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Queen Javethai’s eyes flashed dangerously, and she growled deep in her throat. The bear rumbled behind her, but as the guards had given him a little space, he did not strike out at anyone. He shifted uneasily.

“Three days, Your Majesty.” Gytha smiled as sweetly and innocently as she could. “Give me three days to convince him to choose me publicly. Doesn’t he have a human form? He should be in that form, so that he can speak clearly.”

The queen frowned at her and then looked out at the crowd. The murmuring and whispering of the ice goblins sounded like gravel grinding together, and Gytha felt the menace in it. The crowd was volatile, dangerous both to her and to the queen.

The bear appeared to have heard, or least to have understood, nothing of this, for he swung his head from side to side, growling, as if to defend himself from unseen attackers.

“Three nights,” the queen said at last. “For three nights, you may enter his bedchamber, and if he remembers you in the morning and asks for you, I will let him choose between us. If he cannot even remember you, then that is his choice, isn’t it?

” She smiled, and for a moment the illusion flickered again: berry red lips, ebony hair, and fiery eyes.

Gytha’s heart sank. The queen’s confidence, and the cruel light in her eyes, promised that this would not be as easy as it sounded.

Would the bear prince remember anything? It took courage indeed to resist such an enchanting woman, full of magic and beautiful beyond all others. But he knew her cruelty; he had seen this illusion of her before! Gytha held tightly to her fragile hope.

The queen cried to the crowd, “Hear this now! After three nights, we will have a wedding here, in this very court! Come and see the wedding of the queen!” Then she smiled down at Gytha again, and said more softly, “Foolish child.”

With a graceful motion, she dismissed the onlookers. She turned and barked an order at the guards, who poked and prodded the bear until he roared in frustration and bolted into the white castle.

Gytha cried out in frustration and tried to follow, but someone grabbed her arm.

She flinched away before realizing that it was Arenenak, with Dakjudr not far behind him.

She looked for Eshkeshken with wide eyes but did not see him among the many ice goblins.

Their faces blurred together, gray skin and gray hair indistinct among the silver-tinted shadows.

Someone leaned close to whisper in her ear, “Foolish human child.” She spun and could not identify who had said it; the crowd was still dense, though the goblins were dispersing among the many shadowed alleys and icy buildings.

“Follow me.” Dakjudr caught her eye and waited until Gytha nodded before she led her into one of the buildings. Arenenak followed them, and shortly afterward they were joined by Eshkeshken and the scarred young goblin, Wirkelshen.

The ice goblin prince leaned back against the wall of ice and said, “We must get Gytha to the bear prince’s quarters tonight.”

“Your Highness?” Another goblin joined them, and Gytha gathered that this was Iphreshken, another ally who had apparently not known until now that the goblin prince was alive.

From the quiet conversation and explanations, Gytha inferred that Eshkeshken had been missing for years, and most people thought the queen had murdered him.

She had murdered many others with lesser claims to the throne.

“I thought Javethai had had you murdered.”

“She would have if she had known who I was,” Eshkeshken said grimly. Gytha gathered that Eshkeshken had been in hiding and disguised for years.

After some discussion, it was determined that Eshkeshken and Dakjudr would rest in Arenenak’s quarters.

Gytha was a little startled by the prince’s lack of argument about resting; he was usually the first to get up after a rest when they had been trekking over the ice. But now he looked decidedly ill.

Wirkelshen and Iphreshken were to escort Gytha to the bear’s quarters and remain there to ensure that her efforts to convince the bear to marry her were not interrupted.

Arenenak pressed a packet into Gytha’s hands with a quick explanation before he turned his attention back to the prince.

After another moment of conversation, they set off in different directions.

When Eshkeshken turned to follow Arenenak, he stumbled and would have fallen but for Dakjudr’s grip on his arm. Gytha bit her lip and looked after him for a moment before starting after her guides.

For several minutes, as the two strange goblins led Gytha through shadowy hallways of ice and snow, she dared hope that everything would work out well.

Her face was frozen, her stomach had been empty for so long she had almost forgotten she was hungry, and she was lost beyond the north end of the world.

