The Winter King

  Bounding directly after the other sovereign was the dire bear, Meridian. The two made quite a spectacle entering the room, one a handsome king who’d obviously rushed as fast as inhumanly possible to get to the ice castle, and the other a massive white bear with magic powers and glowing gold eyes.

  They’re glowing, Kris realized just after he noticed it. The dire bear’s normally brown eyes only glowed gold when he was communicating telepathically with his best friend, William.

  “Will, what is the meaning of this?” Kristopher asked at once.

  William Balthazar Solan’s real name was probably something much different and much, much older, and most people who knew him assumed he didn’t even have a given name. These days however, he went by any combination of these three names at once. Between the Thirteen Kings, it was normally Solan. Kristopher referred to him as Will. And in the dark and the quiet, the Time King was referred to as the Lone King.

  At the moment, William skidded to a halt, disheveled and striking, and pinned his currently emerald green eyes on Kristopher’s soon-to-be queen. “Don’t sit down on that throne, Miss Nix. It’s been warded.”

  “Warded?” Kristopher asked, striding down the steps leading from the dais to meet Will and Poppy in the center of the room. What the hell was he talking about? What kind of ward? “By who?” he demanded.

  William turned to the giant bear that had stopped a yard away from the group. The bear made a few growling sounds, and its glowing eyes flashed. Will turned back to Kris. “Apparently….” He cleared his throat, and suddenly looked very worried. “You won’t believe me if I tell you.”

  “I won’t let you live if you don’t,” Kristopher told him firmly. The threat was an empty one; William was impossible to kill. How was that for a super power? It might very well have been his only one, but it was a doozie.

  “Fine,” William replied. Then he took a deep breath and squared his shoulders. “Meridian claims to have seen a shield maiden hovering over the queen’s throne after you both departed earlier. He doesn’t know what she was doing to it, however. Before she could spot him observing her, Meridian transported to me.”

  Kristopher stared dumbfounded at the Time King. “A shield maiden?” he asked stupidly. There was no way.

  William said nothing. The question was rhetorical.

  “By ‘shield maiden,’” said Poppy softly, “do you mean a mortal woman who choses to fight beside her male Viking peers, or….” She paused, no doubt feeling a little silly asking the question. “Do you mean a Valkyrie?”

  Kristopher felt his jaw tighten. His gut churned with unanswered questions and dark possibilities. “Both.”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  793 AD, TromsØ, the northwest coast of Norway

  The year was nearly at an end, and the sun made its appearance for short moments every day, low on the horizon, red-orange in color, faint as the distant moon. It was the time of the Solstice, time of renewal… and for Erikk Rangvaldson the newly throned Winter King, it was a time of revenge.

  He stood as a lone figure on the hilltop, wind and snow blowing about him like a cloak. His eyes, which had always been the bluest of blue, were now lighter than before, and glowed eerily with malign intent. Should any of his people have been capable of seeing him up there on that hilltop that overlooked the village, they would not have recognized him. He was older. His hair was lighter and longer. His furs were solid white, and he held a massive longsword literally constructed out of ice. He had grown in stature, as was fitting for a king. And he knew that stature was frightening to behold.

  But his people were huddled in their tents and homes. Smoke billowed from every lavvu, smoke hole, and chimney below. The temperatures had dropped. Winter was on its way.

  “You have no idea,” he spoke softly.

  He’d come while Neve was sleeping. He didn’t want her involved in this. And it was his responsibility, anyway. Erikk’s father had been chief – and no matter what Bjarke Stalson might believe to the contrary, the death of the chief meant Erikk was now in charge. This was something he was going to make certain Bjarke understood very, very well. Right before he died.

  Erikk moved down the mountain, walking atop the snow rather than sinking into it as he had when he’d been mortal. The snow moved for him now, supported him, and blanketed his arrival. There was no discomfort in it, no cold, no wet. It was a white, multi-faceted friend that rode the winds Erikk now controlled. All of it, he controlled.

