Black Ice Burning (Pale Queen Series Book 3) Read online

  ALSO BY A. R. KAHLER

  The Pale Queen

  Pale Queen Rising

  Cold Dream Dawning

  Cirque des Immortels

  The Immortal Circus

  The Immortal Circus: Act Two

  The Immortal Circus: Final Act

  Other Titles

  Shades of Darkness (Ravenborn)

  Love Is in the Air

  A Child of Wight (A Short Story)

  The Vampire Diaries

  The Tristram Cycle

  The Initiation (Short Story)

  With Blood on His Hands (Short Story)

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Text copyright © 2016 A. R. Kahler

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by 47North, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and 47North are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781503953925

  ISBN-10: 1503953920

  Cover photo by Kindra Nikole Photography

  Cover design by Jason Blackburn

  This one’s for Will for keeping this world alive.

  Contents

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  One

  Summer is cold.

  I can’t even bring myself to say it’s fucking cold, because that would require a degree of sarcasm my body can’t afford. It’s too busy trying to keep all the blood in.

  The runes on my spine should burn like embers falling onto snow. Runes for healing, numbness, strength. Not one of them is doing a damn thing to regrow the three fingers on my right hand or—judging from the dull pain in my legs—the broken kneecaps and shattered femur. They aren’t taking away the lances of agony that accompany every breath, thanks to the ribs currently poking into my lungs. They’re not even helping the black eye that’s swollen my socket shut. Not that I could see in the darkness down here.

  Without magic to fuel them, the runes are just worthless black tattoos. Worthless, ugly tattoos on a worthless mortal body.

  A worthless, broken, freezing body.

  My muscles contract and shudder, making my bruised cheek slam against a bar. The iron cage I’m crammed into is maybe the size of a mini fridge. And that’s being generous.

  Very generous.

  Yeah.

  I am going to die down here.

  It’s not the first time the thought has gone through my head, either in life or in this present situation. But now, I don’t feel any fear or worry. I’m way past that point.

  The queen wants her alive, my captors had said. But clearly not all in one piece.

  Clearly. They’re responsible for two of the missing fingers and more than a fair share of my blood loss.

  And alive is another generous term.

  Mab gave me my first tattoos nine years ago, when I turned sixteen. The year before had been horrible—daily intensive training to endure pain of all types. There was a month of solitude in an icy cave with a few scraps of cotton for clothing and an ember that never died and never burst into flame. Weeks of physical beatings from a rather sadistic minotaur with a dungeon fetish. Endless nights of panic dreams—falling, running, burning, drowning, carnivorous ants . . . you name it—every one of which was then re-created in my waking life.

  I nearly killed myself a dozen times. But that was part of the training—I couldn’t die, couldn’t ever harm myself. If I tried, I would just be brought back, and it would start all over again.

  In the end, it turned out that all the trauma had just been so I would truly appreciate the runes that took my pain away. Mab acted as if it was a perfectly normal thing to do to a teenager—all was fair in love and assassin training. The worst part was, I didn’t hate her. I took those runes like communion, and I viewed her as a savior for showing me the way out of that hell.

  It’s been nine years since I’ve felt pain like this. Since I’ve felt this mortal.

  Being human sucks. I don’t know how others do it.

  A whimper escapes my lips as another shiver pulses through me. I’m somewhere deep in the pits of the Summer Kingdom, the room as black as night and colder than even Mab’s dungeons. Or maybe I’m just not used to facing the cold without my magic.

  None of that matters, though. Because I’m here through every fault of my own, and no one is going to swoop in to take this pain away.

  I should have fought. I should have relied on my training and not my magic—there were still a half-dozen weapons hidden under my skin, but I didn’t even try to summon them when the Pale Queen attacked. If I even could have summoned my weapons without magic. I’d managed the Tarot card earlier, but a full-fledged battle-ax might have been a stretch. Not that that was an excuse. I still had my training to fall back on. I might have lost my powers in attempting to resurrect the Oracle, but that wasn’t enough reason to have failed in this; I still could have taken down a dozen or more of the Pale Queens’s minions and died in the glory of battle.

  No. I let them take me. I let the rogue Fey beat the shit out of me and drag me down to this cell. Literally drag. They shoved me in the cage in Oberon’s throne room, right before the ashes of his body, and then pulled me, cage and all, down five flights of stairs, my body thumping against every one like a sack of bloody bricks. At least, I think it was five flights. I passed out from the pain after the second.

  I let them beat me because it kept me from beating myself. The sparks of pain kept other sparks from my mind—my mother bursting into light before the light consumed her. Oberon—immortal, omnipotent Oberon, the Summer King and vital force of nature—crumbling to ash at the Pale Queen’s feet. Eli, my eternal ally, being torn from my control. And all the lives I’d been shown in Tír na nÓg: content with my parents, the happy home with Roxie, or living exaltedly by Mab’s side as her prized assassin.

  All of them are dead or gone.

