Page 8 of The Yuletide Fairy's Curse
“Of course not,” Dalla choked out.
“I am sorry to have upset you,” said Kolfrosta. “I will have you taken back to your rooms.”
“Is that all?” Dalla gasped. “You’re not going to kill me?”
Invisible hands nudged Dalla toward the east staircase once more. Kolfrosta said something, but it was almost too quiet to make out. It sounded like, “I am not a murderer.”
CHAPTER 6
Once Dalla had calmed herself and rode out the attack, she drank several glasses of water that kept refilling on her nightstand. A bath was drawn, and she sank into it with heavy bones.
Even if the dagger Dalla broughtcouldkill Kolfrosta, Dalla wasn’t sure she wanted to use it. Nothing in the way Kolfrosta treated Dalla revealed ill intent or anything remotely deserving of the loss of life.
She wasn’t here for vengeance. That was never why Dalla had the dagger made.
Most of her family alienated her for her entire life. They kept her out of politics until Kolfrosta started picking them off, and then Dalla had been thrust into their roles. It did not seem necessary to care so much about the bloodline. Why not let another family take over? Someone who deserved it more? Was it so important to her parents to uphold their legacy?
And what legacy, furthermore, were they upholding? Dalla felt stupid that she had not understood the full extent of her conversation with Puck. To choose who lived and died every year was unfathomable. That the people who gave her life were complicit in this made her want to scrub off her skin and becomesomeone new. Not once had it occurred to her that her power was meant to be used for such a thing.
After her bath, Dalla slid into the comfortable sheets. She’d been allowed to live tonight, but the summer fairy would arrive two nights from now to kill Kolfrosta.
What did Kolfrosta do with Dalla’s family when the time came? Were they handed over to Puck to do with as he would? Did Kolfrosta allow him to do the dirty work of killing them?
Dalla had to make sure she was still alive when Puck came. That was the only way to buy herself another year to protect her younger brothers.
Hours of tossing and turning later, Dalla slept. She had only one dream—Kolfrosta, approaching her from a long distance away over an endless snowy landscape in the dead of night. In the dream, Dalla was frozen in place. When Kolfrosta stood before her, she reached for Dalla’s face with a gleaming silver ring adorning the middle finger of her hand. From experience, Dalla braced herself for the warmth of Kolfrosta’s skin, but the ring touched Dalla’s cheek with a coldness so deep it burned.
Dalla woke cradling her cheek, which held a phantom of the pain. The sun was streaming through the windows, and for a moment she did not know where she was.
And then she remembered. A creeping suspicion overcame Dalla, and she rose from bed and tried the door. Locked.
Very well, then. No need to panic; someone would let her out eventually.
Busying herself getting ready took no time at all. She sat, and she waited. And waited some more. And then some more.
Her stomach grumbled.
“Am I allowed to leave?” she asked the empty room.
No one responded.
“Please? I am very hungry. Would you take me to get something to eat?”
The plea worked: the lock undid itself with a mechanical noise, and then the door creaked open.
Dalla stepped into the hallway. The maze of doors made her dizzy. Asking for food had gotten her out of the room, but that did not mean the invisible servants were going to help her.
So Dalla began to open the doors.
One door revealed a room that extended impossibly high into the ceiling. The chittering of birds greeted Dalla. They came in unusual colors and sizes the likes of which Dalla had never seen, and the floor was suspiciously absent of bird droppings.
Another door revealed a room with musical instruments. Another, a room of statues so hauntingly lifelike that Dalla shut the door immediately. The next was another bedroom decorated in a fish theme.
And the next room was a library.
Dalla stroked the chestnut shelves with her fingertips. Books with leather spines and gold print sparkled at her from every surface, illuminated by the twinkling lights falling from the ceiling. The library was well-kept and free of dust, and the smell of books and polished wood overcame her senses. She pulled a book from the shelf—to her delight, an adventure story about a pirate. Did Kolfrosta read these sorts of stories?
Dalla trailed through a maze of ceiling-high shelves and climbed a winding staircase to a second story. There were books on every subject she could imagine. Bird identification and growing crops, ruling a country and keeping bees. Romances and tragedies and comedies. Dalla brought the ones that interested her to a table and flipped through them with reverence.
