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I rode as fast as I could. I had taken one of the Delano's horses, a strong-looking steed with green-tinted skin, and set out on the path I remembered towards Feyland. I knew it would be many days before I reached home; the Pixie lands were far north, and last time I'd had Logan to carry me. In Wolf form, his speed could rival that of a flying fairy.
I wasn't sure how to feel. As soon as I had set up camp for the night – casting warmth and invisibility spells around a small perimeter of soft grass – I curled up underneath the velvet cloak I had stolen from Delano. I had taken food from the larder and a saddle-bag filled with weapons, much to the dismay of the Pixies, who remained scowling, magically bound by the oath that Delano had sworn on their behalf. The food was tasteless – the bland gruel that Pixies seemed to consider a delicacy – but it was better than nothing.
When I had finished eating I looked down at my hands. They looked the same. The same hands I'd always had. But I knew I was different, somehow. My body was different. My very being was different. I pricked my finger with the end of my sword and watched the silver blood pool in tiny dots on its tip. What was I? Since waking up from my tomb, my body has felt strange to me...reacting with such passion with someone I abhorred: Delano. Was I no longer in charge of my own body?
And was I really immortal? The idea was at once exhilarating and terrifying. On the one hand, I imagined that this would make creating peace in the Winter Court a great deal easier – I could be kidnapped or thwarted, but fairies were notoriously hard to kill. I knew that great magic could do it – Kian's father, I knew, had died in battle – but nothing mortal could cause death.
What a strange idea – never to die. To outlive my mother, my friends, Logan! The world back home would go on changing for thousands of years, and I would never grow old! I would have to watch them die, one by one, and have to suffer the pain of missing them. I'd never be able to return Beyond the Crystal River now, of this I was sure. How could I bear to see the people I loved, the places I loved, and know that I would outlive them all?
I felt a sudden involuntary rush of anger at Kian. How dare he give me this gift – and deprive me of the choice to be immortal or not! And yet I knew he was not to blame. He had offered me his life, his love, but it was I who had accepted it; my soul had answered his call, and I had bound myself to him utterly.
My thoughts were racing as I tried to settle down into comfortable slumber. So much had happened since my sixteenth birthday. I had met Kian and fallen in love. I had discovered who I really was. I had even met my father.
My heart sank as I thought of King Frank Foxflame, who still lay somewhere – I didn't know where – in the deep spellbound coma, where he had been ever since the Summer Queen had rebelled against him. She had hated him, resented him for his affair with my mother, sought to take her revenge by exercising all the power in the kingdom, and at last had decided to take over as sole ruler. She was dead now, killed by Shasta's blade. But where my father was, and whether it was even possible to wake him, I did not know. I knew only that we had shared some days together – awkward, at first, and then beautiful – as I had come to learn about the man who had always been a stranger to me.
But now he was in a sleep, a sleep from which I did not know if he would ever wake. He had been a stranger, but in those few days during which I had known him I felt a connection to him. He was my father, after all, and I mourned his loss still – quietly.
I lay staring up at the stars of Feyland, which seemed to ripple through the soft black waves of night. They seemed more beautiful than ever now, gleaming with a milky pearl sheen, as if viewed through a veil. I wanted to sail upwards, to transport my body into those heavens and dance among those stars, gliding from moonbeam to moonbeam, losing myself in this impossible beauty. My heart felt a pang as I looked towards the horizon of Feyland, which spread out before me at the base of the hill against which I had made my camp. Tomorrow, I thought. Tomorrow I would get to the Summer Kingdom; I would get to go home. I listened closely. The Feyland stars seemed almost to be humming – an impossibly soft melody that nevertheless filled me with agonizing longing. This was my country, my fairy country, a place that called to me with such a force that I felt my very body ache with the distance. This was the land that had called to me through my dreams all throughout my childhood, that had beckoned me nearer, that had called upon me to achieve my destiny. I loved this place. I knew I always would. My destiny was to save it.
