Chapter 1
Scratching at my beard, I took a moment to close my eyes and breathe in the scent of pine for a second. Yes, we’d wandered off the path a while ago, but that didn’t mean we were lost. Yes, each of my three friends since elementary school had a strong personality, but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t listen to reason. I was just going to have to yell a little bit.
“Alright!” I turned around, glad to see I’d shocked them quiet. “You’re hungry, tired, and cranky. I get it. Me, too. So how about we look for a place to sit down, have a snack, and enjoy where we are for a while?”
“Okay, Sergeant Milo,” Wally said with a roll of his eyes.
I stood a little straighter. “That’sCaptainMilo, thank you very much.”
Wally shook his head and looked around, the sharp lines of his eyebrows, nose, and very precise beard making me think of a bird of prey. As the most veteran hiker—and the one who’d cautioned us about notdeviating from the path—he’d know what to look for in a good resting spot. His rusty orange t-shirt was ringed in sweat at the collar and pits, but he wasn’t heaving for breath like I had been a minute ago.
I’d worn a kilt. It was a first for me. I’d gotten the required harassment from my friends, men who weren’t afraid to find out if I was wearing anything under my kilt. I wasn’t, and now I was sweating so much, it was cascading down my inner thighs and soaking my damn socks. My balls were hanging so low I felt like I was waddling around with a cow bell down there. Thank god I’d brought a pair of jeans, too, because I wouldn’t be putting this kilt back on again during the trip.
Bridge, our lovable giant, wasn’t waiting for a resting place to start opening his pack and digging out the snacks. “Drink your water,” he said for the hundredth time, and then stared at each of us until we took the required drink. I wasn’t going to tell him that I was running out of water yet—I didn’t want to hear the lecture. Besides, it was possible he had some kind of water purification device in his pack that would save the day.
How the hell did Zalman still look fresh as a daisy after six hours of hiking? Seriously, he was polished and cool like a model pretending to love the outdoors for a photoshoot. His dark hair was perfect, his makeup hadn’t melted, and not a single sweat stain dared mar his take on hiking couture. He was giving me some stink-eye, though, since I’d planned this adventure.
Every year, the four of us took a vacation together. Only the four of us, no boyfriends—or the occasionalgirlfriend of Wally’s—were allowed to join us, and we did our best to unplug from our phones. That was harder for some than others, since Zalman was currently faking a smile while angling for just the right amount of sunlight for his selfie. Last year, we’d gone to Cancun. This year, we were in Upper Michigan.
The idea had been to go to one of the dark spots in the country that would let us see the Milky Way like we’d never seen it before. I’d seen photos and videos, of course, but I wanted to reallyseethe stars. I wanted to feel like a speck of dust in a vast cosmos. It was a bucket list item for me and, yes, I was dragging my boys with me. Today’s plan had been to hike around the Porcupine Mountains before tonight’s stargazing began. And we’d still do that…just a bit later than planned, maybe.
In looking at the sun getting lower in the sky, I saw a ring of big rocks with somewhat flat tops, purple and white wildflowers growing in between them. It absolutely looked manmade, which was a little odd up here, but I didn’t give it much thought since it was a place to sit that wouldn’t have me getting dirt on my bare ass. “Here we go,” I said and walked over.
“Huh,” Zalman said, “that looks suspiciously like a fairy ring.”
I chuckled. “I wish.”
Because who wouldn’t trade the struggles of reality for a sexy fae fantasy come to life?
The second I stepped into the ring, I slipped and fell backward, landing on my back with a holler. Startled and befuddled down to my bones, I lay there blinking for amoment because I couldn’t figure out what I was seeing above me.
I’d been in a forest of old growth pine trees, but now I was looking up at a white ceiling with fancy crown molding and a crystal chandelier. Everything up there looked like frost and snow and icicles. There was a chill in the air, and I could see my breath. I had my knees bent, feet planted on whatever flat surface I was lying on, and my balls weren’t hot anymore. In fact, they were thinking about retreating. Where the hell was I?
I heard a gasp, the scandalized kind, and sat up on my elbows. Turned out that I was on a table and flashing my junk at… Well, a dude made of ice and snow. He was slender and pretty, with pink lips and snow white skin that sparkled like he wore body glitter, and he had pointed ears. Pointed ears? On his head was a crystalline collection of thin icicles, snowflakes, and tiny clear baubles strung together by a spider web of silver threads. His mouth and blue eyes were wide open, and the latter kept flicking down to my?—
“Oh my god, I’m so sorry!” I sat up and smacked the kilt down between my legs to cover myself.
He blinked at me, his white eyelashes looking like snowflakes.
“What are you?” I asked. “Some kind of fairy? I’m not familiar with the fandom you might be part of, but that’s one hell of an amazing cosplay costume.” I reached for his icy hair only to have him flinch back and frown, and I realized that was so rude. “Sorry. You’re right—don’t touch.”
“What areyou?” he asked with a sneer as he slid offthe bench he’d been sitting on to stand beside me. “Ogre? A tuskless orc? Some kind of nearly hairless dwarf mutation?”
“Okay, there’s no need to get nasty.” I’d heard of those things and was pretty sure they weren’t nice creatures, but I didn’t deserve to be called names. “I didn’t mean to fall on your table and flash you and…”
I trailed off as I got off the table and looked around for real this time. He’d distracted me for a couple minutes there, but now I had to honestly admit that I was one hundred percent not in a forest in Michigan anymore. I was in a pale blue bedroom big enough to put my entire apartment inside it with a huge curtained four-poster bed, ornate furniture, and murals painted on the ceiling. It looked like the bed chamber of a prince. The table I stood beside was in the center of a banquette with a window looking out at?—
“Oh, fuck,” I whispered as I gazed out at a snow-covered hedge maze and gardens that stretched out to a field. Beyond that was a forest with a mountain range in the distance. “What the fuck?”
And now I realized, too, that Wally, Bridge, and Zalman weren’t here.
I rushed to the banquette and looked down out the window, desperate to see if they’d landed outside while I’d hit the table in here. But there was no one out there and not a single footprint in the snow.
Maybe I’d gotten my wish and left the real world behind. I’d lost my corporate communications job to some dumb AI just two weeks ago, so I had reasons for not wanting to deal with reality. But that had been whyI’d come on this trip. That it might’ve happened for real was absolutely insane.
Maybe I was lying in a circle of dirt surrounded by rocks, my head bashed on one of them, and hallucinating all of this. “This can’t be real,” I said breathlessly.
“I assure you,” he said as he crossed his arms, “this is the reality of three years under the curse that’s trapped us all here in my court and kept us locked in an eternal winter.”
