He holds her hand in his, staring at her intently. She blushes. He’s wearing fine clothes, fashioned from cloth nicer than her best dresses. Even his most modest attire speaks of wealth greater than anyone she’s met. Despite that, he doesn’t look askance at her faded dress—or her plain home. She’s never seen his home, but she’s imagined how different it must be. Her home is filled with simple handcrafted wooden furniture, and not much of it, but it is clean and orderly. She’s softened the sparseness with the bouquets of flowers he’s brought.

“Come with me? Please?” he pleads, and she can’t think of how she could deny him anything. Keenan’s very presence brightens everything, and he wants her to be his, to love him and stand by his side.

Rika answers the only way she can, “Yes.”

He pulls her to her feet and embraces her, as he whispers, “You are the one I’ve been waiting for. You have to be her. . . .”

In her cave, Rika wiped away tears as she remembered the hope she felt that day, the warmth that permeated her entire being. She’d believed that he loved her as she had loved him, that she had found a man who would cherish and protect her.

She had been so very wrong.

The ground is covered with snow, but as Keenan walks toward her his skin glows as if flames flicker just under the surface, the ground at his feet roils as it melts and churns. She knows now that he is not human, that he is something exceptional, a king. She feels like she’s in the middle of a fairy tale, on the verge of her very own happily ever after.

He is barefoot, a golden effigy too beautiful to look at or to look away from. “You understand that if you are not the one, you’ll carry the Winter Queen’s chill until the next mortal risks this?”

She nods. This isn’t the wedding ceremony she’d expected. It’s better though. The boy she’s fallen in love with is a faery, a magical being who has chosen her to love. She’s about to become fey too, because he picked her to be his queen. There’s a risk; she knows that, but they are in love, and love will break the magic spell binding him.

“If she refuses me, you will tell the next girl and the next”—he moves closer—“and not until one accepts, will you be free of the cold.”

“I do understand.” She walks over to the hawthorn bush. The leaves brush against her arms as she bends down and reaches under it.

She sees the Winter Queen’s staff. It is a plain thing, worn as if countless hands have clenched the wood, and she almost hesitates.