  His power surged through his body, through his mind. He could have laid the village low with no more than a blizzardy thought. He could have buried it beneath an avalanche. They were settled near the ocean; he could have drowned the village beneath a rogue wave.

  But a confused and quick death would serve no justice. He had other things in mind.

  Erikk made it to the main trail leading into the village and walked into the town on quiet malice. He knew where he would find Bjarke, and his eyes settled on that long wood house as the wind picked up around him, a reflection of his mounting fury.

  He whispered, so soft he could barely hear it himself. “Come out and face me, Bjarke. Come out and face me right now.”

  In the mounting storm, something stirred. It might have been a sound, or perhaps a shadow that passed before the slats between the logs of the house. But he knew Bjarke had heard him, and he waited, his sword in his hand, as the man no doubt grabbed his own weapon and donned his furs and boots.

  The wind howled. The flakes of snow around Erikk grew smaller and harder, rolled into hard snowflakes by the building gale. Up on the mountaintop, thunder rolled. Light split the tall, dark snow clouds. They were the mighty bolts of Thor being thrown in a rare, but not impossible thunder snow.

  Down below and all around Erikk, more people stirred. He could feel them. It was an odd sensation, being able to almost hear other minds. He knew where each member of his tribe was at that given point in time. But what was more was that he felt who was not there. Not any longer. Because they had been murdered by the man who now called himself their ruler.

  Erikk waited.

  Finally, the front door of the long house flew open, and the tall, broad form of Bjarke filled the doorway. The man stood there in that passageway for many moments, as he no doubt attempted to process what he was seeing several yards away.

  “What are you?” he finally asked, his voice filled with the strain of confusion.

  “It is not what I am, but who I am that must concern you, Bjarke Stalson. I am Erikk Rangvaldson. Chief of these people.”

  By this time, others had begun emerging from their tents, perhaps arrested from their sleep by the turning of the weather or by a vibration in the air. They knew something was wrong, something was changing, and their curiosity roused them from their beds and brought them out into the troubled night.

  “Erikk?” Bjarke’s voice traveled to him, but barely. “No. It’s not possible.” He shook his head.

  Erikk knew he was referring to several things in this instance. First, the fact that Erikk’s boat had no doubt shown up on the shore in splinters after that wave had struck him, and Erikk had probably been assumed dead. Second, the man standing before Bjarke just then was a good bit older than the Erikk Rangvaldson that Bjarke had last seen. Erikk had glimpsed his reflection in the smooth ice after he’d taken his place upon Winter’s throne. He had aged. He was no longer a boy, but a man. Winter had made him a king in every way.

  “Oh, but it is possible, Bjarke. And it is so. I’ve come to avenge the murders of my brethren and reclaim my people and my home.”

  Now Bjarke lifted his sword arm, and his blade glinted in the wetness of the storm. But lightning flashed overhead, and thunder rolled low and long, a warning if ever there had been one. The people who had gathered around them spoke amongst themselves. The night had brought witchery. The storm was brewing, the air was filled with madness, and the son of the chief, long thought dead, was standing before them now, twenty years older than he had
been the last time they’d seen him.

  But it was him. There was no denying it. He was taller, stronger, different. But still Erikk.

  Wasn’t he?

  “Come at me, Bjarke,” Erikk said softly, raising his hand to summon his enemy. “Let me give you the only warrior’s death you will have ever earned in your pitiful and meaningless bully’s existence.”

  Bjarke muttered something under his breath about sorcerers and the goddess Hel’s infernal reaches, then charged at Erikk with a guttural roar.

  Time slowed down for the Winter King. He moved so fast in that moment, he could almost see each individual snowflake around him spinning leisurely in its crystalline beauty. Sound went away. The thunder that had been rumbling overhead grew distant and quiet as a humming filled Erikk’s head, and his body moved of its own accord.

  His sword – the sword he’d been given as the Winter Kingdom’s sovereign – sliced like a shark’s fin through water. It moved like winter, like snow and weather and nature.

