Ember Ashwing had touched snow only once, and it died under her hand. She stood at the edge of Birchroot Forest and watched the first frost creep over the grass. Her orange hair hung past her waist. Heat rolled off her skin in waves. She wanted to kneel and press her palm to the white crust, but she already knew what would happen. The frost would hiss, steam, and vanish. Everything cold fled from her. And she had fallen in love with the one thing colder than all of it. She had seen the snow queen three nights running, far off among the birches. A pale woman who left ice blooming behind her steps. Ember wanted to walk up to her and simply speak. But heat was a wall around her body. Last time she crept close, the ice at the queen's feet melted into mud, and the queen turned away. Ember crouched by a white cottage with a purple door. Pink flowers climbed its trellis. Beside her, a red fox pressed against her leg, its white-tipped tail flicking. The fox never burned. It was the only living thing that could bear her touch. "I can't get near her," Ember told the fox. "I melt the ground she walks on." The fox trotted to a patch of tall red bell-shaped flowers near the fence. It nosed one bloom. A butterfly lifted off the petals. Its wings looked like toasted bread, golden and crusted. The butterfly drifted toward Ember, then veered away from her heat, circling instead above a line of carved stones half-buried in the grass. Ember had walked past those stones a hundred times. Now she looked. Each stone held a glowing rune. The symbols pulsed with faint blue light. Cold light. She held her hand above the nearest stone and felt no burn pushing back. The rune's glow did not flee from her. She pressed her bare palm flat against it. Nothing melted. The stone stayed cold under her skin. A chill crawled up her arm, slow and strange, like river water. Her fingers stopped steaming. For the first time, heat drained out of her and into the stone. Ember gasped and pulled back. The frost on the grass beside her held. It did not hiss. It did not vanish. She reached down and touched it. The white crust stayed white. The fox barked once. Ember laughed, breathless. She pressed both hands to the rune stones and felt the cold pour into her, filling her like a cup. She could hold it only a while. The heat already pushed back, warming her fingertips again. But now she knew. The stones could cool her long enough to cross the snow without ruining it. Long enough to stand before the queen and not melt the ground between them. Ember stood. The frost stretched toward the birches, toward the pale woman waiting among them. She had one chance before the heat returned.

The rune stones' cold faded from Ember's hands before she reached the first birch. Heat crawled back into her fingers. She stopped at the forest's edge, breathing hard. Even if she crossed the snow, she knew how this went. She would stand before the pale woman and burn. She always burned. The last person who let Ember close had learned to flinch. The queen would recoil too, and no borrowed cold would fix that. Ember sat on a cold cottage step and pressed her palms to her knees. The fox curled beside her boots. A woman came through the trees carrying a pouch of vials. She had brown hair and a green dress, and freckles across her cheeks. She walked straight at Ember, unafraid of the waves of heat. She was the herbalist who had come looking after Ember burned a bridge to ash. No one else had bothered to explain what Ember was. This one had. "You ran out of cold," the woman said. Not a question. "The stones only hold so long." "I know," Ember said. Willow Greenleaf knelt and set a crystal vial in the snow between them. Pale liquid swirled inside it. Tiny snowflakes turned in the glass. "Frostmoss," she said. "It grows under glaciers. I had three sprigs. This used all of them." She did not reach to hand it over. She waited. Ember stared at the vial. Her stomach tightened. She remembered another hand holding out a cure, long ago, and how it ended. She pulled back without meaning to. Willow watched the flinch. "Someone did this before," she said. "Gave you something. It went wrong." "Everything goes wrong," Ember said. "I burn through it." "I know what you are," Willow said. "I came anyway. I spent a week under ice for this." She nudged the vial closer. "That means something, even if you can't hold it." Ember looked at her. The witch had not stepped back once. The fox had never stepped back. Somewhere past these trees was a woman who kept company too, who had sent Ember toward this cottage and these companions. For the first time Ember counted something she had not lost. She picked up the vial. The glass stayed cool in her grip and did not steam. She pulled the stopper and drank. Cold spread down her throat, into her chest, out to her fingers. The heat sank low, like a banked fire. She touched the snow beside her. It held. "How long?" she asked. "Longer than the stones," Willow said. "Long enough to reach her and speak. But it fades too. Nothing I make is forever." Ember stood. Her hands stayed cool. She could cross the snow now, and she would not melt the ground beneath the queen. But the cold inside her was borrowed, and it was already shrinking. If she wanted the queen to stay, she would have to learn softness before the warmth returned.

Ember reached the queen with cold hands and nothing else. The pale woman stood among jagged ice rocks, her white wings sharp as glass. She was everything the stories promised and more. She wanted for nothing. Ember had crossed the snow to win her, and now she saw the trap. A queen who had everything had no reason to stay for a girl who had always burned. Ember's throat went dry. She had no gift. The cold in her chest was already thinning. She turned back for the cottage. Willow was packing vials into her pouch. The herbalist had followed Ember this far, unafraid of her heat, the one person who had chased her down after a burned bridge and stayed. "I have nothing to give her," Ember said. "The potion fades. Then I'm just fire again." Willow did not soften it. "The frostmoss runs out. I have none left." She paused. "But there's a well. I've only heard tales. Water that never stops being cold. A frost potion with no end." "Where?" "Far. A rune path leads to it. A wolf guards it." Willow met her eyes. "No one gets past the wolf." Ember left at dawn. The glowing stones stretched ahead, each symbol carved and faintly lit. She followed them for days, boots crunching frost. Then the path ended at a stone well crowned with snow, its water glowing pale blue. Between her and the water stood the wolf. He rose on two legs, taller than any man, his coat white and wild. His eyes held something that was not an animal's. Ember drew her sword. He did not move. She swung. He caught the blade in one clawed hand and held it. The steel did not cut him. He only watched her, patient, waiting for her to understand. Ember lowered the sword. She looked past the fur and the fangs. There was a man trapped inside the beast. She knew that kind of trap. She had lived her whole life inside her own fire, burning everyone who came close, unable to get out. "You didn't choose this," she said. "Neither did I." She let the sword fall in the snow. She reached toward him with a bare hand. Her heat was rising again, the potion nearly gone. For once she did not fight it down. She let the warmth meet his cold, slow and steady, not a blast but an offering. The wolf bowed his head under her palm. His fur melted into pale skin. He stepped aside from the well. Ember knelt and filled a crystal vial with glowing water. It stayed cool in her grip. Endless cold, a gift that would last. She stood with the vial in her fist. She finally had something to bring the queen. But she understood now what the queen would truly want. Not the potion. The girl who had learned to hold her fire gently, and let someone close without burning them.