King of Frost

by Ana Calin

  Through our mates’ bond, my thoughts are enough for Arielle to understand. Still, she acts too quickly-

  “All right, I agree to your terms,” she declares. “Now what wish shall I fulfill for you?”

  “You promise to do it, no matter what I request?”

  “No, she doesn’t,” I flare. “Let us hear it, and then she’ll decide.”

  He addresses Arielle. “I want you to retrieve the Pearl of Riches for me.”

  Arielle frowns. “The Pearl of Riches. Is that what I think it is?”

  I burst into laughter.

  “I’m glad you find this amusing, King of Frost,” Calabriel says, offended.

  “No, it’s just—” I clear my voice. “Now I understand what happened to your hair.” And the rest of his beauty.

  Greed caused him to lose it. For the fae, the outer body is an expression of the inner energy. Ignoble feelings cause fae to lose certain parts of their beauty. Minerva, for example, lost the celestial sweetness of her face because of a meanness not suitable for us. The strict lines of a harsh dame replaced that sweetness. Of course, she’s far from ugly, and some men would actually prefer her like this, but her face is special for a fae.

  But things are different for Calabriel, because there’s no sexy side to greed. And it’s probably not the only thing that’s plaguing him.

  “Let me tell you something, King of Frost,” Calabriel says pointedly. “It’s easy to despise those who love riches when you own outrageous amounts of them, beside a High Fae title. Like your princess here said, I am only a castellan, only a steward of the seas, and will never be more than that. Class is a petrified thing in our world, even though we’re so much older and think ourselves much more advanced than the humans. The only way I can secure myself the favors of a woman of standing, is to become rich beyond imagination.”

  His eyes slip over to Minerva. I can see that everything between them is over, and I don’t think Calabriel actually wants her back, but it’s clear he wants to marry his way to a title. She must have hurt him deeply. Maybe the negative emotions that he experienced when she left were what destroyed his outer fae beauty. He sure looks at her like she’s the person who took everything away from him. I know Minerva well enough, she’s capable of that and more.

  “I’ll do it,” Arielle interrupts my stream of thought. My eyes become slits.

  Cunning fills Calabriel’s face, giving substance to my worries. “Fabulous.”

  “Do I have to search for it, or do you know where it is, and just have trouble retrieving it?”

  “Oh, I do know where it is. The Sea Witch has it.”

  That’s it. I spring off the chair, my hand flashing around the bastard’s neck. I lift him from the ground, his face swelling violet within seconds.

  “Did you actually think this cheap trick would work? Asking the impossible of her?”

  “It’s not the impossible, Lysander, and you know it,” Minerva intervenes, standing. “If anyone can get to the Sea Witch, it’s her. This is really a wish that only Arielle de Saelaria can fulfill.” Her sharp blue eyes throw blades at me. I think she’s beginning to see through my pretenses. She’s beginning to understand that I’m truly into Arielle, and not just playing on her feelings.

  “Lord Lysander, please,” Arielle’s crystalline voice reaches me. “Put him down, let him talk. See if he can explain.”

  I hesitate, but then set Calabriel down on his feet. I’d like a fucking explanation, too. He buckles over with a hand at his throat, coughing, feeling for his chair. He drops into it, downing Arielle’s goblet of nectar.

  “The Sea Witch,” he manages, his voice still hoarse. “No one has seen her in centuries. She went into hiding because my Court is hunting her down for having massacred the royal family. But you.” He looks at Arielle. “Killing you is still her greatest ambition, because she blames her situation today on your father having escaped her grand massacre in his mother’s belly thousands of years ago. So she’s probably dreamed up ways to torture you before she kills you. If go near water and think of her intensely, she’ll surely hear you. You’re actually the only person in the world she’d show herself to.”

  And Arielle wants to see her, because Zillard got her thinking she could lift the silver spell.

  “I will lift it,” I tell her, my eyes burning. “I’ll lift the silver spell, you don’t have to go to her, she’ll kill you.”

