image from: sodahead dot com.

warnings: dark themes, dark!jack.

word count: ~800

prologue: summer ice

The sky bleeds scarlet, fading away with the setting sun. Its brilliant rays strike off the palace floor-to-ceiling windows, throws jagged jewels of honey light into the many rooms like a warm blanket.

Queen Idun sits in a deeply cushioned rocking chair, languidly stroking her swollen belly while King Agdar reads quietly to her from a book of fairy tales, voice a peaceful balm that settles gently on her skin and seeps through her pores.

"… and they lived happily ever after," Agdar breathes, eyes crinkling slightly at the corners when he sets down the book only to see his wife fast asleep, mouth slightly open and quite ungraceful, but still the most beautiful thing in his life.

He stands up and brushes a strand of hair from her face, before blowing out the candles and silently leaving the room.

Idun awakens to arctic fingers grazing along her cheek. The room is dark, and a full moon peers from behind static grey clouds. A trail of frost leads from an open window, stunning patterns carved into the rugs and glimmering with tiny diamonds of ice.

"Snow?" Idun says, blinking. "Snow in summer?"

She struggles up from her chair, joints aching from carrying the weight of a child for nearly nine months. Grasping the windows, she's about to swing it shut, before someone says, "I'd leave that open, if I were you."

Idun whirls around, breath whooshing from her lungs, and she automatically lunges for the fire poker and holds it with both hands, pointing to an unknown intruder.

A young man stands before her, eyes blue as the sky, hair lily white, and skin so pale that she can see crisscrossing cobalt veins running like spider webs just beneath the surface. A huge brown cloak swathes his shoulders, and he effortlessly plays with a staff that is easily as tall he is.

"Are you lost?" Idun asks cautiously. She lowers the fire poker slightly. "Travellers should report to the palace at sunrise, and wait at the front gates for admittance."

The young man smiles at her, closed lips and wide eyes. "Are you the queen?" he asks.

Raising her chin, Idun says, "You are quite ill-mannered, little sir. Tell me your name before I send for the guards."

"Oh, no," the young man says, and Idun is panicking slightly, but she's still clear-headed enough to realise that he is mocking her. "Names are power, your majesty. I would never tell you my name, not for all the gold in this forsaken kingdom."

Shifting her weight, Idun is about to cry for help, but the young man shakes his head and sighs, and before she can comprehend, he's vanished from his spot at the far side of the room, and then he's standing right in front of her, pressing dainty fingers to her lips.

"You will be silent, Idun," he says, ignoring the shock that pulses across her face, "or I will freeze your vocal chords." The fire poker clatters to the ground, and the man eyes it with distaste. This close, Idun can see his form shimmering slightly, and that his canines are sharper than a human's could ever be. He steps away, and Idun feels fear spreading like wildfire through her body. She cradles her belly as her shaking knees give way.

The man barely spares a glance at her, instead humming, "If only Arendelle could see their fair queen now, crawling on the ground like a dog."

"You are one of the fae," Idun whispers almost reverently. She chokes back a sob. "You are of the Unseelie Court."

The young man makes a disappointed sound. "I wanted to surprise you," he grumbles, banging his staff onto with the floor in a show of his irritation. Ice blasts in small chunks from the point of contact, and Idun flinches when one of them fly too close to her.

Frost creeps along the walls, and Idun notes with sinking despair that the door handle has cemented shut.

"What do you want from me?" Idun asks, breath clouding her face in a pearly fog. She's afraid for her child, for her little baby that will not survive cold temperatures for too long.

"I don't want anything from you," the young man says, wrinkling his nose as if the idea horrified him, "but that budding life inside of you."

For a second, the room spins dizzyingly, and her heartbeat pumps wetly inside her ears.

"No," she can barely hear herself say. "No, no. Anything but my child. I'll do anything! Please spare her!"

"Fae of the Winter Court do not need false promises from a human," the young man hisses. He points his staff towards her, and Idun cries and curls around her belly, tries to protect her unborn child.

The palace is awoken by Queen Idun's screams, desperate and heartbroken and pained, as summer ice drips off the walls.

author's note:

so this is a little idea that i had floating around for a long time. since this fic was unplanned, i'm not sure how long i'll take to update (plus i don't actually know what i'm doing either ;A;) so it's just gonna stay here for a little bit hurrr. hopefully since i've actually posted this up i'll be motivated to write more.

you can kind of already tell that this is really different to what i usually write. it's one of my first canon fics (sort of, not really) as well, but it's like really weird because now i gotta make them talk all regal and formal when i'm used to making them curse and stuff hahahaha.

this probs won't be a long fic, maybe a oneshot, or twoshot at most.

i will also most likely completely butcher fairy lore because i'm a shameless asshole who twists things to my own liking.