Ice ruled the world. The pines wore white cloaks, snow stacked like quiet surf on their boughs. Anyone stepping into this cedar-snow would swear it was winter.

Since he broke free of the seal, Ouyang hadn’t felt a real winter. A year had drifted by like blown ash. The last winter he’d spent in a temporal maelstrom, torn like a leaf in a whirlpool. And before that, the memories felt far as stars behind frost.

“Ouyang?” Kanofia nudged his arm, a warm spark against cold bark. Her touch tugged him from the snow of thought.

Loyin saw his face go pale as moonlight. She looped both arms around his neck like a scarf and breathed in his ear, soft as falling flake. “Brother, did something bad come back?”

Bad? The word scraped like ice on glass.

A bitter smile tugged Ouyang’s mouth. He flicked Loyin’s smooth forehead, knuckle knocking like a pebble on ice.

“Loyin, hop down. How about a snowball fight?” In this city, even under a burning summer sun, there were pockets of deep winter, like lanterns under dark water.

“Snowball fight? Yes! I’ve never done one!” Joy flashed like sunlight on frost. Before he could set her down, she slipped free like a sparrow and landed light. Ouyang hadn’t even reacted when she scooped a fist of snow and hurled it at his face.

Splat…

He didn’t dodge. Maybe he chose not to. Snow burst cold against skin, and Loyin dashed away, laughter trailing like chimes.

Ouyang bent, fingers burrowing into powder like digging in rice. He packed and threw, aiming at Loyin.

Splat…

“Mr. Ouyang! How could you be so sly?” Kanofia bit her red lip like a berry, because his “aim” at distant Loyin had curved like a gull and hit the nearer target—her.

She snorted, a little flame in frost. She gathered her red hair back, fierce as a banner. One hand clutched her cloak, the other clawed a cold handful from the ground. “Mr. Ouyang, stand right there. Don’t you dare dodge!”

Don’t dodge? He wasn’t that foolish. He slipped aside, body cutting the air like a fish in a current. Kanofia’s snowball sailed past.

“Loyin, your brother’s being bullied. Aren’t you coming to help me?” Loyin had thrown at Ouyang moments ago, but when she saw Kanofia throwing at him, her face soured like winter plums. It was the look of a child whose toy got snatched.

She said nothing. Small hands rubbed and rolled, snow squeaking into a hefty ball. She hugged it like a round cat and crept toward Kanofia on quiet feet.

“Hey, stop hitting me. Loyin’s about to attack you…” Ouyang ducked Kanofia’s shots and offered a kind warning. But in Kanofia’s eyes, Ouyang’s credibility was frozen below zero.

“Mr. Ouyang, you think I’ll fall twice? You conned me out of money once. I remember. Not again!”

Right. A year and more had passed, yet her grudge clung like hoarfrost. “I’m serious. Stop throwing. Loyin’s coming with a big one.”

“I won’t believe you, Mr. Trickster!”

Her words barely left her lips before Loyin’s big snowball landed on her head. Snow poured down like a curtain, whispering over her hair and shoulders.

“Why is it, the one time I tell the truth, no one believes me?” Ouyang eased back a few steps, smile thin as a blade. He raised a thumb toward Loyin. She beamed at the praise, then snatched another handful and flung it at Kanofia, quick as a swallow.

Being singled out, Kanofia couldn’t hold back. She grabbed and threw back with a snap. “Loyin, sneaking up on people is wrong!”

“I’m not listening. You bullied my brother!”

She gave herself that perfect excuse. She skipped aside, light as a doe, dodging Kanofia’s snow again. Kanofia kept missing while Loyin retreated on nimble feet, so Kanofia chased without thinking, breath white as steam.

Loyin used her small frame like a wisp of wind. She circled a great snow cedar, feet pattering like drums. When Kanofia closed in, Loyin flashed a grin, kicked the trunk hard, then bolted. Kanofia lacked Loyin’s reflex and speed.

The cedar shuddered. A muffled sigh of snow let go. The poor girl vanished under a collapsing drift like a gull under a breaking wave.

The mound wriggled, then Kanofia’s head popped out, hair frosted, breath coming in big white clouds.

“Little Loyin, you’re so bad. Did you learn that from your brother?” Even buried and tricked, her smile bloomed like a winter camellia. No anger showed. For years, she’d hidden from crowds, afraid the Light Church would fix their eyes on her. Today’s snow-fight was the happiest play she’d known since birth.

Ouyang watched the two circle and pelt, their laughter weaving around the cedars like ribbons. A smile rose to his lips, unbidden as dawn. How long had it been since he’d felt this simple warmth?

Then the smile thinned, and bitterness seeped like meltwater.

Last time he’d played like this, he’d been with Lian… that girl of ice and snow.