  Unstoppable.

  With each slice, the spilling of blood brought with it flashes, images, and knowledge. Erikk learned how Ronald had died; he’d gone in his sleep, his throat slit, his soul denied a warrior’s death. Erikk’s parents had met their ends in the same way. This knowledge spun in Erikk’s head, and his body spun in return. Now his attacks carried out the vengeance he’d come here to deal.

  He carved the path of his revenge into the body of his rival, sending into Bjarke the fear, the loss, and the loneliness that each of his victims felt. For Ronald, left with the world on his shoulders and killed in the still of the night. For Erikk’s parents, sickened horribly before they were finally, almost mercifully, done with. For the men and women of the monastery Bjarke and his men had sacked and ravaged. And for Neve, left to wander alone and afraid and freezing because she refused to submit.

  These feelings, these emotions and physical agonies, he sent spiking into Bjarke Stalson with all the hatred Erikk felt for him. He returned to an evil man all the evil that man had dealt. And when his sword of ice was done moving, Bjarke lay at Erikk’s feet, barely breathing. His blood soaked the snow beneath him, and his own sword lay broken in two a foot from his motionless body. Thunder returned the sound to Erikk’s world, followed closely by the stark silence of the villagers around him.

  Erikk gazed down at his fallen enemy for several moments. They were telling moments. They were moments in which he realized that vengeance was quick – too quick. In those moments, he realized that the emptiness that filled a being’s heart at the loss of someone he loved was not filled again once revenge had been dealt. It remained empty, and it always would.

  After those moments passed, the Winter King took a step back. His boot crunched in cold-hardened snow. He looked up, meeting the shocked expressions of his people.

  “It be Thor…” someone whispered shakily. Others joined in, nodding or whispering in agreement. Children of the village pushed through their parents’ legs and gazed up at him, pointing at his tall body, ice blade, long ash-blonde hair and unnatural white furs. Never mind he wasn’t carrying a hammer.

  “Not Erikk…Thor….”

  Thunder rattled overhead. Lightning split the night, and Erikk glanced up. A light speared the clouds overhead, spreading until it was a broad cone of illumination. From this light, several flying figures emerged. Erikk’s eyes widened. He may no longer have been mortal, and his blood and body may have been changed by what he’d become, but the majority of his existence had been spent as a human. And that human part of him knew that the winged figures descending toward the village just then were no other than the shield maidens of Odin. The Valkyrie.

  They’re real, he thought.

  Then the king part of him took over. He nodded in acceptance and looked back down at the man at his feet. This meant that Bjarke Stalson had stopped breathing. He was well and truly dead.

  Erikk glanced at the people around him. They still stared. Not one of them had noticed the Valkyrie coming toward them. That’s right, he reminded himself. Mortals can not see them. Oddly enough, mortals were never allowed to see anything that would justify their faith while they lived.

  The two women landed a few feet away, their massive eagle-like wings affording them a graceful touch-down in the snow on the opposite side of Bjarke’s fallen form. At once, Erikk recognized the woman who stood in front. It was Toril… Bjarke’s older sister.

  Their eyes met, and unspoken things aplenty passed between them. Then Toril looked down at her defeated brother. Emotion threatened her features. She began to kneel, as she no doubt knelt at the forms of many fallen warriors. However, the winged woman behind her stepped forward and placed a hand upon Toril’s shoulder. Toril glanced back. The other woman shook her head. Just once.

  It meant everything.

  Toril froze under the command. She would not be allowed to take Bjarke to Valhalla. She spun and met Erikk’s gaze again. Erikk could think of nothing to say. There was nothing to say. The other Valkyrie was right. Bjarke was no warrior. He had not died in battle. He’d died in an execution because he was a cold-blooded murderer.

  A long, swollen silence passed between the three. At last, the other woman tugged on Toril’s arm. Toril waited another beat. Her narrowed, angry gaze filled with sparking, hazel-colored promise. Then her wings batted heavily, and she took to the air.