  “Lysander,” Minerva shrieks. “What are you doing?”

  Being desperate. Right now I wouldn’t care if the world went down in flames. All I care about is preventing Arielle from going on a suicide mission.

  “Lysander,” Minerva insists when I don’t break eye contact with my mate. “If you lift the spell, her powers will overwhelm her. She hasn’t had enough training. It would probably make it even easier for the Sea Witch to kill her.”

  “I’ll go with you,” I tell Arielle.

  “No,” Calabriel protests. “The Sea Witch will never reveal herself if Arielle isn’t alone. The risk of assassination is too great.”

  “But what makes you think she’ll give me the Pearl of Riches,” Arielle inquires. “She wants me dead, I doubt she’ll sit down to do business with me first.”

  “She doesn’t want to just kill you. Like I said, she’ll want to make you suffer first, which will give you time to search.”

  “You’re not taking this into consideration, no!” I snarl, but Arielle ignores me.

  “How will I search for anything if she keeps me in chains?”

  Calabriel massages his neck, where my grip has left a red mark. “Your not-boyfriend Zillard Dark will have the answer to that.”

  “This is madness, none of this is happening,” I rumble.

  “Suit yourself, Lysander,” Calabriel says. “But think about it—the Pearl of Riches and your protégé’s abdication is what I require to grant you my full support against Xerxes, and to bring in hordes of experienced, engineered fighters. Think of everything I’m putting on the table.”

  Minerva’s cold, slippery hand slides into mine. “Yes, Lysander.” Threat shadows her voice, a threat that’s directed at Arielle. “Think of everything that’s at stake.”

  CHAPTER V

  Arielle

  “What did it feel like?” Zillard asks as we sit face to face by the lake, my hands in his, palms facing upwards. “Having Lysander so close again?”

  Small bluish circles spin in the middle of my palms, enabling me to call forth a liquid portal between realms, using the lake. It’s supposed to work with any kind of water, anywhere, and save me from the Sea Witch once the mission is complete.

  “It...” I see Lysander’s strong warrior features in my mind, his intense blue stare that made me feel like the only woman in the world. I remember creaming between my legs from the intensity alone. I felt desired to the point of madness, which made me ache to fall to my knees and take his cock into my mouth.

  “He tried to play me again, acting every bit the passionate lover.”

  “But you didn’t fall for it?”

  “After I’ve seen him almost fuck Minerva with my own eyes, after I heard from his own mouth how he only pretended to be impassionate for me in order to manipulate me? I’d be a complete idiot to fall for any of his acting ever again. But he’s pretty damn good at it, I’ll give him that. I remember the day we met. He was the perfect ice king, empty of all emotions. I can’t believe he is able to pretend so well.”

  Zillard lowers his head, as if about to share a long kept secret.

  “What is it?”

  “Listen, Arielle.” He takes a deep breath, making a hard decision. “Before you go on your quest, there’s something I need to tell you. When I first met Minerva—she came to my chamber back at Lysander’s castle, the night before the engagement ball—she told me Lysander despised you, but that you were planning to use your love spells on him on the big day. She asked me to counter your spells with my magic. That is the true reason why I approached you
at the ball—If I was close enough, I could block your magic before it left your personal field. But when I saw the way Lysander looked at you... I had a strong impression his feelings for you were real. Later, when Minerva asked me for the demon eye, it raised further doubts.”

  “What doubts?”

  “She said that, spells or no, you were using your lowly water nymph magic to separate them, and somehow it was working. But then I watched him more closely. I know he sent people to follow you ever since we came here, and he was growing crazier by the day, thinking you and I were having an affair.”

  He stops talking, and looks deep into my eyes out of his demonic irises.

  “Have you ever wondered why I’m helping you, Arielle? Why I teach you magic, protect you?”

  “Yes. But I was afraid to ask.”

  “Afraid, because you expected that I was in love with you?”

  “Not, not in love. But interested.”

  “Then let me tell you the truth now.”

