Kailin Gow - Forever Frost (Bitter Frost, #2)

Forever Frost

Bitter Frost #2

kailin gow

Forever Frost

Published by THE EDGE

THE EDGE is an imprint of Sparklesoup LLC

Copyright 2010 Kailin Gow

All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the publisher except in case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

For information, please contact:

THE EDGE at Sparklesoup

P.O. Box 60834

Irvine, CA 92602

www.sparklesoup.com

First Edition.

Printed in the United States of America.

ISBN: 1-59748-899-2

ISBN: 978-1597488990

THANK YOU TEAM FROST for making this second book in the Frost Series come alive. TEAM FROST is made up of so many people who believe in this series and the power of love. To my editors Tara and Jaya, cover artist and designer Darla, publicity and marketing Dorothy and everyone at the EDGE and Sparklesoup thank you from the bottom of my heart.

To my husband and daughter, thank you for showing me what unconditional love is.

Last, but most importantly, to the readers thank you for giving Bitter Frost and the Frost Series a chance. It is because of you that I write.

Prologue

T he world of my dreams had become reality. For sixteen years, I had spent every night wandering the halls and towers and gardens of the idyllic Summer Palace, a place of f air y courtship and f airy lore. I had dreamed of princes charming princes with wintry cheeks and piercing eyes and of princesses, of gardens perfumed with ripe fruit and flowering plant s, of the soft cadences of the Fairy W altz. Nothing felt more real to me than those dreams the melody of a dance, the touch of a princess's hand, the whispering thrill of a prince's kiss. And I spent my mornings, my evenings, m y afternoons of Gregory, Oregon waiting until it was time to sleep again. I had never fit in among the normal girls at my school the slender, doe- eyed tormentor s that are requisite in every saga of teenage angst I had spent my lunch hour wandering the woods outside the school, whispering to the wind and the leaves and the twigs and branches, instead of shopping at the local mall outlet.

And then I had turned sixteen, and everything changed.

When I turn ed sixteen, I was visited by the Pixie K ing with glowing eyes and cruel lips who tried to abduct me, only to be saved by a figure I already recognized the prince from my dreams. But my salvation was only an illusion; the Winter Court, to which Prince Kian was heir, had been long at war with the Summer Court, which was, I discovered, the land I was destined to rule. And as Prince of the Winter Court, Kian had been charged with stealing me as hostage, using me as a pawn in the political machinations that defined Fairyland.

Over the next few days I learned many things. I learned that things were not what they seemed from Kian's original standoffish cruelty that morphed slowly into love, to the beautiful forests that sheltered untold dangers. I learned that the Pixie King Delano sought to have me for his Queen, because I was a half-breed half-human, half-fairy possessed of great gifts and unimaginable powers. I learned how to perform magic, to connect with the essence, the magical properties within each creature or object and will it to do my bidding. I learned how to transform bread into metal, how to glow like the sun, how to fight because fighting, I learned early on, was necessary in a world as dangerous as Feyland.

I learned about fairy lore and fairy history, about my own unique place in the Fairy hierarchy. My mother was a human concubine; my father was the Summer King a liaison that had angered the Summer Queen and I found myself facing almost as much danger from my own nation as I did from our rivals.

I learned too that Kian was a brave soldier and a loyal friend, a principled idealist who loved nothing more than his Winter Court except, perhaps, me. I learned that he was an accomplished cook for men did the cooking in Feyland and that he loved to paint almost as much as I did. I learned that we had much still to learn about each other, and that his kiss was the most powerful sensation I had ever experienced.

And then there were the bad lessons.

I learned that my best friend, Logan, was a werewolf, a shapeshifting creature that live d between Feyland and the Land Beyond the Crystal River which they called my world. And, when he was killed in a battle with the Pixie King, I learned that he was a hero, too.

All these revelations hadn't just changed my life. They had changed me . I was no longer the shy insecure loser Breena who had shut out the world outside her own head in the halls of Gregory High School, knowing that the real world would never match my somnolent fantasies. I was a p rincess, in destiny , if not in power; it was my responsibility to learn about Feyland its ways, its secrets, and its magic. It was the real world now my home, Gregory High, the woods behind the school, were all part of the mythical Land Across the Crystal River in which some denizens of Feyland didn't even believe. It was my responsibility to broker peace between the Winter and Summer Courts to balance the stirrings of my heart with the needs of a people that weeks earlier I had thought belonged only in the pages of Causabon's Mythology .

And today I had to make my first choice as Princess. I had been captured by the Summer Queen who had revealed to me that I, along with my mother Raine, had been exiled from Feyland; we were dangers to the throne. Now I understood why. My mother was in the clutches of the Winter Court, who wished to use her in exchange for the Summer Court's hostage, Kian's sister, the Princess Shasta. And there was nothing more dangerous for my family, for my kingdom, than my mother in peril. Raine was my father's great weakness there was nothing he would not do for the woman he loved and as long as my mother was in the Winter Court's hands , the Summer Court could be annihilated in a moment by a king who loved the mother of his child more than he loved the King dom he had sworn to protect.

And with a glaring smile, the Summer Queen was asking me me a girl of sixteen what to do about it. If she did not like my answer, she said, she could easily dispense with me, leave me in the dungeons as monster-bait.

I wanted to be a strong queen, a prou d queen like the Summer Queen who , for all her hostility , inspired in me a grudging sense of deep respect.

But I was also sixteen years old. And my mother had just been cap tured by our mortal enemies, a c ourt of fairies who wanted little as much as to m ake an example of her to bring d ow n the Summer Court.

I had to be brave. I had to be strong.

I had to make the right choice.

Chapter 1

I stood before the Summer Queen. She gazed upon me with a cold, unblinking stare her eyes as fixed and deadly as the eyes of a snake. She was beautiful, even in her cruelty; her golden -red hair was wound up in a series of knots and tendrils, embedded with emeralds and rubies. The scarlet velvet of her dress hung down from the throne and brushed gently the floor. She looked regal, truly truly like a queen, and for all that I feared her , I nevertheless acknowledged her authority as Queen of the realm. Instinct led me to want to defend my father and my mother, and yet as she looked upon me , I could not help but feel sorry for her, but take her side. How difficult it must have been for her, to rule a country and fight a war , and all the while endure the indignities of having a husband stray from his marriage and find love with another woman. Did she love my father?