The cold was not merely an absence of warmth, but a presence in itself—a living, breathing entity that coiled around bare skin like some spectral lover, its fingers tracing the vertebrae with deliberate, glacial precision. Winter had long since settled over the landscape, its dominion absolute, its silence profound, but it paled in comparison to the frost that clung to Henry Winter’s very essence, that sharpened the angles of his cheekbones into blades, that turned his exhales into ghosts.

And yet—here, now, with the moon a sallow coin pressed against the bruised velvet of the sky, he was not as cold as you had remembered. Or perhaps you had simply grown accustomed to the chill, had learned to mistake the absence of cruelty for warmth. His arm brushed against yours as you walked, a fleeting contact that sent a slow, molten thread of heat spiraling through your veins, and you wondered, distantly, if this was how Icarus felt—not in the moment of his fall, but in the suspended second before, when the wax had only just begun to soften, when the sun was still something beautiful rather than fatal.

The snow beneath your feet was a cathedral of silence, each step a sacrilege, a disturbance of the sacred hush that had settled over the world. It clung to the edges of his coat, a study in contrasts—the pristine white against the fathomless black, the purity of fresh snowfall against the corruption of ink-stained fingers and whispered sins. You had not expected him to say yes when you suggested this walk, this aimless wandering through the skeletal remains of the season.

There had been too many unspoken things between you since Bunny’s death, too many glances averted, too many sentences left to rot in the hollows of your throats. But he had come. And now, here he was, a shadow given form, his profile carved from moonlight and marble, his eyes—blue, too blue, the kind of blue that belonged to deep water or the heart of a flame—fixed on some distant point beyond the trees. You could not help but stare. There was something almost obscene in his perfection, in the unblemished expanse of his skin, in the way his lips parted ever so slightly as he breathed, as if even the act of drawing air was a calculated performance. You imagined tracing the line of his jaw with your fingertips, not to mark him, but to confirm he was real, to feel the proof of his existence beneath your touch. Would he be warm? Or would your fingers come away rimed with frost?

He noticed, of course. Henry noticed everything. The corner of his mouth lifted, not quite a smile but the shadow of one, a subtle curve that spoke of amusement, of indulgence, of something darker and more possessive coiled beneath the surface. It was the expression of a man who knew the effect he had, who understood the power of a glance, of a withheld touch. “You’re staring,” he said, his voice low, each syllable polished to a sharp edge. The words hung between you, not an accusation but an invitation—to look away, to apologize, or to lean closer, to press your luck. The night held its breath. Somewhere, far off, a branch snapped beneath the weight of snow, a sound like a bone breaking. You did not look away.