Page 1 of Out of Time (The Ice King Chronicles #3)

Glorfindel

The reason I had to leave my father’s kingdom only a week after I returned to it was simple—I was no longer trusted. Not by anyone.

Betray one or two Elven kings, deal out a few treacherous spells, turn a couple of people into frogs, and this was apparently the result. It was all so unfair. I had to admit the stories about my character weren’t totally undeserved, but they were at least highly exaggerated.

It seemed as if my reputation had definitely preceded me. I’ve been told time and again that I’m treacherous and tricky, false-hearted and faithless, and perhaps there’s some small measure of truth in that. It’s not all my fault, but after seeing the looks of fear and mistrust on one too many insipid face and after my own nephew flinched when I bent over to greet him with an affectionate—all right, semi-affectionate—pat on the head, I decided I should never have tried to come back to my father’s palace.

At least part of the blame lies with a double-crossing, treacherous little pixie, who wouldn’t take no for an answer, and who blamed me for her so-called “broken heart.” She laid a curse on me—one that’s been in place for many, many years—since long before I went to the Elven realm. Surely at least some of the criticism from my legion of detractors has to fall on her shoulders, but it seemed as if no one remembered her role in all of this.

The curse she laid on me years ago was wicked and so what if I used my magic to take a small measure of revenge on her? Personally, I think the misshapen humpback I gave her only improved her looks—made her much more interesting, and surely that was an uphill climb in and of itself.

Besides, what was I to do? She hadn’t been willing to lift the curse she laid on me first, so I had likewise refused. And since neither of us harbored any trust whatsoever in the other, we remained at a bitter impasse.

I believe it was strictly because of the curse that I found myself, one bitterly cold winter’s day, kicked out of yet another lover’s bed onto my ass… quite literally. The lover in question was the Dark Elf ruler, King Stefan, and I had been thrown out of the Dokkalfar’s capitol city in the snow with only the furs on my back and a lowly donkey.

King Stefan had unfortunately found me in bed with his handsome captain of the guards and caused an awful scene. Elves, I had learned, could be quite touchy. Which was how I had found myself traveling on what must surely have been the coldest day of the year, back home to my own realm and father’s castle, seeking shelter. I was sure my father would take me in—well, mostly sure, though he claimed to be getting a bit tired of my disastrous romantic escapades.

It was one reason I stayed away from home so long, though I often told people, including the Elven kings, that it was because I was unhappy there. It was a shameless bid for sympathy, when the truth was, I hated to see the look of disappointment in my father’s eyes when yet another of the betrothals he made for me fell so miserably apart, a direct cause of the curse.

The donkey Stefan sat me on was supposed to be a way to humiliate me. The Elves, like King Tarrak’s Quendi tribe, rode magnificent white stags and many of the other Fae tribes rode the big, heavy draught horses that originally came from Scotland, near the River Clyde. To seat me on the back of a lowly ass was intended to be a deliberate insult, but the donkey was a beast I was only too happy to have. The little animal may not have been glamorous, but he was a hardy, sure-footed, little thing in the damnable ice and snow that blanketed the Elven world, and I was happy not to be on foot.

I was told to never darken the door of the Elven king again—either one of them—on pain of death, and I had no intention of doing so. I don’t really like Elves. Never did—I might have been half Elven on my mother’s side, but I rarely, if ever, laid claim to that heritage.

When I finally arrived back at my father’s castle, however, everyone, from the guard at the gate to the scullery maid was surprised to see me back home—and not in a good way.

“What do you mean the Elven king kicked you out? So soon?” My father, King Lorimach of the Woodland Fairies said when he first caught sight of me. But he wasn’t done with me yet. He put two fingers up to pinch the skin between his eyes, and his face grew increasingly red, beads of sweat popped out on his brow. I began to fear a bit for his heart.

“No, don’t even tell me about it!” he cried, a bit dramatically, I thought. “It will only give me indigestion again. Just go up to your room and think about what you’ve done. Go on,” he said, waggling his fingers at me. “Take yourself away. I keep the room in readiness for you, since you’re here with such alarming regularity. You were actually gone longer this time than usual. I suppose I should be grateful for that much at least. But I need to think about what to do with you, Glorfindel!”

As he usually called me “Glori,” I knew I was in serious disfavor.

Don’t look at me, I didn’t name myself, and if I had, I would have chosen something much better. My mother named me, but then she was a member of the Quendi tribe of Elves, and there was little accounting for their tastes. My true name was known only to me, my mother who’d given it to me, and possibly my father, though he’d no doubt forgotten it by now. A fairy’s true name, one of their middle names, was kept secret from everyone else, so that no one could ever use it to control them. If someone had my name, I’d be forced to do their bidding, no matter what it was.

For myself, I would have preferred to be called by some affectionate nickname and not just a shorter version of my name. Though I had to admit, when my father failed to do even that much, it was hurtful.

My father had, for reasons known only to him, decided to take an Elven wife many years ago, who subsequently bore him a son. She was, like all the Quendi’s, extraordinarily beautiful, yet as cold as the heart of an Unseelie queen. After she came home with him, my poor father must have felt as if he’d lassoed a whirlwind. Exciting to look at, but once you have it in your home, what in the world are you going to do with it?

My parents had soon discovered they were totally unsuited, and it had probably been my mother’s unearthly beauty alone that made my father offer for her in the first place. I doubt my mother ever looked back when she left him, either at her husband or the result of that brief, ill-advised union—me. She had left him shortly after I was born and took herself off to parts unknown.

To be fair, my father was remarkably dull for a fairy, and not possessed of any great wit. Even as a young man he liked to spend quiet nights dozing by the fire, and it was undoubtedly his own beautiful face and starless dark eyes that induced my mother to accept his suit in the first place. But then all fairies are beautiful. It goes with the territory.

With three older brothers ahead of me in line for the throne, I’d never have a chance at being king. My father used me and my younger brothers instead as political pawns, betrothing us to first one royal after another as soon as we came of age.

In my case, it hadn’t been long after the curse, so naturally, things didn’t go well. When these betrothals kept on producing disastrous results, you’d think he’d eventually have seen the error of his ways. He never had. He continued making alliances with one strong, powerful king’s daughter after another. All of them failed miserably, because he had forgotten to account not only for the pixie’s curse, but for one other important thing—right out of the womb I had always preferred males.

When I told my father my preference, he was taken aback, but after his marriage to my mother, he had learned resilience. He decided to switch to the kings themselves.

Alas, the pixie’s curse was stronger and even more powerful than even my father’s dogged persistence. I managed, within a remarkably short period of time, if I do say so myself, to sabotage, ruin, and wreck every single relationship with every man the king ever betrothed me to.

And now this latest debacle—I had dreaded to hear what my father would have to say when I showed up at his door yet again, and he hadn’t disappointed me. He hurled one final sally at me, as I left the throne room.

“You’re getting older, you know, Glori. The bloom will soon be off the rose!”

Heartily offended, but not deigning to show it, I put my nose in the air and took myself upstairs to my bedchamber. Bloom off the rose, indeed. I had long been celebrated as one of the greatest beauties in all the Fairy Kingdoms, a not insubstantial feat in a realm where beauty was simply a matter of course for all its inhabitants. I kept my mouth shut, though, and didn’t yell back at him.

I didn’t even have the heart to tell him that when this latest disaster with the Dark Elf king struck, I’d been on my second Elven king, having been already spurned by the first one he’d sent me to, King Tarrak, also known as the Ice King.