Free The Winter King by Heather Killough-Walden Page B

of
the sky above. Through that glass, Poppy could see that the sun
that had been merely peeking over the horizon moments earlier was
now slightly higher, shedding more orange-pink light into the
gigantic room, giving it an otherworldly and warm glow.
    Which was an odd thing for
this room to have – since it was a room of ice .
    The walls and floor of the
room were constructed of pure, hard, perfectly carved ice. At
least, it was either ice or blue-white marble that looked
remarkably like ice. But given the sounds it was making, she was betting on
the former rather than the latter. Besides, it smelled like ice
too, that clean, cold, and hollow scent that was impossible to
describe other than to say it smelled like frozen water.
    Carvings in the ice along the walls were
deep enough and tall enough that she could make them out clearly
even from where she stood at the room’s center. The images that
graced the walls were those of majestically detailing dragons and
giants, great Viking battle ships atop deadly waves on what was
most likely the North Sea, and of lightning bolts on mountaintops
and polar bears trekking across vast, flat landscapes of frozen
water.
    They seemed to tell a story, these pictures
that blended perfectly, one into another, and the story was one
that felt familiar somehow. She’d grown up in Canada, so the
culture of the north and of the cold were not alien to her. But it
was more than that. There was something here so recognizable, she
could almost begin narrating, as if the words would simply pop into
her head and flow from between her lips with flawless delivery.
    She turned a full circle, then craned her
neck and just looked up at the changing colors the sun made upon
the crystal of the glass overhead. Now she knew she was either
dreaming or dead. “I’m standing in a Viking castle,” she whispered
to herself.
    “ You’re close,” came a
familiar voice, deep and resonant. It filled the massive space of
the antechamber and brushed along her skin like a caress. Yet, it
also filled her with dread. It was sort of a… delicious kind of dread. Like death
by chocolate.
    She turned slowly, her mind spinning, her
will reaching out for any and all magic she had left in case even
in this dream world, she was going to have to throw down with a
Norse god.
    But he stood at ease, his
hands at his sides, and though his exceedingly tall frame and broad
shoulders were anything but benign, he made no moves to attack in
any manner. Instead, he gestured to the antechamber around them.
“This is the domicile of a sovereign,” he told her, his glacial
blue eyes glinting, no, glowing , in the early morning light.
“It lies in the Ice of Time just beyond the Frozen
Sea in a realm reachable only by those
with Winter in their blood.” He smiled, his flashing eyes catching
hers and gripping tight. “It is the Castle of the Winter King.
Welcome to my home.”

Chapter Thirteen
    793 A.D. – The Winter Kingdom
     
    Erikk pulled his soaking body out of the
water and onto the fresh white snow of the iceberg mountain, and
immediately got to his feet. For being a dead man, he was awfully
cold. Weren’t you supposed to be comfortable once you were dead?
His feet were like ice cubes of their own in his boots, icicles
were forming on the ends of his eyelashes and braids, and his skin
was thrush with tiny bumps that were chafing irritably against his
wet leathers. He needed to get moving, find peat moss for a fire,
and light it.
    His people always carried flint and iron on
their belts for fires. All he needed was something to light. But
his expression grew dour as his gaze scoured the landscape to find
only thick, bright white. If he wasn’t careful, not only would he
not find fuel for a fire – he would go snow blind.
    He gritted his chattering teeth to keep them
from breaking and placed his hand under his eyes to block the glare
of the snow as he trudged through the white and began climbing the
smooth ice steps that led