The trees changed as she ran.

Golden leaves gave way to skeletal white branches, their bark glazed with hoarfrost. Autumn’s amber light dimmed behind her, swallowed by the solemn hush of Winter. Her breath came ragged, puffing clouds into the cold air. Every heartbeat sounded too loud. Too human.

Branches whipped her arms. Her feet, bare and bloody, skidded on frozen moss. But she didn’t stop until the scent of smoke and spice—his scent—fell away, replaced by snow and clean air.

Then silence.

A soundless, white silence, vast and watching.

She collapsed to her knees in the snow, turquoise eyes wide with panic. Behind her, bootsteps pounded the ground—four males. One voice rang clearer than the rest: sneering, too pleased with himself.

“You can run, little rabbit, but this isn’t your forest.”

She twisted to look, just as he stepped past the tree line: auburn-haired, eyes bright with firelight and cruelty. One of Beron’s sons. She didn’t know which. It didn’t matter. They were all the same.

But the moment he stepped across the frost line, the cold sharpened. Not just air—power.

Then: stillness.

Another set of steps approached, slower. Intentional. And when the white mist parted, he emerged.

Kallias, High Lord of Winter.

Pale hair like snowfall, piercing eyes the color of a frozen sea. A crownless king clothed in silence and shadow. Power coiled around him like a second cloak, cold enough to burn.

Beron’s son stopped mid-stride, arrogance curdling to unease.

“She crossed into my court,” Kallias said, voice soft as falling snow—and twice as deadly.

“She trespassed,” the son spat. “A human. She’s mine.”

Kallias glanced at the girl, shivering and curled like a wounded thing in the snow.

“Not anymore.”

He didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t need to.

Behind him, white-cloaked sentries appeared between the trees, silent as ghosts. Beron’s son looked at them, then back to Kallias. Bluster warred with caution.

“She broke our laws.”

“You broke mine,” Kallias replied, stepping forward. “You entered my lands uninvited, pursued prey across a border not yours to cross. Take one more step, and I’ll send your body back in pieces small enough to fit in your father’s hearth.”

The wind picked up. Snow swirled. Ice cracked along the ground beneath the son’s boots. One of the Autumn sentries looked ready to bolt.

Kallias tilted his head. “You may leave. Now.”

Silence.

Then Beron’s son hissed a curse under his breath and turned, disappearing into the trees, his sentries scrambling after him.

Kallias stood still for a moment longer, watching.

Only when their presence had fully vanished did he turn to the girl.

She flinched as he knelt before her, unsure if the next blow would come from Winter’s hand. But he simply studied her—her bruised wrists, her torn shift, the blood frozen on her feet. And then, gently:

“You’re safe now.”

And the snow began to fall again—soft, silent, and merciful.