The cold finds me first.

It seeps through the carriage walls, through my fur-lined cloak, through the wool beneath. I've been traveling north for three weeks, watching the landscape bleed from gold to gray to white, and still I'm not prepared for this.

The wind carries a sound I don't recognize. A low, mournful howl that might be wolves or might be the mountains themselves screaming.

"We're approaching Frosthold, Your Highness."

My guard's voice is tight. He's southern, like me. He's been getting quieter with each passing day, and I understand why. Everything here wants us dead.

I pull back the curtain and the cold slaps my face like a physical blow.

Gods above.

The city rises from the ice like something grown rather than built. Black stone towers claw at a sky the color of a bruise. The walls are massive, ancient, carved with runes I can't read and don't want to. Every surface glitters with frost.

It's beautiful. Terrifying and beautiful, in the way a blade is beautiful when it catches the light.

My carriage rolls closer, and I see the gates.

Blood.

Someone has painted the massive iron gates in blood. Fresh enough to still be wet, red streaks running down the metal like tears. The smell hits me a moment later, copper and cold and something else. Animal, I think. I hope.

A welcome, then. Northern style.

"Your Highness..." my guard starts.

"I see it."

My voice comes out steadier than I feel. Good. I've been practicing that voice for years.

The gates groan open, revealing a courtyard packed with people. They're all watching. Hundreds of faces, hard as the stone behind them, waiting to see what the southern princess will do.

I know what they expect. Fainting. Screaming. Perhaps a delicate retreat back to my carriage with demands to speak to someone civilized.

I won't give them that.

The carriage stops. My guard opens the door and cold air floods in, so sharp it burns my lungs. I take a breath, two breaths, and step down onto northern soil.

My boots crunch on packed snow. The sound echoes in the silence.

No one bows.

Of course not. Bowing is southern courtesy. Here, respect is earned with blood, not birthright. I knew that. I prepared for it. But knowing and feeling are different beasts.

I lift my chin and let my gaze travel across the crowd. Meet their eyes, one by one. I am Princess Liora of the Golden Court. I've survived worse than hostile staring.

Haven't I?

A man separates from the crowd. Tall, broad, wrapped in furs that make him look twice his size. His face is weathered, scarred across one cheek, and his eyes hold nothing but contempt.

"Welcome to the north, princess."

His accent turns my title into an insult.

"Thank you."

Two words. Warm but not weak. I've rehearsed this too.

He snorts. "The prince will see you when he's ready. Until then..." He gestures vaguely toward the castle. "Try not to freeze."

Laughter ripples through the crowd. Not kind laughter.

I smile. It costs me, but I smile.

"I brought warm clothes."

"You'll need more than that."

He turns and walks toward the castle, clearly expecting me to follow. My guard moves to flank me, but I hold up a hand.

"Stay with the carriage. See to the horses."

"Your Highness, I can't leave you alone with..."

"These are my people now." The words taste strange in my mouth. "I should start learning to walk among them."

His face says he thinks I'm going to die. But he nods, because he's a good soldier and I'm still, technically, his princess.

I follow the scarred man through the courtyard, past the staring crowds, into the shadow of the castle. The stones here are black as midnight, and when my fingertips brush the wall, the cold burns through my gloves.

Inside is no warmer. Torches line the corridors, but their light seems to lose heart before it reaches the walls. Everything is shadow and stone and the distant echo of footsteps.

I catalog details as I walk. Two guards at each door. Weapons everywhere, axes, swords, spears mounted on walls like decorations. The air smells like smoke and old metal and something sweeter underneath. Mead, perhaps. Or blood.

The scarred man doesn't speak. Doesn't look back to see if I'm keeping up. The message is clear: keep pace or be left behind.

I keep pace.

We climb stairs, so many stairs, until my thighs burn and my breath comes short in the thin mountain air. The scarred man isn't breathing hard at all. Another test I'm failing.

Finally, we stop before a door. Massive oak banded with iron, carved with the same runes as the gates. Something important is behind this door.

"Wait here."

He disappears inside. I wait.

The cold seeps into my bones. My fingers have gone numb inside my gloves. I count my breaths, a trick my mother taught me for moments when panic starts to rise. One. Two. Three.

