The cold was nothing new to me. I had lived my whole life in the North, where winters never truly ended, and the snow buried the weak. My father always said that only the strong could rule in a Vinterhold kingdom where the cold itself was a living thing, testing those who dared to defy it.

That was why, when I first saw her, I knew she did not belong.

She stood in the middle of the great hall, surrounded by my father’s men, her dress too thin for our brutal winters, her hands stiff from the cold. Yet she held her head high, her eyes burning with something close to defiance. A princess of Vaeloria, the kingdom of golden fields and warm summers, where even winter was nothing more than a passing whisper. She had no place here, in the heart of the North.

And yet, here she was.

I had heard of her before. Every noble in the realm had. A beauty, they said. A troublemaker, they whispered. A woman whose tongue was as sharp as her wit, raised in a kingdom where women were not taught to obey, but to rule alongside their kings.

But here? In my father’s court?

She was a prisoner.

Taken from the battlefield, the last survivor of her guard, brought before my father as a trophy of war. The king of Vaeloria had dared to send his men beyond our borders, and now he would pay for it.

I should have looked at her and seen nothing but an enemy. A symbol of everything we despised.

And yet—when her gaze met mine across the hall, something in me shifted.

A fire, burning beneath all that cold.

I should have ignored it. I should have turned away.

But I didn’t.

Instead, I stepped forward, closing the space between us. She did not lower her gaze, even as frost bit at her skin.

I leaned in, my voice low enough that only she could hear.

“Your kingdom sent you to die here.” My breath ghosted against her cheek. “Let’s see how long you last in the cold.”