Tears filled my eyes for my loss of my humanity. I was to die in Feyland and be reborn as a fairy, a Winter fairy combined with Summer blood. I felt my silver blood prickle as I seemed to come alive, called to the fairy stars, called to all the magic in the kingdom. I was a fairy now – one of them – and my body connected with the rhythm of Feyland; my heart beat to its magic. I felt its warmth, like the breeze of the breathy tropics, and the soft kisses of the cold on my lips, tiny droplets of frost: Winter and Summer magic were one in me now, and it fell to me to embrace it.
I closed my eyes and let the feeling overwhelm me. It was time to accept who I really was. My immortality. My fairy nature. If it meant that I had even half a chance of saving this place I loved so much, giving up my humanity was worth it. I had never felt more at home here, here where the stars shone so brightly and the breeze felt like a lover's touch.
I heard a sizzling sound. As I raised my head, I saw sparks gathering and flickering outwards at my fingers – combined blue and yellowish orange flames emanating from my fingertips, twirling together like spirals of smoke, heading upwards into the sky...
My magic, I thought. My power. Summer and Winter.
And then I heard rustling in the bushes. I snapped into alertness, looking wildly around. Had Delano been able to break his oath and follow me? “Who's there?” I called, my voice harsh with the long silence, “What do you want? Show yourself!”
A figure stepped out from the shadows. He was tall and dark, with a mysterious look in his eyes and his long black hair shading his face. I knew him well, and the sight of him made me reel with desire. Kian. It was Kian as I had remembered him, as I had seen him in the idealism of my dreams. He was dressed in full fairy knight armor, silver and shining, that glowed in the moonlight and shone its beams back at me with blinding intensity. Around him I saw the same blue sparks that had been flaming from my fingertips, glowing with a bright indigo flame. With his fairy wings fully extended behind him, he looked like an angel – like one of the stained glass images of the Archangel Michael I had seen in our church at home. He was looking down at me with a gaze so full of love, so full of passion and emotion, that I wanted to cry.
“Kian?” I whispered, my voice filled with tears. I was so terrified of being deceived again, of having my heart broken once more. “Is it really you?” Or was he only a glamour –another false Kian sent to torment me?
“My love...” But I knew the truth this time. The blue sparks coming from my fingertips swirled towards his own flame, and the two tongues of fire met, surrounding us with magnificent blazing blue. I knew this man. This was Kian – the real Kian and none other. Our souls called out to each other. Our bodies needed each other. The magic in our two bodies collided and combined, as the heat from our fire warmed us both.
“Breena!” Kian's face was too solemn for a smile, but the joy in his eyes was clear beneath the mask of pain. I raised my gaze to his, and in his eyes I saw all that he had suffered, all that he had feared and undergone. It seemed an eternity that passed with the two of us looking at each other, trying to make sense of our emotions, to put the pieces of our lives back together.
And then it happened all at once. Kian was rushing towards me and I was rushing towards him, and then I was in his arms, alive and complete, and his arms were tight around my waist and our kiss was electric. The blue fire continued to rage around us, punctuated by flickers of orange and gold. It was a cocoon, I thought – a safe place, laid out for us by this magic that connected us both. Nothing could touch us here. Nothing could reach us here. There was nothing here except me and Kian, except our love.
At last Kian was able to speak. “Oh, Breena, my darling!” He held me closer, tighter. “I thought I'd lost you forever – that I'd never see you again!” He pressed his lips tightly to my forehead. “Seeing you is like seeing some phantasm, some shade. No, not a ghost...” At last he smiled, and his grin seemed to light up the world. “An angel!” He stared at me with wonder and rapture plain upon his face, and I could feel the burdens in my heart lifting. Kian was here. What else mattered? Whatever challenges we still had to face, we could face them together! “When I saw the flames, blue and orange together, in the sky, I knew it had to be you! Where else could I see Summer and Winter magic acting in such perfect unison? And yet I did not dare to hope, dare to dream, until I saw your face, until I was sure that what I experienced this morning was not another lie, another trick borne out by fancy.”