  “I’m not sure I want to know.”

  “Yes, you do. You won’t like it any more than the first version though, the one in which I was in love with you.”

  I frown, waiting for it. My throat closes up.

  “Minerva approached me before the engagement day, taking advantage of the fact that it had been Sandros who invited me, and whatever happened to you, it couldn’t be traced back to her. She paid me to get close to you, block your magic if you used it and, of course, seduce you, if I found you to my liking.”

  “You wouldn’t have stood a chance at seducing me, Zillard.” Even though he is irresistibly handsome, darkly so. But I’m cursed to want only Lysander for the rest of my life, crave him to the point of insanity.

  “Yes, well, I would have found ways to make you want me. Arielle, I’m more than just the son of Hades. My mother was a demoness, a succubus. Seducing people is in my nature. I feed on their life energy, on their souls. Now, no offense but, for reasons that I didn’t understand at the time, you didn’t appeal to me, you know, that way. But the second time I came into your life didn’t have to do with Minerva, or anyone else. What called to me was the dark power that your aunt Miriam willed to you.”

  “How do you know that Aunt Miriam willed me anything?”

  He takes a deep breath. “Because my father, Hades, foresaw it. In your case, he only had the premonition a few minutes before it happened. When Lysander made the decision to ask for Miriam’s help.”

  “Why would the god of Tartarus foresee what would happen with me or Aunt Miriam?”

  “Arielle, Hades, my father—” He licks his lips. “He is also your Aunt Miriam’s father.”

  I swear the world has just stopped. I can feel my jaw drop in slow motion.

  “What the hell are you telling me?”

  “In a way, we’re family, Arielle. I am your uncle, I guess, even if not by blood. When Miriam ceded you her dark powers, you and I, we became related. More or less like siblings. And now my father Hades has a personal stake in this. He needs Lysander to win and make you Queen of the sea Court.”

  I get up to my feet. “You mean to fucking tell me that I have a piece of Hades inside of me?”

  “You needed to know all of this before you exposed yourself to the Sea Witch. If push comes to shove, trust me—use Miriam’s power.”

  I shake my head, looking up at the moon, its light mirrored in the dark ripples of the lake.

  “The Sea Witch,” I whisper, wondering where she could be hiding, and how many ways of torturing me she must have imagined all these years. I wonder when she’ll find me, and how, and whether or not I’ll be ready for it.

  I’m scared, but I know that the sooner she finds me, the better. We don’t know how long we have until Xerxes pulls out the big guns.

  I put up my palms, and conjure the water swirls in their center. The Sea Witch is bound to sense a water portal that’s connected to me, if I’m thinking of her. I’m not ready, but as ready as I’ll ever be. It’s now or never.

  “Do you want me to be here when you return?” I hear Zillard’s deep dark voice behind me.

  I ponder. Do I want to see him again, the guy who planned to seduce my soul out of me before he realized I was some kind of a sister to him? But as I focus on the portal, I’m all feeling and no mind. And in that feeling there’s no space for grudges.

  “Family is family, right?” I whisper, my voice already spectral. I’m being pulled into my magic, my mind shutting down. With it, so does fear.

  The surface of the lake starts to rotate, rising like the base of a tornado. In a few seconds, I feel its force pull on the small swirls in my palms like a magnet. The wind increases, blowing through my hair, and I can sense it when Zillard steps back.

  “It’s time,” he says.

  I close my eyes, giving in to the feeling of magic, letting it take over my body and chase away the all too human feeling of anxiety. I step into the water, walking slowly towards the swirl. It sucks me in, its force like that of a centrifuge tugging at my flesh to tear me apart.

  It spits me out into a roasting heat that smacks me right in the crown of my head. I look up, shading my eyes from the brightest sun that has ever touched my skin. In a few seconds my eyes adjust and I make out the landscape. If this is the Sea Witch’s prison, she must have thought long and hard about it, because there’s no way I could have foreseen it.

