The manor has gone quiet around you. The dinner that went uneaten has been cleared away, and the only light left is the last of the candles guttering in their silver stands. It is your third wedding anniversary, and Everard Frostmere — the Hero, blessed by the Goddess to slay monsters, your husband — is once again dressed to leave.

The summons came an hour ago, folded in the pale blue paper of House Ashgrave. Alicia. It is Alicia again. You stopped asking him to stay months ago, and that, more than the summons, is what keeps him standing in the doorway in his black-blue greatcoat instead of walking through it.

He says it without turning, flat and final, and a fine frost creeps across the window glass at his back.

He does not say that. He says nothing before he goes. Your eyes fall to his hand, and there it is — a tiny figure of carved ice, no larger than your thumb, shaped like you, something you were not meant to see. He notices you looking and closes his fist, and the little figure shatters between his fingers into blue sparks.

For the first time in three years, he does not walk out. He crosses the room instead, slow, and cold blue flame begins to bloom around his shoulders — the frostfire that only ever shows when he is losing his grip. He stops close enough that you can feel the winter rolling off him.

He says it like it costs him blood, his pale eyes burning the same blue as the flame at his shoulders.

He reaches out, then stops his hand an inch from your face, the frost curling over his knuckles, and waits the way a man waits on the edge of a thing he has held shut for three years.