But how hard could it be to convince a man to marry her, a kind-hearted, well-intentioned girl, rather than to marry the evil ice goblin queen who had imprisoned and tormented him for centuries?

It was not a difficult decision.

It should not have been a difficult decision .

Yet even this simple choice required that the man be awake to make it.

When they found the right door, there were guards in front of it.

These halls were darker than the ones they had walked before meeting the queen, and Gytha could not see the faces of the guards clearly.

The guards did not protest Gytha’s entrance, but they did not allow Wirkelshen or Iphreshken in with her.

No matter; Alexander probably did not know or trust them anyway.

She stepped into the room alone.

The space was as dark as the underground palace, or prison, in which she had spent that strange year. No hint of light came through the walls nor any windows; perhaps it had no windows. There was no fireplace and no glowing embers from which to light a lamp.

She said softly, “Alexander?”

There was no answer.

“Alexander!” She raised her voice cautiously.

Still, only silence met her ears. The room was frigid.

Gytha fumbled in her pocket for the packet Arenenak had given her.

The thin sticks were made of stone, not wood, but the solidified droplets on the end would catch fire with friction much like matches would. The goblin had called them jafliggi .

Gytha felt around the room for some minutes before she found a low table with a lantern on it.

She tried to light the jafliggi with her gloves on, but could not keep a good enough grip to get the thing to light.

So she pulled off her gloves and lit the jafliggi quickly and carefully, feeling the cold numbing her fingers with every second that passed.

She tried to keep her fingers steady as she held the tiny flame to the lantern wick.

Fortunately the lamp was full of oil, and she turned it up as high as it would go before hurriedly pulling on her gloves .

The light made the situation all too clear. The room was windowless and nearly empty but for a pile of furs and blankets on the floor in one corner. Gytha carried the lamp closer and set it down on the floor.

“Alexander,” she said, her voice soft. “Can you wake up?”

There was no movement from the pile of blankets. Gytha found what she thought was his shoulder and patted him softly, and then more vigorously as he did not move.

She pulled back one layer of fur and blankets, and then more, until he lay with only a thin, bloodstained shirt and ragged trousers between his skin and the terrible cold. These were not the clothes she had made him of his bear’s fur.

Even now, at the cold air upon him, he did not wake. His face was turned upward, so that the scar down his nose was clearly visible, faded now with time and his overall pallor. His dark hair was long and messy.

“Alexander!” She shook his shoulder again with one gloved hand, and he gave no reaction at all.

He was not stiff enough to be dead, but otherwise there was very little sign of life. Gytha held up the lantern to see if his chest moved, and she sighed in relief when she saw that he did breathe after all, albeit far too slowly.

Perhaps he was too badly injured to wake.

Fear tugged at her, and she pulled up his shirt to examine his injuries.

There were more wounds than she had expected, and she winced in sympathy, feeling slightly queasy.

The worst one was low on his left side, deep and still bleeding sluggishly.

None of his wounds had been dressed or treated as far as she could tell.

He was frightfully thin, and something about this made him look younger and more fragile than he must truly be.

The voice she remembered, the bear’s voice, was deep and strong.

She took off her gloves again and put her palms on his cheeks, feeling the icy chill of his skin sink into her palms. She leaned close and said loudly, “Alexander! Wake up!”

His eyelids did not even flicker. If anything, she grew more frightened. This was no natural sleep, and he was not comfortably warm beneath his covers. If she left him with the blankets off, he would freeze solid and die without ever waking.

She pulled his shirt back down and patted his shoulder, as if she could somehow comfort him. He had offered her comfort when he could not talk, and she wished he could feel her compassion now, when he could not hear. But he slept through this too without even a shift in his breathing.

Gytha pulled the blanket up over his shoulders and adjusted another fur so that it covered most of his head, leaving him a hole through which he could breathe without suffocating. Not that he was breathing much. Then she sat back on her heels and studied what she could see of his face.

She shouted at him several more times, despite her growing conviction that his sleep was magically maintained, and he would not wake. “What shall I do for you, Alexander? How can I help you?”