A hand wrapped around my shoulder and someone shoved me toward the carriage. “Move,” said a gruff, deep voice.
I was already shivering, the cold easily working its way into my bones. Sitting in the carriage probably wasn’t a bad idea, so I walked over to it. On the outside, the ornate carriage looked like it, too, was made of ice. The entire body glittered as I approached. But inside, it was blessedly warm, and comfortable.
I sat down on the black, velvety seats, and started rubbing my hands together, blowing into them for warmth. Three soldiers joined me, their full suits of armor clanking as they settled into their seats. The last one in shut the door, and then the soldier across from me knocked the wall with his fist a couple of times.
A moment later, the carriage started moving. Interestingly, the guy in the suit hadn’t joined us in this carriage. If I had to hazard a guess as to why that was, I’d say it was probably because he was too important to ride around in a carriage with the likes of me. I couldn’t say I was upset about that. There was no telling what would happen to me if I had to look at him again right now.
The man sitting across from me didn’t let his gaze slip once. He was fixed on me, watching my every move, studying me. “Why do you do that with your hands?” he asked.
“For warmth,” I said.
“Why do you need to be warm?”
I cocked an eyebrow. “You’re kidding, right?”
“She’s spent too long in the human world,” another one of the soldiers said, “Her blood is weak.”
“Too long in the… what?”
“Let us be glad we are out of that place,” the third soldier said. “I cannot stand Earth… and humans. Why must they smell so? If it were up to me, they would all be slaves.”
“Hey, wait a second,” I snapped, “Why do you have to slag humans off? What did we ever do to you?”
“We,” the one across from me, the leader of the group, said, “Look at her. She thinks she’s one of them.”
“That’s because I—” a sharp, stabbing pain at the base of my neck shut me down so hard I almost bit my own tongue. Wincing, I shut up. That had been Gullie’s work. I’d forgotten she was even there. My instinct was to snap at her, too, but I knew better than to keep talking after that.
I decided to take the soldier, and I guess Gullie’s, advice and remain quiet for the rest of the trip to… wherever we were going. They’d called it Windhelm, in Arcadia. I didn’t know much about it, only rumors and whatever stories my mothers had told me.
Arcadia, I knew, was the name of the realm to which all the fae belonged. It was their world; a vast and wonderous place, with continents, and oceans, countries, and nations. Nobody else lived in Arcadia, only the fae. It wasn’t that the fae realm was inhospitable to humans, it was that the fae themselves hated the idea of sharing their land with those not of the blood and took steps to make sure humans found in Arcadia were… removed.
Another thing I’d heard the soldiers mention was the Winter Court. As far as I knew, the Courts were like fae factions. They were the cultures of the fae world, the nations. The Winter Court, the Summer Court; Spring, Autumn. Each had its own land, its own rules, customs, and leaders.
If that was true, if these other factions existed, I couldn’t help but wonder why in the hell it had to have been the Winter Court that had snatched me up and not, say, the Summer Court? I’d never left England. I’d never even left London. I was used to the cold, but if I was going to be kidnapped by fae, why couldn’t I have been taken somewhere a little warmer?
Shit.
That was the first time I had even thought the word.
I had been kidnapped; kidnapped by fae who rode giant elk and carried swords that were as cold as ice. This was all starting to feel like a fever dream, and maybe it was. Maybe I’d fallen asleep in my workroom, and if I shook myself hard enough, I’d wake up. I decided not to try it, just in case one of the soldiers around me thought I was being threatening.
Me.
Threatening.
I wasn’t sure how long we spent in the carriage. After a while, the landscape rolling by, as beautiful as it was, started to just look… white. Yes, the cliffs and the mountains were a sight to behold, but there really wasn’t much more to it than that. Luckily, all of this vast nothingness and silence gave me time to think.
I needed to figure a way out of this mess, but with three soldiers around me and the only exit blocked, there were none. I also hadn’t considered exactly what I’d do if I did somehow manage to jump out of the carriage and make a run for it.
Where would I run to? Where would I find shelter? How long until the cold dragged me into death?
I needed to keep my wits about me, look for opportunities, and carefully consider my actions and my words. My mothers would’ve returned home by now. They would know I had been taken, and they would start looking for me. My only objective was to stay alive and wait for them to find me.
I took a deep breath of that crisp, cold air and looked out of the window again, watching the world roll by. Then the carriage turned a corner, and for the second time today, my jaw dropped. It was like a jewel gleaming in the snow—no, not just one jewel, a whole heap of them dazzling under the sunlight.
It looked like a city, with huge domes and tall spires; all white, all glittering. A single, narrow bridge looked like the only way into and out of the city, which stood like an island against the surrounding cliffs and mountains. It was the most beautiful place I had ever seen, majestic, regal, and proud—but also cold, and… lonely. There was nothing around this marvelous city, only more jagged peaks, and snow.
There was something sad about that.
“Is this… Windhelm?” I asked.
The man sitting across from me didn’t answer. He only stared at me some more, his bright eyes fixed.
I nodded. “I guess I’ll take that as a yes,” I said.
The carriage drew ever closer to the city as the minutes ticked away. Soon enough, we were on the bridge, which made for a much smoother ride compared to the ground we’d been on. Even from inside the carriage I got a sense of just how high up the bridge was from the deepest point beneath it. The entire city looked like it was on a natural plateau, elevated from the rest of the world, kept apart from it.
We didn’t halt at the gates; the carriage instead being waved through by another soldier-type fae on the ground. Clearly, we were expected. As the carriage rolled through the stony streets, flanked on both sides by white buildings that glittered like they were made of ice, the soldier across from me decided to speak.
“These are the rules,” he said. “You do not speak unless spoken to. You dress the way we tell you to. You eat what we give you. And you don’t try to escape. If you attempt to escape, we will not hunt you down. We will not send soldiers looking for you. The nearest town is several hundreds of miles away. You will not survive without help, and you will find none of that in Windhelm. Do you understand?”
“I understand I’ve just been kidnapped,” I said, “You realize people will come looking for me, right? Powerful people.”
“They will never find you here. And if they did, they would freeze to death trying to break through our defenses.”
“I’m pretty sure you shouldn’t underestimate mages.”