Frost Kisses (Bitter Frost #4: Frost Series) (20 page)

It was an unwise move. In a flash the Queen was surrounded by a glowing blue light, a light that threw Delano back with a yelp of pain.

“Attack!” Delano cried, wincing, and the other Pixies rushed forward. With them was a creature I had seen only at a distance – an enormous red-eyed black bull with fangs bared, rushing towards me with its horns sharpened and spiked. A minotaur, rushing straight at me, faster than I could possibly run.

“No!” I heard Kian's voice, and then a body was pushing in front of me, keeping me safe, taking the full brunt force of the minotaur’s sharp horns seconds before the great beast would strike me.

It took me a moment to recognize Kian, impaled upon the minotaur's twin horns, twin wounds gushing silver blood from all over his body. The minotaur’s horns had gone straight through his front and out his back, raising him up into the air.

I screamed the most horrifying scream, unable to believe my eyes. Kian’s face was in shocked as he stared at me, his eyes connecting with mine, full of love and agonizing pain.

A strong sudden voice flew into my mind. Kian’s.
I love you Bree. Always and forever.

Then his eyes were glassy as he slumped back, still locked in place by the curved horns.

I wanted to cry “No!” and to rush over to Kian, but the Minotaur turned its red blazing eyes toward me, steam flowing out of its nose. White-hot rage rushed through me. My mind went black, and I was conscious only of my body rushing toward the beast, raising my sword, lifting it high to my side and striking the minotaur's head from its body in a single blow.

The Winter Queen, too, her face filled with that same pain, that same rage, was rushing indiscriminately from one pixie to the next, letting her anger guide her sword as she severed seven heads from seven bodies.

Only Delano was left, until – with a look of fear in his eyes
–
he vanished once again.

“Kian!” The Winter Queen rushed to her son, pulling his body from the fallen head of the minotaur. “Kian! My son!”

“But he's immortal,” I heard myself saying, tears flowing down my cheeks. “He can't die! He can’t!” Yet his eyes were blank; his face was whiter than ivory. I pressed my hands to the wounds but no sparks emerged.

“It's too late,” whispered the Queen. “He is holding on with all his strength, but the wound is too deep to heal.”

I picked up Kian’s hand in mine, holding it tight, wanting to hold the rest of him close to me. “I love you, Kian. Please do not leave me. Please hold on. Live.”

She too had turned the color of chalk. She bent down to press her lips to his forehead. “Kian my son. What have I done? With this war…a mother only wishes to keep their children safe, but this…” Her voice broke off.

“Kian,” tears were flowing freely now. “There has to be something I can do! There has to be some way to save him!”

The Winter Queen looked up. “Your forehead.”

My hand went instinctively to the gash in my forehead – I didn't even remember getting it, but I could feel the sticky blood pooling around the wound.

“You're bleeding silver. How?”

“Kian...” I almost choked on the name. “When he proposed – he gave me this snowflake pendant...he said it would make me immortal.”

The Queen let loose a long, pained wail. “No!” she cried. “Oh, that fool! That fool! I should never have let him love you.”

“I don't understand.”

“That was
his
immortality he gave away, child. He gave it up for you!” The Winter Queen wailed once more, pressing her lips to her son's icy forehead. She too tried to heal the wound, but it was in vain, as we both knew it would be. Her blue sparks closed his wounds, but he was still as death, his eyes closed.

“He said....he said he was immortal anyways since he was a full fairy and that this snowflake had the power to give me immortality!” I stammered.

“Fool!” The Winter Queen cried out, her anger directed at nobody in particular, but rather at the whole world that had let her down, that had robbed her of her son. “Fool!”

“Wait,” I cried, “this immortality – it belongs to him. I could give it back…then he’ll live, right? Return from the brink of death like I did?”

The Queen sighed. “There is a legend,” she said. “Of a mountain. A mountain where fairies were first granted immortality by a mysterious creature. The first immortal fairy received this gift – and no fairy since has been able to find it. Many scale the Mountain of Callum, but none have found the creature – and few have returned at all. Perhaps this will restore Kian. You must hurry. Kian’s life force is ebbing away…”

“Where is this mountain?”

“Go East towards the dawn,” The Queen's eyes were full of tears. “Then keep going...”

“I don't understand.”

“The mountain ascends up to one of the twin suns of Feyland – the Summer Sun. They say those that reach its peak will walk on the rays themselves.” She composed herself. “They say you are special, Breena. Let's see how special. Can you find this place – a place no other fairies have found? Will your powers bring you there?”

“I'll try!” I took Kian in my arms – a heavy, limp weight. Moments ago, this body had been the man I loved. I would do whatever it took to bring him back again. “But the battle.”

The Winter Queen said quickly. “As the Queen of Winter, I promise you Winter will aid Summer against the Pixies and the Dark Hordes of Feyland. Without this alliance, Feyland as we know it, will be destroyed!”

I nodded. “Queen to Queen, I trust your word. For the love of Kian, I must.”

I whistled, looking for Coral, the fastest horse in Feyland, but she did not come.

