Yes, please. “There’s no need. I want to do this.” To prove to myself and Ever that I’m not too soft for life in the Unseelie lands. But first. I glance over my shoulder at the wagon, my stomach sinking even lower. “There’s no privy, is there?”

He shakes his head.

No matter. I’ll go over by that boulder. Be one with nature.

Once I’ve relieved myself, I return to the river and slip out of my shift. Ever’s onyx gaze tracks my every movement, a predator studying his prey. Nerves flutter in my stomach as the icy water closes over my feet. My ankles. My calves. How is he just standing there without moving?

Are my lips blue? If they’re not yet, they will be soon.

When I reach my waist, the shivers start. Oh heavens. Oh heavens. Oh heavens. How is it getting colder? This is it. This is how I die. Turned to a block of ice in the middle of a bloody river.

Ever closes the distance between us in a handful of strides. His arms come around me, instantly infusing my body with his heat.

“Hold your breath,” he whispers against my temple.

My feet disappear from beneath me and water closes over my head. Hypothermia. That’s what this shock is. I am dying from hypothermia.

“I h-hate y-you,” I splutter when he brings us back up for air.

For some reason, the venom in my tone makes him laugh. “Then turn around so that I can make you hate me less.”

Doesn’t he see that there is nothing that will make me hate him any less⁠—

He gathers my hair along with the soap and starts to massage my scalp. The tension in my muscles slowly eases despite the frigid temperatures. Warmth collects low in my belly and between my thighs.

“Is it working?” he murmurs against my cheek, his chest slipping against my wet back.

“Maybe.” He brings the bar of soap down my neck to my breast. Definitely.

Steady hands scrub and massage until the cold is so far from my mind, it might as well be the dead of summer. When he finishes, it’s my turn to steal the soap and do the same for him.

Ever leaves the water to collect three towels. One for him, one for my body, and a second for my hair. He insists on carrying me back to his house so that my feet do not get dirty, and I find myself set in front of the woodstove with a beautiful brush inlaid with mother of pearl in my hand.

“Your mother’s as well?” I assume.

“Yes.”

A mother lost as tragically as my own. A mother who might’ve been having an affair with the King of Willowhaven.

I’m about to ask him again about the dresses, but something stops me.