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she’d seen on Murrin’s face when she’d seen him staring toward the water.
    She asked, “But what if you could still have the sea? We could. . .date. You could still be who you are. I could still go to school and, umm, college.”
    “You’d be only mine? But I get to keep the sea?”
    She laughed at his suspicious tone. “You do know that the sea isn’t the same as being with another girl, right?”
    “Where’s the sacrifice?”
    “There isn’t one. There’s patience, trust, and not giving up who we are.” She leaned into his embrace, where she could find the same peace and pleasure the sea had always held for her.
    How could I have thought it was better to be apart?
    He smiled then. “We get each other. I get the sea, and you have to go to school? It sounds like I get everything, and you. . .”
    “I do, too. You and time to do the things I need to so I can have a career someday.”
    She had broken her Six-Week Rule, but having a relationship didn’t have to mean giving up on having a future. With Murrin, she could have both.
    He reached over and pulled the pearls out of her pocket. With a solemn look, he fastened them around her throat. “I love you.”
    She kissed him, just a quick touch of lips, and said it back. “I love you, too.”
    “No Other-Skin, no enchantments,” he reminded her.
    “Just us,” she said.
    And that was the best sort of magic.



Prologue
     
    The Summer King knelt before her. “Is this what you freely choose, to risk winter’s chill?”
    She watched him—the boy she’d fallen in love with these past weeks. She’d never dreamed he was something other than human, but now his skin glowed as if flames flickered just under the surface, so strange and beautiful she couldn’t look away. “It’s 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’ll warn her not to trust me?” He paused, glancing at her with pain in his eyes.
    She nodded.
    “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.” She smiled as reassuringly as she could, and then she walked over to the hawthorn bush. Theleaves brushed against her arms as she bent down and reached under it.
    Her finger wrapped around the Winter Queen’s staff. It was a plain thing, worn as if countless hands had clenched the wood. It was those hands, those other girls who’d stood where she now did, she didn’t want to think about.
    She stood, hopeful and afraid.
    Behind her, he moved closer. The rustling of trees grew almost deafening. The brightness from his skin, his hair, intensified. Her shadow fell on the ground in front of her.
    He whispered, “Please. Let her be the one….”
    She held the Winter Queen’s staff—and hoped. For a moment she even believed, but then ice pierced her, filled her like shards of glass in her veins.
    She screamed his name: “Keenan!”
    She stumbled toward him, but he walked away, no longer glowing, no longer looking at her.
    Then she was alone—with only a wolf for companionship—waiting to tell the next girl what a folly it was to love him, to trust him.

Chapter 1
     
    SEERS, or Men of the SECOND SIGHT,…have very terrifying Encounters with [the FAIRIES, they call Sleagh Maith , or the Good People].
     
    — The Secret Commonwealth by Robert Kirk and Andrew Lang (1893)
     
    “Four-ball, side pocket.” Aislinn pushed the cue forward with a short, quick thrust; the ball dropped into the pocket with a satisfying clack.
    Her playing partner, Denny, motioned toward a harder shot, a bank shot.
    She rolled her eyes. “What? You in a hurry?”
    He pointed with the cue.
    “Right.” Focus and control, that’s what it’s all about. She sank the two.
    He nodded once, as close as he got to praise.
    Aislinn circled the table, paused, and chalked the cue. Around her the cracks