A Crown as Sharp as Pines by Jennifer Kropf

I’m dreaming of a frightful Christmas…
The first thing that Patrolman Zane Cohen notices when he meets Helen Bell again in this new season is that she is not herself.

The libraries of the Volumes of Wisdom have been burned to ash. Believers of the Truth are disappearing across the snow globe. A Beast of the darkness is taking hostages and building his army in Winter. And Helen…

Helen sees it all unfolding in her dreams.

When the Volumes of Wisdom begin to whisper clues of something hidden in Winter that might turn the tides of the oncoming war, Helen finds herself trekking into the prickly pines and thundering songs of war drums in the Green Kingdom. She claims she’s there as an emissary of the Three Kings of the East. But the true reason she’s risked stepping into a kingdom of the verge of losing a deadly war…

Is to steal the Queen of the Pines garland crown right from atop her head.