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

interference from him so long as it hadn’t already pertained to his plans, and he meant that.
    Creeping softly into the first room he came to, he stared at the child lying in the bed. The innocent, sweet little face of the miserable little monster. His smile stretched wider, growing sinister and cruel.
    Everything was going according to plan.
    He’d known that when it came right down to it, the queen might profess to loathing the very sight of humans, but she wasn’t as cold and callous as she liked to think she was.
    She had a weakness.
    One he’d discovered long ago when he’d caught her surreptitiously helping a stranded child in the woods. She’d not appeared as a woman to the little boy, but she’d guided him with pillars of walking snow out of the labyrinth of woods he’d found himself in.
    Keeping the pests and cold away from him. A night in a frozen wood that should have killed him, instead he’d walked out of there into the frantic arms of his parents, alive, well, and hale. And all due to a woman that none would dare believe it could be possible.
    From that seemingly insignificant incident a seed of an idea had germinated in his mind. He was many things, cruel, malicious, twisted, but he was also patient. Bidding his time until she’d not suspect him of subterfuge, until he could gather all the resources needed him to finally best the woman who’d become a thorn in his flesh.
    Petty though it might be, these lands were his, and he didn’t share. He wanted her gone. Wanted her mortal. Wanted that power stripped of her until she became the very thing she hated.
    Human.
    Sneering cruelly, he sat on the corner of the bed and called that sliver of spelled looking glass to him. The very one he’d given back to Luminesa.
    He’d needed that mirror; it was the key to her ultimate downfall. To anyone else it would have been foolish for him to have given it to her as he had, but he’d known what she would do.
    Luminesa had always had a fondness for children. If she’d stayed outside of the enchanted glades all of this would have been moot. He’d never have been able to win.
    But the queen had acted exactly as he’d expected. She’d come into this looped dimension Baba had created just for him. She’d come for the children.
    A shimmer of magic wafted off the silver now sitting on his lap. Picking it up, he fisted it tight in his hands. Until the sliver was nothing but a pile of fine ash.
    “Wake up, child,” he intoned deeply, sending a dark pulse of energy through his words.
    Sleepy eyes blinked slowly open.
    Grinning, he blew on the ash in his hand, spraying the shards into the child’s eyes who began to shudder and shake.
    Tears streamed from out of its eyes, as it rubbed its cheeks violently. But the poison had already been absorbed.
    The child began to cry, blinded and terrified.
    “Who’s—who’s there?” It asked softly.
    He rubbed the pathetic creature’s floppy hair. “There, there, child. All is well now. Nothing but a dream. Go back to sleep.”
    His voice hypnotized, soothed. And though the child clearly still felt the lingering effects of the glass, the tiny body shuddered once, twice, and then slowly relaxed as it once more settled its heavy head upon its pillow.
    “In the morning”—he whispered to a child now fast asleep—“when you wake, you’ll know what to do. Do not fail me, for if you do, I shall cut out your parents’ livers and eat them for my breakfast.”
    The babe shivered and the Goblin licked his lips.
    Standing, he turned, walking out the room and shutting the door softly behind him. He roamed the halls after that. Studying and learning the queen as he did so.
    She’d taken great pains to make the palace as comfortable for her three houseguests as possible. Though built of ice, there was a relaxed and almost warm atmosphere to it. Hearths that flickered in every room and burning with fire.
    There were even servants made of ice marching through the halls, busying