Chapter 26
Diedre could sling her venomous words at me until she was red in the face, but it wouldn’t stop me from looking for her. For my mate. My winter faerie. She was here—that sweet scent of Sylvie’s hung heavy in the air.
“Where is she, witch?” Grabbing onto a bookshelf, I glared at Diedre, willing her to test my resolve.
Diedre scratched her long, pointy nails down the length of her neck, trying her best not to look bothered by what I was doing—what I planned to do. “Winter’s curse, Jakzair. Are you expecting to find her sandwiched between the wall and a bloody bookshelf?”
As much as I despised Diedre’s very existence, I couldn’t deny how powerful a sorceress she had become. It made Sylvie’s disappearance all the more concerning.
“Knowing how you operate, I wouldn’t overlook a fleck of dust,” I roared before toppling over the shelving. Books flew in all directions, cracking spines and bending pages.
A twitch formed in Diedre’s cheek, and the hand at her neck balled into a trembling fist. “Face it, Winter King. You’ve already lost.” She’d spat the words, coating them with poison, and pointed to an hourglass dispensing white sand.
The creature wasn’t having it, forcing its way out, the icy barbs forming over my forearms, shoulders, and head.
Storming toward Diedre, I formed an iced dagger and glowered at her.
“I’ve only lost when the last grain drops.
” I slammed her back against the far wall, pinning her there with the sharpened barbs on my arm and the dagger’s blade hovering near her neck. “I won’t ask again.”
Diedre cackled, scraping her skin against one of my barbs and making a thin line of crimson form there. “Your threats are pointless. We can’t kill each other, you know that. We would’ve done that a long, long time ago if we could.”
“That’s fine,” I countered, pressing my fingertips to a painting hanging on the wall behind her. “Killing you would be far too much of a courtesy for what I intend to do until you tell me where. She. Is.” The canvas froze solid, and I slammed my fist through it, the pieces crumbling into shards.
Diedre’s eyes flared, her entire body starting to vibrate. “You infantile asshole. That artist is dead. It was one of the only memories I had of life before becoming queen.”
Material possessions had always been the easiest way to work under Diedre’s skin. Usually, I wouldn’t have resorted to such petty means, but time truly was running out.
“Boo fucking hoo.” Extending a hand, I shot icicles through several vases on a table in the corner. “I never had a life before being king. So, I sure as freezing hells won’t let you rob me of the only chance I have at some semblance of normalcy.”
A subtle squeak sounded from Diedre’s throat as she watched the priceless vases crack, shatter, and explode from the table. Her gaze lingered in that direction for a breath too long, however, before returning her attention to me. “Are you enjoying this?”
“It requires my still being in your company.” A wobbling glass orb on the same table as the vases caught my attention because I could have sworn I saw something flash inside it. “Otherwise, I’d be enjoying it far more.”
Diedre made another lightning-fast glance in that same direction and pushed her neck against my icy barb, this time, it fully pierced her skin. “Maybe you’re not trying hard enough.”
Narrowing my eyes at her blood rolling down her neck and collecting on my icy blue hand, I snarled and pushed from the wall. I stormed for the table, shaking remnants of Diedre’s blood from my fingers—icy patches formed in the floor, latching onto my feet and momentarily freezing me in place.
Snapping Diedre a glare over my shoulder, her hand poised with tendrils of white and black magic, I yanked my feet free with ease.
“You really want to play this game, witch? You know my power transcends yours.” I ignored her, turning my attention back to the mysterious globe, and my heart froze over again when I caught that hint of blue wing.
“Oh, really? Who cursed who here?” A black vine snapped around my waist, pulling taut and yanking me several meters backward.
Diedre had been gifted with winter magic, the same as the rest of us who were chosen, but the dark magic seduced her, forever condemning her to black ice. I still often wondered if the extra perks to her magic were worth it to Diedre in the end.
“Besides—” Diedre continued, wrapping her pale hand around the vine and reeling me in like a seal. “—all I need to do is distract you long enough.”
The daunting realization had my monster plunging through my skin, my height now challenging the ceiling, the icy spikes on my shoulders, arms, hips, and head the most pronounced they’ve been since waging war.
I sliced through the vine like a piece of thread and slammed a fist into the floor.
My magic surged an icy trail, heading for Diedre until it wrapped up to her neck and held her there.
Turning my back on the snowy witch, it took only three long strides in this form to reach the table.
A moderately-sized snow globe rested atop a wooden pedestal.
As I crouched to peer inside, there was a snow-covered cottage, a snowman, and a miniature Sylvie flapping her wings erratically and screaming, though I couldn’t hear her.
Anger, frustration, fear—it all suffocated me and made my blood sizzle. “You trapped her in a fucking snow globe?” I roared, lunging back to Diedre, who’d managed to set her arms free from my wintry trap.
“I personally thought it was quite creative, darling,” Diedre mused, clacking her onyx nails together. With her hands released, she fluttered her fingers, melting the ice from her legs in wisps of charcoal and icy dust.
“Get her out of it,” I commanded, pointing an icy claw at the orb.
Diedre folded her arms and arched a thin white brow. “No.”
Growling, positively fuming, I swept my arms skyward, raising spikes of ice at her sides, spiraling far above her and curling toward her face. “Do it now, witch.”
Diedre appeared unfazed as she eyed my wintry handiwork, flicking her nail against one spike. “You’ve grown quite the temper as of late. Is this what it’s like to be mated? All raging hormones without an ounce of sensibility left?”
Through the sight of my creature form, the world took on a glacial blue prism and pristine clarity. The sand in the hourglass left little more than an hour, and soon we’d run out of time without any means to undo it. I reached for the globe.
“If you intend to smash it, I wouldn’t advise that, Jakzair,” Deidre said, her voice as coy and confident as ever.
Pausing with my hand poised over the orb, Sylvie still yelling at me at the top of her lungs behind the glass, I peered at Diedre. “Why?”
“It may look like your typical setting with the quaint cottage and snowy companion.” Diedre sauntered toward me, her hands slashing left to right with icy black blades that I effortlessly countered.
“But it’s actually a trapped crumb from Antarctica.
If you smash it, the crumb goes back to where it belongs, and Sylvie goes with it.
What was it about that winter king clause again?
” She pretended as if she didn’t know, tapping her lips.
I had no intention of playing along and stayed silent.
“That’s right.” Diedre snapped her fingers. “Unless you’re mated, you’re at the portal’s mercy on where it takes you. How long do you think it’d take for you to see Sylvie again when the portal could take you anywhere in the known universe, hm?”
Diedre looked entirely too fucking satisfied with herself.
This couldn’t have been fate’s plan. There had to be a loophole to this spell.
Keeping my attention on Diedre, I pressed my claws to the globe, coating it with magic and frosting the glass.
Sylvie stirred inside, turning circles and raising her hands, already attempting spurts of her own power.
It was up to my mate now. Neither of us could get out of this alone, but with our magic combined, we might stand a chance.
Glancing at the dwindling sand in the hourglass, I stifled a sigh, my creature settling until only the spikes at my shoulders, part of my head, and down my forearms remained. “Your ignorance toward mates and foul words against the concept is the precise reason you won’t win this, Diedre.”
Diedre cackled, bending backward to let her head fall back. After flashing me a steely, crimson glare, she taunted, “Prove it.”