2. Violet
Chapter two
Violet
T he blizzard is, in some ways, the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. A rushing storm of powdered snow, so fine that it sparkles beneath the streetlights.
In others, it is the worst, most disgusting, criminally vile thing to ever exist. I’ve already changed out of my scrubs, though, and the thick coat I’ve bundled around my body is likely to do nothing to keep the chill off my bones the second I step outside.
And yet.
“You can’t seriously be thinking about walking home,” Alana says, draped across two waiting room chairs. “Just stay here.”
Now that I’m faced with actually having to go out there, it sounds tempting to stay put. But I’ve been swearing all night that I was walking out those doors at the end of my shift, blizzard or no blizzard.
I can’t back out now without looking like an idiot. So I nod and pull my gloves on my hands. “Definitely going out there,” I say. “I’ll be fine. My house is just down the street.”
“Vi, please.”
“You’re worried about nothing,” I promise Alana. “I’ll be okay. I think I can manage to trudge two blocks home without dying of hypothermia.”
“It’s not the cold I’m worried about, Vi, it’s the fifty mile-per-hour winds.”
“I’ll crouch into a ball and roll home.”
She snorts, then glares and scowls.
“Not funny.” Alana reaches for my hand and squeezes my fingers tightly. “If you really want to go, fine. But you call me the second you get home, alright?”
“Can’t,” I say, giving her a bashful smile. “My phone’s been dead for the past hour. I plan to be fast asleep before it turns back on.”
“You kill me, you know that?”
“You’re going to be wishing you’d walked to my house, too, when you wake up every thirty minutes tonight and have a backache for the next week.”
She sticks her tongue out at me. “Get out of here.”
“I thought you didn’t want me to go?”
“I swear to—?”
My laugh cuts her off. “Goodnight, Alana. Sleep well.” I turn to walk away, a smile on my face.
“Your sarcasm is not appreciated!” She calls after me.
I’m laughing until the minute I step outside. And then the freezing cold blows harshly against my face and sucks the air right out of my body, immediately dismissing all notions of humor I just had. My instant reaction is to turn right back around and hightail it into the heated lobby, but I brace myself against the cold and take another step. It’s a little too late to back out now, anyway. My mom always said my stubborn streak would get me in trouble.
One foot in front of the other, I make my way down the sidewalk. The streetlamps give me just enough light to keep me from walking into pitch black darkness.
And then they start flickering.
I would guess I’m about halfway between the hospital and my house when they go out completely, and I’m left in the dark with nothing but the howling wind in my ears and whirls of snow to keep me from seeing straight.
Definitely should have stayed at the hospital. I should have listened to Alana, bit the bullet, and waved my dignity goodbye. But I’m almost home, and I haven’t died, so I might as well keep going. Especially since if I try to turn around, I might lose my footing against the wind and end up lost in this absolute void of darkness.
I take a few more steps into the night, and then I swear to shit the wind picks up even more. So much so that I wince, and my knees buckle as I try to hold myself up. Then it’s spiraling more and more, and getting colder and colder with every sharp gust of wind.
It feels like it’s wrapping around me. Like it’s tightening around my body, like I’m not just in the storm’s eye but that I am the eye of the storm.
It had been a joke before, when I told Alana I’d curl into a ball. But I find myself doing it, crouching down and wrapping my arms around my legs to try to keep steady. My eyes are clenched shut tightly, and I’m not sure that I could open them if I wanted to at this point.
The wind is battering against me so forcefully, so coldly , that I’m starting to believe Alana’s worries might come true and I’ll wind up in a ditch on the outskirts of town frozen solid.
It hits me then that I truly have come to resent being at work so much that I walked home in a blizzard rather than stay there past my shift. I hate being at work more than I enjoy being safe.
And that didn’t use to be me. I used to love my job, used to love spending every second of my shift doing what I could for the people who needed me most.
Now, it’s not enough. I would rather be anywhere else than at work.
Which seems pointless to realize now that I’m standing in the middle of a snowstorm, but it’s the truth. One that I’ve been holding in my mouth, refusing to swallow, until this very moment.
I want adventure. I want more than staying in this town, tending to the same people I’ve known since I was a baby. I want new . I want exciting . I want to finally live my life for myself instead of for everyone else.
