When finally she is limp in their hands, Keenan steps away, and Aislinn lowers Beira’s body to the floor.

The faery for whom Donia had long ago surrendered her mortality has killed the Winter Queen. He’s broken the curse, found his queen and claimed his power. As he kneels at Donia’s side, she wants to flinch from the heat of him even as she wants to kiss him one last time before death claims her. Instead, she becomes the new Winter Queen.

“Yes, Beira’s death was horrible,” Donia said. A tiny snow shower formed around her. Snowflakes fluttered to the ground like butterflies—slow and gentle in contrast to the remembered anger filling her now. She would say more, but not in front of a mortal.

“Good.” Rika’s expression held the sympathy that told Donia that the faery heard more than the words Donia had uttered. Then Rika added, “Now, if Keenan suffers a bit, all will be well.”

When Rika turned to her mortal, Donia fell back to the memories. The moments after the last Winter Queen’s death were the hardest part of that day.

Keenan kneels on the floor and pulls Donia into his arms.

She has to cough before she can speak. “Beira really dead?”

He smiles, looking like every dream she’s denied having. “She is.”

“Seth?” It hurts to talk, her throat raw from the jagged pieces of ice she’s swallowed.

“Seth’s injured, but not dead.” Keenan strokes her face, gently, as if she’s something delicate and precious, as if she’s the one who will share his throne. Sunlit tears run down his cheeks and drip onto her face, melting the ice that still clings to her. “I thought I’d lost you. I thought we were too late.”

Even after all that had happened, Donia still believed that the Summer King was worth the pain, worth the curse, worth the death she thought she’d know that day. She had believed that for decades, but loving Keenan didn’t mean she was blind to his faults. He was the careless, forgetful Summer. Even when he wasn’t being willfully manipulative, he was still the embodiment of a season that thought first of pleasure and rarely of consequence—and whatever he’d done now had sent one of the former Winter Girls to Donia’s doorstep.