Years passed, and all Rika had for comfort was the wolf who first came to her when she was filled with ice. No faery offered her friendship, not even those she’d spared from the fate she endured. The loneliness weighed her down almost as much as the ice that crackled across her skin, yet time and again, she stood in front of another mortal girl who refused to lift the staff. Each time, Rika was torn between the sharp satisfaction of seeing Keenan falter and desperate sorrow that her own tenure carrying the ice would continue.

Until Donia . . .

Despite all of Rika’s warnings, Donia decided that Keenan was worth the risk. The color drained from her as her mortality was replaced, as she failed the test. For the first time in years, the tears that slid down Rika’s face were not frozen. Water slipped over her skin instead of ice while Donia’s pale blond hair became white, her body bowed under the pain, and her lips turned blue from the cold.

Rika’s freedom was gained only by another’s loss.

Donia fell heavily to the ground, and Rika couldn’t even touch her to help her to stand. Sasha, the wolf, went to the new Winter Girl. He was hers now, like the pain and the ice. Rika felt a burst of guilt as she wished she could keep the wolf, that someone would choose to stay with her.

Rika glared at Keenan as he stood there glowing and then turned away from Donia as he had once turned from her. He had destroyed both of their lives, yet he offered comfort to neither girl. One of the faeries who advised him came to Rika, explaining her new future, treating her with all the barely hidden disdain she’d come to expect of them after she’d convinced girl after girl not to trust the Summer King.

She was no longer ice-filled, but she couldn’t go back to the life she’d left behind. Everyone she’d known was dead. Rika was a faery with no family, no friends, no court; she was untethered, just as alone as she had been for the past decades. Now, however, she no longer even had a purpose.

So she’d fled to somewhere hot, hoping to burn away the memories of the ice that had lived inside her skin. When she arrived, faeries so different than any she knew in the Summer Court or Winter Court watched her, but she’d turned away from them, pretended that they were no different than the landscape around them, and they’d let her—at least, she’d thought they did.