The Winter King

  The Winter King

  Title Page

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty- Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Epilogue

  The Winter King

  Book 8 in the Big Bad Wolf spinoff series, The Kings

  by Heather Killough-Walden

  Copyright 2016 Heather Killough-Walden

  Smashwords Edition

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  Heather Killough-Walden Reading List

  The Lost Angels series:

  Always Angel (eBook-only introductory novella)

  Avenger's Angel

  Messenger's Angel

  Death's Angel

  Warrior's Angel

  Samael

  The October Trilogy:

  Sam I Am

  Secretly Sam

  Suddenly Sam

  Neverland Series:

  Forever Neverland

  Beyond Neverland

  The Big Bad Wolf series:

  The Heat

  The Strip

  The Spell

  The Hunt

  The Big Bad Wolf Romance Compilation (all four books together, in proper chronological order)

  The Kings - A Big Bad Wolf spinoff series:

  (in their proper order so far)

  The Vampire King

  The Phantom King

  The Warlock King

  The Goblin King

  The Seelie King

  The Unseelie King

  The Shadow King

  The Winter King

  (future The Kings books TBA; 13 total)

  The Chosen Soul Trilogy:

  The Chosen Soul

  Drake of Tanith

  Queen of Abaddon

  Redeemer (stand-alone)

  Hell Bent (stand-alone)

  Vampire, Vampire (stand-alone)

  A Sinister Game (stand-alone)

  The Third Kiss: Dorian's Dream (stand-alone)

  Note: The Lost Angels series (not including Always Angel, Warrior’s Angel and Samael) and the Big Bad Wolf series are available in print and eBook format. All other HKW books are currently eBook-only.

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  “Chess is ruthless. You've got to be prepared to kill people.”

  - Nigel Short

  Prologue

  793 AD, TromsØ, the northwest coast of Norway

  Erikk narrowed his gaze and placed his hands above and beneath his eyes, blocking the miniscule sunlight to the south and the reflection of it from the snow below. This far north, the sun appeared for a mere few days before vanishing altogether for most of the year. But of course it would hinder his vision now. Patches left over from the early snow weeks ago had yet to melt and extended directly to the edge of the overhanging cliffs on which he stood.

  He watched the waves on the water below for some time before lifting his head and inhaling deeply, drawing in the scents on the breeze.

  “There’s another storm on the way, isn’t there?”

  Erikk looked down, dropping his arms. His little sister, Ylva, stood beside him, having come upon him as quietly as ever. There was a reason she’d been named for the wolf. “Within three days, perhaps four. Bigger than before. It will mark winter’s beginning and the end of the time of waiting.” Fall to the people across the sea to the west was known as “the time of waiting.” His grandfather, Ohthere had traveled there years ago and had come back to tell tales of their ways. It made sense to Erikk and Ylva, because that was what you did when winter was on the way. You waited. Hence, ever since the stories, brother and sister had referred to fall as such.

  But this second storm was coming far too early for the heaviness it carried. The storm would bury them.

  “You should tell father. He is having Bjarke lead a ship to go-a-viking by tomorrow’s sunrise. He wants him to go south past the Lapp settlements, and I think he wants you to go as well.”

  Erikk bristled. Bjarke was a menace. He hated to have to accompany the brute, but if he didn’t for every trade with the islands, the man would wreak havoc on any crew assigned to him. Bjarke could not be left alone.

  “I’ll speak with father.” He turned and left his younger sibling on the outcroppings overlooking the sea and knew she would remain there for some time, her gaze peering toward the horizon and the ice that waited beyond it. She was always looking northward, toward the cold, toward the bears. It was where her heart seemed to reside.

  As Erikk neared the camp, another young man in leathers approached. Erikk smiled at him warmly. “Ronald. How do you fare?”

  “All healed up and never better. I’m to accompany you tomorrow morning.”

  Erikk frowned, glancing at his best friend’s arm, which was still wrapped – and his leg, which was also wrapped. “I doubt it.”

  Ronald’s red eyebrows raised, and he made a face. “Aw, let a man be, Erikk. I really am feeling well again. And you’ll need someone on your side with Bjarke at the helm. He has it in for you. He hates you even more now because you bested him four nights ago.”

