Frost Kisses (Bitter Frost #4: Frost Series) by Kailin Gow

had offered me his life, his love, but it was I who had accepted it; my soul had answered his call, and I had bound myself to him utterly.
    My thoughts were racing as I tried to settle down into comfortable slumber. So much had happened since my sixteenth birthday. I had met Kian and fallen in love. I had discovered who I really was. I had even met my father.
    My heart sank as I thought of King Frank Foxflame, who still lay somewhere – I didn't know where – in the deep spellbound coma, where he had been ever since the Summer Queen had rebelled against him. She had hated him, resented him for his affair with my mother, sought to take her revenge by exercising all the power in the kingdom, and at last had decided to take over as sole ruler. She was dead now, killed by Shasta's blade. But where my father was, and whether it was even possible to wake him, I did not know. I knew only that we had shared some days together – awkward, at first, and then beautiful – as I had come to learn about the man who had always been a stranger to me.
    But now he was in a sleep, a sleep from which I did not know if he would ever wake. He had been a stranger, but in those few days during which I had known him I felt a connection to him. He was my father, after all, and I mourned his loss still – quietly.
    I lay staring up at the stars of Feyland, which seemed to ripple through the soft black waves of night. They seemed more beautiful than ever now, gleaming with a milky pearl sheen, as if viewed through a veil. I wanted to sail upwards, to transport my body into those heavens and dance among those stars, gliding from moonbeam to moonbeam, losing myself in this impossible beauty. My heart felt a pang as I looked towards the horizon of Feyland, which spread out before me at the base of the hill against which I had made my camp. Tomorrow, I thought. Tomorrow I would get to the Summer Kingdom; I would get to go home. I listened closely. The Feyland stars seemed almost to be humming – an impossibly soft melody that nevertheless filled me with agonizing longing. This was my country, my fairy country, a place that called to me with such a force that I felt my very body ache with the distance. This was the land that had called to me through my dreams all throughout my childhood, that had beckoned me nearer, that had called upon me to achieve my destiny. I loved this place. I knew I always would. My destiny was to save it.
    Tears filled my eyes for my loss of my humanity. I was to die in Feyland and be reborn as a fairy, a Winter fairy combined with Summer blood. I felt my silver blood prickle as I seemed to come alive, called to the fairy stars, called to all the magic in the kingdom. I was a fairy now – one of them – and my body connected with the rhythm of Feyland; my heart beat to its magic. I felt its warmth, like the breeze of the breathy tropics, and the soft kisses of the cold on my lips, tiny droplets of frost: Winter and Summer magic were one in me now, and it fell to me to embrace it.
    I closed my eyes and let the feeling overwhelm me. It was time to accept who I really was. My immortality. My fairy nature. If it meant that I had even half a chance of saving this place I loved so much, giving up my humanity was worth it. I had never felt more at home here, here where the stars shone so brightly and the breeze felt like a lover's touch.
    I heard a sizzling sound. As I raised my head, I saw sparks gathering and flickering outwards at my fingers – combined blue and yellowish orange flames emanating from my fingertips, twirling together like spirals of smoke, heading upwards into the sky...
    My magic, I thought. My power. Summer and Winter.
    And then I heard rustling in the bushes. I snapped into alertness, looking wildly around. Had Delano been able to break his oath and follow me? “Who's there?” I called, my voice harsh with the long silence, “What do you want? Show yourself!”
    A figure stepped out from the shadows. He was