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He was inches away. I could smell him, and this isn’t something I’m proud of: cold air after snowfall, and under it something dark and sweet, like wine left in a glass overnight. The scent went into my head and stayed , like it was applying for a permanent job.

“Respect yourself,” Maksim said quietly. “Stay away from me. Do you hear me?”

His accent was thicker up close. I realized this was the longest string of words he’d ever said to me. It was also the first time his voice had done anything other than sit flat and boring in the air. It wasn’t angry. If it had been angry, I would have known what to do.

It sounded almost like a warning.

It was a warning, but not one meant for me. It was a warning about him.

For one half-second his eyes dropped to my mouth, and I swear on everything that they dropped. Then they came back up, and he let me go all at once, as though I’d burned him. He took a step back, gathered his bag, and walked out. He didn’t run, he walked, precisely, as though every inch of the floor were a decision.

The door swung shut.

I stood there against the lockers, breathing like I’d just played a fourth period. My heart was going. My hands were shaking, a little, I noticed, and I stared at them like they belonged to somebody else.

What the hell was that?

Somebody had just held me against a wall like I was a kid, and my body’s response was not fury. I want to be clear. It wasn’t. It was something hot and bright and interested. Like a dog that had been let off a leash.

And I don’t do that. I’m the one who pins. I’m the one who gets the last word.

I started to laugh, quietly, because it was either that or something worse.

Okay, ice prince. Okay. So you want to play.

I dropped my bag on the bench and grinned at the door, at the empty air, at the whole ridiculous situation. I’d been bored for two years, because hockey was easy and girls were easy and money was easy. Everybody I met was easy to crack and easy to read and easy to make bleed, and I had been quietly dying of it.

I’d found something hard.

“Maksim!” I called down the hallway, loud enough to echo, in case he was still close enough to hear. “See you soon, ice prince!”

Silence, of course. But I could have sworn, way off down the corridor, I heard something that sounded like a low breath. A man exhaling slowly, through his teeth, like he was counting.

The rivalry round was best of five, so I had up to four more games with him. Four more weeks under one roof. I was going to make his life hell.

I was going to enjoy every second of it.

Everyone in Halden thought Maksim Volkov was some kind of god. He was already a legend in the Frost Cup, this quiet, deadly Russian who played the game with cold perfection. The papers loved him. The fans loved him. He had scored more goals than his own captain this season, and nobody even seemed mad about it. If I were his captain, I’d have quietly drugged him and dumped him in a lake, just to get my spotlight back.

Somebody had to remind him he was human.

I didn’t know yet that he wasn’t. I didn’t know anything.

I pulled off my jersey and turned to my locker, and that’s when I noticed the smell was still there. Snow, and old wine, and something under it that I couldn’t name. It was in the air. It was in my shirt.

I stood there breathing it in like an idiot until the janitor stuck his head in and asked if I was okay.

Chapter 2

MAKSIM

Honey Bread

In eleven hundred years I have been genuinely surprised perhaps six times, and four of those were wars.

The fifth was penicillin.

The sixth was a human in a blue Kings jersey who slammed me against a locker and smelled like honey bread.