Hey Everyone!! :-)
Since Christmas was just a couple days ago, I thought it might be a good time to take a peek into the Winter Court of Fairie and see how the Fae make merry. Happy Holidays! :-)
Excerpt from Captivated by the Winter King:
When she reached the exact middle of the room, Kate paused and allowed herself to take in her surroundings. The ballroom was always a morbid wonder, but the servants' hurried preparations had managed to make it beautiful as well. This room was the true seat of the power of the Winter Court of Fairie. Ankou hadn't had much use for a throne room or audience chamber since Brona's death, but that was what this room was intended for. The room was massive, more than capable of serving the purpose of a ballroom, but it was only his less formal style of ruling and absolute confidence in his power that had made it so. The intimidating chamber had been designed as a symbol of authority for the Winter Royals and a reminder of where the power of the Winter Court truly lay. At its essence, this was a space that was intended to awe and cow those who entered it. The floor was made of a solid, shiny, black stone. To Kate, it looked like an enormous onyx. The walls were made of ice that was lit from within by a cold, flickering, ghostly glow.
Behind the surface of the walls, the ice swirled blue and white and silver. The odd currents in the ice were a mystery to Kate, but she knew it wasn't an optical illusion because every now and again they would serve up a peek at a body or skeleton that was trapped within. Some of the remains looked human to her, though they may just as easily have been human-looking Fae, but some of them were strange and grotesque to her eyes. When she had first seen the macabre display, she had assigned herself the goal of one day being able to put a name to each type of creature that appeared behind the frozen walls.
The walls were eye-catching, but it was the ceiling high above the room that stole the show. As the heart of Winter's power, the room was situated at the base of the colossal tree that both housed and guarded the palace. Roots from the tree crawled and twisted over the ceiling, dangling down into the room and clinging to the tops of the walls. Within the roots, small, pale yellow nodules grew which gave off a dim, sickly glow. The anemic yellow light combined with the cool blue/white glow of the walls to give the entire room an eerie cast.
Kate had been informed that the nodules were a luminescent fungus and that some of the arthropods that crawled amongst the roots fed off that fungus. Some of the larger arthropods, in turn, fed upon the fungus eaters. It was not unheard of for both predators and prey to drop from their home in the tree onto the floor below. Or onto those who occupied the floor.
On occasion, one of the creatures would try taking a bite out of the roots themselves. The tree objected to such activities and responded by loosing a cascade of electricity across the ceiling. Those mini lightning storms often had the effect of causing the inhabitants of the roots to rain down into the room. Some well cooked, some injured, but others just seeking to escape the holocaust above. The arthropods that preferred meat were not picky, they were happy to dine upon any flesh that was convenient. Including that of any people who were unlucky enough to be standing beneath them when they fell.
Overall, the room made Kate's skin crawl, but she saw the value of such a psychological effect. Some of those who sought an audience with the Court monarchs might reconsider the tone they chose to use when finding themselves in such surroundings. Thinking about it, she realized the fact that Ankou had chosen to use the chamber as a ballroom was a not-so-subtle hint as to his opinion of formal dances. Suppressing a smile, she twinkled at him from the corner of her eye.
Want to find out what happens in such a sinister room? Grab your copy of Captivated by the Winter King at the link below. Thanks so much for stopping by today and don't forget to check back tomorrow for the latest in Mistral Dawn's Musings. Happy reading!! :-)
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