Winter

“Because I had to know if she loved me back.”

“She could have killed you,” I snap, trying and failing not to sound petty as another round of jealousy burns across my cheeks.

“Yes, but once you love someone the way I did her—let’s just say, if she didn’t return my love, I would have preferred death.”

“But she did. Love you, I mean.”

“Yes. We were soul bound.”

I blink, wrestling with my emotions. Part of me hates her.

No, all of me hates her.

“When her father found out we were mates, he locked her up. You see, they had been hiding her rare magic from the world. It was stronger than even my own. With us soulbound, my own magic would have been limitless. But her father couldn’t stand the thought of all that power going to the Winter Court. He was afraid my grandfather, Oberon, would use it to finally destroy the Seelie Courts.”

I take a breath. Why does this sound so familiar?

“She tried to escape. She nearly made it to me. I was waiting just outside the palace walls. We were going to run away together. But”—his hands flex into fists—“her father discovered her moments before she made it out the gates. And he killed her right there while I watched through the bars. He murdered his own daughter to keep her powers away from my court.”

A sob bubbles up my throat and I barely swallow it down. I can’t imagine a father killing his daughter. I can’t imagine any of this.

“She was an Evermore, but the king refused to let a soulmancer perform the proper rites. He knew every court would track her new soul down for the power it harbors. But her mother snuck into the burial chamber and performed the rites in secret. She was interrupted before she could fully complete the act.”

I glance up at the girl again. “So, her soul is just . . . out there wandering around?”

He shakes his head slowly. “No, Princess. Her soul found a body. A human baby who had just died in childbirth.”

“Where? Who?”

Only, at this very moment, I hear his nickname for me, Princess. Really hear it.

Like it slaps me upside my oblivious face.

Princess. How many times has he called me that? I thought he was just being cruel.

He lifts a hand to my face, seems to think better of it, and then curls his fingers into a fist at his side. “All the courts have been searching for her ever since then. I have spies in every court, and when I learned one of the Darken’s followers had dispatched tracker wolves to a small town in the Tainted Zone . . .”

My heart skips a beat.

“I didn’t know it was her, not for sure. Imagine loving someone and then they become someone else overnight. A stranger. They look different, their laugh has changed. Their nose crinkles when they’re amused. They eat with their fingers instead of using utensils, and smile when they’re sleeping, and cry when they’re mad. They’re starving, yet their heart is too kind to kill what they hunt. And anything they do bring home, stolen or otherwise, they selflessly give to their family.”

Me. There’s no doubt now he’s talking about me. For some reason, I recall how he had my picture. How he had obviously stared at it for hours at a time.

Now I know why.

“I watched her for over a year. When I couldn’t be there I had my familiar stay to protect her.”

The owl.

“But then, the wolves found her farm. I knew any day they would discover her and inform their master.”

The animal tracks around our house.

“So I made an excuse to send her to the academy, knowing the wards there would hide her from the tracker wolves. But I didn’t realize the mating bond had already been activated by that one chance encounter.”

I take a step back. I can’t breathe. Can’t think of a single thing to say.

“If anyone realized we were mates, they would know her secret. So I had to be cruel to her. Had to fight off my feelings every second of every day. I didn’t expect her to feel the bond too. I hoped she would hate me, but when she didn’t . . . I was too weak to fight the bond anymore.

“And then something happened that changed everything. By then, the tracker wolves had moved on and she was safe again in her farmhouse. I knew going to her would only put her in danger, so I let her hate me . . . despite how it hurt me.”

I remember the night we spent together. That was a moment of weakness for him, I see now. And in his mind, when Inara and Bane tricked me into hating him once again, he let me feel that way.

To protect me no matter the price.

“She did hate you,” I whisper. “She burned with it.”

“And now?” he asks. He watches me without blinking. He’s so very, very still.

“Now, I don’t know. I need time to process this. What you’re saying . . .” I blow out a breath, sending blonde hair flying from my face.

How does one go about convincing oneself she’s a murdered Fae princess?

“You can have all the time you need,” he answers softly. “I’ll be here, waiting.”

I swallow. “I do know one thing.”

He runs a hand through his dark blue hair, his eyes wide and expectant and a little afraid.

“I can never go back to my life before,” I say. “This academy, this world, it’s my home. I don’t care if I’m not safe here. I refuse to cower and be afraid. Who knows? Maybe I can graduate and actually do some good. Change the way the Fae treat humans. That kind of stuff.”

