Luminesa blasted a sheet of ice at him, but in this place, it was the Goblin and not she who controlled the element. With a sneer, he flicked his wrist, and the spires of ice turned on her, pressing dangerously against the cage of her ribs, right above the spot of her beating heart.
“Tut tut, my love. Manners.”
Trembling with fear and terror for Alador, she shook her head. “Leave them alone.”
“Oh, not to worry. I’d planned to return the children once this was all done. Really I only needed him, the children were nothing more than a distraction.”
Her nostrils flared. “But the deaths. Kai and Gerda...”
Grinning broadly, he revealed a new golden front teeth. “Meant to send you on a wild goose chase, which I must say, succeeded so far beyond my wildest expectations. You two were so consumed with saving them, that you never realized they were completely insignificant.”
Alador stepped into the frame and the moment he did the funnel of silver that’d swirled around Gerda’s head surrounded him, winking sharpened slivers of deadly silver.
Gerda, awake now, jumped to her knees upon the bed, screaming. “I am sorry, Alador, I couldn’t stop it. I couldn’t—”
Her male, her beautiful, brawny, wonderful male stood absolutely still, knowing the danger he was in. There was no protection to be had from the silver.
She shook her head as tears streamed down her cheeks, crystallizing an instant before they hit the floor and shattered into millions of infinitesimal particles.
“Well, let’s end this thing shall we?” The Goblin asked as though bored. Then snapping his fingers, she found herself suddenly transported to Gerda’s landing.
But not just her. Kai was there also. The four of them who’d started this, now forced to finish this together.
The silver still swirled around Alador who gave her a stiff smile. Even now he tried to be so brave.
“Welcome, welcome, one and all,” the Under Goblin bowed, “blah, blah, blah, now let us get down to business shall we, for I loathe the very sight of the four of you and wish you to leave my presence as soon as can be.”
Kai rubbed sleep from his eyes, slow to awaken, staring at what was going on around them with wide-eyed curiosity. Luminesa reached for the child, dragging him tight to her, shielding him from the Goblin as best she could.
The last thing she wanted was for the children to be forever marred by the sight of what the Goblin had planned.
But her eyes were for Alador alone.
And only because she studied him as she was did she spot a look in his eyes that chilled her to the very core of her being.
Grim acceptance.
What had he been about to tell her downstairs?
Oh Goddess.
She shook her head in silent denial even as her brain suddenly clicked all the pieces into place.
The constant and irritating ache in his chest that would sometimes flare at night and in the morning. The way his heart would sometimes beat out of control inside of him.
How he’d sometimes mumble in his sleep, visions of death and destruction.
She’d told him nothing, she hadn’t wanted to worry him, and she knew he’d done the same for her.
He closed his eyes, as though knowing that she’d finally figured it all out.
“Oh my Gods,” she mouthed the words.
But the Goblin had been paying close enough attention to her that he’d seen it.
His cackling laughter echoed down the halls like demon song.
“Please tell me you didn’t do what I think you did,” she pleaded with tears choking her.
“Here’s the thing, my sweetness,” he said, ignoring her question, “I rather enjoyed seeing your struggles this past month. The the ice demons that would hammer away at the castle at night, the random deaths and terrible omens...this is a hell worth keeping around. I will let you have your horse—”
The way he spat the name, like a slur instead of the loving way she used it, made her teeth clench.
“How dare you!” she seethed. “You cannot do this.”
“Oh, not I.” He crossed his arms. “Choice is yours. Keep this heaven on Kingdom if you will, have your mate, rut like beasts, raise these sniveling ‘forever’ children...nothing changes in this place, always you will be frozen in time. Doomed to live each day over and over and over...but together. Which surely counts for something. Or win your freedom by taking his.”
“What have you done!” Alador thundered this time.
He’d been so still; unnaturally silent that Luminesa had feared there was none of the fire left in him that she’d come to love. She almost smiled to hear the passion in his voice now.
Her male started to move forward, but the Goblin held out his hand. “Na uh,” he jerked his chin in Alador’s direction, “one move in my direction and I’ll slam that silver into every square inch of you, instant death.”
“Taking his?” Luminesa was made of ice, but she’d never felt so cold in her life.
Her ears rang and her heart beat an aching melody in her chest.
“Oh, did you think I meant death?” His eyelinered eyes widened, and he patted fingers to his chest, booming laughter eased from between his lips. “Luminesa, the things you say. What you must think of me, woman, I mean really.”
Moving slowly as she talked, Luminesa finally got her body between the Goblin and the children. The moment she did, Kai tossed himself into Gerda’s arms who was sobbing a heart rending moaning sound behind her.
They might not be the children’s parents, but for a month’s time they’d tended to them as if they were. And in that moment, Luminesa suffered a startling epiphany.
For the first time in her life ever, she knew what it was to have a family. A family she would protect at all costs.
“Killing him is just too easy. Truth is, my love—”
“Do not talk to her thus,” Alador snapped, barring his teeth at the Goblin in a crazed, animalistic manner.
