The question hangs between us, weighted with possibilities and complications. I lead her to the hearth, where a fire burns low—just enough for human comfort without causing me distress. We sit together on the fur rug, her back against my chest, my arms encircling her.
"Now we discover what this connection can become," I tell her. "Day by day. There are no maps for the path we walk."
She leans her head back against my shoulder, watching frost patterns form and fade where my hands rest against her arms. "I have a life in Canada. Work. Obligations."
"I know."
"But I also have this—" She gestures to the frost on her skin, to the cabin around us, to me. "Whatever this is. And I can't just walk away from it."
"Then don't," I say simply. "Find a way to have both."
She turns to look at me, surprise evident in her expression. "You'd be okay with that? Me going back and forth between worlds?"
"I've existed for five centuries," I remind her. "Time moves differently for me. Weeks or months of separation are moments in that span."
This isn't entirely true—the hollow ache of her absence felt eternal while it lasted—but the principle remains. I can endure temporary separations if it means she will return.
"A winter photographer does need to travel where the winter is," she says thoughtfully. "And Iceland has some of the most dramatic winter landscapes in the world."
"A convenient truth."
"My editor would never question regular assignments here." She's thinking aloud now, problem-solving in that practical way I've come to admire. "And with remote work being so common now..."
I listen as she works through the logistics, the human concerns that mean nothing to me but everything to her. Details of careers and finances and travel arrangements. All the while, I'm aware of the winter in her blood growing stronger by the hour, the connection between us deepening with each moment of contact.
Whatever path we forge will be unlike any walked before—a bridge between human and other, between warmth and winter, between modern life and ancient magic. But as I hold her in my arms, watching her plan and dream, I find myself believing in possibilities I would have dismissed as impossible mere months ago.
Five centuries of perfect solitude, shattered by a single human woman who somehow withstood my cold. Whatever comes next—separation, reunion, some balance between worlds—I am changed irrevocably by her presence in my existence.
And for the first time in centuries, I welcome change rather than resisting it.
Outside, the perpetual storm of my domain shifts its patterns, responding to my altered state. Where once it raged chaoticand fierce, now it moves in harmonious cycles, beautiful in its controlled power. Like my existence now—still cold, still winter, but containing warmth I'd forgotten could exist.
The night deepens around our sanctuary. Tomorrow will bring questions, complications, decisions. But tonight belongs to us—the winter guardian and the woman who carries frost in her veins.
Tonight, neither of us is alone.
11
Freya
Iwasn't supposed to come back so soon.
The plan had been practical, responsible: return to Canada, fulfill my contracts, organize my life, then maybe—maybe—return to Iceland in a few months to "continue my winter photography series." A reasonable timeline that would let me process everything that had happened with Vidar.
I lasted exactly twenty-seven days.
Twenty-seven days of waking with frost on my pillow. Of turning the shower to its coldest setting and still finding it too warm. Of watching my breath cloud in heated rooms while colleagues complained about the mild winter chill.
Twenty-seven days of feeling the cold inside me growing stronger rather than weaker, of dreaming in blue and white, of sensing a presence across an ocean that called to me with increasing urgency.
I tried to ignore it. Threw myself into editing the Iceland photos—the publishable ones, not the private collection ofimpossible images locked in my encrypted folder. Accepted new assignments. Paid bills. Called friends I'd neglected.
But each night, alone in my apartment, I'd place my palm against my window and watch frost bloom from my fingertips in patterns too perfect to be natural. Each morning, I'd wake to find delicate ice crystals on my ceiling, directly above where I slept.
The changes weren't fading with distance. They were intensifying.
On the twenty-seventh day, I was in the middle of a client meeting when frost suddenly covered my coffee mug, spiraling across the ceramic in elaborate patterns visible to everyone at the table. I covered it quickly with my hand, making a joke about the air conditioning, but the incident left me shaken.
