Frost Kisses (Bitter Frost #4: Frost Series) by Kailin Gow Read Free Book Online Page B

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    Moments before I had run my hands up and down that chest. Now I wanted to see a sword in the middle of it. I bit back my anger. Killing Delano would only make the pixie problem worse. But that didn't mean I couldn't scare him. Delano kept on staring at me with those smoldering eyes, making it clear that he was thinking back on every lascivious moment we'd shared when he was glamoured as Kian. It made me want to vomit. “I should kill you,” I said. “You're lucky you lasted this long!”
    “You wouldn't kill me!” Delano sounded over-confident; I had made him nervous.
    “Maybe not right now...” I said. “Not if you do as I say. Say, if you handed me the snowflake, and made a solemn pixie oath not to follow me out, not to chase me....a magic oath.”
    “That's bloody unlikely!” Delano spat.
    “I'm not going to kill you, that's true,” I said. “But I’ll stab this where it’ll hurt.” I moved the sword downwards, pointing directly below his belt. “And then you won't be having children at all – with me or anyone else.”
    “Highly unlikely,” Delano snorted, but cried out in pain as I hit the flat end of the sword straight into his groin. He knew I meant business.
    “Next time,” I said between clenched teeth. “I’ll slice something off.”
    “Fine!” he gasped for breath. “The pixie oath – I swear it!” He threw me the snowflake from around his neck.
    “What do you swear?”
    “I swear, as a pixie, on my very magic, that I and my men will let you pass through unharmed.”
    “Good.”
    I gave him one last withering look, and ran.

Chapter 7
     
     
    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