CHAPTER 2: THE MAN IN THE SNOW

Elena didn't remember putting on shoes. She didn't remember opening the back door either. One moment she was on her kitchen floor with frost on her hands, the next she was standing barefoot in August snow that didn't melt when it touched her skin.

It fell only over her small garden. Beyond the fence, Brooklyn was still summer. She could hear a neighbor's air conditioner humming. Inside her yard, it was silent, like the world was holding its breath.

The man under the oak tree hadn't moved.

Up close, he was worse. Or better. Elena couldn't decide.

He was tall, at least 6'3", in a black wool coat that should have been suffocating in August but looked right on him. His hair was black, damp with snowflakes that didn't melt. His skin was pale, but not sickly — like marble that had never seen sun. And his eyes — God, his eyes were not human. They were light grey, almost silver, with a ring of darker frost around the iris. When he looked at her, the snow fell harder.

"You shouldn't be out here barefoot," he said. The British accent was clearer now. "Your power is spiking. The snow is you."

"Me?" Her voice was raw. The light in her hands had faded to a soft glow under her skin, like veins of starlight.

"Starlight Fae manifest weather when emotional. Usually as a child. Yours was suppressed." He glanced at her neck, at the empty space where the necklace should have been. "That necklace was spelled. Iron and witch-blood. It kept you dormant."

Elena wrapped her arms around herself. She was still in Julian's shirt. It suddenly felt disgusting. "Who are you really?"

"Adrian Blackwood. In your world, I'm a British investor. Portfolio includes tech, hotels. Including The Whitby where your husband —" He stopped himself. "In my world, I am Adrian Rhyser of the Winter Court. Second son of High King Moros. Prince. And for the last three years, I've been exiled here."

Elena stared. "You're insane."

"I know how it sounds."

"You think you're a fairy prince?"

"Fae," he corrected quietly. "Fairy is insulting. Like calling you a monkey. Technically related, but —"

"Don't," Elena snapped, and snow exploded off the oak tree in a gust that had nothing to do with wind.

Adrian's eyes widened. He smiled for the first time. It transformed his face. "There she is."

"There who is?"

"The Starlight Heir. My mother told me stories about your line. You were supposed to be extinct. The last Starlight queen died 200 years ago sealing the Veil to keep humans safe from us. She had one child hidden in the human world. That bloodline diluted, diluted, until —" He stepped closer, but didn't touch her. The air between them crackled cold and warm at once. "Until you."

Elena's head was spinning. "This is a trick. Victoria put you up to this. Or Julian. Is this some gaslighting thing to make me think I'm crazy so you get the apartment?"

Adrian reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a phone. Victoria's phone. He unlocked it and showed her. Not just photos of Julian and Victoria. There were other photos. Victoria standing in a circle of salt and blood in what looked like Elena's bedroom. Victoria holding Elena's necklace over a bowl of black liquid. Victoria kissing Julian while Julian looked... glazed, eyes unfocused, like he was drugged.

"She's been feeding him a love potion," Adrian said. "It's called Syrin. Makes mortals obsessed and pliable. It's also poisoning him. That's why he's been losing weight. Snapping at you."

Elena felt sick. Julian had lost 15 pounds in the last two months. He'd said it was CrossFit.

"Why would she do this?" Elena whispered. "She's my best friend."

"She's not your friend. She's a Blood Witch. Half-fae, cast out of all courts for stealing power. She married me three years ago because a Winter Prince's heart blood can make a witch immortal. She almost succeeded. I left before she could finish the ritual on our wedding night. I've been hiding here, powerless, because the iron in this world weakens me. Until you..."

He looked at her hands. The starlight under her skin pulsed in time with her heartbeat. And strangely, in time with his.

"What about me?" Elena asked, voice barely audible.

"You woke me up. I could feel you across the city for months. A little flicker. Then tonight, when you found out, you... you screamed. Not out loud. Here." He touched his chest. "All fae of Winter can feel Starlight when it awakens. It's our opposite. Our balance. Like sun to moon."

The snow was falling harder, swirling around them now. Elena shivered, not from cold, but from the way he was looking at her — like she was water in a desert.

"I'm cold," she said, though she wasn't. It was an excuse to break eye contact.

Without asking, Adrian shrugged off his coat and draped it around her shoulders. It smelled like frost and old books and something clean, like pine.

The moment the fabric touched her, the starlight in her hands flared and shot up her arms. At the same time, Adrian gasped and doubled over.

"What? What's wrong?" Elena reached for him.

His hand shot out and grabbed her wrist — not hard, but firm. Where his skin touched hers, there was a sound like ice cracking on a lake in spring. Light exploded between them, white and silver, and a mark seared itself onto both their wrists — intertwining vines of frost and stars, glowing.

Elena screamed, not from pain, but from the flood. Suddenly she could FEEL him. Not just his hand. His exhaustion. His three years of loneliness hiding in a world that hurt him. His rage at Victoria. His awe when he looked at her. And underneath it all, a raw, aching tenderness that made her knees weak.

Adrian was staring at their joined wrists, his silver eyes wide with horror and wonder.

"No," he whispered. "No, no, no. Not now. Not like this."

"What did you do to me?" Elena tried to pull away, but the mark held them like a magnet.

"It's a soul-bond," he said, voice hoarse. "The most sacred, most dangerous magic in the fae world. It happens when a Winter fae and a Starlight fae freely exchange warmth in a moment of true vulnerability. It hasn't happened in 500 years. My parents —"

"I didn't consent to a soul-bond!" Elena's voice rose, and the snow around them turned to tiny shards of ice.

"You did. You accepted my coat. You were cold. I offered warmth. In fae law, that's consent. I should have known. I should have —" He finally let go, and the light faded but the mark remained, silver and pulsing. Elena could still feel him, like a second heartbeat in her chest.

"What does it mean?" she asked, touching the mark. It was warm.

"It means," Adrian said, looking at her with an expression that was half devastated, half reverent, "that you can feel what I feel. I can feel what you feel. If you are hurt, I bleed. If I die..." He didn't finish.

"If you die?"

"If I die, you die. If you die, I die. And until we learn to control it, anyone who knows can use it against us."

Elena looked at the Brooklyn brownstone she had decorated with Julian. At the garden where she and Victoria had drunk rosé last summer. At the man who claimed to be a prince, who had just accidentally bound his life to hers.

Then she looked down at the glowing mark, and for the first time since the phone call, she didn't feel broken. She felt powerful. Furious.

"Good," she said, and her eyes flashed starlight. "Then let's make sure Victoria and Julian are the ones who die first. Two can play at this game, Prince. But this time, we play with real magic."

Adrian stared at her. Then, slowly, he smiled — a true, sharp, winter smile that promised war.

"My queen," he whispered.

And in a garden that was snowing in August, surrounded by a world that had no idea magic had just returned, Elena Sinclair, last of the Starlight Fae, began to plan her revenge.