Summer’s breaths came hard and fast, her chest rising and falling in quick succession so much so that she felt she would faint dead away at any second. She could not believe what she had just witnessed. Nor could she come to grips with what she was witnessing right now.
The elf prince stared for a moment more at the space where Raven and Loki had been only seconds before. His expression was unreadable. He then turned his ice blue eyes upon Summer, and her knees gave out. She had stood when Loki had gotten to his feet, perhaps instinct driving her to respond in kind. But now she dropped unceremoniously into her chair and stared slack-jawed and terrified at the second most powerful man in Kriver.
Astriel eyed her unrelentingly. With a composed grace completely unbecoming of one who possessed four deep, oozing furrows in his chest, the prince righted a chair that had been knocked over and lowered himself into it. With a nonchalant air, he began to peel off his soft leather gloves one finger at a time.
Summer whimpered low in her throat, unaware that she had done so. She trembled in the presence of this man and his guards, knowing deep inside that nothing good could come of his attentions at that moment.
Just when she was sure she would pass out from fear and dreadful anticipation, the fey prince spoke. “Tell me what you know of your two friends, Summer,” he ordered softly without looking at her.
She answered immediately. “I don’t know anything, really, I swear I don’t. I only met them this morning. They came out of the forest at our farm. They said they had traveled from Aster Hollow.” She swallowed hard and continued, her words pouring forth like water in a fountain. “They said it only took them a few days. Then my father asked them to accompany me into the city. They didn’t know anything about Trimontium. I told them what I thought they needed to know. Then Jax Narrium saw Raven and.…” She trailed off, suddenly mortified. She’d been about to divulge how she had warned Raven and Loki about the prince and his father. Her cheeks burned hot and, as she stared down at the table top, she finally felt the weight of the prince’s gaze upon her cowering form.
She closed her eyes, terrified of what he would do with her.
The silence stretched uncomfortably.
“So you presumed to hide them here.” His voice was so soft, so calm, it sent horrible chills up Summer’s spine. She gritted her teeth and nodded her head.
There was another long, pregnant pause.
“I see.”
Summer forced herself not to cry. Then, just as she was certain he was about to order his guards to haul her off to Eidolon’s dungeons, he surprised her. “Thank you for your help, Summer. Give your father my regards.”
The prince stood and Summer looked up as he turned to leave. She could not move from her seat, and would not have done so even if she’d been able to. She refused to do anything to attract the prince’s further attention. He was going to leave her be. In fact, she resolved to not even breathe until he and his men were gone, lest he change his mind.
Astriel’s tall black boots sounded hollowly on the wooden planks beneath him as he moved across the tavern room to the waiting guards. One guard, a more elite insignia on his armor than the others, glanced down at his prince’s chest and then met his gaze. Neither of them said anything. Astriel pushed through the front door and was gone. The guards followed silently after him.
No one spoke for a long time after they left.
And then, gradually at first, explosively next, the patrons began to gossip amongst themselves. Marianne, who had frozen in place near the kitchen door when the elves had come in, rushed forward to embrace Summer. Summer cried quietly onto the other woman’s shoulder, shivering uncontrollably.
“It’s okay, sweet heart. You’re going to be all right,” Marianne whispered soothingly. The tavern owner’s head was spinning. She could not make heads or tails of what had just happened, but for the life of her, it had actually seemed as if someone had finally stood up to the Lords and Ladies. Could it be that these strangers who had come, defied the prince, and then disappeared might be the start of … of some kind of change? As her gently whispered words mollified the young girl in her arms, she wondered.
And dared, even, to hope.
*****
Raven had been squeezing her eyes shut so tightly that, at first when she opened them, the world swam. As it cleared, she held her breath. The first thing she noticed was the vastness of the chamber she was in. She glanced up to find herself staring at a giant archway carved of pure bluish ice, which was reproduced several times in a circle around her. Beyond each archway was a corridor so long that it disappeared into darkness, despite the bluish light shed by blazing torches lining each wall.