  The Summer King.

  My mother.

  Eli.

  The dreams I hadn’t even known I’d harbored.

  The Pale Queen took them from me in the space of an hour, and I don’t even have the energy to feel enraged. For the first time since I took someone’s life, I don’t want revenge. I don’t want blood. I don’t want someone else to hurt in my place.

  I sit here, curled in on myself, bleeding out onto the brick, and all I want is to die.

  I want to die.

  It’s not even a depressed thought—it is as cold and resolute as this cell. It’s my last way out and only way forward. It’s better than the alternative.

  I try to call out to Eli. He was bound to serve me, and only me. But my jaw doesn’t work, and I can’t even force my thoughts to coalesce enough to think at him, not that
I really expect it to work. But it should work. He should be here. I shouldn’t be rotting alone. But with every attempt to call him back, I’m reminded that I am no longer powerful. I no longer have any cards to play. I can’t even get my damned astral servant to come to my side as he’s bound to do.

  I’m not sure how long I’ve been lying here, my blood dripping into my mouth, my breath growing harsher and slower as the dark turns a deeper black. I don’t care. The Pale Queen told me to tell Mab that she had three days to surrender. It’s an order I’ll never deliver. Not down here.

  I’m failing my queen.

  I should feel ashamed.

  Instead, it just feels as though I’m embracing the inevitable. We always knew I would fail her. It was just a matter of when and how badly.

  I try to squeeze my eyes shut, making small splotches dance across my vision. Images of my mother come back. I’m too weak to push them away.

  She sat in front of me on the grass, huddled in my arms, as her skin glowed bright, as her flesh turned hot. As the power that Kingston had so carefully locked away within her broke free, all thanks to me. I had given her my blood. My power. And that cracked her wide open as the force within her fed on my magic. She began to shake. To moan. I felt her, burning away. I felt the memories Kingston had given her flare and fade, felt the oracle powers within her stretch and burn. And then she began to scream. Her words were almost unintelligible.

  Even having gone over them a dozen times, they don’t make any more sense.

  Her name is writ in hell! she cried out. In blood and twilight, her name is spelled, and this name shall be her downfall. She must die where her shadow began. Where she ended, she must end again.

  Then the light consumed her. Blinded me. Burned through my mother and my closed eyes, and the light was golden. Warm. As warm as the tears dripping down my face. Warm as the blood dripping from my wounds. So golden, so bright.

  Until it’s not just in memory. I feel the warmth of her. The light of her, through my closed eyelids. The hiss of her fire.

  I must be dying. Or going insane. Or maybe that’s just what happens when you die—you begin to hallucinate a golden light, a warmth. Heaven. It has to be one big delusion; there’s no way I’m going to the happy place after the life I’ve lived. I squeeze my eyes tighter, fold the pain back over myself. I don’t deserve heaven. I may want to die, but I don’t deserve escape from this. Not for what I’ve done.

  Only, the light doesn’t go away.

  It gets brighter. Warmer.

  And when I open my eyes, I’m not staring into darkness.

  Hell, I don’t know what I’m staring into.

  A golden serpent twines in the air above me. As if the creature is made of light and energy that hisses and sparks, and it has this plume of feathers sprouting from its head. For a moment, I think I really have lost it—I’ve never seen a faerie like this. Then the gears click, and I realize with a sickening pang why the thing looks familiar.

  It’s Kingston’s tattoo. Peeled from his skin and quasi corporeal. All witches have a familiar—a magical, often animal counterpart that amplifies their power. This must be his. What better way to keep a powerful spirit close than by binding it to your very skin?

  Which means Kingston isn’t far behind.

  “Go away,” I mutter.

  I close my eyes again and try to focus on my pain. I said no one would save me. I should revise that: I don’t want to be saved by Kingston. I don’t want him to swoop in and think he’s my knight in leather armor. That’s not a power I ever want him to have over me.

  But the serpent doesn’t go away, just keeps circling over my head in a quiet Möbius strip, and I keep waiting for one of two things to happen: either the guards come down and somehow banish the thing or Kingston appears in a puff of glitter and tries to make me feel like shit.

  After all, I’ve not only killed my mother in the act of reviving the Oracle, but killed the only woman Kingston ever loved as well. For someone who’s lived three hundred years, that’s not something you forgive so easily.

  Nothing happens for the longest time. I close my eyes again, watch the serpent move behind the darkness. Maybe Kingston just sent the thing to taunt me. Or maybe it is a sign that he is dead. No, I wouldn’t be so lucky.

  “I should be enjoying this,” he says. His words drift through the dark like cigarette smoke, just as bitter and just as deadly.

  I can’t move, but I still jerk away from the voice. I’m too far gone to even berate myself for being surprised, for flinching like a beaten pup. But I guess that’s what I am right now. I’m a bitch in a cage, and I don’t even have the strength to bark back.

  A moan escapes my lips. I think I wanted it to sound like screw you. It’s not even close.

