Beauty In Her Madness (Winterland Tale #3) - Stacey Marie Brown Page 0,41

bigger.

Dor motioned to PB. “Yeah, because clearly you’re—”

“Dor,” Frost warned.

“Because clearly you’re…not fat. Crazy trees.”

“Right?” PB sniffed. “It’s mostly fur.”

“Sure…” Dor choked.

“Oh, can we bring cookies with us?” PB stretched, his huge belly jiggling.

Dor shook his head, turning for the door, heading for me.

Shit… Any kind of plan was chucked; my instinct was to get away and hide. Whipping around, I sprinted back down the hallway, their voices nipping at the back of my heels. I darted around the corner into a dark room off the main hallway, tucking into the shadows.

Footsteps and mutterings echoed off the stone, their voices sounding farther and farther away as they headed up the stairs.

My shoulders dropped on my exhale, relief making me relax back into the wall. Light from the hallway spilled into the room I was in, giving me enough light to see that it held dozens of pictures and paintings. They were stacked in layers on three walls, as if all the ones upstairs had been taken down and stored here instead.

But why? Why have all this art and keep it hidden below? Most of them were turned away, so I couldn’t see the canvases. Inching up to a stack, my fingers ran over a textured painting, pulling it back. I saw a picture of three kids playing in the snow.

One boy’s hair was bright as sunshine, the other boy dark as night. The little girl’s cheeks were rosy, her face happy, a red-and-white scarf looped around her neck.

“Dinah, you and me against Jack in a snowball fight.” Blaze slung his arm around me. I could feel him shivering violently under his puffy coat.

“That’s not fair.” I pulled away from Blaze, looking between the twin boys who were like night and day.

“Why not?” Blaze shrugged. “This is his terrain. It’s actually only fair if we both team up against him. He has the advantage here. We can’t let him win.”

Jack’s eyes moved to me, his scrutiny digging into me, waiting for my answer. Jack never spoke much, not compared to Blaze, who rarely shut up. Jack watched. Observed.

“Come on, Dinah.” Blaze yanked on my jacket, trying to pull me away from his brother.

I hesitated, still bouncing between my two friends.

“It’s okay.” Jack, even as a kid, had a raspy voice. “Pair up with him.”

“But…”

“You want to.” The intensity of his blue eyes made me wiggle. Jack sometimes scared me, while Blaze was always happy and fun. “Plus, he’s right; I have the advantage here.”

I nodded, moving to stand next to Blaze, who was rolling balls of snow in his gloved hands. Jack and I didn’t wear any. Compared to snow in Earth’s realm, Winterland wasn’t cold at all to me. I loved it here, hated when I knew it was time to return home.

“Dinah?” I turned to glance back at Jack. “I always win.”

The memory flooded back to me, bending me over. I could still taste the air on my tongue, the smell of pine and snow, hear the crunches from our boots, the laughter as Blaze and I tried to hold our own against Frost.

We lost.

Smiling, I recalled Blaze being a sore loser, stomping off, saying he was tired of being cold. I followed him back to the beach, leaving Frost behind.

It had happened. It was as real as any childhood memory I had of Alice and me. I used to come here all the time. My memories were still hazy of that time, only a handful of moments coming back to me, but I knew with everything in my body Winterland was real.

Or real to me. I had blocked it from my mind for so long. When slices of it slipped through, I would blame it on my childhood game of make-believe, creating friends, a world so crazy there was no way I could believe it was real.

My eyes caught on another painting in the stack, one dark and foreboding, tapping at an awareness in my chest. Reaching for it, prickles speared my nerves, warnings spreading through me like wildfire.

Abruptly a hand clamped over my mouth, stifling the scream in my throat, another hand yanking me back into a firm physique. The sharp sensations of cold and hot both burned and soothed my skin as lips grazed my ear.

“What the fuck are you doing here, little Liddell?” A voice full of fury snarled into my ear, his entire body engulfing mine, flicking fear and desire through me, hitching air in my lungs. “Did you come back for more?” His