She followed the arches around the room with her eyes until they came to a stop behind a massive ice-hewn throne that stood twenty feet tall.
Upon it rested a man. Raven had that strange fingertip-numbing sensation that she sometimes felt during the frightening part of a nightmare. He was eight feet tall, at the very least, from his horn-crowned head to the tips of his large black boots. The skin over his immense, heavily muscled body was nearly as blue as the ice palace around him. The tips of his fingers ended in black, claw-like nails. White glistening fangs rested menacingly upon his pale lower lip. He wore armored clothing of some magical iridescent-scaled beast and bracers forged of a shimmering, glimmering alloy that looked as if it had been melted and re-hardened around tiny, shattered stars.
Raven drew her gaze over his form, not able to help herself as she took in each detail, memorizing it unwittingly. He was terrifying. He was beautiful. He was the Lord of Caina, the second most powerful devil in Abaddon. He was Lord Malphas.
He was her father.
Finally, Raven looked up into his eyes. They burned an eerie tri-colored hue; blue, gold and silver-white, like an ice-cold fire. As she gazed into them, she felt positive they would singe a path straight to her core.
There were a thousand things she wanted to say, to ask, but no sound would emit from her lips. She could barely bring herself to resume breathing.
The giant man peered down at her, the corners of his mouth turning upward into a slight smile. “Welcome to Caina, daughter.” His voice was thunder, rumbling across a vast expanse of ice. He rose, his indomitable figure towering over her, appearing to dwarf everything in the cavernous room.
Malphas calmly strode to where she still sat beside her brother’s unconscious form. His boots resounded loudly on the floor of smooth, carved ice. Raven glanced down at that ice and wondered, for a fraction of an instant, why she was not simply freezing to death in this frozen world. And then she wondered whether her brother actually was.
“He will not be harmed, child. However, I think it best he remain sleeping for the time being.”
Raven glanced back up at the arch devil and swallowed. He was probably right. Loki would most likely have a heart attack if he were to awaken in the throne room of the palace belonging to Haledon’s sworn enemy.
No, it was best he slept.
Malphas came to stand before her, then knelt and offered her his hand. She stared down at that massive taloned hand and listened to the blood rushing through her head. Slowly, she laid her own comparatively small hand atop of his, and his fingers gently closed over it.
He helped her rise. “It is time, Winter.”
“Time?” It did not register as strange to her that he called her ‘Winter’. It seemed perfectly normal, as if that had been her true name all along.
“I have brought you home so that you may accept your soul’s true form.”
She had never felt so baffled. “I don’t understand,” she admitted. This all had to be a dream. She must be on the pyre in Aster Hollow, hallucinating to escape the fiery pain of her death.
“You are not dying, Winter,” her father chuckled. “You are very much alive. However, you suffer the undesired affections of others because your outward beauty reflects the beauty of your spirit. You are the most ancient and potentially powerful soul ever offered up by the Spring of Souls. Hence, the perfection of your physical form. However, you are also my daughter.” He raised her hand before her, and her fingernails extended to their full, razor-sharp iron lengths of their own accord. She stared at her hand. Malphas then placed his own palm against hers, and the similarity between the two was unmistakable.
“I made certain, as I placed your soul inside of your mother’s womb, that you would also retain a piece of me. You are my one chosen child, the heir of Caina. As such, you possess a true form, one native to your home realm. It is time for you to find this… and accept it.” He smiled at her then, and released her hand. “It will give you power against your enemies and protect you from those who would harm you.”
Raven pondered his words in silence. Then she glanced at her brother’s form where it lay curled on the ice several feet away. Loki was her best friend. He knew her as she was; as she now looked. This other form… would it change her? In Loki’s eyes? Would he recognize her? Would she turn into some sort of monster? “I don’t wish to be anyone other than who I am,” she said quietly.
