Also, don't be intimidated by the prologue's length. Most of the chapters are much shorter.
Prologue
Men screamed. Horses whinnied. Chariot wheels crunched in the sparkling snow. Every sound brought him to life. The underlying silence of battle pumped fresh, cold blood through his veins of ice.
He could see himself, his skin – if it really was skin anymore – shining a brighter white than the snow. A laugh escaped his throat as one of his bolts of ice flew into its target – a Stonne’s chest, burrowing a hole a foot across and nailing him to the ground. Crimson blood spurted from the dead man’s flesh and stained the snow underneath him.
That won’t do it all, he thought, flicking a forefinger at the corpse. An invisible wind swirled around the Stonne, turning the body and the blood a pale, icy blue.
He smiled. Better.
The mortals swirled around him, so slow they were almost comical. He laughed again. What were they doing out here besides dying and being injured, or, at the very least, freezing their tails off?
He launched a spade of ice into one soldier’s heart. “You’d thank me later, if you could,” he shouted before another wind whisked through his blood and flickered him into transparency. “The cold is murder on you mortals’ skin.”
He rode the wind six feet into the air, only streaks of his form visible now. The battle between Legendary and Stonne stretched out underneath him; snowy white troops on one side, brown-armored soldiers marring the perfect landscape on the other. He noted with pleasure the dwindling number of brown-wearers actually moving. A quick flick of his fingers froze bloodied corpses and removed the red smears from the view.
Except one. A bobbing spot of holly-berry red weaved and darted through the fray, a cloud of ice flakes and snow spears never far behind. He grinned and surfed the wind close to the splotch of red.
“Hey!” he shouted, jumping off the wind. “Heads up!”
He landed in a graceful crouch that shook the ground and drove up yards of snow. It crested like ocean waves, then crashed on top of any unfortunate Stonne in range.
Small bare feet, as pale as his, landed lightly next to him, and he straightened. “How goes it?” his deputy asked, blowing fiery bangs from her oversized green eyes.
“How do you think?” he replied with a grin, then rode another wind into the air. His troops recovered from the snow wave easily; the Stonne weren’t so lucky. “We should get into the temple very soon.”
She rose up with him. “Go on. I’ll hold down the fort.”
“I don’t want to miss any action.”
Her body’s visibility melted into flickering strips, her wicked grin remaining, like the Cheshire Cat. “I’ll have fun for you. Remember, there is a point to all of this.”
“There is? I forgot.” He sent a wave of ice slamming into one Stonne formation, close to converging on his people’s weaker flank.
“Go!” She gave him a shove. “I want to see the sparkly treasures you bring back!”
With another whoop of laughter, he rode the icy wind over the battlefield, east of the Stonne/Legendary temple. There, at the base of the hill the temple straddled, the wind set him down as lightly as a feather. He glanced back at the fighting. They never would learn what it was all about, the mortals. Not even some of the Legendaries.
Then again, most weren’t of the Ice People.
Still flickering into and out of visibility, he scaled the gentle hill, then went up the temple steps. A statue of the patron god, Hermes, stood in front of the massive front door.
He glanced at the statue, bypassed it, and snorted. Didn’t look a thing like the Messenger.
The wide outer hallway led into a smaller alcove, where the self-proclaimed priests offered their sacrifices to their ‘god.’ The walls and floor sparkled a dark brown in the votive candles’ light, illuminating another statue of Hermes at the far end. An elaborate trough stood underneath the likeness, with three incense holders before it.
He slipped forward, insubstantial feet like feathers on the floor. Mounds of platinum, along with grain, packets of water, and other trinkets his deputy would love gleamed at him from the sacrificial trough. He smiled and reached out.
“It’s all a game to you, isn’t it?”
He jerked back as if burned. A slight woman moved out from behind the statue, the dim light casting shadows on her profile.
“Isis?” he asked, letting the cold air swirl into him and give back his form. “What are you doing here? This is the wrong side of Legend, isn’t it?”
“It’s the right place for right now.” Another figure joined the woman, this one slender but clearly male. He kept one hand on the statue’s arm.
“This must stop,” the new man said, leveling a golden stare at him.
He smiled lazily. “Apollo and Isis in the temple of Hermes,” he said. “How diverse. Not even mentioning me.”
“It’s gone far enough, Frost,” Apollo said. He stepped into the full light, closer and closer. “Do you have any idea how many innocents have died today?”
He shrugged. “Soldiers are bred to die, aren’t they?”
Isis’s eyes blazed with anger. “I should kill you here and now for that,” she said, then calmed. “But I won’t.”
“How magnanimous. Now tell me the catch.”
The two Legendaries padded to either side of him. The temple alcove suddenly felt small and hot, pushing in on him with steaming walls. He swallowed hard and told himself it was a trick of his imagination. One of Isis’s sleight-of-hands.
“For the past millennium, you’ve been causing skirmishes and killing mortals for little excuses like this.” Apollo ran his hand through the sacrificial trough. “It has to stop.”
“What are you going to do? Isis just said she wouldn’t kill me.” Smoke filled the room – or was that just the candlelight? Either way, he was starting to sweat. And that wasn’t good.
“In five minutes,” Isis said, looking him square in the eye, “Agents are going to flood this temple, overpower your deputy, and cart both of your unconscious bodies to a prison where you will never be able to escape. You will stay there as long as the Prophetic Board thinks appropriate.”
“And as I’m the head of the Prophetic Board,” Apollo added, “you can depend on its not being too short of a visit.”
He shook his head. “Ouch. You’re really killing me here. Prison. As the Mirrors say, been there, done that. I might even have the t-shirt.”
“That’s not it.” Isis stepped closer, and the heat seemed to increase. He stared into her red-hot eyes, burning bright red like flames...
“You, Jack Frost,” Apollo whispered, the wisp of his voice seemed to shake the walls, “for the rest of your immortal life, will be haunted daily by the memories of the innocents you’ve killed. No night’s sleep will go by without seeing their blood on your hands.”
“By my power,” Isis picked up, resting a hand on Jack Frost’s head, “you will not be able to escape them. Their ghosts will follow you wherever you go.”
“The shame will always be yours to wear,” Apollo finished. “Like a garment that can’t be torn.”
Heaviness weighed down Jack Frost’s eyes and mind. He swayed and reached out for one of the incense holders to catch himself, but it fell under his grip, and he crumpled to the floor. “What... what did you do?”
“It’s called a curse, Frost,” Apollo said coldly. “Reflection can’t deal with you anymore.”
The temple swirled and melded together. Jack Frost let his eyes close. “Holly...”
“Jack!” His deputy’s voice echoed from somewhere in the outer hallway, as if by magic.
“Don’t!” Jack Frost tried to croak. But the word strangled in his throat. He felt his forehead crack against the marble floor, and fingers of black reached into his vision.
“Ready,” he heard Isis say, like she was at the bottom of a deep, deep well. “Frost and Holly are ready for arrest.”
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