The cabin feels too quiet, the way it always does after a long day. I flip on lights as I move through the rooms, trying to chase away the sense of being watched that followed me home from the forest road. It’s ridiculous. I live alone by choice, have for three years now, and I’ve never been the type to jump at shadows.
But I check the windows anyway, peering out into the darkness beyond the reach of the porch light. The snow continues to fall, thick and steady, and I can barely make out the tree line twentyyards from the house. Anything could be out there, hidden in the storm.
Anything.
I shake my head, disgusted with myself. “Get it together, Jessa Rowan.”
The routine helps. Hot shower to wash away the day’s accumulated scents of antiseptic and animal musk. Leftover chili reheated in the microwave because I’m too tired to cook. A glass of wine that actually doesn’t taste like it came from a box, because I splurged on a bottle from the local vineyard last weekend.
But even as I curl up on the couch with a blanket and try to lose myself in a mindless Netflix show, my thoughts keep drifting back to the road. To golden eyes and impossible antlers and the way my chest had tightened when our gazes met.
It had felt like recognition.
Which is insane, because I’ve seen nothing like that stag before. Hell, I’m not even sure I saw him tonight. Exhaustion can play tricks on the mind, and I’ve been running on empty for weeks. The rational explanation is that I nearly hit a normal reindeer—albeit a large one—and my tired brain filled in the supernatural details.
That’s what I tell myself as I finish my wine and head to bed, checking the locks on both doors because better safe than sorry. That’s what I repeat as I brush my teeth and change into flannel pajamas, trying to ignore the way my skin feels hypersensitive, as if something invisible is watching me through the walls.
But when I finally turn off the lights and slip between the sheets, the truth settles into my bones with the weight of certainty. I know what I saw. I know those eyes were real, that intelligence was real. And I know, with a bone-deep intuition that has nothing to do with logic and everything to do with the way my pulse quickened under that golden stare, that this is only the beginning.
The wind picks up outside, rattling the windows and sending snow against the glass in rhythmic whispers. I pull the blankets up to my chin and close my eyes, but sleep doesn’t come easily. Instead, I drift in that space between waking and dreaming, where the line between possible and impossible grows thin.
And in that space, I hear them—hoofbeats in the snow, moving in slow circles around my cabin. The sound is soft, muffled by the storm, but unmistakably there. I tell myself it’s just the wind, just my imagination running wild, but some primal part of me knows better.
Something is out there. Something that watched me drive home, that followed me through the forest, that waits now in the darkness beyond my windows.
Something with golden eyes and antlers that gleam like starlight.
I should be afraid. Any rational person would be terrified at the thought of being stalked by something that shouldn’t exist. But as I finally slip into sleep, the only emotion I can identify is anticipation.
Whatever he is, wherever he came from, I know he’ll be back.
And God help me, I want him to return.
CHAPTER 2
AELIN
The magic ripplesthrough the forest like a stone dropped in still water, and I feel it in my bones—a disturbance, a violation. Someone walks where they should not walk. Someone breathes air that is not theirs to breathe.
My antlers manifest in a rush of power that makes the ancient pines shiver, frost spreading from my feet in widening circles as I rise from my throne of carved ice and shadow. Three hundred years I have ruled these lands, three hundred years since the last human dared set foot in the sacred groves, and now…
Now one of them stumbles through my domain like a lost child, leaving footprints in snow that remembers every trespass.
The council chamber falls silent behind me, the indistinct murmur of advisors’ voices cutting off as they feel the shift in my power. I don’t need to look back to know they’re watching, calculating, waiting to see if their king will finally lose the iron control that has kept our people safe from the mortal world’s corruption.
“My lord?” Theron’s voice carries the careful neutrality of a courtier who has learned not to provoke me. “Shall we dispatch the guard?”
“No.” The word comes out rougher than I intend, edged with something that might be anticipation if I were fool enough to name the sensation. “This trespass is mine to address.”
I shift without conscious thought, letting the transformation ripple through muscle and bone until I stand four-legged and crowned with antlers that could impale a grown man. In this form, I am what I was born to be—not just a king, but a force of winter itself, ancient and terrible and utterly without mercy.
The forest welcomes me as I run, snow parting before my hooves like a curtain drawn aside. Every tree whispers its secrets—the rabbit that crouches in the hollow log, the owl that watches from her perch, the fox that scents the air and hunts elsewhere tonight. But beneath it all, threading through the familiar symphony of my domain, is something else.
Something that makes my blood sing in ways it has not sung for decades.
Human. Female. Young enough that her scent carries the sweetness of fertility, old enough that it’s tempered with the musk of a woman who knows her own mind. The trail leads deeper into the forest, toward the heart of my territory where the oldest magic sleeps beneath snow that has never melted.
Toward the Solstice Glade.
