The Winter King Read Online Free PDF Page B

on?”
Violet asked, clearly able to hear her hesitation. If Poppy wasn’t
careful, the new Shadow Queen would be here in a few short hops,
skips and jumps through the portals of the shadows.
    Kristopher smiled.
    “ It’s nothing,” Poppy lied.
“I’m just – I’m super busy. I’ll call you back in a few, okay?” She
hung up.
    She’d never hung up on her best friend
before. It felt so wrong, and she could just imagine Violet on the
other end of the line, staring disbelievingly at her phone. But
then again, Violet had encased Poppy in a holding spell a few
months ago, and that had been the first time Violet had ever cast
magic on her, so Poppy still had a ways to go until they were
even.
    She put the phone on silence and slipped it
back into her handbag. “She’s on her honeymoon,” she said.
    “ And you don’t want to ruin
that for her by asking her a lot of questions about what
supernatural being could look like me and know who and what you
are. Sweet of you, but not very smart. And since I have a feeling
you’re very smart, Poppy Nix, I’m guessing you actually hung up on
her because you don’t want her involved with the Entity again.
She’s already been involved enough, hasn’t she?”
    Poppy stood up. Her legs felt strange, but
they held her. Fear was driving her.
    The Entity was out there; she knew
that well enough. Everyone who had anything at all to do with the
supernatural factions these days had been made aware of the Entity
– and her best friend had gone up against the terrifying being
herself. So, Poppy was well versed in how dangerous the world had
become of late. The man sitting across the table from her could
very well be possessed. He could be the Entity. Or he could be working for
him.
    Despite those eyes and those muscles, he
could be evil through and through, and he’d all but just admitted
as much.
    She leaned over the table
and found her hands shaking where they braced against its surface.
She tried to keep her voice down, tried desperately to keep from
drawing attention as she hissed, “Tell me who and what you are, Kristopher, or
I will walk out of this coffee shop and head straight to the
Thirteen Kings to inform them of this exchange. And if you follow
me or try to stop me, I won’t care how frowned-upon it is to use
magic in the mortal realm.”
    His smile became a cold, hard grin. In a
voice just as soft but far more powerful, he said, “You do have
spirit, don’t you? But you aren’t going anywhere, Poppy. Not
without me.”

Chapter Six
    Kristopher knew what was happening. But that
was different from believing it.
    From the moment he’d heard
her voice speaking those pointedly portentous words, “You don’t need to understand me, you just need
to love me,” he’d been stunned. For a
while, all he could do was sit there in his chair at that table and
stare at her. He was focused, tuned-in, listening. But he could
feel the magic in his body spinning too hard, too fast, and he knew
he would draw attention soon. Either the windows around him would
freeze and shatter or the air would begin forming indoor clouds or
the ground would ice over and people would slip to their untimely
deaths.
    So he shook himself out of his stupor and
morphed his body out of the visible spectrum of those around him.
Then he slowly rose from his table and moved in.
    That was a mistake. The
closer he got to her, the stronger the knowledge was that what he
was seeing, what he was witnessing, and what he was feeling , was all real.
That reality was like both an icepick through his heart – and a
quickly following blowtorch to melt it all away again. It hurt. It
felt wonderful.
    It was unbelievable.
    How many years? How many blasted winters had
come and gone to see him occupy his icy throne alone?
    No. He was dreaming. He had
to be. The Shadow King had thought his realm was uninhabitable? The
Unseelie King had thought no woman would want his darkness either?
The Goblin King had been positive no