Frost Read Online Free PDF

fluffy bunny.
I lay there for a moment, perfectly still, my bare legs and arms touching the snow. The texture was there, wet and crumbly. The feeling of ice. What it should have been was cold. I didn't get up. Just lay with my flashlight beside me, staring at the gray sky. "How is this possible?”
No one answered. Moisture seeped into my thin nightgown, but still no cold. There was definitely something wrong with me.
A few feet away, something crunched, and I sat up with a gasp.
There, in the halo of my flashlight, stood a man. He had to be well over six feet, with brilliantly blond hair, and he was dressed in nothing but a T-shirt and blue jeans, in spite of the sub-zero weather.
I clutched the flashlight until my hands hurt, my heart thundering in my ears. “Who—”
The man's eyes went wide, and he threw one hand up. "No!"
Someone gripped me around the shoulders from behind, and something damp and smothering pressed over my nose and mouth. Panicked, I clawed at my face. Trying to scream, trying to breathe. My head spun, and black spots jumped in front of my eyes.
Then a wall of darkness slammed down around me.
 
~ * ~
 
The motion is as natural as breathing, the fluid, violent dance of war. My sword feels warm in my grip as I face my enemies—dark shadows against our moonlit snow, a crowd of disorganized rabble, little better than barbarians in their ugly, brown furs and tromping boots.
I watch them cradle their flames to keep warm. We will not return home until their blood falls scarlet on the snow. I blink against the glare of the sun, and my vision blurs for a moment. I squint, and sharp pain lances through my temples.
The sound of the battlefield fades, replaced by angry voices.
 
As I surfaced from the fog, the smell was the first thing that struck me—the musky, cloying odor of smoke hanging in the air.
The second was how sore I was. Every muscle was screaming, and I was lying on something hard. A wood floor? Cement? No, it was moving.
From somewhere in front of me came a low, angry voice. "I told you I could handle her."
              "The queen gave orders."
"She would have been receptive to me..."
I tried to lift my head and a wash of dizziness followed. Had he just said queen ?
"Oh, come now. You think you can just charm the girl? She wouldn't come with you because you're dreamy ."
"Do not mock me, Caleb. And put that out. It's disgusting"
It wasn’t just dark. There was something over my eyes. I could feel it. Horrified, I tried to rip the blindfold off and discovered I couldn’t move. The floor beneath me was still vibrating. Okay, I was in a car. Or a van, more likely.
When I stopped to take stock, I could barely feel my arms—they were so numb. My hands were tied behind my back. I was lying on them. Tentatively, I tried to move my legs and found them tied as well. Jolts of panic ran through me, making me nauseated and weak. Visions of the terrible things I'd heard on the news ran through my head like a macabre slideshow.
"Well, you didn't need to truss her up like that," the first voice said sharply. "She's a slip of a girl. Are you afraid she'll be too much to handle?”
Even in my current predicament, my mind repeated the phrase slip of a girl . At six feet, that wasn’t something I’d expected to ever apply to me. The man standing on my lawn, he'd been taller.
"I had my orders," the second voice, the one called Caleb, said. "You know how much is riding on this. I'm not going to go and make her mad, am I?"
"You let me deal with her when we get to the palace. I won't have you manhandling her like that again," the first voice grumbled.
“You’ll damn well do as you’re told, soldier.”
Soldier? The palace ? What the hell. Was this some kind of joke?
Something was digging into my back, and I squirmed around on the hard surface. Obviously, we were going to be driving for some time. Last I’d checked, there were no palaces in Grande Prairie.
After a while, I gave up and lay still,