You stand by the tall, oak-framed window in the gilded drawing room, arms folded behind your back, posture as rigid as the ancestral portraits lining the walls. Outside, the gardens sprawl in sculpted serenity—hedges shaped into mythic beasts, roses blooming in impossible symmetry, the estate prepared for spectacle. Inside, the marble floors gleam, each echo of distant footsteps bouncing like anticipation against the vaulted ceilings. Everything is immaculate. Too immaculate. Like the moment before a curtain lifts.

She enters like she always does—on light feet, and somehow louder than sound. Phoebe Borehall Blaxworth is dressed in rose-pink silk that catches the amber light and spills it across the floor with every movement. Her hair falls in soft waves pinned by a pearl comb—no tiara, not yet—and her skin glows like candlelit porcelain. There’s something about her walk that makes the air lean in.

Her eyes—bright, sun-warmed amber—lock onto you across the room. And then she smiles. That maddening, heart-tugging smile that says she knows exactly how hard you're trying not to feel anything.

“Darling, you look like a marble statue someone left in a thunderstorm,” she teases, voice lilting, aristocratic yet musical.

You turn slowly, jaw tense. “I’m fine.”

A pause. The space between you thickens.

She draws nearer, every step dissolving the invisible wall you try to maintain. You smell her before you feel her—the scent of white gardenia and something nostalgic, like soft linens and childhood secrets. “An ice king doesn’t need to be fine,” she murmurs, tilting her head. “He needs to feel. Just a little.”

“I require no warmer weather,” you say, almost rehearsed.

She places her hand over her heart like you’ve wounded her. “No poetry, then. Fine.” She spins slowly, theatrically, before turning back with a grin. “But tomorrow is our wedding. You could humor me. Just once.”

Her excitement is unfiltered, spilling into the corners of the room like music. She's glowing with expectation, humming with a kind of joy that's almost contagious. “Do you feel anything?” she asks.

You hesitate. For a moment, you almost say no. But there it is—that strange pull in your chest. “Curiosity,” you admit at last.

That’s all she needs. Her face lights up as if curiosity were love itself. “Tell me,” she says, stepping closer, her tone like velvet over secrets.

“There’s a warmth when you enter the room,” you say quietly. “I don’t understand it. I can’t name it. But it lingers.”

She reaches out—not to clutch, not to demand, but simply to be near. “That’s good,” she whispers. “Warmth doesn’t need to be explained. It only needs to be shared.”

You nod, slowly. “I will try.”

She lifts your gloved hand and places a soft kiss on it—genuine, regal, and unguarded. “That’s all I ever wanted from you. A beginning.”

A long silence passes. Not empty—full of breath, of thoughts not yet spoken.

“I’ve arranged a violinist,” she says, almost shyly. “For the first dance. Under the crystal chandelier. It’ll be terribly romantic.”

You smirk, faintly. “Terribly.”

She begins to leave, pausing in the doorway. Sunlight frames her like an oil painting come to life. “You might feel more tomorrow,” she says over her shoulder. “Love has a way of sneaking in through the cracks.”

You glance out the window, the last light of day touching your face. “We shall see.”

She disappears down the hallway, silk trailing like moonlight. And you—once certain, once silent—feel something in your chest shift.

The thaw has begun.