I took Kian's snowflake from my pocket and held it out to him. The pendant sparkled in my hand, sending out beams of light into the stars. “This saved me,” I said. “Your snowflake. It made me immortal.”
He took the snowflake, his hands trembling. “Then you accepted me,” he whispered, his voice so soft, it felt like a caress. “My proposal – you must have accepted, deep in your heart, for this magic to work.” He took hold of my shoulders and pulled me in towards him. “You have become part of the Winter Kingdom. In accepting my love, you have bound yourself to my magic. And our love has brought you back from death...” Our kiss silenced him. There would be time to talk in a moment. But for now, I wanted only to feel his lips on mine, and give myself in to that ecstasy.
Kian held me tighter, and I leaned into his embrace, feeling his cold, steely power running through me – a terrible chill that coursed through my veins and yet did not hurt me, even as I felt the full force of its magic. “I want to feel you, Breena. Just let me hold you, please. Let me feel you in my arms once again. I want to savor this. I want to feel this!”
I ran my fingers over Kian's face and body – over the scars on his arms, the wounds on his cheeks and forehead. As my fingers touched each aggrieved spot, I could see a small orange-blue glow that restored his wounds to their former health. Once, I had heard that fairies could only heal their own kind. And now I was healing Kian – my Winter magic connecting with his. We were one, after all.
But as I looked into his eyes, lined with dark circles, I knew the psychological wounds would be harder to heal. The anguish we both shared at the loss of the Peace Treaty, the love that we felt for our fellow countrymen, the pain we had suffered – this would take time to get better. I touched his face with my hand, and he leaned into my hand, caressing it with his cheeks. Then he turned his face so that he can lay a kiss into my palm.
I closed my eyes. I wanted nothing more than to take away his pain, to show him how much I loved him. But as I sank down to the ground with Kian, kissing him harder than I'd ever kissed him before, I knew that the path before us was clear. We were together now. After all the misunderstandings, all the sadness, we were together now.
And we had tonight.
Kian held my face in his hands and began kissing me first with his lips. Soft kisses on my top lip and then my lower. His tongue urged my mouth to open wider, and swirled around mine teasing and tantalizingly so until I felt my entire body heated up into a fireball of desire. I kissed him back, nibbling on his bottom lip, tasting him. As I devoured his mouth, he drew me closer and our lips met in a deep soul-searing kiss.
We broke away for just an instant, and he was smiling, his eyes shining. “Now that you’re of winter fey,” he said, “your kiss can take my breath away, Bree, not that you haven’t before, but now we can give each other frost kisses.”
I laughed, and then he pulled me in for a kiss, his eyes hooded in desire. His mouth covered mine, and I felt his tongue again against mine, soft and searing, tasting me delicately and with fervor. When I couldn’t take the heat of his kisses much longer, he blew frosty cool air into my mouth until I felt my spine chill and my lungs freeze, and then he was sucking the warm air out of my breath until we were breathing as one. Hot and cold, summer and winter.
Now blow your breath into me, Breena. Cool air first.
I blew cold air into his mouth as he inhaled my breath and felt him gulp. Then he blew cold air into me, causing me to gasp for air. The sensation was electrifying and the coolness of his breath seeped through every pore of my body, making me shiver with cold and anticipation.
Hot, Breena. I want to feel the heat of your breath...of Summer, of life.
I blew warm hot air into Kian’s mouth, causing him to tense up, feeling flush. He gripped me tighter, and we were rolling on the ground, consumed with our passion for each other. And as our kisses grew more heated, and the protecting flames around us shielded us from any view, we gave ourselves over to that long-held desire, and allowed our love to at last take hold of us both.
By the time we opened our eyes again, the sun was coming up over the mountainside, and it was nearly morning.