Ice Kissed (28 page)

“Stay here,” Ridley instructed me. “Lock the door behind me, and don’t let anyone in.” He started walking toward the door. “And hide, just to be safe.”

“Where are you going?” I asked.

“I’m going to get you out of here,” he said, like that explained anything, and then he left.

I did as I was told. I locked the doors and then went into his bedroom to hide. The shades were drawn, leaving it nearly dark even though it was still daylight. The afternoon sun was hidden behind an overcast sky, but the extra level of darkness was still comforting.

I leaned against the wall and slowly lowered myself to the floor. And I couldn’t think. I tried to figure out my next course of action, but I couldn’t. My mind felt numb and blank, and I couldn’t process anything that had happened today. It felt like I’d slipped into a big white void that had swallowed me whole, and nothing was real anymore.

“Bryn?” Ridley’s panicked voice was in the house, and I hadn’t even heard him open the doors. Time no longer seemed to move in any coherent way, and I had no idea if he’d been gone for ten minutes or two hours.

“Bryn?” Ridley repeated, sounding more panicked this time, and he came into the bedroom. “What are you doing? Why didn’t you answer me?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted.

He crouched next to me. “Are you okay?”

“I don’t know,” I said again. “But I will be.”

His eyes searched me in the dark. I didn’t know if he believed me or not, but we didn’t have time to figure things out right now. “We have to get out of here,” he said.

I got up and hurried after him, and that seemed to help. Moving reminded me that I was alive, and there were urgent things I needed to take care of if I wanted to stay that way.

Ridley had gotten an SUV from the King’s fleet and parked it in the constricted alley behind his house. I pulled up my hood over my head, and he snuck me out the back door and loaded me into the back of the Land Rover. He covered me in a thick black blanket kept in the back for emergencies, and then he hopped in the driver’s seat.

As he drove through town, he said nothing. Underneath the blanket, I couldn’t see anything. I just listened to the sound of the car.

It didn’t take long before I heard the SUV come to a stop and the window roll down.

“Where are you going?” a man barked, and by the tone of his question, I surmised it was one of the H
ö
gdragen guarding the gate.

“I have orders from the King,” Ridley replied, sounding just as stern.

“That doesn’t tell me where you’re going,” the H
ö
gdragen shot back.

“I am the
Ö
verste, Ridley Dresden.”

By the sound of the rustling, I guessed that Ridley was pulling out his credentials to show the guard. It was a cross between a passport and an FBI badge, with all the specific information to prove exactly who he was.

“This still doesn’t tell me what you’re doing, sir,” the H
ö
gdragen said, but with a bit more respect in his voice now. “Doldastam is on lockdown now.”

“I know that,” Ridley snapped. “But the King has sent me on a mission to follow up on a lead on Viktor D
å
lig. Do you want to stop the commander of the army from going after the man who tried to kill the King?”

“No, sir,” the H
ö
gdragen replied. I heard the muffled sounds of him conversing with another guard but I couldn’t understand what they were saying. Then, rather reluctantly, he said, “All right. Go on through.”

The gates creaked open loudly, and the SUV started to move. At first, Ridley drove at a reasonable speed, but as soon as we were a safe enough distance away, he sped up, causing the vehicle to bounce around on the worn road.

I pushed the blanket off my head and sat up, looking around at the familiar trees that surrounded us. I wondered dimly if I’d ever see them again, but I had far more important things to worry about.

I climbed up over the seat into the front and sat down next to Ridley.

“How are you doing?” he asked.

“I’ve been better.”

“I got passports and money from the safe.” He motioned to a black duffel bag in the backseat.

“Thank you.” I looked over at him, and I hoped he understood how much I truly appreciated what he’d done and risked to help me. Ridley reached over, taking my hand in his, and held it on the drive to the train station.

When we pulled into the parking lot, he turned off the car and got out. He grabbed the bag from the back, and I walked around the Land Rover. He took my hand again so we could walk together to the ticket booth, but I stopped.