“And you shall remain so. You can call upon your true form when you need it.” He placed his fingers beneath her chin and turned her so that she was looking up at him once again. “This body you possess at present will always remain. I am simply giving you what has been your birthright since the moment I took you from the Spring. You shall have two forms, daughter. One is Raven,” he stepped back and slowly let his eyes trail over her tall lissome form. “The other is Winter.”
She quietly mulled over what he was telling her. “I will still be me?”
He nodded slowly, just once.
“But I will be able to defend myself,” she turned to look at her brother again, “and those I love?” She looked back at her father.
Again, he nodded.
She closed her eyes and swallowed, searching within herself. What did her soul tell her to do? She felt something uncoiling deep inside. It was like a shining, golden rope of power, a magical knot that had been tied up, useless and quiescent in its anchored state. It wanted to unwind, to expand, to be free.
She opened her eyes and met the fiery, eerie orbs of her father’s commanding gaze. She took a deep breath. She was trembling as she said, “Very well.” She swallowed hard and finished. “I’m ready.”
Malphas’s eyes sparked with something akin to victory, but Raven had no time to ponder the source of his triumph. He at once came forward and slowly, ceremoniously, placed the palm of his hand against her chest.
The world exploded around her. She cried out, arching her body, throwing her head back as unbearable heat surged through her followed by a cold so frigid it burned like fire. It was relentless, cascading over the precipice of her sanity and dragging her along with it into the depths of the unknown.
Malphas encircled his daughter in his well-muscled arms and held her against his massive chest. She was so tiny, so fragile. And yet, as he held her, he could feel the dark stirring of immense power that she’d locked up so deep within herself. As he watched, her barriers fell one by one, allowing that darkness to climb up within her and take shape.
Wings of the finest raven down emerged from her back to spread to a glorious wingspan. His eyes grew wide with surprise, for no one else in the Nine Circles of Abaddon had wings such as these. He continued to watch, fascinated, as her hair became unbelievably soft to his touch, long and lustrous, fading from raven black to the color of spun arctic ice. He felt her grow taller in his grasp, stronger, and he looked on as her skin turned dark as a northern winter’s midnight. When tiny fangs pressed against her full, blood red lower lip, he couldn’t tear his eyes away from her mouth, luscious and tempting.
Her first change washed over her like an ocean, and he knew she felt as if she were drowning beneath the weight of it. He held her tight, lending her as much strength as he could without stalling her transformation.
Eventually, the intensity of the change waned, and she moaned low in her throat. Malphas’s eyes were focused on the iridescent sheen of her extraordinary wings as she slowly came to and opened her eyes.
He found himself reluctantly letting her go so that she could stand before him in all of her glory. From her gorgeous wings to her web-spun, waist-length hair to the smooth dusk of her perfect skin, she was pure flawlessness. But it was her eyes he loved the most. They were reflections of his own, having changed from solid blue-black to a tri-colored fire and ice that glowed hotly beneath impossibly long, thick lashes.
She was extraordinary. His only daughter was more beautiful than any she-devil he’d ever laid eyes upon. And she was his, a powerful piece of his soul combined with the eldest soul in existence – made flesh.
She stood before him unclothed, her own garments having torn in the conversion that made her taller and stronger. She blinked at him, and then she looked down at herself. After a moment, she stretched her arms out, her eyes taking in the darkened tone of her skin, the curves of her strong musculature, the fine spun silver of her snow-white hair.
“Father...” she spoke and an other-worldly purr escaped from behind her fangs to innocently wrap around him, unknowingly awakening protective emotions he barely recognized.
For the love of the Dark Powers, Malphas thought to himself in quiet amazement. This one will to be hard to shield from the prying eyes of Hell.
“I feel….” Winter paused mid-sentence, and the perfect skin of her brow furrowed slightly as she searched for the words to describe the sensations that flooded through her. “I feel so….”
“Powerful,” he finished for her.
She blinked, smiling shyly. He noticed the faint glow about her body, the way she fairly emanated the magic of Darkness.
“Yes....” She closed her eyes and, holding her arms out at her sides, she released her claws.