But the terrible tension in his words fazed the Goblin not at all. He merely smiled at her centaur, sure in the knowledge that he held the upper hand.
Which she hated to admit, he did.
In here her powers were limited, and fighting the ice demons every night as she had had drained her further. Luminesa wanted to kick herself for not seeing what he’d done, for not being able to piece it all together sooner.
The Goblin had been brilliant in the simplicity of his plan.
“You found me my mate,” she said it softly, brain clicking everything together.
The Under Goblin turned, beaming down at her like a proud parent. “Took me years to find him. But Baba Yaga’s price hadn’t been much to pay when it all came down to it. I merely had to wait for the colt to grow into a stallion. But patience I have in spades, sweet Queen. And so I waited, waited until every piece was in play and then I made my move.”
Turning her eyes upon Alador she cried, shook her head, and broke as the enormity of what it all meant finally sank in.
“Alador?” His name was a broken whimper on her tongue.
His face crumpled and yet again when he tried to move to her, the silver swirled tighter about him.
The Under Goblin’s grin grew wider.
“Where is the key to your release from this hell, Luminesa?” he asked with a cackle in his voice.
She swallowed, devastation slamming into her so powerfully that it was almost hard to breathe.
“Inside of you,” she whispered it to Alador.
His nostrils flared and then a lone tear trekked down the corner of his eye.
“It’s what you were going to tell me earlier, wasn’t it?”
He nodded.
“When did you figure it out?”
“This morning when I woke, I felt something foreign inside of me.” He tapped his chest, just below the spot of his heart and winced. “I feel it now.”
For once the Goblin remained silent, but he needn’t have said anything anyway. H
is plan had been flawless, perfect.
She’d been so blinded by her love for him, and her belief that the Under Goblin couldn’t lie and so therefore the key had to have been hidden in the castle.
He’d told her it was just beneath her nose.
She should have known. Dear gods above she should have known.
“Goddess I’m a fool.”
“No.” Alador shook his head. “You are wise beyond your years, my love. Far superior to any centauress anywhere.”
Her breath stuttered as she took a trembly breath. Because this felt an awful lot like he was saying goodbye.
“What happens if I take the key from out of him?” She looked at the Goblin.
He was far more serious now than he’d been, staring between them with the oddest look she could hardly fathom.
“Then you all leave. Returned to your world and your peoples.”
That wasn’t everything and she knew it. Saw it in the thinning of his lips and the way he averted his eyes.
“That’s not everything. Tell me everything, now.”
He didn’t need to. The Goblin held the entire deck of cards. So it shocked her when he said, “His memory is supplanted. The past month, all of it, gone.”
He snapped his fingers. “He’ll forget the truth of everything.”
Luminesa staggered back, feeling as though someone had just shoved a red-hot poker through her heart. Clutching onto the horribly beating thing, she imagined what that meant.
And the fullness of it was a horror too difficult to comprehend.
She would lose her mate.
But maybe she could just woo him back? They were mated now, bonded by souls. Surely that meant something, surely that—
“And before you imagine that you can simply turn the charm back on him and make him fall in love with you once more, the memories he will receive of this past month will make him loathe you. For you see it will be you and not I that tortured the children, you who killed innocent ice maidens, you who tortured them through the night with demons ripped straight from the bowels of hell. All of it. All. Of. It. All you.”
She gasped.
“Don’t believe him, Luminesa!”
Alador called, his voice a desperate cry, but she was so cold and numb and heart sick to her core that she hardly heard him at all.
“We are bound by the truest of magic that no darkness can penetrate.” His words were an urgent cry.
The Under Goblin snarled. “There is another way of course,” he pressed on with a dismissive flick of his wrist in Alador’s direction, “you leave the key inside of him, content to live out eternity trapped inside of here. But really, isn’t this preferable than having the male of your heart hate you forever?”
Tears dripping down her face, Luminesa looked at the children.
Thinking of their parents, of the pain and desolation they must feel never knowing what’d occurred to their little precious ones. Her mind traveled to the deaths, the pain that they’d endured in this place. Yes, there were moments of happiness, when she lay in his arms, when he told her of his great and undying love for her...all those things she remembered, but it was not enough to make her forget the rest.
Ice maidens would suffer eternally. There’d be so much death on their hands, and all for the sake of their love.
“It is not a sacrifice we can make,” Alador whispered, knowing exactly where her thoughts had led. Her beautiful, wonderful male...so perfect for her in everywhere.
Gerda and Kai began to sob quietly and the sound of it broke her.
Chin wobbling, she moved toward Alador, covering her face with her hands as she wept, “How can I endure your hatred of me? I do not think I could handle it.”
“I’ll never hate you, my heart. ‘Tis impossible.”
But she knew his words to be vain lies, the Goblin had thought of everything. He’d fixed every scenario so that even if she won her freedom she still lost.
Either choice was her doom.
He’d won.
And though she thought that maybe the fires of her wrath should be burning hard and heavy in her chest, she was too exhausted for it.
