The Snow Queen's Captive (13 page)

“I didn’t,” Charlotte said in a wry, sad voice. It made her feel more despair every time someone reached to touch her.

“Honey,” Muffin said again. “This is not my first go-around in this fairy tale. I’ve had my share of Snow Queen stories. And while I admit this is the first time I’ve been working from the other side, there is one consistent factor in things.”

Charlotte’s stomach gave an uneasy little flip. “What’s that?”

“No one ever loses against the snow queen. Gerda always wins. Always.
Always
.” She gave her head a little shake, the puffy pink parka rustling. “Why do you think we have the interns start with this sort of fairy tale? Because it’s a ‘gimme’ for them. It’s training wheels. You set your girl as Gerda, and Gerda always, always defeats the snow queen. Later on, we move them to something more challenging.” Muffin wrinkled her nose, thinking. “Might be a while before Fifi moves on to something challenging, I have to admit.”

She swallowed hard, that sick feeling in her stomach growing. “But if I’m the first snow queen, maybe I can be the first winner.”

The look Muffin gave her shut that concept down. “By, what? Tossing those weak little plants at her?”

“I want to show her that I’m here to do good—“

“And you think she’ll stop in her avenging rampage long enough to listen? As you continue to hold Kai captive at your side?”

“He’s not my captive!”

“He’s still here, isn’t he? He’s not home, helping them with the hunt or feeding hungry families? Because you know there are hungry families. His people aren’t used to the cold. Look at the tan on that boy. That’s not the mark of someone who spends his days tromping through the snow.”

Charlotte swallowed. Bent her head in defeat. “I…just wanted things to be different. I didn’t want to be the bad guy.”

“I know sweetie.” Muffin gave her another little pat, this time with a gloved hand. “You mean well, and I get that you’re trying to make the best of a bad situation. I get that. I really do. But you’re better off preparing the fortress for the invaders instead of trying to grow flowers. I’m just trying to help because I hate to see you go down without a fight. And the way you are headed? You are in for a quick and humiliating defeat.”

Charlotte nodded, head bent. Tears pricked at her eyes but she struggled to keep them back. She didn’t want to cry in front of the fairy godmother.

“As for that boy toy of yours. It’s clear to see that you’ve become attached. I know you’ve been lonely, darling, but you need to cut the cord before someone gets hurt.”

Too late, Charlotte thought. But she forced herself to swallow the knot in her throat. “Cut the cord?”

“Yes. Let’s extrapolate our future scenarios for a minute, shall we?” Muffin’s mittened hand soothed Charlotte’s bent back. “Let’s say Gerda shows up two days from now, as we know she’s going to. There are two possible outcomes. The most likely one is that you lose, right? And what do you think is going to happen to that boy when he sees his childhood friend cut your head off and raise it on a pike at the castle gates?”

Charlotte gasped and put a hand to her throat. “She’s going to what?”

Muffin blinked, looking alarmed. “Hyperbole! We don’t know that’s going to happen. Maybe she’ll just burn you at the stake like a witch or something more dignified. It varies depending on the flavor of Gerda.”

“Great,” Charlotte enthused tonelessly.

“Either way, how do you think that boy’s going to feel?”

Charlotte said nothing. She didn’t want to think about how Kai was going to feel at the sight of her dead. If he really, truly cared for her…he’d be devastated. As devastated as she would be if he got hurt in the upcoming inevitable battle. “He’ll be safe either way, won’t he?”

“Well,” Muffin hedged.

She turned an alarmed look at the fairy godmother. “Won’t he?”

“I’m not going to lie to you; sometimes things go badly in the final battle. I’ve seen some incarnations of Kai trapped in the ice palace when the Queen goes down and he’s buried alive. I’ve seen him accidentally stabbed by his own people’s spears in the heat of the battle. I’ve seen the queen kill him out of spite. But a lot of the time he lives.” Muffin gave her a bright smile. “Mostly. It just depends on how this story plays out.”

But she was always doomed. And her doom might affect Kai. In addition to hurting his heart, she might cost him his life. She needed to fix that. “I see.”

