Crystallia Frostborne had tested a hundred hearts by watching them, and she needed one more before she could stop. The cold told her she was tired again this morning. She had ignored it for years. Now her silver crown, set with opal, felt heavier than snow. She wanted to crown someone worthy to guard the winter realm, someone who treated small things with care. But she judged people only when they thought no one watched, and no place in the realm drew them close enough to study. Once she had hidden behind a drift and watched a stranger warm a frozen bird back to life. The stranger never knew. That was how she learned the truth of a person. She could not learn it from thrones or ceremonies. She needed a place hopefuls would come to on their own, doing ordinary work, unaware of her eyes. She followed a sound across the valley. Blades cut ice in steady lines. A frozen pond lay below, pale blue and smooth, its edges soft with frost. A frost pixie skated across it in sharp, careful arcs. Crystallia watched from the trees, unseen, as she liked to be. The pixie, Crysta Frostglide, did not skate for show. She knelt at the center of the pond and pressed her palm to the ice. She frowned. Then she worked outward, thickening the frost ring by ring, guarding the weakest middle first. She never once looked up for praise. "The center is thin," Crysta said aloud, to no one. "It always goes first." Crystallia almost left satisfied. Here was a worthy heart, found the way she trusted. But a branch cracked under her foot, and the pixie's head snapped toward the trees. "Someone's there," Crysta said. Her voice went flat and final. "These blades were my grandmother's. This pond is ours. Say what you want or go." Crystallia stepped out. Hiding no longer worked. "I was watching how you tend the ice." "I know how to tend ice," Crysta said. "I don't need watching." Before Crystallia could answer, heavy steps broke through the snow. A tall yeti arrived, copper glasses fogged white, a satchel of glass slides at his hip. Aldric Frostspire wiped his lenses and squinted at them both. "I catalogue the frost crystals here before the melt," Aldric said. "This pond grows the clearest ones in the range. I come every week." He looked at Crystallia plainly. "You are the queen. People say you watch from hiding. They say it by the fire." Crystallia stood still. Her secret was gone. Her hidden method, the one she had used for a hundred years, was known and named. No one would reveal a true heart while she watched now. She looked at the pixie who guarded the weakest ice, and the yeti who returned each week to the same pond. Two worthy souls, standing in the open, warned of her. "Then I will watch openly," Crystallia said, "and you will both know I am judging."