He dropped to his knees . . . and was once more in front of another girl. He’d done this for centuries: asked the same words of girl after girl. He couldn’t stop, not until he found her. He saw her, though, and he knew that this girl was different.

“Is this what you freely choose, to risk winter’s chill?” he asked her.

She glared at him. “It’s not what I want.”

“You understand that if you are not the one, you’ll carry the Winter Queen’s chill until the next mortal risks this? And you agree to warn her not to trust me?” He held his breath for a moment, feeling the sunlight flare in his body.

“I don’t love you,” she said.

“If she refuses me, you will tell the next girl and the next”—he moved closer—“and not until one accepts, will you be free of the cold.”

“I do understand, but I don’t want to be with you for eternity. I don’t want to be your queen. I’ll never love you, Keenan. I love Seth.” She smiled at someone who stood in the shadows, and then she walked toward the hawthorn bush—and kept walking.

“No! Wait.” He reached down, and his fingers wrapped around the Winter Queen’s staff. The rustling of trees grew almost deafening as he ran after her.

Her shadow fell on the ground in front of her as he stood behind her. “Please, Aislinn. I know you’re the one. . . .”

He held out the Winter Queen’s staff—and hoped. For a moment he even believed, but when she turned and took it from his hands, the ice filled her. Her summer-blue eyes filled with frost, and it crawled over her body.

Aislinn screamed his name: “Keenan!”

She stumbled toward him, and he ran from her until he couldn’t breathe in the freezing air from her continuing screams.

He fell to his knees, surrounded by winter.

“Keenan?”