Winter

I needed that bow to live. We needed it.

A pallor of desperation comes over me, but I shake it off. Where are my other weapons? My hunting knife! The folding blade sits at my waistband, nearly forgotten, and I fumble at it with clumsy, frozen fingers while the dickwad watches me quietly, probably grinning.

“I’ll destroy that too,” the Fae promises in a smarmy voice.

Ignoring his warning, I drag my thumb over the blade to open it—

The dagger breaks apart in my fingers in an explosion of snow. For a stunned moment, I stare at my empty fingers, unable to process the events unfolding. Both of those weapons were worth more than gold in my world.

Everything is spinning out of control so fast. I need to stop and think, but I don’t have time.

Magic—only magic could have done that. Real magic.

The fact this creature can use magic shouldn’t surprise me, but it does. Fear and anger churn into a whirlwind of emotion inside me. My chest aches.

With a desperate growl, I whip around to face the Fae. “Neat party trick. Does that impress all the mortals?”

The biting sarcasm in my voice does nothing to mask my fear. If anything, it makes me sound more desperate.

“It wasn’t meant to impress you.”

The coldness in his voice cuts to my core.

Squeezing my hands into fists, I try a different tact. “Put away your magic so we can fight fair.”

A wicked laugh fills the forest. “Fight? With what?”

“With my bare hands . . . if I have to.” I hold up my frozen fingers to drive home my point, hoping they look lethal instead of halfway frozen. “Or you could just move and avoid all that unpleasantness.”

A spurt of icy breeze lifts the hood of his cloak back, just enough to draw the shadow up and reveal his lips: soft, cruel things bowed at the top and perfectly full at the bottom. Lips meant for smirking and taunting and kissing.

Another joyless chuckle drifts from the offending lips. “Try it and I’ll turn you to ice too, mortal girl, and rest you in my winter garden, chipping away at you piece by piece. When only your heart is left, I’ll crush it between my fingers and spread the remains among the snowdrops, so that nothing of you is here to mourn.”

Wow. This guy is a bundle of rainbows and unicorns. The horrible cruelness of his words pierces deep into my heart, his voice a snow-driven shard of ice. What could cause such terrible darkness inside someone?

Or perhaps all the Fae are this twisted and hateful.

Shivers wrack my body, and I’m suddenly all too aware of the cold seeping into my bare flesh. I’m turning into a human popsicle. Riotous waves of my hair has escaped its braided prison and tumbles around me, the sweatier strands frozen at odd angles. The color is just a shade creamier than the snow.

“That sounds fun . . . but messy,” I say. “I vote you just let me go home.” I lift my arms above my head in the universal sign of surrender. If I can’t scare him, perhaps looking weak and innocent will conjure pity. “Let me go and I promise, you will never see me again.”

Another cruel laugh dispels that foolish hope. “The hubris of your kind never fails. You’ve stolen, an offense punishable by death, yet you ask to go home?”

Was he watching me earlier? “The food I stole is ours anyway,” I say quietly. “I’m just taking it back.”

“And the neverapple fruit you plucked from the Winter Prince’s orchard?” he responds just as softly. “Does that also belong to you?”

Oh. Right. Somehow I just assumed the apples were, I don’t know, wild or something. My gaze falls to the golden fruits strewn across the frosted grass, and I know denying his accusation is pointless.

Why did I have to be so greedy?

“We’re . . . we’re starving. The scourge has been seeping through your broken wall for years and it’s poisoned everything in the borderlands. We have nothing to eat. You know”—I put my fingers to my mouth and mime eating—“that thing mortals must do to live?”

I peer through the shadowy haze surrounding his face, desperate for a shred of humanity. Of kindness. Instead I’m met with the faint glow of pale silver-blue eyes. They’re not as big or as inhuman as I was led to believe. The rest of his features are indiscernible.

An icy hatred too dark to be human brims inside his strange irises. “You poisoned your lands, so now all your animals flee to our side. How, exactly, is that our fault?”

For a moment, I stare at him, aghast at his apathy. “Why are you so cruel?”

“I may be cruel,” he admits. “But is that not the order of things? That bow you nearly used on me, how many animals have you killed so that you can live? Living and dying are two sides of the same blade. Call it cruelty or call it fate, I care not.”

I roll my eyes. “Typical pointy-eared dickwa—Fae jargon. Using cryptic words in place of sense. Just tell me what I owe this Winter Prince and I’ll find a way to pay him.”