  He moves from the shadows, comes around to the side of the cage to kneel down and look me in the eyes.

  “You look like shit,” he whispers. It almost sounds pained. Like it hurts him to see me like this. More than it hurts me. Not possible.

  Another grunt. I think my jaw is dislocated. I lost track of the blows pretty early on. Turns out I wasn’t so masochistic without my magic.

  He reaches out and I flinch again, but he doesn’t touch my face. His hand goes to the bars of my cage. Power pulses through my prison, and a moment later the cage vanishes, falling apart around me in a waft of dust. My body flops to the ground, muscles screaming with the sudden movement. I am going to kill him after this.

  Rather than put a hand on me to start the healing process, he looks to the serpent spiraling above us.

  “Tell Mab I found her,” he says to his familiar.

  I’m cognizant enough to see the serpent nod; then it seems to implode on itself in a slow swirl, and the cell is once more as black as my humor. Distantly, I wonder how much of this is actually happening and how much is my brain hemorrhaging.

  All I hear is his breathing. He doesn’t move to heal me. I can’t move at all.

  “Did you kill Oberon?” he asks.

  I grunt. I don’t know if it sounds like a no. I don’t know if he cares.

  “Did you kill her?”

  I don’t say anything. That’s answer enough. I know he’s not asking about the Pale Queen. He doesn’t care about her. Ever since I met him, my mother was all he could talk about. Apparently I look like her. Explains why he slept with me.

  He doesn’t speak. Not for a long while. I feel him there, beside me, and I feel his rage like a cloud. I’m suddenly fully aware of how vulnerable I am, and how powerful he is, and how quickly our usual dynamic could flip on its head. He could kill me, and no one would know. It would defeat the purpose of him coming here, but hell, at least then Mab would believe whatever lie he spilled. I tried to save her, but I got there too late. Look, this was all that was left of her . . .

  “I should let you die for this,” he finally says. His voice is steel over whetstone. “This is your fault. All of it.”

  He grabs me by the hair then, and it’s not gentle, not in the slightest. I wince and bite down the moan as a halo of light forms around him, a rage that illuminates him like a demon. He forces me to look in his eyes.

  “Did you enjoy it? Did you make her beg like the heartless bitch you are?”

  His fingers tighten when I don’t respond.

  Then he slaps me.

  “Answer me!”

  He’s never raised a hand against me. No man has ever raised a hand against me, not one who expected to live. And I can’t even wrench my hair from his grip.

  “I should have killed you the moment you were born,” he hisses. “You don’t deserve to live. Not for what you’ve done. You should have died in her place. It should have been you!”

  The last part is a yell.

  When he goes silent, he looks up to the ceiling. We both hear the scurry of footsteps. The guards approacheth. Okay, magic man, time for us to go. But I can’t force the words from my mouth. Just another moan. I don’t like the expression on Kingston’s face
. It’s this strange mix of distant and pissed. And resolute. I see the decision congealing behind his eyes. If I were the type to beg, that look would bring it out of me.

  “I want you to rot down here,” he hisses. When his eyes look at me, I see something of my old self in the gaze—the coldness, the dead resolution: it’s the combination of traits that are necessary to kill. “Your mother would be ashamed of you. I hope you know that. Everything you are, she would despise.”

  He lets go of my hair and my head slams back to the concrete. Consciousness fades in and out.

  “I’m not doing this because I care about you,” he says. “I don’t want you to live. But Mab would kill me if I let you die down here, and I’m not going to let you ruin my life, too. At least, no more than you already have.”

  He leans in closer.

  “You failed her, you know. Your mother. And Mab. And Mab does not take kindly to failures.”

  There’s a crackle of power, a spark that curls through the air. And right before the Summer prison fades away, I realize the true reason I was okay with dying down here.

  Failing Mab is a far worse fate than death.

  Two

  This is not how I wanted my homecoming to go.

  I’m lying in a pool of my own blood before my cold hearth. Kingston isn’t there, which means there isn’t any magic keeping my pain in check, or mending broken bones. Or regrowing my fucking fingers. A moan escapes my lips as my remaining digits twitch desperately at the fireplace. But the flames don’t spark back to life. The embers glow faintly. One cracks. My inner dialogue is a series of curses.

  I don’t even have enough magic to light my own damn fire.

  Thankfully, my skin frosts over with Mab’s presence before I can mentally berate myself too much. I’ve never been thankful for Mab’s unannounced entry to my room. I blink, and there she is, standing beside the fireplace, wearing a dress of black lace and leather panels of armor. I’m too brain-dead to wonder how she pulls it off.

  She doesn’t rush over at the sight of me. Doesn’t kneel by my side and make tsking noises as she soothes and magics away my hurts. No, she just stands there, staring at me, her green eyes glowing in the darkness and her ruby lips tight with displeasure. Her arms are crossed, one ringed finger tapping on her elbow. Studying me.