Violet Ashford wanted to marry a man who loved her violet skin, not one who wished to bleach it pale. Tonight three suitors waited in her stone cottage parlor. She stood behind the front door, hand on the brass handle, and could not open it. A wrong choice would trap her forever with a man who called her skin a flaw. She knew the trap. The first suitor had already sent a jar of skin cream, wrapped in ribbon. The second praised her "despite" her color, as if it were a limp. The third pitied her, and pity always turned into fixing. She could not tell admiration from disguise. Every kind word sounded the same through this door. She opened it anyway. The three men rose. She served them tea and watched their eyes. The first stared at his cup, not her. The second offered her a parasol "to keep the sun off." She set it down. The third smiled too gently, the way people smile at broken things. A knock came at the front door. Kai Heartwell stood on the step, purple hair damp from the rain, a pink jacket zipped to his chin. He was the neighbor who fixed her fence last winter and never mentioned her skin at all. He held out a rose bush, its red blooms dusted with pale frost. "I found this dying in the cold," Kai said. "I thought you'd like the color of the leaves against your hands." He set it in her palms. The frost melted where her purple fingers touched it. He watched the color, not the flaw. He grinned like the bush was lucky to be held by her. The three suitors watched. One asked if the frost would stain her skin darker. Violet looked at that man, then at Kai. Kai frowned, confused by the question. "Darker would only be more of her," he said. He said it plainly, like a fact everyone should know. Something settled in Violet's chest. The test was over. The three inside had shown her their pity and their cures. Kai had shown her a plant he saved because its color matched her hands. He had never once wished her paler. She turned to the three suitors and thanked them for coming. Then she opened the grand front door wide and asked them to leave. They gathered their gifts, the cream and the parasol, and went out into the rain. She shut the door behind them. Violet held the frost-kissed rose bush and faced Kai. "Stay," she said. "I've made my choice." His grin widened. But she had chosen a man, not planned a wedding. She did not yet know if a kind heart could survive her mother's plans for the match, or the town that still called her skin a curse.