Free The Fairy Letters: A FROST Series(TM) Novel by Kailin Gow Page B

characterize our time
together. Perhaps I am wrong – I hope I am! But I cannot, in my jealous, loving
way, turn back that fear from my heart.
    Tell
me I am wrong, Breena! Tell me I have nothing to fear – that your heart belongs
to me and is mine alone! Such joy that this would give me is beyond the bounds
of thought; indeed, I alone would hardly be able to bear such rapture!
    Yet
despite my rancor against him, I am also grateful for him. Many times when you
were in danger (and once, as I well recall, when I was in danger), Logan has
risked the fur off his lupine back to protect you and those you loved. He is a
steadfast friend – as dependable in those labyrinthine chambers of the Summer
Court, with all its mysteries, as he once was on the battlefield. While at
times the thought of him so close to you – able to smell the swell,
intoxicating perfume of your flesh, able to touch the smooth skin of your
shoulder, close enough to feel your breath upon his lips – drives me to
tormenting distraction – at other times I feel a vast sense of relief that you
are not alone in that faraway place, that you have somebody to protect you, to
look after you, somebody in whom you can confide your secrets, even if that
somebody is not me.
    I
remember when Logan and I first met – we were both young lads, arrogant and
proud, and he had just returned from spending time with you in the human world,
and he was with his father, The Wolf King. When he heard I was curious about
you, every aspect about you, he grew wary of me and protective of you.
    “What
makes you so curious?” he asked me. “Do you intend to go after her, seduce her
like you fairy princes do to humans, Snow Prince?”
    “Of
course not,” I heard myself scoff, with all the pride and arrogance of a young
fairy soldier. “She is nothing to me! But I am curious as to the goings-on of
this strange land beyond the Crystal River. Likewise, I am concerned with her
safety – for as long as she is alive, she may yet grow to challenge Redleaf's
power, and Redleaf's reign – and perhaps then peace might be affected.”
    Logan
looked soulful. “I cannot imagine,” he said darkly, “that Breena is nothing to
anyone.”
    I
remember feeling slightly a pang of jealousy like a lightning-bolt in my heart
– but I composed myself and hid my feelings. Did this Wolf – I could not help
feeling – intend to make my bride his own? Our engagement was long-broken, by
the code of Feyland, and yet I could not help but think that you were mine –
that he had no right to you, no right to love you, not when that magic I so
tried to deny still bound us. I could not have explained my melancholy to
myself, but I remember that the night after meeting Logan, I felt for the first
time the sense that I could very well lose you, Breena, and not to the mortal
world, but to someone else.
     

 
    Letter 11
     
    Dear Breena,
     
    I
have trained over twenty years to be a great fairy. I have been well-versed in
the various Fey arts required of me. I learned to fight both with natural
weapons and with magical ones, to harness my strength such that – when dueling
with an enemy – I could seemingly slow down time well enough to choreograph my
next move. I could make the sword clatter from an enemy's hand and fall to the
barren earth simply by wielding my magic. I could read minds – not the
telepathy that I exchanged with you, my beloved – but a kind of eavesdropping
on weaker fairies. I could glamour – though not as well as Shasta – and
although it took considerable effort I could even glamour and hide my wings, as
I was forced to do on occasion when masquerading as a particularly tall elf on
one espionage-expedition to find out about the proposed elf-Summer alliance. I
worked day and night to forge these skills, beneath the twin suns of Feyland.
After your departure, and after my father's death, I gave up all my leisure
activities, all that had once given me joy. The few paintings I made of