Elizabeth Frostwyn had loved Elijah Winters from a careful distance for two winters, and this morning a stranger in a sunhat had climbed his steps before her. She watched from the tree line, her fingers gone cold inside her blue sleeves. The woman knocked on the wooden door of the stone home. The door did not open. The woman left the hat on the step like an offering and walked away down the path. Elizabeth stepped out of the trees. Ice crackled along the grass where she'd stood too long. She had planned this day for weeks. She would bring him a small gift, say something kind, and let him see her plainly for once. She had not planned on a rival. The sunhat sat on the stone step. A blue ribbon trailed off the back. Elizabeth stared at it. Her temper rose the way it always did, quick and bright as a struck match. She could freeze the ribbon. She could crack the crown. She could bury the thing under a mound of frost and let him find nothing. "Don't," a voice said behind her. Elizabeth turned. Beth Wonders stood at the edge of the path, purple hair wind-mussed, wings folded tight. The cosmic witch had no reason to help her and every reason not to. They had never been friends. "Why are you here," Elizabeth said. "Passing through. I can feel your magic thinning the air from a mile off." Beth glanced at the hat. "You freeze that, he'll know it was you. Not the way you want him to know." Elizabeth's hand was already lifted. Frost webbed her knuckles. "He'll pick her over me." "Maybe." Beth shrugged. "Or maybe he opens the door because a hat's on his step and a woman's crying in the yard. Your call." Elizabeth lowered her hand. She hated that the answer was obvious. She hated more that Beth had said it. She took a breath, walked up the steps, and set her palm on the wooden door. She knocked three times. The door opened. Elijah stood in the dark of the entry, long black hair, red eyes flat. He looked at her, then past her at the hat. "Someone left this," Elizabeth said. Her voice held. "I thought you should know before the sun took it." Elijah picked up the hat. He turned it once in his hands. "Not mine." "I know." He studied her face. "You're the ice witch." "Elizabeth." "Elijah." He stepped back from the doorway. "Come in. Tell me who left it." She went in. Behind her, Beth was already gone from the path. The door closed. Elizabeth had wanted to be noticed first. She had not wanted to be noticed as a witness. Now Elijah wanted a name she didn't have, and the woman in the sunhat would be back.

The door closed behind Elizabeth. The stone home swallowed the daylight. Cold air moved along the walls, colder than her own magic, and she felt her advantage shrink. Elijah set the sunhat on a stone table by the entry. He turned to her and waited. He wanted a name. She did not have one. "Sit," Elijah said. He pointed to a stone bench near the hearth. She sat. He stayed standing. "Describe her." "Tall," Elizabeth said. "Dark hair under the hat. A blue ribbon." She stopped. Every word she added could be a lie he caught later. "I only saw her from the trees." "Then why come to the door." Elizabeth's fingers curled in her lap. Frost bloomed on the stone under her palm. She lifted her hand fast and rubbed the mark away. "Because a woman leaving a gift and not staying to give it — that seemed wrong. I thought you should know." Elijah looked at the hat. He looked at her. His red eyes held on her face for too long. "You watched my door." "I was passing." "Through the north woods." She had no answer for that. Her temper flared before she could stop it. "Do you want help or do you want to question me?" He did not react. He picked the hat up again and turned it in his hands. A small dark shape dropped from the crown and landed on the stone floor. Then another. Then six more. Inky spiders spread from under the brim, bodies like wet ink, legs moving fast toward the walls. Elizabeth stood. "Don't move." She threw out her hand. Cold rolled from her palm across the floor. The spiders froze mid-step, legs stiff, bodies dulled to gray. One near her boot cracked and split. The room went quiet. Elijah stared at the frozen spiders. Then at her. He knew now. He had always known she was the ice witch — but seeing it was different. She had used her magic in his home without asking. "They were inside the hat," she said. Her voice shook. "She didn't bring you a gift. She brought you those." Elijah crouched by the nearest spider. He touched a frozen leg with one finger. It snapped clean off. "You knew to freeze them." "I knew they'd scatter." He stood. He looked at her a long moment. "Then she isn't a friend." "No." "And you don't know her name." "No." He nodded once. He did not thank her. He did not ask her to leave either. He pulled the sunhat off the table by its brim, careful now, and set it on the bench between them. "Stay. I want to see what else she left." Elizabeth sat back down. Her hands were shaking. She had not won his heart. She had won a seat at his table, and a new enemy she had never met.

