I stepped close to him, placing a hand on his chest, feeling his heart beat under his shirt. “I trust you,” I said, rising up so our faces were inches apart, trailing my fingers down his stomach. “I know you’ll find a way.”

His breath hitched, and he regarded me hungrily. “You’re playing with fire, you know that?”

“That’s weird, considering you’re an ice prin—” I didn’t get any further, as Ash leaned in and kissed me. I looped my arms around his neck as his snaked around my waist, and for a few moments, the cold couldn’t touch me.

* * *

We spent the night in the cave, both to give Ash a chance to heal from his wounds and to give us one more night of rest before entering Tir Na Nog. It didn’t take long for Ash to recover. The fey heal insanely fast, especially if they are within their own territories, and by the time darkness fell his bite wounds were almost gone. As the temperature dropped, he started a fire, solely for my benefit, and we sat around the flames sharing the last of the food, lost in our own thoughts.

Outside, the snow continued to fall, piling outside the entrance and in the center of the room through the holes in the ceiling. It sparkled in the icy moonlight, like flakes of diamonds drifting from the sky, tempting me to stand in the center of the light and catch them on my tongue.

Ash was silent through most of the evening. He’d broken the kiss earlier, pulling away with a guilty, agonized look, and mumbled something about making camp. Since then, he’d given me short, one-word answers whenever I tried talking to him, and avoided eye contact whenever possible.

He sat across from me now, chin on his hands, brooding into the fire. Part of me wanted to walk up to him and hug him from behind, and part of me wanted to hurl a snowball at his perfect face to get some kind of reaction.

I opted for a less suicidal route. “Hey,” I said, poking at the flames with a stick, making them cough sparks. “Earth to Ash. What are you thinking about?”

He didn’t move, and for a second I thought he would reply with his favorite one-word answer of the night: nothing. But after a moment he sighed and his eyes flickered, very briefly, to mine.

“Home,” he said quietly. “I’m thinking of home. Of the court.”

“Do you miss it?”

Another pause, and he shook his head slowly. “No.”

“But it’s your home.”

“It’s the place I was born. That’s all.” He sighed and gazed into the fire. “I don’t go back often, and I rarely stay at court for any length of time.”