Frost, Tome 3 : Silver Frost

When I was younger, I dreamed dreams of Feyland. I was decked out in silk and satin – warm jewel tones hugging breathlessly against my body – dancing every night at the Fairy Ball. The waltzes were soft and low, my feet as light as whispers against the marble floor. I spent night after night in the arms of a fairy prince, who stared at me with eyes so piercing blue that I felt my whole body shatter and come apart ten thousand times in an evening. We would dance to the fairy waltz, tangled in each other's arms, gliding across the floor. The smell of bergamot would linger from the garden; the scent of jasmines would cloud our nostrils from so many bouquets spread across the ballroom walls. The light would sparkle as it faded into sunset, casting impish shadows through the stained glass windows. And I would be in the arms of a fairy prince who loved me, whom I loved with more power than the whole fairy kingdom could contain. But those were old dreams. I did not dream them now.

Now Feyland had become a place of terror to me, and when I dreamed I screamed aloud, and woke up gasping, with my throat raw and my eyes red and bloodshot. Now when I dreamed of Feyland, I dreamed instead of the forest where Kian first took me on my sixteenth birthday, when I had first been stolen away from my normal, mortal life, and told that I was a fairy princess, destined to become a fairy queen. The forests' trees were black with shadow and the cobwebs of night; the terrain was rocky and sharp stones nipped at my feet at every opportunity. I dreamed that I knew nothing of my power, of my birth – and yet in the dream I was wearing the crown that told me that I was the Summer Queen, in charge of the whole expansive land of summer and light, crops, fertility, and sun. In my dreams I knew there was always on my heel an assassin, an assassin whose face I did not see and whose name I did not know, but whose purpose was made clear to me in the fear that throttled my throat and the terrified beating of my heart. And the assassin, I knew, wanted my blood, wanted my death.