  Erikk watched them fade into the sky above as lightning and thunder sung a saga of love and loss. When they were gone again, he took a deep breath and faced the people of his village. They were still frozen in place, their eyes wide, their expressions waiting.

  “Where is the sister of Ronald Dagfinnr? Where is Edda? Step forward!” he commanded, allowing the magic in his voice to carry it clear and far.

  The crowd rippled, and after a few moments, it parted to allow a tall woman with long red hair and freckles to walk into the small clearing. The woman’s green eyes cut to him like emerald blades, and she raised her chin. “Aye,” she said resolutely. “I am here.”

  If she thought he was Thor, she made no mention of it. As any true warrior would, she did not cow. Not even before a god.

  Erikk had known Edda for as long as he’d known Ronald. She was two years her dead brother’s senior, and she’d fought as a shield maiden in three battles. A small scar ran the length of the left side of her chin, but did nothing to mar her beauty. She hadn’t spoken to him much in his mortal life, but enough perhaps that she might have recognized him now.

  If she did, she kept that to herself as well. She didn’t care whether he was Erikk back from the dead or Thor, the god of Thunder. He’d defeated Bjarke, and that was all that mattered.

  Erikk sheathed his sword, slipping it smoothly into the white leather scabbard at his broad back. Then he slowly approached Edda. She did not back down.

  He could see into the woman’s heart. It was a sensation that would be difficult to describe. He simply knew what kind of person she was, and this with no more than a glance. He saw past her eyes and into her soul and knew that she was strong, good, and wise. “Edda Dagfinnr, you are to be chieftain of these people. You will guide them with the wisdom of Odin and Frigga and the strength of Thor and Magni. Keep one another close.” He leaned in, placing his hand upon her shoulder.

  She blinked, but did not flinch, and she looked down at his hand before once again meeting his gaze.

  He nodded, and just to her he said, “Right what has been wronged.” Then he stepped back, willed himself to return to his palace of ice, and vanished.

  Chapter Thirty

  Present day, the Winter Kingdom

  “So, Toril wants revenge.” Poppy was thinking out loud more than anything. She wasn’t totally in the present, sitting in that library of ice and books with two kings and a massive Dire Bear. Part of her was mentally stuck in the past, in the snow and cold and drama of Kristopher’s tale. It was a book-worthy tale. But unfortunately it was her very real life, and the drama within its telling
was about to catch up with her through mere association.

  She glanced up to get a covert closer look of the Time King, one Mr. William Balthazar Solan. He was busy ruffling Meridian’s fur while the massive bear slept beside his chair. Staring at the king now, she couldn’t help but wonder if every man who sat at the table of the Thirteen was ridiculously gorgeous. She knew the Shadow King personally. He was hot. She had met Roman D’Angelo once while he was visiting with Lalura. He was hot. She knew the Winter King… biblically. He was way hot.

  And now here was the Time King, with his full head of shiny dark brown hair and his eyes that looked like brilliant cut emeralds and his smile that was a little sardonic and a little sad. He was dressed in a charcoal gray three-piece suit that had to it an air of yesteryear, though it was clear the suit was brand new, very expensive, and tailored to perfectly mold to his tall, cut form. There seemed to be not an ounce of fat on his body, and the way he moved, walked, and even sat down in his chair across from her was the epitome of grace. There was something tucked into his front pocket, where a pocket watch would go, but she had yet to get a look at it. She only knew it was there because of the gold chain that was attached to it and one of the buttons on the vest of his suit.

  She studied him quietly as he lazily stroked the bear. In his right hand, he held a book in his lap, but there was no way to tell from his reserved expression whether it was a good book or he were even enjoying it. He reminded her of something, a mixture of jaded cruelty tempered by a helpless, grudging empathy. It wasn’t that he wasn’t a gentleman – just the opposite. It was just that there was something about him that looked as though it would not suffer a fool.