The Ice Queen (Dark Queens Book 3) (2 page)

Shaking his head at her nonsense, the Goblin ran from there, only able to breathe once he’d put at least a mile of distance between him and her royal craziness.

“There is no way I shall lose.”

Finally, after all these years, Luminesa’s downfall was nearly at hand...

Luminesa

L
uminesa walked barefoot upon a thick patch of pristine snow that glittered like frozen fragments of iridescent mother of pearl.

Her silvery gown—made up of snowflakes and ice crystals—trailed in a sweeping undulation behind her. She felt the eyes on her; the owls and the mice hidden within the shadows of skeletal trees watching her movements with hawk-like curiosity.

She’d not left her ice palace in years, used as she was to her isolation. But a star had fallen from the sky into her snowy realm and it was a matter that required investigation.

Snow bees danced about her shoulders, their gentle buzzing a soothing melody to her curious mind.

Just then a sharp cry pierced the air—the call of her only friend, Baatha the Snow Falcon. Luminesa paused and stared up as he circled the bluish-gray tinted sky once, twice, and a third time before he finally lowered toward her and sank his talons upon the shoulder plate of her ice armor.

“Baatha,” she said in a voice grown rough and scratchy from long years of disuse. “What news?”

The white falcon blinked tawny eyes back at her. Before cocking his head and ruffling his beak along the inside of his foot, at the leather pouch Luminesa had attached there.

“What have you there, friend?” She gently shoved his beak away and undid the leather thong.

A strange silver shard winked back at her.

She was just about to reach for it when a pulsing wave of dark magick breached her palm.

Hissing, she snatched her hand back. Curling her fingers into a fist and hugged it tight to her chest. Threads of steam hissed through the air as the heat of that darkness mixed with the ice of her flesh. Heart racing she turned her gaze toward Baatha’s and quickly retied the thong.

Luminesa knew this sort of darkness. She’d beheld it once before. Many moons ago. This level of darkness could only come from the wicked heart of the forest witch—Baba Yaga.

But there was a trace on the mirror, in the waves of that magic that tasted faintly of sulfur too. It was that sulfur that led her to the true culprit behind this object of power.

“Where did you find this? It bears the stench of the Under Goblin.”

With an ear-splitting shriek Baatha took to the air, his powerful wings slicing through the sky, moving slow enough so that she could follow.

Luminesa was the Queen of Ice. She could shape her body to be more than mere flesh. If she so chose, she could turn to a pillar of swirling snowflakes.

But the falling star had awoken her from her slumber and for the first time in ages she found her curiosity piqued.

Wishing to retain her human form for a while longer, Luminesa followed Baatha’s trail, and as she did so she looked at the landscape she’d crafted when she’d first come to this realm a hundred years past.

Then it’d been green and lively. Full of warmth and heat. She’d not set out to turn her surroundings bleak and cold. Though in truth she found none of this bleak or cold, there was beauty in the ice. In the simple flake of a snow. The uniqueness of it. How in all of creation there would only ever be one of its type.

All the more beautiful because of its fragility; each flake was a gift and once gone, never to be seen again.

But soon another flash of silver intruded in on her musings. Baatha circled the small object, before landing and tucking his wings against his breast, giving her a sharp cry to come.

Luminesa studied the stark landscape, looking for any signs of tracks. Anything that could give her a hint as to where the Under Goblin had gone.

But the hills and valleys were smooth and clean. Snow drifted gently on the breeze. It would have taken at least an hour to wipe away any tracks made by an intruder.

“Do you smell him, Baatha?”

The falcon merely blinked at her. She cocked her head, eyes narrowing as she thought of something else.

“Was this the falling star?”

The falcon’s stare never wavered.

So what she’d seen hadn’t been a star at all. But a fragment of mirror. She stared at the leather pouch tied to Baatha’s foot. Why had a mirror fallen from the heavens?

“To me, Baatha.” She held out her arm.

Her companion heeded her command, landing swiftly and heavily on her forearm, sinking his thick claws into the ice of her skin. Her form was so frozen though that she felt no pain.

