The Winter King (30 page)

Each time it rose up, wings out, length of
body coiled beneath it like a partially drawn rope, it opened its
mouth and revealed its fangs. There were four rows of teeth, two in
the front on the top and bottom, and two more behind those, rather
like a shark’s back-ups. At the incisor location on either side
were two long fangs, four fangs in total. Each set of fangs
possessed one very, very long fang, and one only slightly shorter.
They were so sharp, their tips disappeared into the thin sheerness
of something too sharp to see the end of. There would be no
stopping those fangs, and if the snakes in the ice castle truly
were the Serpent’s children, she could understand how some of them
would even be able to bite through magic.

But it was the monster’s
eyes that held Poppy’s attention the most. There was
something…
off
about them. Granted, she was staring up into irises the size
of pickup trucks, and that was probably odd enough. But it was more
than that.

They were as multicolored as the beast’s
scales, slipping from red to orange to yellow and down into the
blue end of the spectrum. They reminded Poppy a bit of the eyes of
Dannai Caige, rainbow-hued and luminous. But at their centers,
where there should only have been the black of the Serpent’s pupil,
there was something else.

Poppy frowned, squinting to
try to get a better look. Whatever it was that caught her
attention, it was out of scale with the rest of the giant snake. It
wasn’t as large as it should have been. It didn’t fit. It was as if
the thing she saw were
hiding
there in that darkness, not wanting to be seen or
noticed. And that was exactly why she
had
noticed it, and why she tried
all the harder to
see
it.

She inched forward, staying well out of
their wide ring of combat. But just when she thought she could make
out what it was that was wrong, the dragon roared, tilted its head
back, and breathed a spray of ire-laced acid that filled the air
around them. Poppy screamed, running and jumping for cover behind a
particularly thick tree as the spray flew into the trunk and
sizzled.

A half-second later, her heart leapt into
her throat and she shot out from behind the tree, her only concern
whether or not Kristopher had also found cover.

He had. A shield of ice melted slowly around
him like a thick, clear igloo. He was crouched down behind it, but
his eyes were on her. Once he saw that she, too, was safe, he
nodded. She smiled at him and hoped it was reassuring.

Kristopher waited another beat before
spinning and rising, using his sword to shatter the shield he’d
created. It exploded brilliantly, and shards of the ice went flying
outward toward the Serpent. As if by sheer dumb luck, or perhaps
because the Fates deemed it to be so, the longest and sharpest of
the shards shot straight for Jormungand’s throat. It struck between
its scales and sank deep. Blood that looked like blue goo mixed
with pixie dust began spewing outward with gusto.

He hit an
artery
, thought Poppy. She began to feel
something akin to hope. The fight would soon be over.

The Serpent lurched backward, its mouth wide
open, its fangs glistening, a terrible cry of fury erupting from
its long, long body. More blood splayed outward, and Kristopher
barely managed to avoid being drenched in it.

Then the ground shook again. More fissures
opened up in the dirt around Kris. He looked down just in time to
jump in order to avoid falling into one of them. And as he was
looking down, the Serpent struck final and true.

Kris’s head shot up just as the Serpent’s
fang descended.

In that moment, Poppy at last saw clearly
what it was she’d noticed in the monster’s eyes. Kristopher’s sword
rose in defense, in one final attack, and pierced the Midgard
Serpent beneath his jaw. The icy blade of the weapon sank deep into
the beast’s skull just as the Serpent’s tooth pierced Kristopher’s
heart.

Chapter Forty-Five

Poppy could feel it in her own chest. She
froze as it took her breath away, and she watched as her entire
world fell to his knees in a clearing a few feet away.

“
No.”

She shook her head.
No, no, no, no, no….

The Serpent tried to wail again. It tried to
scream. But the sound came out garbled, strangled and drowning in
the blood that now seeped and boiled up exuberantly from the hole
in its head. Kristopher’s sword had gone straight through, and she
could see the very tip of the ice blade poking out from the top of
the Serpent’s skull.

Kristopher had fallen to his knees. The
snake’s fang had gone through him as well; its razor-sharp point
went clean through the Viking’s chest to emerge on the other side
before it curved downward and back, nearly piercing him once more.
Red blood soaked his chest and drenched the ground beneath him, yet
he maintained his grip on his sword, fighting to the end like a
true warrior.

No….
She’d only started;
they’d
only started. This was all still brand new. She
hadn’t had a chance to do anything yet. Neither of them had. There
was so much to learn, there was so much to do.

She wasn’t seeing what she was seeing.

Yes you are, Poppy. You know you are.

No, I’m not.
She shook her head again and closed her eyes,
willing it to go away.

Yes you are! Now grow up, see what is there,
and fucking do something about it!

Her eyes flew open again. Her inner voice
had always been particularly harsh when she was doing something
wrong and knew it. Like she was right now.

Somehow she forced her feet to move. They
took one step, two, and then they were running, and finally she was
sliding into the red mud beside her lover, and her arms were going
around him. She caught him just as his strength gave out, and he
slumped into her embrace.

The Serpent’s fang receded, pulling from
Kristopher’s chest as Jormungand slid heavily and limply back into
the abyss. The hole left behind by its massive tooth oozed more
blood, but its flow was slowing. He was dying.

“
Kris,” Poppy
whispered.

Beside her, the ground
shook one last time. She ignored it, though. It wouldn’t dare
swallow her up right now. It wouldn’t dare! The multiverse would
not fucking
think
about messing with this precious moment! “Kristopher, look at
me.”

She heard the sound of a blade through
flesh. She felt something wet coat her right arm and the right side
of her body. She felt more rumbling, heard the scrape of stone on
stone, and she knew what was happening. Kristopher’s sword was
pulled free of the Serpent’s head. Jormungand was falling. His
blood was drenching everything around him. The ground of Midgard
was swallowing it back up. It was all happening, really happening,
and Poppy couldn’t take her eyes off the man in her arms.

