Who was there to live for? Oma saw me as nothing but a tool. Sven had loved my Talent, not my person. Anouk and I were on separate paths. Mutti was dead. And Bastiaan . . .

Bastiaan was gone. Angry with me for not saving Runt. Despite that, our brief encounters had formed one of those rare acquaintances that built into a flame of understanding and shared hurts. It could have become something if he’d stayed with me . . . and if I’d had a working heart.

There was no one to keep breathing for. Except myself. And the mystery of what I could have been as the Wishtress. If I wasn’t broken, I could have thawed the canal. I could have helped Anouk. I could have healed Mutti.

Chances missed.

I couldn’t seem to recall the conviction I once had for breaking my curse.

To allow Winter to be my end seemed fitting. Justice for how I’d killed Coralythe’s sons. So why did I want to keep breathing? Why did my lungs still inhale and exhale? Why did my mind shy away from the idea of forever darkness?

I pictured Mutti skating on the canal after me. Pushing herself to her limits—to her very death—in order to find me. To embrace me. To tell me she loved me.

She didn’t give up. She ran the race to the end, beyond her own pain and incomplete memories. She didn’t approach death as an enemy in battle. She had treated it like the end of a long road, a well-skated race, a full-lived life.

I would not give up. I was her daughter, and the least I could do was learn from her sacrifice and example. If I was to die today, it might not be unwelcome, but it wouldn’t be without a fight.

As though sensing my determination, Winter attacked. This was more than a storm; it was as though I’d stepped into Winter’s very soul and the season had become a raging, wild thing.

Wind was its voice; frostbite its clawed hands; ice its mirror-like vision.

The thinness of my inhale told me the temperature lurked colder than any winter in Fairhoven I’d lived through. This cold guillotined warmth. Bitter and angry.

Like me.

Frostbite swept its talons across my cheekbones. I shoved it away but my hands passed through air. It renewed its attack double-fold, but I had always been part winter. Since I was born on the winter solstice, my blood ran colder than others’. My tolerance for chilled bones ran deeper and lasted longer.

You can shred me with your teeth, bite away my skin, but I will not yield to you!

The wind battered, tearing my hood from my head and screaming in my ears like a furious woman. I screamed right back, bent at the middle, and forced a step forward, breaking through the razor-ice and leaving a path of smeared blood.