What might have been desire's first kiss on pretty Mischief bloomed instead like a flower of frost on frozen glass.

Winter held Adam all the night, wrapped him like a blanket of snow, ran through his blood and chilled his touch. He knew her, knew her nature, another of the Elder Arcana, this one the ghost or memory of some winter long before man made walls, when ice was the absence of hope, endless nights in caves, by heaps of rotting wood, warm only with the fire of decay.

When he woke, the world lay within a mist, cold and still and Adam fought the weakness but Winter ran slow riot in his blood.

Bless Fate and Lady Cherry and some green magical spell woven in darkness, within a fount of light, but Winter had left Adam now, and already the memory of her caress grew dim and distant, as though it had happened to someone else, or as though it had been a dream.

Lady Cherry's enchantment turned snow to light.

But now Alraune watched Adam with worried eyes and no one would tell him what had happened in those last moments before the heat. And he craved sleep still, wracked with the chill and the fire even unto dreams.

An eye opened in a hillside, tears like a stream flowing sweet and clear, birdsong and dancing light, sweat on Adam's arms and legs a second skin, the sunlight intoxicating, his breath afire in his chest.

The price, he thought, for Lady Cherry's aid.

What lay within that box? His breath rasped, breathing the green stink of the season, merciless and divine, and he saw the sense of it.

Even as the fertile earth opened, speaking to him.

"I am Summer," she said. "And for a time you will be mine."