Page 61 of A Bride for the Winter King
I arch a brow. “And what exactly is that? Life?”
If I make him talk, he might drop hints at the solution to his riddle.
He shakes his head, chunks of ice detaching from his hair and falling to the ground. “All life starts and ends at the whims of the spindle of the gods. Thousands of creatures are born and die every day, without fail. In itself, life is not righteous nor worth protecting, and death is not the enemy, but a certainty. I live, and yet I suck souls out of imprudent girls and murderers alike. Why shouldn’t I eat you, too?”
A full-blown shiver rattles me to my core. Blood-sucking weasels were bad enough. I do not want my soul to be munched on and swallowed by this damned ice creature.
“What would you offer me in exchange for your soul? An apple, a mirror, or a crown?”
His voice is sharper, and I know he won’t ask again.
I live, and yet I suck souls out of imprudent girls and murderers alike…
I reach inside the glass dome and pick up the apple, quickly tossing it at Chenu. “An apple. So that you would know right from wrong.”
The ice giant bites down on the plum red flesh of the fruit and transforms into a man in front of our eyes. He’s perfectly naked and beautiful, his jaw matching the shape of the previously frowning heart. “I see you now. You are the one who comes as two. You will make a fine queen.”
His piercing gaze causes my teeth to chatter and my arms to shake as he raises two fingers to the trail. “You should hurry along if you want to save the midnight sun.”
I follow his gaze, a ball-shaped cloud visible in the distance. “Midnight Sun? You mean Elio?”
Daisy hooks her elbow in mine and tugs me along the path. “The scary monster-man told us to go, Sixteen. Let’s go!”
The strength of the pull almost knocks me off balance, and I follow her lead, my extremities still numb from the pressure of Chenu’s gaze and the sizzle of his enigmatic smile.It’s like he could see my entire future…
Daisy gives him a wide berth, and her chest heaves as he lets us walk past him. “Come on! Let’s catch up with the others before we lose their trail or another creepy fairytale creature comes for us.”
I crane my neck around to catch one last glimpse of him, but Chenu is gone, vanished into a cloud of snowflakes.
The huge,silvery moon and an abundance of stars illuminate the snowy forest, and the absence of clouds makes it easy to follow Wendy’s trail. The Winter Fae is best equipped to find her way in this white immensity, and her mortal friends follow her lead. Six pairs of footsteps are visible in the fresh snow as Daisy and I walk carefully behind them and slow down whenever I catch their voices on the wind.
Luckily, I’ve got a better ear than all of them, and the mountain breeze hits us square in the face, keeping our hushed conversations from carrying forward.
Walking in fresh snow is tiring to say the least, but the dresses keep us warm, and the lonely eyeball camera doesn’t flyhigher than our heads as though it understands our need for stealth.
After about an hour, the trail in front of us switches from the clear footsteps in the snow to a well-traveled trail flanked by a steep rocky cliff. The imprints of sleigh runners, foot traffic, and paws make the terrain easier to navigate, but Wendy and her team are nowhere to be found.
Daisy braces her hands on her thighs, sweaty and breathless, and I motion for her to stay quiet. “Those prints are too big for sleigh dogs.”
She bends down to touch the closest set of animal prints. “That’s an understatement.”
We continue forward and reach a crossroads. The path to our right ascends the mountain, while the path to our left heads downhill, revealing a gap in the rocks that offers an unobstructed view of the valley below. The spectacular oval shape of the crater makes it clear that this entire mountain range was once an active volcano.
“We were walking along the rim of a huge caldera,” I say.
A narrow path heads down to the crater’s center, at least four or five miles down.
Far off in the distance, the lights of the Ice City flicker in the night. The fortress of death emits a warm orange glow, its walls snuggled up to the crater’s steep cliffs.
Screams and shouts echo in from the narrow path leading down to the Ice City, and the shrill edge of the voices quickens my pulse as I peer over the ledge.
About half a mile down the winding path, three sleds pulled by enormous black-and-blue wolves have stopped to greet our fellow competitors. Humanoid figures stand on the footboards behind each sleigh, and I gawk as one of the horned silhouettes steps toward Wendy. The monster slams a long stick that shines with a yellow glow into her chest, and the Winter Fae falls proneto the ground, the motion knocking her out in an instant. Her two friends quickly suffer the same fate.
The Reds crouch with their hands extended forward to retaliate against their attackers, but they’re unarmed and outnumbered four to one. They manage to escape the first couple of blows coming at them, but even with their impressive hand-to-hand combat skills, the creatures make quick work of them.
A long set of white horns spirals upward from the monsters’ foreheads, making them about seven feet tall in total, but their leather boots and knee patches look as mundane as they come.
“What are these monsters?” Daisy gasps.