“What?” Ridley looked back at me.

“You can’t go with me. This is where we have to say goodbye.”

He shook his head. “What are you talking about?”

“Kennet and Konstantin are just pawns. Somebody else is making the moves, and I need to find out who that it is and make sure they get some semblance of justice. I may never be able to prove my innocence, but I won’t stand by and let everything I care about be destroyed.”

“That’s exactly why I should go with you,” Ridley insisted.

“No. I shouldn’t have let Kasper go with me, and I won’t let you meet his fate,” I said.

“Bryn—”

“And more than that,” I cut him off, “my parents are still in Doldastam. I don’t know who is behind everything, and they could go after them in retaliation. I need you to go back and make sure they’re safe.

“And Tilda,” I went on. “She needs someone to help her now. And I need you to tell her that I didn’t kill Kasper.”

“Bryn, she knows that,” he said.

“Tell her anyway, okay?” I persisted. “And tell her I’m sorry. I never meant for him to get hurt.” I swallowed back the tears that threatened to form.

Ridley squeezed my hand. “Okay. I’ll tell her, and I’ll watch out for you parents and Tilda. I won’t let anything happen to them while you’re gone.”

I kissed him then, knowing I might never see him again, that this might be the very last kiss we ever shared, and he set down the duffel bag so he could wrap his arms around me. For a moment, the world fell away around us, and it was only me and him and the way his lips tasted and his arms felt and how desperately I loved him.

He held my face in his hands and looked deep into my eyes. “When this is over, and your parents and Tilda are safe, I will come find you.”

The train began to whistle as it pulled into the station, so we didn’t have much time. I kissed him again, then grabbed the duffel bag and ran into the station.

FORTY-SEVEN

five days later

The cell phone sat on the counter, the black screen staring up at me, almost taunting me to use it. It’d been five days, and every day had been a battle of will not to call Ridley to find out what was going on.

I didn’t know if he’d gotten caught for helping me escape, and I wanted to know how Tilda was doing and if my parents were safe. But the H
ö
gdragen were probably monitoring his phone, and even though I’d gotten an untraceable prepaid phone, that could still mean trouble for him.

So I didn’t call.

“What are you having?” the waitress on the other side of the cracked vinyl counter asked me, interrupting my staring contest with the phone.

“Um…” A badly worn laminated menu sat on the counter next to my phone, and I quickly scanned it to see if anything appealed to me. Most things sounded as if they were cooked in a vat of grease, and my stomach rolled in disgust. That was the price of stopping in dive diners like this, but I didn’t know how long I’d be on the run, and these places had the cheapest food—even if all the food was repulsive.

“Just an unsweetened iced tea,” I decided.

“Coming right up.” She smiled at me as she took the menu. Even though she had the weary expression of someone who was at the end of a ten-hour shift, there was sympathy in her eyes as she looked at me, so I knew I had to look as bad as I felt.

The metal side of the napkin holder worked as an okay mirror, so I tilted it toward me to get a better look. My attempt at dyeing my hair hadn’t worked, failing the way it always did since my hair refused to hold any color. The black dye had faded into a sickly grayish-blue, and in another day or two it would be gone entirely.

The black eye Kennet had given me had finally begun to heal. The first few days it had been an awful puffy purple, and now it was fading to a putrid yellow. I tried to cover it up with makeup, but it was still obvious that there was something going on with my eye.

It didn’t help that I wasn’t sleeping, so there were bags under my eyes, and my skin had an unpleasant pallor. I hadn’t been eating well either, since it was hard to find anything that sat well with me on the road. I’d made the mistake of grabbing turkey jerky in desperation last night and ended up throwing it up.

So far, my only plan was to get south and lay low for a little while until I felt like most of the heat was off. I knew Evert wouldn’t want to spare many soldiers to go after me, but he would probably send a few. The Skojare would definitely send some of their guards, not that I thought they’d be able to do anything.

