A bruise purpled Zane’s jaw when they brought him back to me. I didn’t have time to ask what had happened before they grabbed me by the fur of my hood. Zane spun, but the heavy door slammed shut between us.

My fingertips tingled on the walk to a snowy cove behind Timber Castle. The gray Winter skies toiled overhead, swelling and darkening to a murky sea. I jumped at a pop in the forest.

I was shoved toward a stump-chair next to a table and told to sit. The Evergreen Host questioned me about being a Trite, about my knowledge of the King of the East, about my desire for the Crown of Pines.

I admitted as much as I could: No, Eliot Gray was not an emissary, and he was not my husband. Yes, I was a common-blood. When asked how I’d entered Winter, I cracked a smile and said, “That’s a long story.”

A woman with intense, olivine eyes watched from the side of the cove. Every so often, she hummed, and the snow quivered. I felt the sensation of needles pressing in the sides of my head, and I squirmed in my seat. My hands slapped the tabletop when I couldn’t take it anymore. “Stop!” I begged, blinking through moisture.

“Melody…” the Queen of the Pines emerged from the shadows, twirling a silver dagger and eyeing my shaking fingers.

The olivine-eyed woman paused her song, but the foggy breath from her lips curled toward my skin, leaving a trail of prickles. I worried they’d done this to Kaley.

“Try another one,” the queen insisted with ice-and-stone eyes.

A cruel smile formed across the singer’s mouth, and she parted her lips. This time, the hum carried words. It was like they were embedded into the tune, playing through my mind:

You’ll have a place around our table mount

All the food you like

Plums and sweets, cakes, and pies

All the food you like

Come and join the feast

Something tugged in my abdomen. Deep hunger growled, and my gaze tapped off the cove’s surfaces, looking for the food she spoke of. I imagined a great feast, a colourful display of sweets, cakes, and pies. My empty stomach groaned, and I wrapped an arm across it.

A platter appeared before me and I sprang back from the table, tripping over the stump. My eyes widened at the glistening white apples, the bowls of ice berries with drizzled syrup, the steaming pile of herbed meat, and the hot cup of soup.

“Is that…real?” I whispered, inching closer on my knees.

The queen appeared past the platter, the needles of her dress sharpening into view. “Feasting. Gluttony. Greed. That is how my people are controlled, common-blood,” she admitted. “I just keep feeding them.”