Page 26 of Santa Daddy, I'm Not the One

I took a step back, my legs shaking. “You brought me here? Who are you?”

Was he Frostheart, the person the elves talked about so much?

“I’m not sure yet that you are worthy of knowing my name.” He stopped, closed his eyes, and inhaled deeply. “Ah yes, you did better than I could have hoped for.”

My breath hitched in my throat, and my heart pounded painfully. “What do you mean?” I asked, trying to keep the tremor out of my voice.

The figure laughed again, sending a fresh wave of chills down my spine. “Why, your isolation, of course,” he said, his voice as cold as the wind that whistled through the trees. “Your resentment, your bitterness.” Those terrible eyes glowed brighter with each word. “It has created such a delicious scent. A scent I’ve been seeking for a very long time.”

I felt sick to my stomach, terror constricting around me like a vise. “I just want to go home.”

“Do you?”

“Yes.”

“Then kill the tree.”

“What?”

“You believe them that if the tree dies, the town will die? Come now, Landon. You are smarter than that.”

“Then why does the tree mean so much to them?”

“It keeps your world out of this one. If the tree dies, you get to walk out of here and go home. It’s as simple as that. Kill the tree, and you’ll get your heart’s desire.”

“I don’t want to kill the tree.”

“Too bad. It’s already dying. Soon, they’ll be asking for your head.”

“You’re lying.”

He moved so swiftly that in the blink of an eye, he was standing right in front of me. I opened my mouth to scream, but he gripped me by the neck. Icy fingers dug into my skin, and a chill, a frigid cold more intense than anything I’d ever felt, spread across my body. His glowing red eyes stared into mine, and fear paralyzed me.

“If you’re going to prove useless, I might as well find another purpose for you.”

He pulled aside his black cloak, but instead of legs, his limbs were the gnarled, twisted roots of a tree. Between them was hiscock, which looked like a thick wooden trunk, pulsating with a sickly glow.

I let out a bloodcurdling scream.

He merely laughed. “Your fear makes me excited. Maybe I’ll let you live after all. You can serve me the way you serve him.”

“No. Never!”

He thrust me away from him, and I fell to the ground, coughing and rubbing my neck.

“Go back to him,” he said. “Only you can kill the tree.”

I shook my head. “He hates me.”

“No, he doesn’t. He’s weak and pathetic. Why do you think I chose you? He loves pale blond boys who are eager to please him. You were chosen well.”

A sob tore from me. I was just a pawn in this sick game of his. The reindeer whined pitifully as though sensing my distress. Tears welling up, I glanced back at the reindeer, their gazes sympathetic and their noses twitching in unease. I straightened, not for my sake, but for theirs. “I won’t go through with this scheme of yours.”

“You have no choice.”

He reached out a hand, and a surge of icy energy shot toward me. I tried to dodge, but it was too late. The force of the magic hit me in the chest, sending me sprawling back into the snow, my body numb and my mind reeling.

As darkness closed in, his voice reached me as though from a distance. “Just a bit of ice to make the heart go numb.”

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