Ring of Ice

By Kailin Gow

If you like Anne Rice, Sarah Maas, and Neil Gaiman's fantasy books, you'll love Kailin Gow's epic fantasies like this one. The Ring of Ice around Feyland has been shattered.

The original Dark Fey, known in the mortal world, in the Land Beyond the Crystal River, as a bloodsucker, an undead, a vampire...Queen Neriti has entered, bringing with her the darkness of the human world.

The world of magic will collide with the human world.

Empress of Feyland, Breena Malloy, half-fey and half-human, will once again be forced to fight a war she is against...only this time, it will take place not only in Feyland, but also in the Land Beyond the Crystal River, otherwise known as the human world.

Her love, King Kian of Feyland will fight besides her, along with her loyal Prince of Wolves, Logan.

New allies will be formed, and new enemies revealed. Can the denizens of Feyland and Empress Breena trust the vampires and gifted humans on the trail of Queen Neriti? Jaegar Greystone, an ancient vampire with the beautiful Kalina Calloway, a human girl with vampire powers?

Or are they part of Queen Neriti's evil plan for revenge against all?

Ring of Ice is a full-length novel called the Frost Worlds: Beyond the Crystal River. It is a new series based on the characters from the Bitter Frost Series and from The PULSE Vampire Series.

For age 16 and up.

A Continuation of the Bitter Frost Series and the PULSE Vampire Series now in production as major games.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sparklesoup Inc.
• Release date: Feb 28, 2015
• ISBN: 9781597481786

Kailin Gow

It's official! Read about Kailin and her books being adapted into films and tv series here: https://filmdaily.co/obsessions/kailin-gow-loving-summer/ FIND OUT MORE ABOUT KAILIN GOW AT: https://linktr.ee/KailinGow including how to get a free book from her! Kailin Gow is a million-selling international and USA Today Bestselling author of over 680 published books! She writes in many genres under her name and other pen names. She has been an invited speaker on Book Expo America, appeared on CBS News about writing books with social issues, and the Top 15 National radio regularly on women's issues, women in film and Hollywood, and leadership. She holds a Masters in Management from USC and degrees in Social Ecology, Criminology, and Filmmaking. She is an author influencer on Instagram, owns a podcast network with multiple channels, is a multi-award-winning filmmaker, screenwriter, producer, actress, and host. Her books have been made into games, animated short films, and series. Currently, a number of her book series have been optioned, are in development, or pre-production, including her YA Fantasy Sci Fi Thriller FADE (which has been optioned) and Red Genesis (also optioned) by Netflix producers. Kailin Gow is a regular guest in radio and television on women in Hollywood and filmmaking, naming the top Women Execs to Watch. She is a judge in film festivals, writing contests, and is also a voting member in the Academy Awards. AWARD-WINNING INTERNATIONAL MILLION-SELLING AUTHOR, PRODUCER, AND TV PERSONALITY Kailin Gow is an internationally-recognized multi-award-winning multi-genres USA bestselling Asian American author and woman director/filmmaker who has written and published over 400 books under Kailin Gow and her pen names. She is both traditionally-published as well as indie. Considered a digital publishing pioneer, her books have been downloaded over 10 Million times around the world. She is known as one of the most prolific authors internationally who not only writes novels but screenplays fast, but of world-class quality they win prestigious awards like the ALA YALSA Awards and Los Angeles Film Awards. Besides having gone to law school, she holds a Masters Degree in Communications Management from USC and Drama/Film and Social Ecology Degrees from UC Irvine. She has also been a longtime member of TED Talks. She is the first Asian American author to have sold over 1 million books and to be featured on Amazon.com's homepage as an indie Author Success Story. Her success as an Indie Author and advocate for Indie authors during the early Kindle days has inspired many to take a plunge to become authors. The first Asian American woman who is independently published to appear on Amazon's homepage as an Author Success Story, she also represented Amazon as an author spokesperson during Amazon's Kindle Family Launch press conference in Santa Monica and at Book Expo America where she was an invited speaker. A digital publishing pioneer, she was one of the first authors and publisher to publish digitally back in 2001. Prior to becoming a full-time author and filmmaker, she worked as an Exec in Legal and Production at Walt Disney Company, a writer/producer for Cable Television, an Exec at high tech start ups, and Exec at Fortune 100 Hotel and Travel Corporations where she has managed and trained hundreds of employees on world-class service and operations. She has also been a professional model, a tour director, journalist, re-organization consultant, a secret mystery shopper/consultant for top brands, and professional speaker who has been an invited speaker at Book Expo America, Girl Scouts, Asian America Heritage Week, and more! FUTURIST AND SOCIAL INFLUENCER A social influencer, she has over millions of views on her YouTube channel and her Vimeo channel with over 1.5 million views on her Bitter Frost trailer and award-winning animated short film alone. She is a judge on writing contests for writing incubator social sites, has been a member of TED Talks, and is one of the most quoted modern living authors today. She has also been regularly published as a contributor on Fast Company magazine on articles about publishing, leadership, business, and social issues. https://www.fastcompany.com/1800256/social-media-and-future-publishing-industry

