Frost Kisses (Bitter Frost #4: Frost Series) Read Free Page A

fly out in all directions.
     
    “Breena, where are you?”
     

Chapter 2
     
     
    I opened my eyes. I couldn’t make out shapes, nor were colors clear to me. There was only the hazy patterning of light and dark, soft and sloping across my eyelids. For a moment things became clearer… as they had done before… shimmering into my consciousness… but then I felt my eyes close again, and suddenly it was gone. What was it? Was there a face… did I see a pair of eyes, glowing at me… or were there only two yellow circles, beaming like the two suns of Feyland? It was too late. The exhaustion had hit me again, the slow and soft intoxication that kept my brain quiet, muffled its screams. I felt calm, extraordinarily calm, and yet within me I felt a yelp of terror. Wherever I was, this wasn’t right. This wasn’t where I was supposed to be. This place, this room… it wasn’t my home. And where was my home?
     
    Images flickered across my brain. I remembered a Midwestern detached house with two bedrooms and a slab of marble across the kitchen, but it seemed hazy to me, as if it was but a dream from long ago. I remembered woods… their pine-sharp smell, the crunch of leaves beneath my feet… and then the woods became magical and I remembered whispering trees and leaves that changed color before my eyes. I remembered oranges, ripe and red and smelling like the richest perfumes. I remembered the sound of a fairy dance. I remembered a Prince…
     
    My eyes flew open again, and again I saw the shapes. There were no golden eyes, now, but I could make out crystals – tall, slanted boulders with enough sides to make me dizzy. I couldn’t move. I could only wait, wait for the world to make sense to me. And then I saw what it was. It wasn’t a crystal at all. It had the same sharp sheen, the same beauty, but it was colder than a crystal, darker. It was pure ice.
     
    But I wasn’t cold. That was the strangest thing, the thing that first hit me when at last I was able to sit up, to look around. I was lying in a cavern made of ice, upon a slab of ice, and yet I felt no cold. My gown was flimsy – it was silk, beaded with fairy beads of gold and silver, intricate, more beautiful than any gown I had ever seen and yet unfamiliar – it could not have protected me. And yet the cold meant nothing to me. I couldn’t feel anything. Not the cold, not the softness of the silk, nor the slippery hardness of the ice.
     
    And this cavern was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. Delicate etches of Feyland meadows, mountains, and skies covered the crystal ice walls. As my eyes adjusted, I saw familiar things. Golden silken curtains, intricately carved tables and wardrobes and shimmering fairy paintings. I recognized the style immediately. This was Summer work. The carved fruits and flowers, the golden hue, the life and vibrancy of Summer that glowed from every piece of art: this was the work of the Summer Court.
     
    I must be in the Summer Court, I thought to myself. That meant I was safe. I could feel my breathing slow, feel my body relax beneath me, as if it had a will of its own.
     
    Or did it? The heartbeat in my chest started up again, sensing my fear before my brain did. The Summer Court wasn’t safe – that was the last thing I remembered thinking, in the time that existed before I was in this cave, in the time before…but I couldn’t remember the time before. My images were still hazy. I remembered only that the golden halls of the Summer Court had been stained silver with fairy blood, and that a knot of terror had formed at the pit of my stomach and I could feel it, tensely knotted, still.
     
    My memories crept forward out of their hiding-place. I remembered the clashing of swords, so loud and horrible even in my memory. I remembered the fear in my throat, fear that tasted black on my tongue. I remembered a swarm of knights I did not know or recognize - the confusion that followed – as we no longer knew who we were