His hand dropped to the side, and his sword
skittered to the ground inches from his loosened grasp.

She leaned in, her lips a breath away from
his. “Look at me!” she yelled.

Blue eyes opened. She moved back a little as
they focused on her. “You killed him, Kris. You defeated
Jormungand.”

“
Of course I did,” he said
softly. His voice was weak. He tried to speak again, but his words
hitched, and a trickle of blood fell from the corner of his mouth.
“I can do… any…thing,” he told her. “Because… I’m….”

Thor
, she thought.
I
know
.

He smiled. “Santa Claus.” He chuckled, the
sound for once as terrible as it was wonderful.

And then his eyes shut again. His body
became heavier in her arms, and all that was impossible became
reality. Right there, in that moment – when Kristopher Scaul’s
heart stopped beating and the poison of the Serpent took his
life.

“
Kris… no, no, open your
eyes. Kris! Kristopher, look at me!”

Her voice rang out hollow and helpless in
the stillness of the clearing. She tore her eyes off the man she
clung to and looked around as if searching for something that would
make it all untrue. The ground was destroyed, broken into pieces
like a shattered puzzle. The Midgard Serpent was nowhere to be
seen.

She knew now why the Serpent had attacked
the Tree. She knew everything. The thing she’d seen in its eyes,
the thing that didn’t fit, had been a long, ghostly white face. A
stretched out visage nearly without features. The Serpent had been
possessed by no other than the Entity. And now the Entity had taken
her king.

“
Bullshit,” she spat,
unable to look back down at Kristopher’s fallen form. She looked up
instead – and when she did, she saw the hole in the clouds and the
ray of light shining down from it, and the half dozen winged
figures that began descending toward her in that brilliant beam.
“No,” she said. “No!” she screamed. “
Bullshit!
” she bellowed at the tops
of her lungs.

You’re a warlock. Warlocks can
resurrect.

Her breath hitched. She went still and
looked back down at the man in her arms. And just like that, she
realized the voice that kept speaking in her head wasn’t actually
her own.

Winter.

Yes, Poppy,
said Winter
. It’s
me.

I have to bring him back.
How can I bring him back?
she demanded,
her eyes as wide as a crazed person’s.

Resurrect him.

I can’t! A warlock has to
be more powerful than the one they’re resurrecting!
She was not more powerful than the Winter King.
She had nothing on Thor.

Yes you can. Make yourself more powerful
than him, Poppy.

But how
…. But even as her mind whispered the question, she had the
answer. An image of the throne room appeared in her head. She saw
her throne. And she saw a chessboard, broad as the face of the
world. And she knew the queens on that board were the most powerful
pieces of all.

Suddenly, the idea that had sparked to life
while she was in the transporting room back at the castle
re-kindled and grew, catching ablaze like a bonfire. She realized
what she had to do.

She threw her body over the Winter King and
hugged him tight as she called up a portal and commanded it take
them both home. She felt the wind pick up, saw the swirling colors
in the sides of her vision, and waited for it to finish its job.
When she no longer felt or saw movement, she rose to a seated
position and glanced around the room. It was blurry through unshed
tears, but otherwise, it was the plain, unfurnished room she’d been
expecting. No sign of snakes. No sign of Valkyrie.

Good
, she thought.
I did that right.
Let’s see if I can continue the streak
.

She gingerly moved back, releasing her hold
on the Winter King so that he rested still against the ground. She
couldn’t stand to see him. She did it all without looking down.
Besides, there would be blood – lots and lots of blood of all
fucking colors – and she couldn’t stand to see that either. She
couldn’t afford to lose her nerve now. What she was about to do
would take all of her warlock strength and more.

She rose on legs that were completely numb
but somehow still moving. She made it to the stairs and began
climbing. Halfway to the top, as she’d expected, she heard the
hissing. But she continued until she reached the final step and
gazed out over a two-foot-deep sea of slithering Serpent
children.

She bared her teeth, narrowed her gaze, and
began to whisper. As she whispered, the air around her charged with
dark magic. She felt it funnel through her, in from the world in
general, out through her pores. She sent it into the ice that was
the castle’s only building material. And there, it got to work.

Conjuring was powerful magic. It was the
kind of magic that got noticed right away and from a great
distance. The reason for this is that it took a lot of strength to
conjure. Even so, conjuring magic was the second kind of magic
Poppy Nix had always been good at. So if she’d wanted to, she could
have called the very waters of the ocean to her. And they would
have come.

But she needed as much strength as possible
for what would come later. So rather than pull in water from
elsewhere, she turned to transmutation and decided she would simply
change the water she already had.

The first sign that her
spell was working was the quicker, agitated movement of a few of
the snakes on the top layer of the undulating pile beyond that top
step. She looked up to see that the ceiling was dissolving. Streams
of water were dripping off the dome overhead and falling on the
snakes down below. But it was happening too slowly. She needed it
to work faster. She needed to get these goddamned snakes out of her
way right
now
.

Time for the conjuring
magic after all.
If I combine the two, it
will spare me a little strength
. And her
hope was that once she sat on that throne, whatever strength she
had remaining would multiply as she became queen.

It was not just her hope,
but her
only
hope.

Chapter Forty-Six

Well, that worked better
than planned!
was her rather crazy thought
as she dove directly into the floor-to-ceiling swimming pool the
ice castle had become. She’d realized the transmutation was working
too slowly, she’d altered her magic to invite in the conjuring, and
suddenly the study had flooded with so much salt water, she could
only stand there stunned as it poured in. Within seconds, the
snakes were floating around helplessly, and there was plenty of
room for someone to make it from the hidden staircase to the study
door.