We’ll be together without the glass casket.”
He nods, his speech stilted and barely intelligible. “How do you know?”
Paige understands him perfectly. “Gaia saw part of our future and recorded it in a book. It’s hidden in your realm, but I don’t think you’ll find it until much later.”
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