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that seemed worse. She couldn’t really marry him. Years from now, she was supposed to marry some researcher, some scientist who loved the Arctic as much as she did. She sometimes daydreamed about starting her own research station, where she and her future husband would lead expeditions together. Or maybe she wouldn’t marry at all. Like Gram, she’d be an old lady with a dozen suitors. Regardless, she was not supposed to marry a talking bear.
     
    But it wasn’t a real wedding. It was only words. She didn’t have to mean them. She just had to say them, and she would accomplish what no one else—her father, her grandmother, no one—had been able to accomplish: She’d bring her mother back! “Do you . . .” She halted. “What’s your name?” She turned to look at him. His massive head was inches from her shoulder. Instinctively, she flinched. She couldn’t do this. He was . . . She didn’t know what he was: magic or monster, predator or rescuer.
     
    “You may call me Bear,” he said.
     
    “Bear,” she repeated. She was marrying a creature simply called Bear to save a woman she’d never known.
     
    That was the crux of it: a woman she had never known. Cassie had never known her mother. All she had to do was say a few words, and she could change that. Her mother would live again.
     
    Looking into his black eyes, she began. “Do you, Bear, swear by the sun and the moon . . .” After this was done, she would demand to go back. He didn’t want an unwilling wife. She knew Gram’s story.
    He’d said so himself to her mother, I would not have an unwilling wife. He wouldn’t refuse Cassie.
    She’d divorce him as quickly as she’d married him. “The sea and the sky . . .” She could divorce him, right? Her voice faltered. She felt a roaring in her ears.
     
    “The earth and the ice,” he prompted.
     
     
    “The earth and the ice,” Cassie said. It was almost done. What did it mean to marry the Polar Bear King? Her eyes flicked to the door—the crystal lattice shimmered like a thousand stars in a net—and then back to the bear.
     
    “To be my beloved husband from now until your soul leaves your body,” he encouraged her.
     
    “And you’ll bring back my mother?” she said.
     
    “Yes,” he said. “Our vows are void if I fail.”
     
    Cassie closed her eyes. She had to do it for her four-year-old self, who had believed with all her heart that her mommy was in a troll castle. “Fine. Let’s finish this. To be my beloved husband from now until your soul leaves your body?”
     
    “I do,” he said.
     
    She thought she heard a sound like a bell, but she didn’t hear it in her ears. She heard it inside, as if it were resonating in her rib cage. Her knees wobbled.
     
    “Do not be afraid,” he said softly. “As long as these walls are standing, nothing here will harm you.” Eyes closed, she tried to breathe. It felt as if there weren’t enough oxygen.
     
    “Come,” he said.
     
    Cassie opened her eyes to see the bear walking down the shimmering hallway. For a second, she didn’t move. She looked back over her shoulder at the outside world, and then she took a deep breath and followed the bear.
     
    The corridor widened into a golden and glowing banquet hall. The faceted walls glittered so brightly with candlelight from the chandeliers that Cassie saw sparkles when she blinked. Translucent, the cathedral ceiling glowed like stained glass. She looked around her in wonder. Carved birds and animals decorated the walls and ceilings. Buttresses arched over statues. A banquet table stretched the length of the hall with thronelike ice chairs on either end. It looked like . . . She tried to think of places to compare it to, and failed. It was as if every beautiful ray of light, every beautiful shape of ice that she had ever seen, were here all at once.
     
    “We have had a long journey,” the bear said, suddenly behind her. Startled, she spun to face him.
    “You must wish to