The Winter Queen whistled, and took my hand. “Another way for me to help you…there is a horse, my trusted beloved horse, Snowdrift, the one I rode into battle on. She is fast and strong. She will take you where you need to go.” Out in the forest, a large white horse ran out, galloping quickly over to us.

I had no time to protest. I mounted the horse, laying Kian over the saddle, and kicked my heels. The horse ran like the wind in a few gallops and then before I can blink, we were lifting up off the ground.

Down below, the Winter Queen raised her hand in a gesture of goodwill, then turned to head back to her knights. With a fierce neigh, the horse spread its wings and began to fly – fly high above Feyland. The Winter Queen had given me a Pegasus, a mythical horse with wings. For a second, I thought back to Gregory, Oregon and back to my mother Raine, who had painted a Pegasus years ago, whose image hung in my bedroom at home. Was this the same Pegasus that Raine had painted?

I looked down and gasped. The Summer and Winter Fey appeared to be fighting together. My heart leaped for a second, the Winter Queen had kept her word. But my heart grew heavy again as I saw far along the horizon hundreds, perhaps thousands of Pixies marching to join the fray.

Kian had once said that he thought his mother did not love him, that she believed love to be a weakness, that she would sacrifice him for the good of the kingdom. Now, as I carried Kian across the sky, I knew that it wasn't true. The Winter Queen had loved her son – enough to ally with the Pixies, enough to lie to get me away to the Mountains of Callum. She had loved him as strongly as I did.

Yet she'd never gotten a chance to tell him.

It was too late to return. I leaned my face into the wind and rode East, as commanded, towards the dawn.

Chapter 21

I
t was late. The stars twinkled overhead, set like diamonds in the black sky. I had left the Pegasus at the bottom of the mountain, and at sunset I had begun to make my way up the narrow path, worn down by footsteps. Kian weighed down on my back, and my shoulders ached and agonized with the tension. But I could not slow down. I could not stop. I had to keep going. I had to save Kian.

I had been climbing for hours now. My feet had blistered and bruised; my hands had grown callused. I had ascended the path and found myself in a place where there was no path, only the tangle of reeds and vines. I heard noises – the howling of wolves, the groaning of ogres – but there was no creature in sight. There was only me, and the mountain was filled with my loneliness.

At last it felt that I could not go on, that I was sure to give way. My feet were screaming out for release, and my shoulders were bent low beneath the weight of Kian's body. My eyes filled with tears. I couldn't fail Kian like this – I couldn't give up! Not after we'd suffered so much together, not after we'd fought so hard for this.

Please,
I whispered.
I love him. Help me – I love him.

As I collapsed to my knees, I caught sight of a tiny, glowing ball of light immediately before my eyes. At first I thought it was a hallucination, like a mirage in an oasis, but it grew closer to me, brighter and brighter until it touched my nose with a shimmer that tickled me, eliciting an involuntary laugh.

The light dipped further away, now – a playful sort of motion that I knew meant only one thing.
Follow me.

The light gave me strength. It gave me courage. With a groan, I heaved Kian back onto my shoulders, and forced myself to my feet. There, in the tangled darkness, I followed the light, which darted about before my eyes. There was hope, I thought to myself. Somebody else knew I was here.

The light led me through the night, up by pools and waterfalls, through woods and then through hot and humid jungles until at last, as the dawn rose in the east, I found my feet at the top of the mountain. It was as the Winter Queen had said – the mountain so high it seemed to reach into the heights of the Summer Sun itself. The mountain came to a rocky point, and on that point there was an orb – barely the size of an antique glob – from which was glimmering an impossibly bright light, a light that stretched around me in all directions. We were in the heart of the sun, and everything was golden; everything was alive.

“Breena,” I caught sight of a woman standing by the orb. She was the most beautiful creature I had ever seen, a graceful woman – she could have been any age, for though her skin was fair and unmarked by wrinkles her hair was white, and her eyes impossibly wise – with translucent skin, surrounded by a white sheen. “I have heard of you. No fairies dare to find this place – but you were able to find it. What have you come for, my child?”

“I've come to heal him!” I laid down Kian's body before her. “My love, Kian.”

“Love,” the woman smiled. “That must be it. I knew there was something special about you...”

“Kian gave me this,” I showed her the snowflake pendant. “And in doing so he gave me his immortality. But I didn't know! I didn't want it! Now I want to give it back – I need to give it back, or else Kian...” I didn't want to believe it. I couldn't let myself say the words.

She took the pendant. “This is worthless,” she said, and before I could stop her she tossed it aside, letting it shatter on the rocks below.

“Wait, no!”

She gave me an enigmatic smile. “If your love Kian transmitted his immortality to you, he did not do it with a pendant. A great magic like that of death and life cannot be confined in such petty objects. It was his love for you, and nothing more, which allowed him to give up his immortality. The pendant was only a symbol of that love – a reminder. The true love is in your heart.”

“I don't understand,” I said.

“Kian loved you so much he was willing to give up his life, his immortality for you. This caused you to become immortal. If you wish to give it back to him, you must do the same thing.”

“But I do love Kian!”

“Enough to give up your life for him?” The woman raised an eyebrow sharply, and I knew what she wanted. I knew what must be done. My life for Kian's life. A fair trade. Giving back to him what he had given to me.