“I think you’re starting to,” Muffin said. “Now, let’s extrapolate some more, shall we? Let’s say that we roll the dice and you fight Gerda and you hit that one in a million chance and win this thing. Wouldn’t that be nice?” Muffin beamed at her, but Charlotte couldn’t even muster a return smile. “Then, we whisk you out of here, lickety split, and set you in your nice, new, cozy reality where you’ll spend the rest of your life.”

Wait…what? “New reality?”

“Well, yes. You didn’t think you were going to stay here, did you? Once the fairy tale is over?”

Actually, she
had
thought that. Charlotte sniffed. “W-what happens if I win, then?”

“You get a new, fresh start in an entirely new place. Just nice, normal you in a nice, normal place. No fairy tale, just the happy ever after part. Think of it as Charlotte 2.0.”

She blinked repeatedly, unable to process this. No more snow queen? No more endless winter and ice and powers? No polar bears for mounts. No unseen servants to serve her and no icy boudoir to sleep in. No ice gowns. She’d be normal. She’d be able to be touched and be loved, and to touch and love back.

But…Kai. “I…what if I want to stay here?”

“Not possible.” Muffin pinched her cheek with a mittened thumb. “You don’t really think these people are going to want a snow queen around forever, do you?”

“I’d kind of hoped…”

“Don’t be silly.”

She licked her dry lips. “What…if I win, does the old snow queen take her body back over again?”

“That’s need-to-know information, Charlotte darling, and you really do not need to know.”

That didn’t sound good. Oh, Kai, Kai. Would he even know it wasn’t her before it was too late? Or would he end up trapped all over again?

Oh dear lord, what could she do to fix this? Charlotte looked around at her crumbling, melting walls. At the patchy ice that had – two weeks ago – been the start of a rather fierce and forbidding ice fortress. At the limp plants in neat rows that she’d spent so much time and energy on.

Boy, she’d really fucked this one up, hadn’t she?

Charlotte stared blankly at the walls. “I’ve got a lot of work to do in the next two days.”

Muffin beamed at her. “I can see my little pep talk helped. You scrape yourself off the ground, Charlotte dearie, and you get back to work. There’s always hope, right? And you’ll want to go down swinging.”

“I’ll get started,” she said, an ache in her throat that wouldn’t go away. “You can count on me.”

“Good job,” Muffin said, and waved one of her ski poles in the air. “I’m out of here, then. See you in a few days!” She vanished in a puff of glitter.

Charlotte sank to her knees, a small moan escaping her throat.

What could she do? She had two days and her ice castle was crumbling around her. Her ice magic was ebbing low, because she’d sunk so much of it into her plants. Those stupid, stupid plants. If she wanted a shot in hell of sticking around to become Charlotte 2.0, she needed to redo her ice walls. Make them stronger, thicker. Maybe create some icy pit traps around the courtyard with some ice spikes at the bottom…

She shuddered, mentally picturing someone that looked like Kai stumbling into an icy pit trap. Could she do that? Could she embrace her evil side in order to survive? She had to – if she didn’t, she’d be annihilated right out of the afterlife. The cards were stacked against her no matter what she did.

And oh God. What if she hurt Kai in the process? She looked back at her ice castle, not seeing it as a glimmering, secure fortress but an icy creation one strong gust of wind away from collapsing. What if one of the icy crenellations collapsed under the heat of the sun and pinned him underneath? What if the entire thing came crashing down when she bit it?

Worse, what if the old queen returned and Kai went to her with open arms, thinking it was Charlotte?

She had to do something. Something different. She had to fix this. God, she’d made such a mess of things, even worse than that stupid Fifi. Desperate, she clutched at the frosty mounds of her skirts and pushed her way inside the front doors of the castle, seeing now just how fragile and ephemeral her dwelling was. It was no place to keep Kai safe. The ice could collapse on top of her and not hurt her, but Kai was all too warm and human and fragile for this. She thought of his warm brown skin, smothered in furs so he didn’t freeze to death.

She thought of his blistered hand, frost nipped from where he’d touched her. He’d nearly lost his fingers, all because he’d wanted to pleasure her.

A sob escaped Charlotte’s throat. She was selfishly destroying him and his life, wasn’t she? Even without the mirror chips in his eyes, she was still manipulating him.