“You are,” he said as he reached out, gently grasped one of her outstretched hands, and pulled her toward a window that she could have sworn was not there only moments before. “And you will have to learn to control your new power before you leave this realm.”
They reached the window and Malphas peered over the dominion that was Caina. The vast expanse of an icy and desolate wasteland stretched into infinity under the towering shadow of Malphas’s palace. Raven gazed out at the bleak landscape of cold, gray despair. A howling wind carved the pattern of eons into glaciers that shifted and floated, rimmed by rivers of slush and rime, bottomless and barren.
The mortal heart looking upon such frozen solitude would surely have felt the wretched anguish of frigid despondency. It would have perchance ceased to beat, overwhelmed by the unwillingness to go on, without hope, without passion, as dead inside as was this eternal, lonely winter.
However, to Raven – to Winter – it felt much, much different. “Caina.” She let the word roll off of her tongue. The sound of it was soothing and welcoming in an unfamiliar kind of way.
“Your home,” her father added gently.
They fell into a mutual, comfortable silence.
*****
Princess Zeta watched her brother as he gazed distractedly into the fireplace in the richly decorated drawing room. He leaned over the marble hearth, his strong arms braced against the mantelpiece. The firelight cast shadows upon the planes and angles of his handsome face and caused his eyes to flicker like blue flame.
She smiled to herself. His mood had progressively deteriorated since his return from the tavern that afternoon. And as his mood worsened, hers improved.
She looked away, turning her attention to the diamond beading on her lavender silk gown. “So, she managed to break your enchantment, you say?” she teased as she languidly stretched her long legs out onto the divan and re-arranged her dress so that it draped properly over the edge. She chuckled softly and shook her head. “And then she attacked you.” Her smile was all but cruel now. “She sounds positively delightful. When do I get to meet her?”
Astriel turned his gaze upon his sister and the azure irises of his eyes dilated from the circles the elves always wore around mortals in order to look more like them into the cat-like slits that the elves were more familiar with. He returned her cruel smile effortlessly and to much more effect, and his sister’s smile disappeared. Satisfied, Astriel looked away once again. “Soon. She’ll not escape me a second time.”
“Oh?” Zeta asked. “From what I hear, she is not entirely mortal. I was told that she called out for her father. And that Malphas answered.”
A muscle ticked in Astriel’s jaw. He righted himself and turned to face her. Their eyes met and held for a moment and then he moved to the bookshelf against one wall and appeared to casually peruse the titles.
“If she is the daughter of Lord Malphas, then she will prove a difficult prey, indeed,” said Zeta. “And you must also consider, Astriel, what she was doing in our city. Have you thought about what significance her appearance might hold?”
He waited a moment before answering, his back still turned toward her. “It crossed my mind,” he said. He pulled out a book, briefly shuffled through its pages, and then returned it to the shelf. Finally, he turned to face her. “I care little what plans the Dark Lords might be hatching. They are not what concerns me.”
“No, just one of their daughters.”
“She will be mine.” He tossed the promise out, as if it was of little consequence.
Zeta’s smile was back. Astriel had never been denied something he wanted before. No mortal had dared ever defy him. This woman, this Raven, had to be simply killing his enormous ego.
“If you are so sure,” she began slowly, “then I propose a wager.”
This had Astriel’s attention. He gracefully sat in one of the overstuffed chairs opposite her, draped his arms over the cushions behind him, and leaned back, a curious smile on his gorgeous face. “Oh?”
Zeta’s eyes glittered malevolently. “Indeed.” She leaned forward, drawing out the suspense. “I bet you cannot capture this rebellious little prize of yours without resorting to magic.” She fairly fidgeted with excitement as she continued, “I wager ten of your courtesans that you can not bring her back to the castle as a mortal man would – using no fey power whatsoever.”
Astriel stared at her in silence. His expression turned darker, more determined, with each passing second. And then, slowly and gracefully, he leaned forward, his fingers laced before him, his elbows on his knees.
He smiled a horrible, beautiful, dangerous smile.
“I accept.”