This is what I was born for. What I was raised for. Twenty-two years of diplomatic training, language lessons, cultural study. Three generations of war between our peoples, and I am the key to ending it.

I just have to survive long enough to turn that key.

The door opens.

"Enter."

I step into the great hall and find my future husband.

He's sitting on a throne carved from ice. Actual ice, blue-white and glittering, vapor rising from its surface like breath. The cold radiating from it makes my eyes water.

And on that throne, in that cold, sits a man who makes the winter look warm.

Corvyn of the Frozen Throne. Prince of the North. Blood of the Wolf Kings.

He's younger than I expected. The reports said twenty-eight, but war ages men, and I'd imagined someone weathered. Instead, he's all sharp edges and clean lines, black hair swept back from a face that could have been carved from the same ice as his throne.

His eyes find mine.

Blue. Pale blue, like frozen lakes, like the sky before a killing storm. They assess me the way a hunter assesses prey, calculating threat and weakness and worth.

I hold his gaze. I don't flinch.

Something flickers in those cold eyes. Interest? Irritation? I can't tell. His face gives nothing away.

"The southern princess." His voice matches the rest of him, cold, controlled, carrying an edge that suggests violence held carefully in check. "You're smaller than I expected."

"You're colder than I expected."

The words slip out before I can stop them. In the silence that follows, I wonder if I've just started another war.

Then his mouth twitches. Not quite a smile. Something closer to surprise.

"The reports said you were meek."

"The reports were wrong."

He rises from his throne. He's tall, of course he is, and moves with the fluid grace of someone who's spent his life fighting and winning. When he steps closer, I catch his scent: leather and pine and something darker, something that makes my skin prickle with awareness.

He stops an arm's length away. Close enough that I have to tip my head back to meet his eyes.

"You understand why you're here."

It's not a question, but I answer anyway.

"To end a war. To seal an alliance. To give our peoples peace."

"To be a hostage." His voice is flat. "A guarantee of your father's good behavior. If he breaks the treaty, you die."

I knew that. I've known it since my father first proposed this match. But hearing it spoken aloud, in this frozen hall, by this frozen man,

My stomach tightens. I keep my face still.

"I understand the terms."

"Do you?" He circles me slowly, predator examining prey. I feel his gaze on my back, my shoulders, the nape of my neck. "You'll be alone here. No friends, no family, no allies. My people hate southerners. They'll watch you fail with great pleasure."

"Then I won't fail."

He completes his circuit, stands before me again.

"Brave words."

"True words."

His eyes narrow. For a long moment, he simply looks at me, and I look back, and the air between us grows thick with something I can't name.

Then he turns away.

"You have one week to prove you won't die. Then we'll discuss the wedding."

"One week?"

"Consider it a trial." He's walking toward a side door, dismissing me without ceremony. "Most southerners don't last that long."

"I'm not most southerners."

He pauses at the door. Glances back over his shoulder.

"We'll see."

The door closes behind him.

I stand alone in the great hall, surrounded by ice and shadow and the echo of his voice. My fingers are numb. My face aches with cold. And somewhere beneath the fear, beneath the uncertainty, something else is taking root.

Determination.

He thinks I'm going to fail. He thinks I'm going to freeze or break or run home crying.

He's wrong.

I've spent my entire life being underestimated. The soft princess. The diplomatic daughter. The sweet girl with the pretty smile and the gentle heart.

They never see the steel beneath.

A servant appears to show me to my chambers, and I follow in silence, cataloging every corridor, every face, every potential threat. The room they give me is sparse but clean, stone walls, a fire burning in the hearth, furs piled on a bed that looks hard enough to bruise.

It's cold. Everything here is cold.

But I've learned to build fires.

I stand at the narrow window and look out at this frozen kingdom that's supposed to become my home. The mountains are turning pink with sunset, sharp peaks painted in colors that seem impossible against the gray.

Beautiful. Even here, there's beauty.

My mother told me once that I have a gift for finding light in dark places. She said it like a blessing and a warning both.

I press my palm against the frozen glass.

One week. He gave me one week to prove myself.

Challenge accepted, Prince of Ice.

I'm going to survive this. I'm going to survive you.

And someday, you're going to wonder how you ever lived without me.