Free The Ice Queen (Dark Queens Book 3) by Jovee Winters

with snow. The air smelled of crisp pine, and frosted berries, and nipped at her nose with its wintery kiss.
    “For years Baatha I’ve been alone. Devoid of human, or semi-human interaction, I do not know if I can do this now. How do I even start?”
    He screeched, and she looked deeply into his golden-tawny colored eyes. So wise, and full of intelligence. She nodded, having lived with him as her constant companion the past hundred years, she’d learned his language.
    Learned what each shrill cry meant as though he’d spoken to her in her own tongue. And just as she knew him, he’d come to know her.
    “You are right, I did not think this through.”
    His chest feathers ruffled and he bumped his sharp beak into her cheek, then blinked at her twice.
    He’d been angry at her earlier for deciding to come on this journey, not able to understand her sudden about face for coming out to the people trapped here.
    Honestly, she wasn’t quite sure herself why she’d done it.
    It went against everything she was now, and yet...sometimes when the loneliness of her existence became too deep she’d remember the woman she had used to be.
    The one who could laugh easily and often.
    Who’d been able to tell tales, and make jokes.
    The one who’d smile with a heart full of glad tidings. Who’d had a heart for the unfortunate, and the downtrodden. Who’d believed in the general goodliness of the people around her.
    The woman she’d been before the night that’d stripped her of her soul and had turned her into a creature as unfeeling and uncaring as the ice she loved so much.
    Shaking her head, she watched as a small shower of diamond polished flakes fell off the crown of her head to land at her bare feet.
    In that deep darkness she gave voice to the innermost fears of her heart.
    “When I saw him, Baatha, I felt again.”
    Her whispered words sounded like a ghostly wail on the wind. And for the first time since the genie had given her the power of ice, she shivered. Hugging her arms to her chest, but not from cold.
    Rather from some innate knowledge that things were about to change for her. Portentous things. Like she’d come to a fork in the road, one smooth and barren and free of obstacles and another that was choked with weeds and treacherous holes throughout.
    And though she knew she should have chosen the cleared path, she also knew that by coming here she’d somehow taken the rickety and dangerous trail.
    Mouth dry, and palms actually sweating, she held them up before her, watching as curls of steam wafted off them into the night.
    “I sweat.” Her words sounded shocked, strained, and even slightly of fear.
    Baatha moved his head toward her first palm, rubbing the side of his face against it, allowing the magicked tears to fall from his eyes and rim her hand in frost once more.
    He repeated the same process on the other hand before turning to look back at her with curiosity burning bright in his tawny eyes.
    Feeling choked up, Luminesa swallowed hard.
    She was feeling things, not just emotionally, but physically as well. Already she was changing. And the thought was terrifying.
    Curling her hands tight to her breast, she gazed at the blizzard in front of her without really seeing anything and whispered, “I feel, Baatha. I’m beginning to feel again.”
    His sharp cry rang in her ears. A question that demanded an answer. Was it good what she felt? Would this change her forever? Would he lose her?
    A single tear slipped from the corner of her eye, crystallizing the moment it landed on her cheek.
    “I don’t know,” she whispered honestly, “I just don’t know.”
    Luminesa stood on that balcony for hours, watching as the aurora borealis danced here and there.
    ~*~
    Under Goblin
    S miling softly to himself, he made his way up the spiraling staircase, undetected by all within. Not even the queen would find him here, not with the type of dark magick he’d shrouded himself in.
    He’d told her there would be no