How much can nine neverapples cost?

“The price for stealing just one neverapple from the prince is death.” My mouth falls open and his smug grin becomes wicked. He’s enjoying this. “How do you expect to pay for nine?” he continues. “Do you have nine lives like the pixie to bargain with?”

“You’re kidding.” But of course he’s not kidding. He doesn’t even seem capable of cracking a joke. “What kind of monsters grow such a precious fruit right next to starving people? Is that your thing? Starve us and then taunt us with forbidden fruit?”

When he doesn’t answer, desperation takes hold. “I haven’t touched them. Can’t you just, I don’t know, put them back with your magic or something?”

I can feel his glare behind his hood. “Put them back? You’ve touched them with your human fingers, meaning now the revered fruit is tainted.”

You mother cracker.

I would have laughed at the injustice of it, but his knuckles tighten over the hilt of his fine sword and suddenly I can’t breathe.

The scrape of the blade exiting its scabbard sends my heart ramming into my breastbone, my strangled breaths punching out in violent ivory bursts. The curved metal glimmers softly in the moonlight.

“On your knees,” he says casually. Icily. As if executions of starving mortals are an everyday occurrence.

That’s when I know, without a doubt, he’s going to kill me.

4

I jut out my chin, cramming every bit of my rage into my expression as I glare at the Fae. “Screw you, dickwad. If you’re going to kill me for taking a few stupid neverapples, I’m not making it easy for you.”

Maybe I should run. I should definitely run. Move! I order my legs, who straight up refuse to budge. Either from fear or shock or the freezing cold. My bet is all three.

“Have it your way.”

I’m working on coaxing my stubborn thighs into action when a flicker of white above calls my attention. We both glance up at the distraction to see a swarm of white moths fluttering down from the trees like giant drops of snowfall. They move as one, a cloud of sparkling wings that shimmer and glow.

I’m so in awe of their beauty that I nearly forget about the Fae and the blade he holds, or that I’m supposed to be fleeing.

Nearly.

One by one, they gather around my head. A few alight along my brow, the rest hovering a few inches above my messy, half-fallen topknot.

Like a crown.

One of the moths breaks from the others and alights on the tip of the Fae’s sword. Its gossamer wings open and close as we stare on in stunned silence, the creature’s ethereal beauty in stark contrast to the murderous blade and the monster holding it.

All at once, the moths take to the air and ascend into the darkness as quickly as they came, and my dark reality comes crashing down again.

“What is your name?” he asks.

“Why?” I scoff. “Do you need it to scratch into a murder notebook?”

Suddenly, I feel his focus flit behind me at something. A peek over my shoulder shows a young girl in worn overalls with bright red pigtail braids and freckles bounding up the hill on the other side of the Shimmer.

Jane. She’s calling my name and she has a flashlight.

Should have known she’d come looking for me. As the second oldest, she acts like an adult when she’s barely fourteen. Half the time she’s arguing with me; the other half she’s trying to be like me. Not two days ago I caught her shooting my bow into moldy hay bales.

Only instead of wild game, her target was black paint made into a long face with sharp, pointy ears.

Give her a couple years and she’ll be a fine shot, better than me. Not that I’d ever tell her as much.

After a few moments of staring at the Shimmer, she begins to draw close, ignoring every single warning and rule I’ve ever told her about the Everwilde.

“Don’t hurt her,” I blurt, looking from her to him. “She has nothing to do with this. She’s just a—a kid.”

The Fae says nothing as he watches her. She’s all gangly limbs and freckles as she peers into the Shimmer, her face covered in dirt and oil. Her thin lips are pursed, her brown eyes bright with the anger of someone just old enough to understand her world isn’t fair.

I watch her too, willing her away with my thoughts. Internally screaming all the ways I’ll punish her if she enters.

“Doesn’t your kind follow any rules?” he demands. “Stay away from our land. Why is that so hard for you mortals to obey?”

All the things I want to scream burn on the tip of my tongue. Because it used to be our land. Because we’re starving. Because we’re pissed. Because people we knew and loved died here.

But for once in my life, I manage to hold back my smart tongue, instead pointing out, “She hasn’t entered.”

Yet, but she will. She’s Jane.

A cloud of panic falls over me. When she’s barely two feet from the wall, she points the flashlight into the Shimmer and squints her eyes, trying to see through the veil. If she spots me, she’ll surely pass through.