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I removed my cloak and shook it until it transformed into a tent again, then rummaged about in the folds, wondering if Wendell had thought to supply it with other camping essentials, and naturally I was not disappointed. I found several pegs for securing the structure to the ground in high winds, yet more pillows of different shapes and sizes (good grief), a small cookpot, and, at last, tucked into a fold I was certain I’d searched before, a piece of flint.

I gathered a few fallen branches and built a fire that I hoped was a respectful distance from the king’s tree. Shadow’s dinner was dried meat and melted snow, while for my own repast I toasted some of Poe’s bread over the flames, pairing it with the last apple I had brought with me from Lilja and Margret’s cottage. And then, the winter king showing no sign of materializing in my midst, I went to bed.

9th February—late

Well! Shadow and I have spent the day alone, and night closes in again. We will depart tomorrow morning, I think, for it seems unproductive to linger in this desolate wood any longer. Perhaps neither the king nor his servants visit the tree anymore, and it is some bogle or brownie who makes off with the villagers’ offerings.

I confess it is not only practical considerations that make me wish to depart. This is an unpleasant place to linger alone. The air has a heaviness that I have found, as the hours pass, increasingly easy to associate with malice. I am frequently reminded that the Hidden king was trapped here for centuries—has the tree somehow retained a memory of his fury and despair? More and more does its trunk seem to resemble a gaping maw frozen in an eternal scream.

Not only that, but I grow increasingly convinced that there are voices coming from the tree. I cannot make out what they are saying, for they speak in echoing whispers, as if their words have travelled a great distance, but I am certain that it is Faie. I have spoken to the tree—because why not speak to the thing; it is so uncanny—explaining that I am the snow king’s former fiancée (God) come to seek a favour. Naturally I have also given him many compliments, explaining that I would not have presumed to trespass upon his domain had I not been certain of his kindness and magnanimity. I am not at all convinced this will suffice to save me from meeting an unpleasant end. After all, the king was told I was dead, and few faerie lords respond well to being tricked.

Enough with these ruminations! I have done too much of that today, as well as fret about Wendell being upset with me, which is not a subject I recall devoting much attention to in the past. I have read his letters perhaps a dozen times—well, what else is there to do in this haunted place?

Perhaps I should scratch that out. He would never leave off teasing me.

I will attempt to sleep. I can only hope the bloody tree allows it—I hear it now, whispering inside its shadowy recess. God knows what it is saying.

11th February

The next morning I awoke to the certainty that something terrible had happened. It was an odd feeling, like waking from a nightmare, without the relief that consciousness ordinarily supplies. Shadow was sitting up, staring silently at the tent flap, his body one long line of tension.

I unbuttoned the flap—it took me several tries, for my hands were shaking. The Hidden king stood just outside.

He was as magnificent and terrible to behold as I remembered. His hair shone like dark jewels, his face all sharp lines, each at precisely the correct angle for beauty. He wore his white crown, shards of ice coated in frost, his necklaces were of jet and opal and sapphire, and over his black silk tunic and boots of pale reindeer leather he wore a fur cloak—Arctic fox, by the look of it. Held loosely in his hand was an enormous sword, unsheathed and glittering. There were pearls woven into his hair.

“Have you come to kill me?” I said. My voice was so hoarse I am surprised he heard; it seemed to have been carried off on the cloud of breath that rose before me.

He pursed his full lips, looking regretful. “Indeed, my dearest. I am sorry it has come to this.”

His voice was as lovely as I remembered, rich with an edge of roughness, like the scrape of ice crystals blown by the wind. He’d often seemed to me to have only the most tenuous of connections to the cares of the living, and to be at any moment on the precipice of lifting a hand and sweeping whole villages aside in an avalanche or drowning the country in a days-long blizzard, having no reason at all for doing so, as nature does not, only the purest form of caprice.

“Will you not at least tell me why?” I said.

He looked puzzled—or, rather, he arranged his features into an expression of puzzlement; rarely have I had the sense that he is truly touched by feeling, with the exception of the feral delight I witnessed when his traitorous queen was brought before him.

“I was told you had perished, beloved,” he said. “You should have perished when you fled my court—how could a mortal girl survive my winter, unless she was in league with the queen and my other enemies?” He examined me. “But first, I wish to know how you escaped, for I am very curious.”

I clenched the coin in my pocket—not to ward him off, I am not so foolish as that, but merely because the habit was steadying. “Perhaps I will not tell you,” I said.

He gave the faintest of shrugs. “You shall eventually.”

I forced myself not to flinch at that. I had never been comfortable in his presence—how could I be?—but I was even less so now, for I was not swathed in enchantment that wore away my fear and memories, as I had been in his court. He stared back at me, and in his eyes I saw only winter, its power and indifference.

Fortunately, my mind had not been idle during the long trek through the Irish countryside and up to the peak, nor during the hours I’d sat in that winter forest. I had surmised that he would think me a traitor and wish to kill me—though naturally I’d hoped to avoid such a circumstance.

I burst into tears.

Or, at least, I gave it my best effort. I made a great deal of noise, certainly, and I screwed my face up into what I hoped was a convincing expression, but I have never been much of a crier, and crying upon command is simply a lost cause, even with my life at risk. Fortunately, the cold made my nose run, so that part at least was authentic.

When I looked up, I was pleased to see him eyeing me with something closer to genuine puzzlement, his lip slightly curled—on account of the snot, most likely.

“Forgive me, Your Highness,” I bawled. “But I did not wish to leave you. He”—another snuffly inhalation before I burst out—“he forced me to marry him! He stole me away to his dreadful kingdom, which is so wet and dark, and smells of green, rotting things, nothing like the loveliness of your court. I have only now managed to escape, and you must help me get my revenge—you must! Please, I beg of you. I have—I have longed for you every day.”

Ordinarily, my acting skills are dreadful, but fortunately I was in such terror of him that simply dwelling upon my very real emotion sufficed to send me into convincing hysterics. And, as I have noted on numerous occasions, the courtly fae think so little of mortals that they are not difficult to lie to, particularly if one frames it as an appeal to their vanity.

“Who is this blackguard you speak of?” he said, almost gently.

“He was a prince when he came to your realm,” I said. “An exiled wanderer from the summerlands. Now he has slain his stepmother and taken her throne.”