He stares at me for a long time. Then he dons his mask, becoming the cruel, heartless prince everyone knows him to be.

As he walks away, he glances over his shoulder, lips quirked in a dark grin. “Of that, I have no doubt. See you around . . . Princess.”

Epilogue

“Chew with your mouth closed, jerk,” Jane chides, glaring at Tanner. Chatty Cat purrs in her lap, his lime-green eyes trained on her hand as she slips him bits of honeyed-ham.

Tanner rolls his eyes and chews even louder. Aunt Vi scowls at the two before turning her attention on the twins. “Forks, children. Use them. Or are we a family of heathens?”

Aunt Zinnia rushes into the dining room. Her face is red and flustered, her golden curls sticking out at all angles. She holds out a pan of cornbread between two mismatched oven mitts. “It’s here, I only burned it a little.”

“Oh, goodie,” Aunt Vi says before taking a long, careful sip of her spiked tea. I’m impressed she managed to hold back the barrage of sarcastic comments I know are loaded and ready on her sharp tongue.

Thanks to our guest, Vi’s on her best behavior.

Mack sits beside me at the table, a grin brightening her face as she takes it all in. She’s staying with me for the weekend. Technically, she’s not supposed to enter the Tainted Zone, but her dads found a way to make it happen. I know they’re worried about her because they call every couple of hours.

But after learning how I saved her life, they kinda love me. And with all that calling, Nick and Aunt Zinnia have become fast friends.

Despite Aunt Zinnia and Nick’s opposing views on the Fae, they get along gloriously. They gab for hours on the cordless phone while Aunt Vi sits at the table and glares, pretending she’s not listening in on their conversation.

“More rolls, Mackenzie?” Jane asks Mack.

Jane hasn’t stopped staring at Mack since she arrived. They don’t make girls like Mack in Amarillo, that’s for sure. Already, Jane has talked Mack into painting her nails and putting streaks of black in her red hair tonight—black, for frick’s sake.

I’ve never seen Jane so happy. I’ve never seen any of them so happy. It took a while after announcing I was attending the academy in the fall for things to return to normal, but eventually, we fell back into our dysfunctional rhythm.

It helps that I used the gold crown from the dance to buy enough food to last until winter. Turns out some people will pay a hefty price for a real gold crown from Everwilde.

“Oh!” Vi says. She throws a hand over her mouth. “We forgot to say the prayer.” With a horrified expression, Vi turns to Mack. “We aren’t normally so uncouth.”

Mack and I share an amused look, and then she smiles, putting Vi at ease. “Aunt Violet, I’ve been to dinner parties that were the toast of the Upper East Side, but hands down, this has been my favorite.”

After we’re all thoroughly stuffed, we gather the china and take turns washing and drying everything. At some point, I hear Chatty Cat mewling to go outside. He likes to watch the birds in a patch of sun right before nightfall.

The iron plated door is heavy and cold against my palm. All the windows and doors have been reinforced with the highly toxic metal, and a new box of shotgun shells containing iron pellets rests on the entryway table. Not that Cal would try coming here again.

I’m fuzzy on the details, but a few days after I returned home, I found a note on my pillow from Eclipsa. She’s staying at the academy during the break to help Professor Spreewell with some soulmancy spells.

Hey, beotch,

I miss your mortal face. Please come back soon before I murder your sprite. Oh, and that changeling won’t bother you anymore. The prince and I had a nice little chat with him. You’re welcome.

Love and light,

~E

I have no idea what they did to him, but he hasn’t shown his face since.

I push the door open, the hinges creaking. “Don’t you dare kill any birds,” I warn Chatty, “or you won’t be long for this world. Got it?”

He growls in understanding and then, tail swishing, saunters to a puddle of sun on the porch and flops down.

Leaning against the doorframe, I peer out into the woods. A flicker of movement catches my eye. On instinct, I freeze. I know what lurks on the other side of the Shimmer, and I’ll never look at our forest the same.

Through the tangerine shafts of dusk piercing the trees, delicate white specks spiral to the ground. They float slowly, almost trapped in the sunbeam, like snowdrops suspended in amber.

My breath hitches at the same time a light breeze stirs. It rustles the leaves and lightly lifts the ends of my hair.