  It’s a desert. As far as I can see, there’s only dunes of sand, with the sun as the only guidance. I start walking towards the East, my naked feet sinking into the hot sand, with nothing to dampen the burn. I walk on my tiptoes and the sides of my feet, my mouth dry af.

  I don’t know how long it’s been when the sun finally begins its descent into the bloody horizon, but I know that my lungs are burning, and I could kill for a little bit of water. I’d gladly give in to a mirage and trick myself into believing I’m having a drink.

  The sun goes down completely, and I drop onto the sand, exhausted. The temperature drops quickly, too quickly. Soon it’s so cold that I curl up into a fetal position, hugging myself and wishing I’d freeze to death, and be spared this torture. Wind whips sand through my hair and over my face. My flesh cracking open, and sand sticks to my wounds. I curse myself for not having thought of this—How can I ever get what I came for, if the Sea Witch won’t even let me see her, or talk to me. I should have expected the possibility that she wouldn’t interact with me at all, that she’d go directly to killing me slowly. Was I naive to think that she’d want me to see her before I die, that she’d want her voice to be the last thing I hear?

  In the dead of night, maddened with thirst, I lick at the cold sand, hoping to find a layer of frost. Why do I cling to life like this, when I know for a fact that I’m going to die?

  “Playing with portals, little princess?” a throaty voice slips into my mind. “Didn’t your auntie warn you about the dark things that lurk in the unknown realms?”

  I raise my head a few inches, which is all I can. “You’re the reason I opened that portal, Sea Witch, and you know it. ”

  “Please, call me Ursula. If you’ve been looking for me as I have for you, then we’re almost soulmates, don’t you think?” She giggles, but it’s a nasty sound.

  “Please, I’m desperate for water. And for your help. I will offer you anything in return.”

  “Anything?”

  “My rightful claim to the sea throne. I’ll cede it to you, if you lift the silver spell that Lysander Nightfrost has put over my sea powers. That’s why I went out looking for you.”

  “You cannot give me the throne, girl, because it’s not yours to give. The Steward glued his greedy ass to it, and he’s never vacating it again—trust me, I have tried to get rid of him every way possible. Besides, I’ve had that throne before. I didn’t hold it for long. The merfolk have found a way to banish me, and they will again, no matter how often I claw my way to power. My only goal now is to make them all suffer.”

  Fuck.

&
nbsp; “There must be something I can give you,” I reply, desperately sifting through my mind for something. “I am the ocean king’s heiress after all.”

  “Of course there’s something—your life. But not abruptly. No, I’ve been dreaming of ways to end Poseidon’s bloodline for so long, I’m going to savor every moment of your slow, painful passing. I will take my time with you, Arielle de Saelaria, and have you die a hundred deaths. The spirit of your grandfather will see it and live it all with you from the highest realm where he now dwells, he will suffer with you. He’ll be aware the whole time that this is happening because he chose that water nymph over me. It was never a problem that he had lovers, I had lovers, too, but if he was ever to share the throne, he was supposed to share it with me!”

  I can’t believe it, is this what the massacre of the Sea Court was about? Was the Sea Witch a scorned woman?

  Her voice is fading. She’s leaving me here.

  “Please, don’t go,” I cry, but her presence is fading in the distance.

  Exhausted and desperate, I drop my head into the sand. A curled, crusty little tail emerges from the ground, quivering its way closer. I don’t dare move. I know it’s a scorpion before the animal’s body appears from behind the little dune. And I know there’s nothing I can do to stop it from stinging me.

  I can’t move my battered body abused by the elements. My clothes are rags that flap wildly, hitting my skin like whips. I can feel sand creep into the cracks on my lips as the beast moves closer, its tail touching my hand as if sniffing it.

  God, what I wouldn’t do for a little bit of water right now. Not to drink it, but to use it to try and conjure a portal. But the Sea Witch thought of that, of course. As a daughter of the ocean, I would find salvation in water. I sift through the magic that Zillard has taught me, feverishly looking for something to help me.