Untying the thong from his foot, she hefted the pouch in her palm, testing its weight. If she’d not seen the sliver for herself, or felt the waves of its power, she’d not have thought there to be anything inside. The fragment felt like little more than air.

Baatha grunted.

“No. You cannot have it back.” With a twirl of her finger she encased the leather in ice before tucking it into the bodice of her gown. “Have you seen the demon lately?”

With a graceful nod the bird took powerfully to the air. He traveled quickly, necessitating her change back to snowy mist.

This was her home. She’d made sure when she’d come here a century ago to plant herself in a place isolated and separate from the rest of the world.

If he dared, if even
anyone
dared to try and take her home, there would be death.

Luminesa

T
he place in which Baatha finally stopped was a wild jungle of overgrown vegetation. Vines dangled from sinuously curled tree limbs. The humid air was awash with the scents of hibiscus and plumeria flowers.

Body trembling from the violent surge of heat already beginning to drain at her, Luminesa conserved her energy by stepping out of the mist and changing the ice of her body to flesh and bone.

She loathed this form. Hated the clunkiness of it. The foreignness of heated blood sweeping through her veins. It wasn’t that she couldn’t handle the warmth, she could.

She’d been human once, a long, long time ago.

Suddenly an image wavered in and out of focus before her, the form quickly taking shape into that of a long, tall man. His body was muscular, though not too large. His flesh firm and youthful, but tinted a shade of green that bespoke of his goblin heritage. He wore a colorful array of fabric. His shirt was a brightly colored fuchsia, while his pants were a muted shade of palest blue, on his fingers, wrists, and about his neck were large pieces of golden jewels. In some ways he reminded her of a gilded flower in this muggy land.

Hair as black as ebony trailed past his shoulders, framing a face that was hawkish in appearance and covered in deep scratches and grooves. Ribbons of dried blood on his cheeks caught her eyes.

What had happened to him? The Under Goblin was never so unkempt.

“Ah, the Ice Queen comes. And to what do I owe this honor?” Draping an arm about his waist theatrically, the Under Goblin bowed low.

She turned her nose up, affronted by his arrogance. “Surely, you knew I’d be coming.”

Standing straight once more, his mercurial black eyes filled with bursts of silver pinpricks seemed to dance with mirth. “Why, I haven’t a clue.”

Tucking his hands behind his back, he glided in a slow circle around her. The press of his glare raked her back. He would not intimidate her with his heavy silence; no matter how hard he tried.

Luminesa feared no man. Not even one spawned of hell fire. Holding her chin high, she never once fidgeted or turned to look at him. As if realizing how truly unaffected she was, he finally came to stand in front of her.

“You look a bit...piqued, my frigid beauty,” he said with a sneer.

There was no love lost between them. Their rivalry went way back to almost the very beginning.

“I am none of your concern.” But even as she said it the heat continued to leech through her energy reserves. Tightening the power about her, she crafted flakes of snow to sift gently through the air.

The Goblin snorted and then leaned back against the thick, twisted trunk of a tree heavy laden with vines of fruit. “Then why are you here?”

Wanting to leave as soon as could be, Luminesa reached inside her bodice and extracted the pouch, opening the sack to reveal the sliver of looking glass within.

"What is this?" she asked as he peered inside.

He shrugged, his manner insolent once more.

"A mirror. What else? You look into it, Ice Queen." The Under Goblin's smile was lecherous and full of wickedly sharp teeth.

Luminesa narrowed her eyes. "I'm no fool, Devil. So do not play me as one. I know you are up to something."

The Under Goblin shifted his stance, and then taking a large, curved knife from the sheath at his belt he drew it along the inside of his thumb nail. His green skin seemed more muted and gray toned than normal. The unusually greasy lanks of his hair were twisted into ropey knots and full of brambles and weeds. He really did look awful. As though he’d been on the wrong end of a scuffle.

He’d never been a devastatingly handsome sort, but the Goblin had at least always taken great pride with his appearance.

"What has happened to you, demon? Where have you been, and what have you done?"