He could feel her absence like a hollow under ice. The sky full of flakes tugged her image from him, the way moon pulls tide. His heart tangled. Words he hadn’t said counted themselves like beads. Thoughts he’d never confessed lay stacked like sealed letters.

Was that it… was everything simply over? Lian—once the White Queen, Bai—the one who brought him joy in winter’s heart. When he was happy, she stood beside him, sharing light like twin candles. When he was sad or lost, she never left, her comfort warm as tea.

Truth be told, the life before his sealing had been threaded through by Lian like silk through cloth. His world… had only her.

He knew, even then, that everything she did was for another Ouyang, for the Void Watcher. He hadn’t known that other self existed, only that her gifts were for someone else’s shadow. He still chose to play dumb, lying to himself the way one sips wine to numb the cold.

Call it a failed love. A love woven with lies, with self-deceit, with sweet poison.

That winter, in this same cedar grove, by a lake locked in glass, the ice-sprite in white gauze danced barefoot over the frozen skin. She asked, voice soft as falling snow, “Yang, how long will you love me?”

Ouyang smiled, breath fogging. “I don’t know. I don’t know how long I’ll live.”

Now it was all memory, like frost flowers on a window. Would there ever be another girl to ask him, How long will you love me?

Splat…

A snowball thumped his head and yanked him back to now.

“Brother, no slacking. Play with us!” At some point, Loyin and Kanofia had made a truce, two winter generals with powder in their hands. Ouyang looked at the big one and the small one, beauty in two scales, and he laughed. He didn’t even know why.

Some people, some moments, are carved into bone. The thought cut like a knife. Why had Lian been so good to him? Why leave a memory so deep, it never melts?

Splat…

Snow flew. Loyin didn’t know what weighed his chest, but she felt his gloom like a cold draft. So she fought with snow, trying to tug his mind away.

“You two… really think I’m that easy to bully?”

He’d taken hits from the two beauties long enough. He plunged both hands into a drift like a hawk into a cloud and scooped, then sent one white arc after another at their distant forms.

None of them used any power. Ouyang and Loyin were both careful, playing like ordinary people in a field of white. It was Loyin’s first snowball fight. It was Kanofia’s first too. For them, right now, nothing in life tasted sweeter.

They threw with abandon, and let their hidden weather burst. No teams held. See someone, throw at someone. Their laughter floated through the cedars like bells. It carried bitterness, remembrance, and the soft wish to forget.

In the inner domain of the Demon King’s city, a mirror-like pane floated before Dongze and Agas. It showed Ouyang and Loyin flinging snow like children. Xi lounged in a chair, right elbow on the table, palm cupping her fine face, eyes lazy as cats on sun-warmed stones.

“That idiot. Why keep thinking of that woman?” Her voice was a knife in velvet. “Is there no one else who loves you? Enough. When the one-year pact arrives, if you lose, I’ll fasten a dog collar on your neck and keep you on a leash in my hand.”

Hearing that dark sweetness, even Agas and Dongze felt gooseflesh prickle their arms, like cold needles.

Beside Xi stood a winged girl. She kept her eyes closed, white wings arched forward, as if to shelter Xi beneath a crescent of snow.

While Dongze and Agas shivered at Xi’s words, the angel opened her deep blue eyes. Her voice was airy, like wind through a bell. “Master, making Lord Ouyang lose… is easy. If these two cooperate, Lord Ouyang will surely lose.”

These two—of course she meant Dongze and Agas. It was a whisper to turn their coats.

Xi’s beautiful gaze slid to them, meaning clear as moonlight on steel. “What do you two think?”

Dongze chuckled, a dry twig snap. His face twisted, then steadied. “Your Grace, Aurora, I only take orders from His Majesty the Emperor. So…”

“So what?” Xi asked, each word laid like a card. Danger threaded her tone like a serpent. Behind her, the angel smiled and opened her wings. A few white feathers drifted down like quiet snow.

Dongze’s face shifted colors. Sweat beaded his brow like dew. He bowed to Xi. “Your Grace, Aurora, please allow me to discuss this with His Majesty…”

Xi nodded. Dongze let out a breath and fled like a man from a cold room.

That left Agas in the hall. “And you? Your decision, Agas Francis…”

Decision? Agas’s cheek twitched, as if a nerve had frozen. He was a small piece on a big board. Even Dongze, with a lord behind him… what choice did Agas have?

He was about to agree when Xi added, voice sweet as candied haw over a blade. “If you agree, when the Gate fully opens, I’ll bring Yimeng out. I’ll give you two a private world. How about it?”

How about it? What else could it be?

Agas almost dropped to his knees. For Yimeng, he had already sold his own student down the river.