Vasya said, “If I am lying, winter-king, then why would I risk my life to come before you in this hall at Midwinter?”

“Why are you not afraid of me?” He did not try to touch her again, but an icy wind stirred the hall, blueing the firelight and dampening the talk.

Yelena wrapped her arms about herself; a hush rippled through the raucous crowd. Vasya almost laughed. Was that supposed to make her afraid? Blue fire? After everything else?

“I am not afraid to die,” she said. She wasn’t. She had walked down that road. There was nothing in its cold stillness, the great sweep of stars, that could frighten her. Suffering was for the living. “Why should I fear you?”

His eyes narrowed. Vasya realized what a stillness had gathered about the fire, like the birds when a hawk comes soaring. “Why indeed?” Morozko said, holding her gaze. “Fools are often brave, for they do not understand. Leave us, girl, as your mistress bids. I will honor your courage, and forget your foolishness.” He turned away.

Yelena sagged; she looked caught between disappointment and relief.

Not knowing what to do, Vasya slipped back into the crowd, her hand sticky with mead, her wrist tingling where his hand had lingered. How could she make him remember?

“Did she displease you, lord?” Vasya heard Yelena ask, with curiosity and censure mingled.

“No,” said the frost-demon. She could feel him watching her go. “But I have never met anyone who was not afraid.”

The people drew away from Vasya when she came among them, as though she were stricken with some sickness. The old serving-woman hustled up behind her, seized her elbow, relieved her of the wineskin and growled in her ear, “Mad thing, what possessed you to approach the winter-king so? It is the lady who gives him mead. She takes his gaze upon herself; that is her task. Do you not know what happens to girls that catch his eye?”

Vasya, feeling suddenly cold, asked, “What happens?”

“He might have chosen you, you know,” muttered the woman just as Yelena rose to her feet. She was pale, but composed.

A deadly hush fell.

The blood began to beat in Vasya’s ears. In the fairy tale, a father took his daughters into the forest and left them there, first one, then the other: brides of the king of winter. The winter-king sent one home with her dowry.

He killed the other.

Once they strangled maidens in the snow, Morozko had said. To court my blessing.

Once? Or now? Which midnight is this? Vasya had heard the fairy tale, but she had never imagined it: a woman separated from her people, the frost-demon vanished into the forest.

Vanished, but not alone.

Once he’d been nourished on sacrifices.

Morozko and Medved were alike once, she thought, her lips cold. In the winter-king’s face was a clear and unthinking joy, the hawk’s hunger when he tears the rabbit to pieces. He got to his feet, took the woman’s hand.