  Ronald Dagfinnr was a medium-sized man the same age as Erikk, ten and six years. He had braids of red hair and the lucky and early beginnings of a beard. Ronald was fairly sure his beard gave him magical powers, and he had been acting a might too brave for Odin’s wisdom of late. The last time they’d gone out fishing together, he’d made the mistake of jumping into the freezing water in order to attempt to wrestle a male narwhal. The beast had speared him in two place
s before flippantly swimming off again.

  Erikk had been forced to haul the bleeding man out of the water before the blood drew unwanted company. Fortunately, the cold of the water caused him to bleed less. On the other hand, he’d lost a toe.

  To Ronald’s defense, the horn would have brought a mighty good trade. And what he said about Bjarke was true enough. The brute hated Erikk, not only because Erikk was the chief’s son and next in line as leader, but because Erikk had actually earned that honor. He was admittedly more handsome than most of the men in the camp, and had drawn the attentions of a handful of maidens who were more than content to warm his bed at night. Bjarke had enough reason for jealousy there alone. But at the age of sixteen, a full five years younger than Bjarke, who was twenty-one, Erikk was already larger than most of the men in the camp, taller and broader shouldered. He sported the coveted gold hair of Sif, and eyes of clearest, coldest blue. But most importantly, Erikk had proven himself a more skilled fighter than the other men in the camp, even Bjarke. His command decisions were invariably more intelligent than Bjarke’s, and that didn’t go unnoticed by the swine either.

  All in all, he had an enemy for life, if not several. It was a shame, too, because Bjarke’s family was not without value all in all. His older sister, Toril, had been a shield maiden of glorious success. She’d won seven battles before she’d finally fallen beneath the enemy’s blade at the age of twenty-seven. She’d been mighty and honorable. No doubt, Toril had become a Valkyrie upon her death, and now lead other mighty warriors to their final resting place in Valhalla.

  “Tell me something, Ronald. How did you know we were to go-a-viking in the morning?”

  Ronald shrugged, then winced when the movement no doubt pulled on his stitches. Jorunn was very good with those needles she carved out of bone, but the sinew she sewed into the flesh drew a need for ale none the less. “I’ve been speaking with your mother,” said Ronald. “And of course, she knows everything your father does and says. She’s got Frigga’s eyes and ears, she does.”

  Erikk sighed. “Go check on Ylva. She’s by the sea again.”

  Erikk’s little sister was another point of contention between himself and Bjarke. Bjarke felt Ylva would be the perfect mate for him. And Erikk, quite simply, did not. The girl was but eleven years, for Odin’s sake.

  Ronald brightened at the prospect of seeing Ylva, whom he’d always been fond of. He nodded. “Right.” He began to walk around Erikk, but stopped and turned back. “I’ll be going with you, won’t I?” he asked before Erikk had gone too far.

  “There’s a storm coming. We should not be going at all.”

  Erikk left it at that and continued into the camp, heading directly for his father’s hut. It was one of the larger in the camp, its pointed roof composed of thatch and running flush with the ground, its facial walls constructed of stripped logs. His people did not use chimneys to vent their fire pits, as Erikk had seen used in some of the buildings belonging to those they traded with. Instead, their roofs were simply ventilated enough that smoke never gathered long.

  Smaller huts in the camp bore leather reinforced roofs, and the smallest domiciles were mere tents made of wolf and sealskin. But the chief of the clan, of course, lived in the chief’s house. And that was where Erikk went now.

  “Father, I request a word.” He entered the hut by ducking beneath the door’s overhang and shutting the door securely behind him. His mother and father were at the table, speaking quietly.

  His father, Rangvald of the Wilds, looked up and met his gaze. Eyes like his own stared back at him, a piercing blue the shade of the ice mountains where they rose from the sea in the north. “Then have it, son.”

  “You are sending Bjarke tomorrow with a crew to trade with the islands to the south?”

  “Aye. I had expected you to go with them, however. Why do you ask this as if you do not plan to be included?”

  “There is a storm coming, and the sea will be angry. We should remain here.”

  Rangvald considered him carefully and for a long time. Erikk’s mother, Thyra turned to regard her son as well, her own blue eyes a much deeper hue, like the North Sea itself.

  She turned back to her husband and said, “He always knows, Rangvald.”

  The chief watched his wife’s face for a moment, then nodded. “Erikk, speak with Bjarke. He is already rounding up the crew. I believe you’ll find him with Sigurd and Ingvar.”

  Erikk nodded and left the hut.

  *****

  When evening came, the camp was subdued, with an undercurrent of resentment that left Erikk feeling as though there were more than one storm on the way.