But since I was accused of killing a Prince, other Skojare allies might send troops to help find me, like the Trylle or maybe even the Vittra. They lived farther south than we did, which meant I’d have to go even farther to get out of their range until everyone got tired of looking and went home.

I didn’t know where I was exactly, but the last sign I’d seen had been for Missouri. I hadn’t decided if this was far enough, or if I should keep going. I didn’t know where the end of this journey was for me.

The waitress brought back my tea, and I pushed away the napkin holder so I wouldn’t have to look at myself anymore. I leaned forward, letting my hair fall over my face as if I could hide myself, and went back to my staring contest with the phone.

I heard the stool next to me creak as someone sat down, which annoyed me since the entire bar was empty. There were plenty of seats for them to sit in without crowding me.

“Need any company?” the guy next to me asked.

“No, I’m good,” I said firmly, and tilted my stool away from him a bit.

“A girl alone like you, I really think you could use a friend,” he persisted, and it didn’t look like he’d get the hint without more force.

“Listen—” I turned to him, preparing to tell him off—but when I saw I was face-to-face with Konstantin Black, the argument died on my lips.

He looked exactly the way he had in the lysa—his hair longer than it had been before, the raven curls framing his face. From the scruff on his cheeks it had to have been a couple days since his last shave, and he wore all black. His smoky gray eyes studied me, and he offered me a hopeful smile.

“So, what do you say, white rabbit?” Konstantin asked. “Friends?”

GLOSSARY

Changeling
   A child secretly exchanged for another.

Doldastam
   The capital and largest city of the Kanin, located in northeastern Manitoba, Canada, near the Hudson Bay.

Förening
   The capital and largest city of the Trylle. A compound in the bluffs along the Mississippi River in Minnesota, United States, where the palace is located.

Hobgoblin
   An ugly, misshapen troll that stands no more than three feet tall, known only to the Vittra and Omte tribes. They are slow-witted but possess a supernatural strength.

Högdragen
   An elite guard that protects the Kanin kingdom. They must go through a specialized training process after tracker school, and many prospective guards are unable to complete it because of the difficult requirements in order to graduate. Members of the H
ö
gdragen are respected and revered throughout the kingdom, despite the fact that most are born lower class, because of their skill and their unparalleled ability to protect the royal families and the kingdom at large.

Host family
   The family a changeling is left with. They are chosen based on their ranking in human society, with their wealth being the primary consideration. The higher ranked the member of troll society, the more powerful and affluent the host family their changeling is left with.

Iskyla
   Small Kanin arctic community in northern Canada.

Kanin
   One of the more powerful tribes of trolls left. They are considered quiet and peaceful. They are known for their ability to blend in, and like chameleons their skin can change color to help them blend into their surroundings. Like the Trylle, they still practice changeling exchanges, but not nearly as frequently. Only one in ten of their offspring are left as changelings.

Lysa
   A telekinetic ability related to astral projection that allows one troll to psychically enter another troll’s thoughts through a vision, usually a dream.

Mänsklig
   Often shortened to “m
ä
nks.” The literal translation for the word “m
ä
nsklig” is human, but it has come to describe the human child that is taken when the Trylle offspring is left behind.

Markis
   A title of male royalty in troll society. Similar to a human duke, it’s given to trolls with superior abilities. They have a higher ranking than the average troll, but are beneath the King and Queen. The hierarchy of troll society is as follows:

King/Queen

Prince/Princess

Markis/Marksinna

H
ö
gdragen

Troll citizens

Trackers

Humans

Marksinna
   A title of female royalty in troll society. The female equivalent of the Markis.

Omte
   Only slightly more populous than the Skojare, the Omte tribe of trolls are known to be rude and somewhat ill tempered. Unlike the other tribes, Omte tend to be less attractive in appearance, and along with the Vittra, they are the only tribes known to have hobgoblins in their population.

Ondarike
   The capital city of the Vittra. The King and the Queen, along with the majority of the powerful Vittra, live within the palace there. It is located in northern Colorado.