Book preview

DEDICATION

To all who believe love is the greatest magic. – Bitter Frost

Prologue

R

Breena

Once again, the river streams of Feyland, was stained in the color of blood. However, in this dream, there was a new hue to the palette of the silver blood of the Winter and Summer Fey, and the green blood of the Pixies.  This time, there was the crimson red of human blood. In Feyland!

Humans from the Land Beyond the Crystal River, the river which separates the world of the magical from the world of the humans, the mortals, or as some of the fey or magical ones would called, the Mundane ones, the Unsighted. How?

In my dream, I stare at the map until my eyes go cross-eyed, tracing my fingers over the territory: the mountains, the forests, the rivers and the hills and dales of Feyland. Places I loved. Places that were beautiful. Once. Before the shadows began. Before darkness cast a pall over the land, and the winter snow and summer sun alike were blotted out by darkness, stained with blood. Leaves of the trees were covered with the blood of men I had known, men I had cared for. And the snow, too, was dark red. That was the time I had come to rule in. That was the time of Feyland beginning with NOW.

That is what my nightmare is.

I do not know if it is a waking vision: a terrible presage of the world to come.

You think it would be easy, winning a war. Uniting the Winter Kingdom, the Summer Kingdom, into one unified Feyland. We have brought peace to Feyland. Peace that Feyland had not seen in thousands of years. For once.

Once upon a Time...there was once peace in Feyland.

That's what my love for Kian had done. That's what I thought I would be able to do. It had seemed easy – almost too easy. Win the battle, win the war, marry the handsome Prince who loves you, and whom you love in return. A fairy tale, complete with a once upon a time and a happily ever after to keep you warm at night, and help you fall asleep: calmly, coolly, without nightmares to trouble your pretty little head.

You'd think it'd be easy, wouldn't you, I think to myself. And yet I have been having the same dream, over and over again. The Wall of Ice surrounding Feyland breached, destroyed. Feyland in ruins.

Once, that Wall of Ice meant so many things to me, to us, to all of us who lived in Feyland. It meant safety. It meant security. It meant that we were like children tucked into bed by our mothers, safe, in a world where no evil, no monsters could ever breach. But that story was just that: a fairy tale. It belonged to another era, another age.

If there's anything I'm learning as Empress of Feyland, it's that fairytales don't always come true. Not even here. Not even in the fairy kingdom. And even now, a beautiful girl can discover she is a fairy princess, and joyfully marry her fairy prince, and still learn that happily ever after is a lot harder than she thinks.

Empress of Feyland, that was my new title, not the Summer Princess, not the Queen of Feyland, but now the Empress of a United Feyland, crowned with the sparkling silver crown with its diamonds and warm summer rubies in it, worn it as a symbol of my commitment to ruling over both Winter and Summer, to ruling well. After my hard-fought victory over the Pixies, over the Winter Kingdom, over the witches and sorceress and all who used dark magic to cast evil and darkness over Feyland, I stood proud in my role as Protectress and Empress of a world that not that long ago, was hidden from sight from me, until the Winter Prince Kian kidnapped me from my ordinary home in Oregon and into the Fey forest.

Now I take up the mantle, with Kian as my King and my Prince Consort by my side. I had thought that it would be, if not easy, at least straightforward. I had won, after all. I had defeated the Pixies. I had defeated all threats that came to our door. I had done well – we had done well – Kian and I.

But ruling, I have come to learn, comes at a difficult price. And there's no learning curve, either. You screw up, people die. Good people. And you have to live with that on your conscience for the rest of your life.

And I have been having dreams of death. Of the Ice Wall: penetrated. Of our barriers against the outside world: so easily broken.

For a year, things had been so peaceful. They had been bucolic, idyllic. It had been so easy to believe, to make myself believe, that this is what was how it was always going to be. Feyland would be pure, innocent, a magic kingdom buffered from the vicissitudes and evils out the outside world. Fey went back and forth beyond the Crystal River. Some loved humans, some chose to stay in Feyland. Logan had kept the peace. He had been a good man, a kind man, a good leader. My love for him had only ever grown stronger as my desire for him, my attraction to him, had waned in the wake of my marriage. Logan had been a good General, in charge of the security between Feyland and the other world, the one beyond the Crystal River, the one I had once called home. But those days were so long ago now I could barely remember them. Sometimes, from time to time, I wondered what my life would have been if I had stayed ordinary fifteen-year-old Breena forever. What I would be doing now. Would I be going to college? Would I be dating...someone normal, someone so unlike Kian with his piercing blue sapphire eyes and his winter-white skin, my husband, my true love, and yet...a man I might never have met, were it not for that fateful accident of my blood. Would I have a job, a career, something  other than running a whole bloody kingdom? Would I have ever watched men die, or known that it was I who had caused their deaths?