  “He’s been giving you the eye all night, Erikk,” said Ylva softly. “It doesn’t help that the trade was going to bring in more mead. Bjarke is unpleasant if he doesn’t have his drink.”

  And she was right. Bjarke was like a bear who’d had his fish taken from him. He wanted a kill, he wanted a meal, and he wanted them both now. To say nothing of the mead. Both ale and mead were running short, made so by the early storm they’d had not long ago. What ale they did possess had soured a little. Either that, or it was a sour taste Erikk had on his tongue as he drank that night.

  He did understand the need to make a trade, and soon, but he wasn’t a fool. Nature didn’t care how little mead you had.

  The night passed without incident, but Erikk had an unsettled feeling. Every time he glanced at the large, surly Bjarke to find him and his mates staring darkly back, that feeling deepened. By the time Erikk’s head hit his mat, his nerves were alight with worry, and it took a while for sleep to find him.

  Chapter One

  Present day, Seattle Washington, United States

  He was not into coffee shops. Coffee was served either very hot or very cold, and neither had any effect on him unless he willed them to, and then it just felt like too much effort. The people in coffee shops wore Converses and Abercrombie. He wore boots and a leather jacket. The atmosphere was one of sedate money, young ones drawing together to utilize their parents’ wealth by studying for classes their parents bought for them on laptops their parents bought for them. Or it was the old coming together to show off diamond rings when they lifted their mugs and discuss church or wedding preparations or how lovely their vacations were.

  Kristopher had no use for money. He was anything but sedate. And the last time he’d been to a wedding, it had been to stop it. Because he’d felt like it. And the guy the bride had been about to marry was a dick.

  Winter is not quiet.

  And neither was Kristopher.

  True winter was not a season. There were people along the equator of Earth who would claim that between the months of November and February, they were in “winter.” They would smile and shrug and say that it was always mild, but in some places, winter was fortunately like that. Then they would don snorkeling gear and get their asses burned laying face-down in the ocean for hours on end.

  But that wasn’t winter. That was a joke.

  Winter did not always come, and certainly it absolutely ignored some locations. Winter sometimes had a temper. It could be stunningly beautiful and graciously comforting. But when it raged, it blotted out the world and cut it to the bone. And when it died, it did so with unspoken yet seething promise: I will return. And I do not forget.

  Kristopher would know. He’d been charged with its keeping. Long – long – ago.

  So why the hell he was leaning up against his bike with his arms crossed over his chest, standing across the street from the busiest, most commercial coffee shop in the world was a mystery to him. But apparently, winter was coming. And according to the power that had made him its king for eons, it was beginning here.

  Tonight. In this coffee shop.

  Kristopher took a deep breath and rubbed his eyes. The dual temperatures fighting for control inside of him sometimes made them hurt. They were blue, the color of the hottest heat and the coldest cold. And right now, they felt like dry ice, torn betwee
n burning and freezing.

  “I don’t have time for this crap,” he muttered. Winter was fickle, and right now, it was riding his nerves. He had other things to worry about. He’d just received word from his men in the north that the seed storage facility they guarded might be compromised. He’d also just received word that the base of the damned Tree itself had developed a hairline fracture. It wasn’t that hairline fractures in the Tree were especially rare, but they did require attention just in case. The afternoon had gone south really fast.

  He had work to do and was needed elsewhere, so it pissed him off more than a little that winter had decided it was going to just up and start right here and now, at this very moment, weeks before the Solstice.

  “I don’t understand you,” he muttered next.

  You don’t need to understand me, Winter whispered back. You just need to love me.

  Kristopher sighed, uncrossed his arms, and made his way across the street to the front door of the enormous building that was the Starbucks Reserve Tasting Room and Roastery. Or something like that. He happened to know that the Shadow Queen was a fan of the place. He half wondered if she was in there at that moment. The Tuath loved coffee, and in the two and a half months since she’d taken her place at the table of the Thirteen Kings, coffee had become a regular staple amidst the food and drinks offered at it.

  Plus, he was fairly sure she was from Seattle.

  Which increased Kristopher’s curiosity about this location. Why here? Why had winter decided this would be its inception in the northern hemisphere this year?

  In the southern hemisphere, he didn’t really have to worry. Winter almost slept through its designated months there. It touched a few peaks here and there, gave a few careless climbers frostbite, and then drew back, as if it were preparing for its real winter. On the other side of the Equator.