The mirror.

Gasping, Charlotte ran for the deepest recesses of the snow queen’s secret chambers. She found the thick wall behind her throne, coaxed it open, and then staggered through. There, set alone, was the magic mirror. It oozed power and malevolence. The two chips that had been in Kai’s eyes were returned, and the glass itself was unblemished perfection.

A fine mist seemed to cling to the air around the mirror. She approached it cautiously. It felt dirty to stand so close to it, like she was breathing in oily, unctuous evil with every breath.

But there was power here. Lots and lots of power. And Charlotte’s power was running low. The mirror might be able to save her.

Licking her lips nervously, she took another step forward and stared into the mirror’s reflection. There was her face, so pale and frightened, surrounded by a wild tangle of pale blonde hair. Her skin had a bluish, frosty tinge to it, but the mirror made it seem sickly, unholy. Everything about the mirror made her skin crawl. Her mind rebelled at the thought of touching it, using it, but she was running out of options fast.

“Hello?” Charlotte said softly. “Are you there?”

Alwaysss…

Yeah, that wasn’t encouraging. “Um. I think I need your help.”

I am here…speak what you need…

She looked down at her hands. They were trembling, but she wasn’t sure if it was anxiety or fear or just exhaustion. “I need more magic. I need to fortify the walls here because I need to protect myself.”

Tell me what you will give me…

Charlotte frowned. “Give you?”

All magic requires a trade…

That sounded horribly ominous. “And if I have nothing to give you?”

Don’t you?

An uncomfortable prickle touched her skin. She took a step away from the mirror. “What do you mean? I don’t have anything except ice and magic, and I’m coming to you for more of those.”

Twin pricks of light centered in the mirror, right over the spot where her eyes were.
You removed these once. You can replace them again.

“In Kai?” she asked, horrified. “They made him a zombie!”

He is strong. You can use him to feed your own magic.

“No! There has to be another way!”

This time, the mirror’s tone was mocking and evil.
Where do you think magic comes from, little one? Power must come from somewhere, even borrowed power. You’ve used me once before…

“Not me! Never me!”

Ah, but you are not so different from the other queen. She came to me seeking power as well…

And she’d done whatever it took to get that power. Charlotte squeezed her eyes shut, but when she did, all she saw was Kai’s mirrored, deadened gaze. “I can’t do that to him.”

Can’t you? He trusts you. All you need is to get close enough to touch him and I’ll do the rest. He won’t even notice…

Because his mind would be turned to mush. Charlotte shuddered. She wanted to leave – run away – but the power pulsing in the mirror was real and thick in the air and she was running out of options. “Tell me something else I can do. Anything. Just…not that.”

You make it sound as if you have choices…

That made her angry. “I always have choices, you son of a bitch. I can choose what I want to do. I’m in charge of this fairy tale at the moment.”

The mirror said nothing, but she could hear the echo of its laughter in her mind.

“Forget it,” she said, turning away. “I’ll figure out something else.”

You’ll be back. The other always was…

For some reason, that sent a chill down her spine. God, what if the snow queen had started out as another, normal woman and had turned to the mirror for help? What if it had corrupted her? What if that happened to Charlotte?

What if, in two days, she grew weak with fear?

No, she told herself, shaking her head. She would never do that to Kai. But if someone else came close…

Oh God. What was she thinking? She wouldn’t sacrifice someone else just to drag a few more days out of her own sorry life. The very thought horrified her. She turned and looked at the mirror. Just being in its presence made her want a bath. She felt dirty from being near it. Dirty from having talked to it. Like its evil was worming its way through her system.

Twin gleams remained in the mirror’s glass, reminding her of what it wanted.

There was only one way to fix this. Charlotte dredged up enough power to make an ice club. She approached the mirror slowly, hefting it.

You won’t do it, the mirror mocked. Where do you think you get this limitless power from already? Your predecessor has sacrificed many a slave to increase her pool—

The mirror made a delightful shattering sound when the club hit it. Shards rained down on the floor, and for a moment, Charlotte could almost see the evil miasma hang in the air like a puff of smoke. Then, it dissipated and the room brightened.

The ominous, heavy pulse of magic in the room was gone.