I'm sorry, Breena, Logan says. He hangs his head. He looks so defeated, so miserable. More than I have ever known him. But he also looks almost like a stranger to me now. Like a soldier. He is more muscular – years on the security services will do that to you, I suppose. He is stronger than I remember him. Or maybe he was always this strong and I just didn't notice.

I have heard rumors, Logan says. "That nearby is where she...that woman breached it."

Then my dreams have come true after all.

For the Wall of Ice has been penetrated, at last, by a power we do not know or cannot understand. The mysterious woman of whom Logan speaks is Neriti – for that is her name now – the vampire queen who has made life beyond the Crystal River a misery for so many, who threatens that world as well. But she was not satisfied with that world. Now it is our world she has come to conquer – or to destroy.

I heard a rumor, Logan tells me. A story.

He smiles sadly.

Once upon a time... he begins, a wry smile forming at the corner of his generous lips, lips I had once kissed with a love that rivaled the one I had with Kian, before I realized my fate was with Kian...

I smile back with equal bitterness. Once upon a time, I say.

Delano had a wife once, you know, he says. A Pixie Queen. A beautiful and wicked young woman who had all his magic, all his power, but while sometimes I think there's a shred of heart somewhere in Delano's icy chest, there was none in hers. Neranda was her pixie name once. Neriti is now what she is known as in the human world.

Neranda. Neriti. I think I am starting to tell what Logan is getting at. An image forms in my head. A beautiful woman. A pixie queen with a crown upon her head and a cold, cold heart. A pixie queen who stares straight ahead with a stern and implacable expression as she meditates on all the men and women she has killed, will kill, will destroy in her pursuit of power. I can see her when I close my eyes, now. She haunts all my nightmares. She haunts me still.

I think I'm starting to understand, I say to Logan.

They say she has even more power than she had Beyond the Crystal River, Logan says. She lost much of her powers in the other world. But – even so...she's new to the place, and she's still getting used to the way magic works here. That might be our only advantage against her.

I sigh. We need all the advantages we can get.

They say that she was a Pixie, first. Before she became a vampire.

Funny how even now the idea of vampires existing surprises me.

There was a beautiful virgin whose blood had been enchanted by a human alchemist, says Logan. That's what they say. And this woman – this person – this pixie Neranda – she wanted to get some of this woman's power for herself. To be beautiful, to be fruitful like a human, to be able to conceive, unlike the cursed fey and pixie women here. So she drank this blood. And so she became a vampire. Not just any vampire. The first vampire – from which that whole world springs out there beyond the Crystal River.

Kian's face is impassive. But I can see the fear in his eyes. He may seem cold to some, but I know Kian better than anybody, and I know when he is truly afraid. Kian knows the Fey better even than I do, maybe even loves them more than I do. And he has heard these legends – legends told to frighten children and keep them awake at night in their beds – of a mysterious Pixie Queen so terrible, so ruthless, so cutthroat, that it took all the kings and queens of Feyland, all the magic they possessed to banish her beyond the Crystal River.

It doesn't feel real, I say, looking at the map. I can't believe how far Neranda – or Neriti; I don't even know what to call her now – and her dark forces have penetrated into the world. My world.

There is another, Logan tells me. Someone who can help us. Someone from outside our world.

What are you talking about? Someone from Beyond the Crystal River? What could someone from Beyond the Crystal River know about our problems, our struggles? What could someone who did not know the Fey and our ways possibly have to say to  us?

Jaegar, says Logan. I've heard the name before – Logan's mentioned him.

The vampire? I say. I'm not sure. Right now, all that vampires have brought me are misery and woe. I'm not sure I can handle another vampire right now, anyway.

He's not like Neriti, says Logan. We can trust him.

I'm not sure, I admit. Aren't all vampires motivated by the same bloodlust?

Not quite, says Logan. This one's motivated by a girl. A beautiful girl at that. Her name's Kalina. And I have to say, loyalty to a beautiful woman is a powerful motive.

He says it like it's matter-of-fact, but deep down I feel a pang, the way I always do when I remember that Logan loved me, once, enough to give his life for me, and that I did not choose him in return. It's a dull ache, now, since Kian and I took our places on the throne, but an ache nonetheless.

Believe me, says Logan, "He wondered that, too. Wondered why Fey