The Snow Queen's Captive by Jill Myles Page A

guy!”
    “You’re a whiner,” a high, nasally voice said emphatically.
    “Now, now, Fifi,” said another voice. “Let’s be nice to our clients, all right? What she meant to say, Charlotte, was that when life gives you lemons, you make lemonade.”
    “You keep saying that, and I’m tired of hearing it! There’s no lemonade to be made here! You’ve put me in an impossible situation! Do you understand that if I win this, I screw over Kai and his girlfriend and everyone in the village? They can’t live in all this ice! Nothing grows! I’m destroying the crops and their livelihoods simply by being here.”
    “Then lose,” the kind voice said. “If you value the lives of strangers more than your own, lose and this won’t be a problem.”
    “But you told me if I lose this challenge, I’ll be stuck between worlds forever, right?”
    “Well, yes, that’s right.”
    “Then I can’t lose,” Charlotte’s voice rose to a panicked level. A sob escaped her throat. “What am I supposed to do?”
    “Well, crying about it won’t help,” came the nasal voice again.
    “Fifi,” the other one warned.
    “She’s whining,” the nasal one continued. “I thought you said she’d be happy for a second chance?”
    “Well, most of them are.”
    “Not this one! All we hear is ‘waaah, I’m so sad that I have to be the bad guy. It’s so awful that I have all these magic powers and get to live in an ice castle. Oh, my life is sooo terrible’.”
    “You suck,” Charlotte said in a tear-choked voice. “It’s your fault I’m here. I’m supposed to be the other girl! The one that Kai likes! Not his enemy! I wish you hadn’t messed everything up!”
    “Wish in one hand, shit in the other, see which one—“
    “FIFI!”
    The quarreling voices fell silent.
    What in all the heavens was going on? Who was the snow queen arguing with? Why did she keep saying that this wasn’t supposed to be her?
    “Please,” Charlotte said after a long moment. “I just want to go home.”
    “I’ve told you before,” the authoritative voice said. “You cannot go home. You cannot be transferred. You are, for all intents and purposes, an evil queen. You’re stuck, so why not have fun with it? You’re evil! Cut loose! Go wild! This is your second chance to cram in everything you never got to do before!”
    “You’re my fairy godmother!” He heard Charlotte cry. “I thought you were supposed to help me!”
    “I am helping you! Look, this is me playing the world’s smallest violin at poor you, stuck with a second chance at life as a magical queen.”
    “Ugh!” Footsteps slammed on the ice, and Kai barely had time to slide against one glittering wall before Charlotte swept out of the room in a puff of frost, swiping at her eyes. She stormed away, heading for her apartments, and Kai was pretty sure he heard the sound of weeping.
    He wanted to go after her. For some reason, her crying tore at him. Maybe it was because he’d never heard her cry until she’d changed? Or maybe it was that he was sensing she was just as trapped as he was. Who had she been talking to?
    Curiosity won out, and Kai cracked open the ice-lattice door to the room that Charlotte had left behind.
    The room was empty. He frowned, stepping inside and looking around. No one was there. He ran his fingers along every wall surface, looking for a door he might have missed, but there was nothing.
    Odd.
    Maybe he’d overheard a conversation with her invisible servants. He glanced around, wondering if someone lurked silently in the corners. But there was no one, and nothing to see. It was all so strange.
    When he returned to her room, Kai was surprised to see that her eyes were red and swollen, and her nose looked like a red berry. She’d been crying, and was obviously still upset. She had one of the fur satchels and was tossing cubes into it, along with anything else in arm’s reach.
    “Who were you talking to?” he asked.
    “I can’t say,” she said