The Winter King (27 page)

Before transporting, Kristopher filled Poppy
in on what to expect. It turned out that far from being the
dangerous, angry, crag-filled place that comic books and movies
would have it out to be, Jotenheim was actually no more than a
mirror of the human world, but with giants. And the giants were not
the Earth-shaking, stomping and furious twenty-foot-tall beasts
legends had them out to be either. At least, not all the time.

Apparently, giants had three different
forms. In Jotenheim, they could appear either slightly large or
very large. Because appearing very large took a lot of magical
energy, giants preferred their more natural form, which happened to
be about the size of the aptly named Andre the Giant. They were
big, but not Goliath big.

The most surprising thing
Kristopher told her about them was that it was in the human world
where giants took on their third form. In the mortal realm, giants
were in fact on the small size. Poppy scoffed at this, but
Kristopher
swore
that if you ever met a giant in the human world, he was
guaranteed to be on the shorter side of normal.
And
the skinnier side of
normal.

“
You’re kidding,
right?”

He just chuckled and shook his head, making
the sign of a cross over his heart.

“
Jeez,” she said. “It’s
like… the opposite of all these guys with tiny penises who are
drugged up on vein-popping, ball-shrinking steroids and blowing
their tops at the slightest provocation. Real giants, on the other
hand,
are
enormous but
appear
small.” She laughed. “I love it. You know, I’ve
known quite a few skinny guys in my time. I wonder if any of them
were giants?”

“
Were they
smart?”

“
I don’t associate with
idiots.”

Kristopher laughed again. It was starting to
get to her. What was it about his damn laugh? “Then your chances
are good,” he said. “Also unlike the perception Hollywood and even
my own mythos have attempted to foster, giants are not the bumbling
morons they’re made out to be. Quite the opposite, in fact. They’re
highly intelligent.”

Poppy stared at him a moment. “What you’re
telling me is that giants are nerds.”

“
Yep.”

“
Oh my God. The quarterback
on the football team is a shrinky-dink, and the math tutor is from
Jotenheim.” She threw back her head and laughed as she recalled all
of the chess club geniuses she ate lunch with in high school. She
may have been dressed in torn jeans and combat boots, and she may
have had a few rebelliously colored streaks in her hair, but when
it came down to it, she simply could not stand to surround herself
with anything but open minds and quick wits. So she’d hovered
around the geeks. “All that time, I was kicking people’s butts for
picking on my friends, and they didn’t need my help at
all.”

“
Believe me, in this world,
they’re as physically helpless as they appear. You were probably
their very own shield maiden. At least, that’s how they would have
seen you.”

She stared at him. “Really?”

“
Really.”

“
But…
how?
Why didn’t any of them ever
just, I don’t know, transform? Or at least tell me what they were?
And why would they even come here to begin with?”

“
Like I said, they’re
highly intelligent. They crave education. When a child is born to a
couple in Jotenheim, they make the decision to either have them
tutored by former mortal realmers in the giant’s realm or send them
to live with the mortals, where they can learn alongside humans. I
will say one thing for humans. They may be closed-minded on the
whole, but a few of them are brave enough to focus on the problems
of the universe and seek answers to those problems. While everyone
else is far too wrapped up in things they can’t prove, the great
ones, for
now
,
continue to share the things they
can
prove. When they stop doing so,
whether by choice or because they’re forced into silent submission
by their peers….” Kristopher took a deep breath and blew it out
quickly with a shrug. “Well, the giants will probably stop coming
then. There will be no point any longer. Humanity will have
regressed into the stone age.”

“
So giants haven’t always
come to the mortal realm?”

“
Gods, no. This is a recent
development, more sixteenth century and beyond. And at first, they
couldn’t manage it. When they finally developed the magic that
would allow them to do so, it came at a cost. Here in the mortal
realm, they would lose what made them giants. It was the sacrifice
they had to make. Their strength and stature would vanish. In
return, they would be allowed to live in the mortal realm until
they’d learned all they could learn. Then they would return to
Jotenheim and become teachers themselves.”

“
About how long does a
giant live?”

“
I’d say around a thousand
or so of your years. I know of one who lived to be a thousand,
three hundred.”

Poppy digested it all and they prepped to
transport through Jotenheim. Kristopher referred to it as
transporting “through” the realm rather than “to” the realm because
they were running short on time. Concern over what the Midgard
Serpent might do next was elevating with each passing minute. If
Poppy wanted to, she could always visit the realm later. She had a
lot of realms to decide whether or not to visit.

Wow
, she thought. Life was opening up to her. She felt like man
on the verge of flight… new worlds were available to her now, and
if and when she became queen, she would have an immortal lifetime
with which to explore them.

“
Wait,” she said, holding
up her hand to place it on Kristopher’s arm just as he was making
the motions of calling up a portal.

He froze. “What is it?” he asked, at once
concerned.

“
I’m sorry, I just – I’ve
been wanting to ask you something. If I become queen, will that
make me immortal like you? Or will you just have to get another
queen in fifty to sixty years?”

Kristopher laughed a relieved laugh, and of
course she absolutely loved the sound of it. “You will live as long
as you wish, blossom. Immortality is relative.”

“
It is?”

“
Just ask
William.”

Poppy frowned. Then she shook her head and
asked, “And when I do, will I age twenty years like you did? I
mean… living forever is a grand idea and all, but I’d rather do it
from my age and not my mother’s. If I’m being honest.”

He laughed again. He laughed easily. Poppy’s
eyes dropped to his lips. Every damn time he laughed, she wanted to
kiss him and swallow the sound up. It was like he was laughing
cookies or something.