For a month she’d been surrounded by death. Every night losing so many of those nearest and dearest to her...knowing come night the terror and horrors would start all over again.
Luminesa had lost her taste for violence.
All she wanted was to live in peace, secluded from the world with only her lover for company, but even that would be denied them now.
Grabbing her hand, Alador planted it against his chest. And though every other time the silver had buzzed angrily when he’d moved, this time it was as though the spelled fragments understood that victory lay close at hand.
The shards dropped to the ground, harmless, winking almost prettily from the reflection of winter fire.
The Goblin leaned against the corner of Gerda’s bed, legs crossed at the ankles, and wearing a smug smile of satisfaction.
His vengeance complete.
“Withdraw the key,” the Under Goblin said, “and the children shall return to their families unscathed with no memories of what ever happened here.”
Clenching her jaw, she looked back at him. “Will they hate me too?”
“They will not remember you. You will be forgotten by them. Any kindness you shared, warmth, or love...all forgotten like a feather drifting off on a breeze.”
He wiggled his fingers dramatically.
Gerda shook her head. “I don’t want to forget you, Ice Queen. I love you.”
Kai shook his head too. “Me too.”
With tears streaming down her face Luminesa was absolutely broken, a shattered woman. If she were selfish she’d leave the key inside of Alador. But not at the expense of their souls or his.
The children had died once, with a surety it could happen again. No doubt would happen again. This place was no oasis, it was purgatory, the worst form of hell that tortured the mind and played with their emotions.
She looked back at the beloved face of her horse. “I love you, Alador, with all my soul and heart.”
His knuckles brushed against the tender flesh of her cheek, causing her to tremble. Had she known this morning would be all they had left, she’d have said so many other things. She’d have taken the time to imprint herself upon his soul so that no amount of dark magick could ever shake her out of it.
“And I you, my lady of the snow. Always.”
Then tipping her chin up, he planted the sweetest, softest kiss upon her lips and it wasn’t fair that she tasted forever on them, because in just a few moments, there’d be no forever for her.
Just misery.
“Find me again, Luminesa. Do not let me go. Never stop searching for me, come back for me, Luminesa...come back for me.” He punctuated each word with a hard thump of their twined hands against his chest.
His eyes were wide and full of entreaty.
She loved him so much. The thought of losing him this way...it was killing her.
Then tugging the bracelet free of his wrist he handed it to her. “Keep this. And when you come for me, show it to me. The magic of my people rests within these charms, even if I don’t know you, I’ll feel it. Do you understand me?”
The Goblin chuckled. “Ah, the plight of the hopeless. What fun.”
Luminesa wanted to cut his tongue out and feed it to the ice demons. But it wasn’t worth losing even one precious minute of her time with Alador.
Taking the bracelet from him, she slipped it high on her bicep. The weight of it settled warmly against her.
Alador turned his palm over. The snowflake pattern that’d appeared upon their joining was now gone.
She flipped her hand over. The tiny horse hoof marking was still there. Bringing her hand to his lips, he pressed an ardent kiss upon it.
“Do it now, Luminesa, before I lose my nerve.”
With a cry of pain, she forced herself to do what she did not want to do. Luminesa turned her hand to ice and
shoved it through the side of his chest, her fingers curling immediately around a cold piece of metal.
Alador cried out, crumpling to his knees.
And then she yanked the key free.
Epilogue
Alador
A year later
The Ice Queen stood before him, tears in her eyes as he held a spear to her throat. The night was long and pregnant with moonlight, highlighting every luscious dip and groove of her body encased in a gown of ice.
A body she’d used to get what she’d wanted out of him. Gorgeous she might be, but her heart was as hard as the ice she called home.
“You would do well to leave my side,” he snarled, “do not think I’ve forgotten the evil you committed against me.”
She was brave in the face of his fury. Notching her chin high as she shook her head. “If you would just let me give this to you, you would see—”
She moved her hand toward him, but he slapped her hand away, knocking whatever it was she’d held out onto the forest floor.
“Kill me then,” she cried, “kill me if you can. If I’m as evil as you say, end me.”
Her words so shocked him that for a moment his arms froze and all he could do was stare at the face of the woman who haunted his dreams every night.
But the dreams were nothing but lies, the reality was that Luminesa was a bitch, an evil-hearted creature who’d taken great delight in hurting him and the children.
“I should end you,” he seethed. And though he knew he should, though he remembered every awful thing she’d done with startling clarity, he couldn’t seem to make himself commit the final blow.
“If you don’t, I’ll only return again. You made me promise you, Alador, remember what he’s done. Remember me.”
Her words haunted him, had hot ghostly threads of some alternate memory come sliding to the surface. Memories of her laughing, smiling at him, whispering of her love and fealty...of him telling her the same.
He roared, and settled back on his hind legs, his front hooves kicking out, nearly taking her head off.
“Go!” he shouted, “go away and never return!”
With a cry that seemed ripped from her soul, she turned into a pillar of snow and headed toward the spot where whatever she’d been holding had been flung.