Elijah crouched over the frozen spiders with a knife. He pried one off the stone and turned it in the light. Elizabeth watched from the bench. Every minute they wasted on the corpses was a minute the woman who sent them walked free. She might already be circling back with something worse. "I need to see where she stood," Elizabeth said. "Outside. Before the trail cools." Elijah looked up. "You said you saw her from the trees." "I saw her leave. I didn't see her come." Elizabeth stood. "Ice keeps a print longer than dirt does. If she stepped anywhere damp, I can pull her weight, her stride. Maybe her scent." He considered her. Then he opened the door. Outside, the afternoon had gone gray. The stone steps curved down past the small round windows of his home. Elizabeth knelt at the base of the door and set her palm flat on the threshold. Cold spread from her fingers into the stone. Frost bloomed in a slow ring. A boot print lifted from the grain, shallow, narrow at the heel. "Small foot," Elizabeth said. "Light. She wasn't carrying the hat far." She followed the prints down the steps. Elijah walked behind her. The trail curved off the path and into the trees, and she pulled frost up as she went, printing each step in pale white. Six paces in, the tracks stopped at the base of a lamp post. A navy iron post with a pink star burning at the crown. Rose light pooled on the ground. Elizabeth stared. "This wasn't here yesterday." A bench sat beside the post. Rose quartz, polished smooth. On the bench lay a folded square of blue ribbon. The same blue she had described from the trees. She reached for it. Elijah caught her wrist. "Don't," he said. She let her hand drop. He picked the ribbon up himself. A single hair was caught in the fold. Long. Dark. And under the ribbon, pressed into the quartz by something warm, a name had been scratched in a quick hand. Gretel. Elizabeth felt the cold leave her fingers. She knew the name. Everyone in the woods knew it. The child Elijah had claimed as his own in Vale. The one he'd hidden for three nights at a place that forgot faces. "She knows about the girl," Elizabeth said. Elijah's face did not move. His hand closed on the ribbon until his knuckles went white. "She wants me to come to her," he said. "Then don't. Not yet. I can hold the trail from here. I can find her before she finds the child." He looked at Elizabeth for a long moment. Something shifted behind his red eyes. Not warmth. Use. "Track her," he said. "I'll go to Gretel." He was gone between one breath and the next. Elizabeth stood alone under the rose light with a stranger's hair in her hand, and a hunt of her own.

Elijah was gone. Elizabeth stood alone under the rose lamp with a stranger's hair pinched between her fingers. The bench of pink stone still held the scratched name. She had told him she could hold the trail. Now she had to. She knelt at the last clear print by the bench and pressed her palm flat. Frost bloomed. The boot shape lifted from the moss, narrow heel, short stride. Elizabeth stood and followed. Print by print, she pulled the cold up under the woman's steps and set them in white. Then the wind changed. Warm air pushed through the trees. It came from the south, wet and heavy, wrong for the hour. Elizabeth felt it on her neck first. Then she saw the frost she had just laid begin to bead. Water ran down the bark. The print at her feet softened at the edges. A thaw. Out of nowhere. She swore and dropped to both knees. She spread her hands wide and pushed cold into the ground. Frost raced ahead of her in a thin sheet, catching three more prints before the warmth caught up and ate them. Her breath came short. Her fingers ached. She knew this trick. Fire magic did not have to be flame. A steady warmth, aimed at her work, was enough. Someone was burning the trail off behind her on purpose. Elizabeth ran. She followed the last hard print past a purple-barked tree hung with pink and white star fruit. Past a bush of chalky gray berries that popped soft under her boot. The prints thinned. Two more. One more. Then wet earth. She stopped in a small clearing. A wooden stall stood at the far edge, striped canopy sagging, the order window black and empty. It smelled of cold coffee and something older. On the picnic bench in front of it, a mug sat steaming. Elizabeth crossed to the bench. The mug was full. The steam rose straight up. No one sat there. No prints led away. Under the mug, a slip of paper. She pulled it free. Three words in the same quick hand as the name on the quartz. Too slow, witch. Elizabeth's temper broke. She slammed her palm on the bench and drove cold through the wood. Ice climbed the stall, split the canopy poles, cased the empty window in frost. The mug shattered. Steam hissed and died. It did nothing. The woman was already gone. The trail was gone. Gretel was somewhere at the other end of a road Elizabeth could no longer follow, and Elijah was running toward her blind. Elizabeth stood in the ruined frost and made herself think. The woman had waited here. She had known Elizabeth would come. That meant she had known Elijah would not. The trap was not for the child. It was for him, wherever he was going now. Elizabeth turned and ran back the way she came.