The rusty squeal of his laughter grated on her nerves. “Well, you know, it’s interesting you should ask that.”

She narrowed her eyes. Not liking the insolent tone of his one bit. Licking his front teeth, he sighed deeply, put his knife away, and then looked back at her.

Deliberately taking his time about it, no doubt to irritate and annoy her, but she would not be ruffled. Luminesa had learned how to deal with the goblin long ago, and that was to not give him the satisfaction of knowing anything he did rankled her.

Lacing his fingers together, he bent a knee against the base of the tree, and thinned his lips as he tapped his thumbs together. His claws clacking as he did so.

“I want that land,” he finally said.

She glared. This had been an ongoing battle between them for nearly a century now.

“It’s not yours. And never—”

“Oh no,” he wagged a finger under her nose, “it was always mine.”

Clenching down on her back teeth, she stared at him. Maybe, just maybe, the land had seemed his. Years, and years, and years ago. So long ago in fact that none could truly say whether it was so or not, since that’d been long before the days of owning land came with a deed.

The Under Goblin called that land his merely because he’d lived in this muggy, rank Jurassic era throwback world almost since the dawn of time. But, there was a problem with his line of thinking. He’d let that land go, he’d never visited it, never nurtured it, never even claimed it until the day she’d stumbled into it and had changed it merely by her presence alone.

“By that reasoning then the whole of Kingdom should belong to you, and we both know that is not so.” She lifted a brow.

The Under Goblin was an ancient, older than many of the beings that lived and dwelled in this world, but he’d been obsessed with her for the past many years. A dark obsession she was hard pressed to understand.

He shrugged. “I do not care what happens in the rest of Kingdom, I only care that you’ve turned my grounds into a wasteland of pale, blue ice. I cannot abide the sight of it and I will take it back.”

His snarl made her blood run cold. Beneath the suave exterior laid a monster more capable of evil than almost any other creature she’d ever known in her life.

Luminesa was no stranger to the darkness of men’s hearts, she’d nearly died by the hands of one of them. But she was no longer the weak woman she’d been then. And
no man
would ever do to her again what’d been done to her once before.

She smirked. The smile cold, frosty, and full of disdain. “You can do nothing to me, demon. I do not know what you hope to accomplish by—”

But rather than erupt in fury as she’d half expected him too, the Under Goblin’s libidinous grin grew wider still with each word she spoke.

Confused by his countenance, the words died on her tongue as a horrible shiver of foreboding zipped down her spine like a sheet of black ice.

“Oh no,” he flicked his fingers, “please continue to make a fool of yourself, my sweet.”

Nostrils flaring, she had a horrible sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach that something foul had happened that she was as yet unaware of. She knew her adversary well, and he’d never acted like this unless he was sure he held the upper hand.

“What have you done?” she snapped, blasting out a sheet of ice from between her lips at him.

His black lips suddenly turned a pale shade of frosty blue when he inhaled and star-dusted eyes widened in fury as he growled, “Give me my land back!”

Slamming her hand to his chest, she shoved him up against a tree and pumped him full of ice, knowing this act drained her of the vital cold she needed to survive his goddess awful lands, but she didn’t care.

“It is my land. You never wanted it, nor cared for it until I arrived. Leave me in peace, Devil, and I shall do the same for you.”

And though his skin was now turning a shade of greenish-blue, he merely laughed, the sound of which was like a dagger thrust deep into her cold heart. The Under Goblin was not scared as he should be, he was taunting her, mocking her.

He swatted her hand off, then insolently brushed at his vest as the tint of color returned back to his cheeks. A corner of his lips tipped up.

“Oh, Luminesa, my beautiful, wicked woman.”

She clenched her jaw. Irritated with herself that she’d ever once thought him a friend. That she’d ever once let him envelope her in a hug. That she’d trusted him with her heart. He was a male unworthy of such an honor. Her lasting shame would always be the knowledge that he knew her as he did. That she’d ever once confided the secrets of her heart to him.

But once she’d thought him kind, thought him gracious...until she saw the true mark of the man and severed all ties between them. From that day forward it’d become his sole mission to make her life a living hell.