Unfortunately, this revelation didn’t slap me across the face until my life started flashing before my eyes, but better late than never, I guess.
With my eyes closed and my whole body braced against the wind, it takes a second for the change to register in my mind, but the second it does, my body tenses even more than before .
The wind stopped. It’s still cold, obviously, and I still feel snow brushing gently against my face, but there’s no wind.
Suddenly, it’s gone. Faster than I could have snapped my fingers.
Holy fuck. Did I actually just die? Am I dead?
Because I’m pretty sure blizzards aren’t just there one second and gone the next. It’s more of a gradual fading, sometimes slow enough that the only way you can tell it’s fading is when your house stops creaking against the brutality of the wind.
I need to open my eyes. But if I open them, I risk not seeing the snow-covered cement beneath me. It might be heaven. Would I even know heaven if I saw it? Would I know I was dead?
“What is this little thing?” A voice says, a chilling and curious voice. It sounds demeaning, almost. But more than that, it sounds… old. Masculine and clear, and not old in a way that leads me to believe it’s an old man that stands there, but ancient .
I force myself to uncurl my arms from around my legs. To try to look less meek, less little . Look like more of a threat than I actually am. The chill that rattles through me wraps right around my heart the second I open my eyes and my gaze locks on a pair of icy blue eyes.
When he speaks, it’s not the same voice as before. His voice is one of pure ice, of authority and power and distaste.
“She,” he says, eyes darkening with hatred, “Is my mate.”
The voice from before says nonchalantly, “Is she? ”
Surprise adds to the curiosity from earlier, and I tear my gaze away from those blue eyes until I meet a pair of smokey gray ones. His face is all sharp lines and features that seem almost dainty in comparison.
“It would seem so,” the blue-eyed one murmurs. “If the prophecy is accurate.”
Mate . I don’t know what it means, nor do I particularly care for him calling me his anything , but I’m more worried about looking like I’m not freaking the fuck out than I am about figuring out whatever the hell they are talking about.
I force myself to stand on shaky legs, eyes back on the one who seems to believe he has some sort of claim on me. The one with icy blue eyes and long white hair. And is his skin blue?
“Who are you?”
One of his brows quirks and a dangerous smile teases at his lips, though it is nowhere near an authentic one. Or comforting. It only sets me more on edge than I already was.
“Insulting that you should ask who I am after trespassing into my kingdom. You are the one who needs to explain yourself.”
“I have nothing to explain.” I lift my chin in defiance, even as the word kingdom is rattling around in my brain.
“Nothing at all? Not even as to how you find yourself in my realm?”
“Your realm ? Listen—are you okay? I can take you back to the hospital if—” Then my eyes finally settle on something besides the two men before me and the gently cascading snow around us. Something in the distance catches my attention, making my breath catch in my throat.
A castle. Not just any castle—a massive structure that pierces the pearl-gray sky like a crown of crystalline spires. Around it sprawls a city unlike anything I’ve ever seen, with buildings that seem to be roofed in sheets of pristine ice, their surfaces gleaming with an otherworldly blue-white radiance.
The air here feels different too. It’s crisp and sharp, carrying hints of pine and winter mint that make my nose tingle. Each breath forms a thick cloud in front of my face, and my ears pop from what must be the altitude.
The snow crunching beneath my feet isn’t the wet, heavy stuff I’m used to in Colorado—it’s powdery and dry, almost like diamond dust.
The entire scene before me feels impossible, like I’ve stepped through the pages of a fairytale. Or more accurately, ridden a damn tornado to Oz. Wherever the hell we are, it’s definitely not Salida, and it’s sure as hell not anywhere in Colorado I’ve ever seen.
“Where the fuck am I?”
“Like I said before,” the white-haired man says, “this is my kingdom.”
“Right,” I say, forcing myself to look over at him again. “And like I said before, who are you?”
The silver-eyed one laughs darkly. “A bit dense, isn’t she?”
A sigh from Blue Eyes. He runs a pale blue hand down the front of his old-fashioned jacket and flicks his gaze to mine, ignoring his friend entirely. “I am Jack Frost,” he says simply, and I swear the icy hold on my heart only tightens. “And you need to leave. ”
Then he turns and walks away, the black-haired friend following behind him with nothing more than a gesture.
Leaving me standing here, alone.
In an entirely different fucking realm than the one I was in fifteen minutes ago.