“
Winter turned me from a
boy to a man because no king should be frozen in eternal
adolescence. You on the other hand, will remain as you are. If
anything, you’ll feel younger than you do now. The surge of power
that comes with taking the throne is indescribable.”

Poppy’s eyes widened a little. She imagined
herself sitting on that throne now, absorbing that power. Feeling
younger! Would that mean… no more pain? No more headaches?

Kristopher leaned in, chuckling softly. “I
see it in your eyes now, blossom,” he said as he slid his arm
around her waist and wound his other fingers through her hair to
gently grasp the back of her neck. “You can’t wait, can you?”

She kissed him. Because it was the laugh
that did it.

He kissed her back. Because that was how he
was.

And when they parted a full minute or so
later, she asked breathlessly, “What the hell is it about your
laugh that gets me so damn hot? It makes me… I don’t know! I feel
like I just got a new car for Christmas or something!”

Kristopher’s lips slid into a slow, knowing
smile. “Well, in all honesty, that makes a lot of sense.”

“
What? How?!”

“
The name Winter gave me is
Kristopher Scaul,” he told her. “Every now and then, I add an ‘e’
to the last name, just to keep smarter people doubting. But even
then, the resulting name is a homophone of the real one – if you
scramble the letters up a little….” He trailed off, turned away,
and began opening the portal.

“
Scaul,” she said softly to
herself. “S-C-A-U-L….” In her head, she unscrambled them and placed
them back together in different orders. Once. Twice. Third time was
the charm. Her heart began pounding as she said the name in her
head. Her ears started ringing. “Oh my God,” she
whispered.

As the portal swallowed them up and took
them into another world.

Chapter Forty-One

For all intents and purposes, they really
did pass through Jotenheim, transporting to a forested location
outside one of Jotenheim’s cities and transporting back out again
before anyone could notice them there.

They headed back to the castle to regroup
before opening the third portal they would need to activate a
gateway to Yggdrasil.

“
Now for Valhalla,” said
Poppy. She’d hoped to keep the worry out of her tone, but she
failed miserably. She
was
worried. Someone in Valhalla wanted her dead.
Which meant she had two options. She could either stay here and let
Kristopher deal with that someone himself, or she could look her
problem in the eye and deal with it too.

“
She doesn’t really want
you dead, Poppy. She just wants to get even with me.”

Poppy looked up at Kristopher. It was as if
he’d read her mind.

“
It doesn’t matter,” she
said. “You’re my king. I’m your queen. So this is my game.” She
nodded to herself and peered deep into his aqua blue eyes. “And
sometimes you just have to take people off the board. That’s the
nature of chess.”

Kristopher didn’t smile. He didn’t laugh.
But there was something different, something deep and indescribable
in his eyes. He didn’t take them off her as he summoned up the
portal. And when the passageway was complete, he stepped aside to
allow her entry first.

Poppy rolled her shoulders back and stepped
into the portal. Time and space swirled around her, shifting and
pulling and shortening and straightening until the exit opened up
on the other side. Before it had even fully formed, she was
stepping out.

Once again, it might have
been wise to proceed into a new environment more warily, and this
was something that shot through her mind
just
after a fist connected with her
jaw, her head snapped to the side, and her body followed sluggishly
after.

She hit the ground in some
indeterminate manner, so numb in shock from the attack that she
literally couldn’t tell what part of her hit the ground first. But
half a second after she hit, she started to get her bearings. She
was on mixed turf, grass and dirt. She was rolling, and the rocks
bruised where they contacted bone. Her face hurt, but the attack
had impacted her jaw, not her teeth. That was fortunate; dental
implants were
not
fun. Someone was yelling; she recognized Kristopher’s voice
and the voices of several women. She continued to roll and forced
herself to her feet.

More pain instantly assaulted her, radiating
out from just beneath her ear, where her jaw joints met. Probably
they were torn, hopefully not broken. She decided to ignore the
pain in that certain way that only people in the middle of a fight
could do.

She was standing in a man-made clearing
amidst a forest of giant trees that looked like a cross between
Aspen and Redwoods. They were as tall as Redwoods, but their bark
was white as snow. The ground was soft brown dirt covered in
patches of thick, green grass. At the center of the clearing was
what looked like a fire pit.

Several yards away, on the opposite side of
the fire pit, the portal came to a close and vanished. Feet from
where the portal had been, Kristopher stood tall and strong, and
held a woman out at arm’s length, one of his hands wrapped firmly
around her neck.

The woman’s feet were a
foot off the ground. Otherwise, Poppy guessed she’d have stood
approximately the same height as her, more or less. She had long
light brown hair streaked gold by the sun, and she was dressed in
what seriously looked like “Amazon warrior” armor. There were half
a dozen other women in the clearing, all dressed similarly. It was
as if they’d transported directly into a filming set for
Xena, Warrior Princess
.
She knew these were the Valkyrie. This was Valhalla, after all. But
not one of the women was sporting a set of wings.

Poppy turned her attention back to the woman
Kristopher was choking. She had both hands wrapped around his
wrist, and by the color of her face, it looked like Kristopher’s
grip was tightening.

That’s
Toril
, she thought.
And he’s going to kill her
. Poppy
opened her mouth to call out to him and try to make him stop, but
before she could say anything, someone else did.

“
Erikk! You know the fight
is no longer yours now!” said one of the women. Poppy gingerly
touched her chin and moved forward to get a better look at whoever
had spoken. The small group of women parted, and a seventh warrior
moved forward into the clearing.

Kristopher’s eyes glowed hot with anger, and
Toril’s face was turning the color of beets. “She attacked my
queen,” he stated through clenched and bared teeth.