Frost (frost and Nectar, #1)

The first book in the Frost and Nectar series is set in a world where the fae, a magical race with pointed ears and supernatural abilities, revealed themselves to humans roughly thirty years ago. Most fae live in Faerie, a separate realm accessible through magical portals, while some "common fae" live among humans.

Ava Jones is a twenty-six-year-old common fae who has lived her entire life in the human world after being abandoned as an infant. Raised by her adoptive mother, Chloe, who has since died, Ava works as a bartender and has built a life with her human boyfriend, Andrew. She pays his mortgage while he finishes business school, and he has promised to help finance her dream cocktail bar, named after Chloe. On her birthday, Ava comes home early to find Andrew in bed with Ashley, a woman he met on a couples' vacation to Costa Rica the previous winter. Andrew insists he and Ashley are soulmates. Ava hurls hot curry at them and flees with only a gym bag.

At the Golden Shamrock bar, Ava's best friend Shalini, a wealthy tech professional, consoles her. A news report announces that King Torin, the young ruler of the High Fae in Faerie, will hold an ancient tournament to select a queen. Torin's motorcade stops nearby and he enters the bar. His supernatural presence causes humans to kneel, but Ava, emboldened by alcohol, refuses to bow and drunkenly calls him a "pretty, rich douchebag." Torin dismisses her and leaves.

A chapter from Torin's perspective reveals his motivations. Faerie is dying: His mother, the last queen, died twenty-three years ago, and without a queen on the throne to replenish the kingdom's magic, an endless winter has caused famine and the return of dark creatures. Torin must marry, but he is cursed so that if he falls in love, his touch will freeze his beloved to death. He once loved a woman named Milisandia, and his curse froze her to death in the Temple of Ostara. The curse prevents both Torin and his sister Orla from speaking of it to anyone. He decides he needs a bride he could never love and thinks of the drunk fae from the bar.

The next morning, Ava discovers she has been fired because her rant went viral and Torin's fans threatened her boss. When reporters ambush her, Torin saves her by summoning ice from the road and uses glamour, a form of fae mind-suggestion magic, to compel the reporters to destroy their camera. He proposes a business arrangement: Ava will compete in the tournament, marry him for a few months, sit on the queen's throne to restore the kingdom's magic, and then divorce. Ava negotiates the payment to fifty million dollars, and they sign a binding fae contract. Shalini accompanies Ava as her advisor.

They cross into Faerie, a snowy medieval landscape, and arrive at Torin's castle, where Ava feels the castle itself rejects her. She meets Princess Moria of the Dearg Due, a blood-drinking fae clan, who treats her with contempt. At the opening banquet, Ava observes the six princess contestants from different clans, including the earnest Princess Alice of the Kelpie, a shapeshifting water fae clan. Torin announces the tournament: a race, social events, and a final fencing competition. Ava recalls her high school fencing training, the one properly fae skill she learned among humans.

Torin gives Ava three magical vials for the race: a blinding vapor, a fog screen, and an anti-pain potion. The race is brutal. The princesses string magical razor wire across the forest path, maiming several runners. Ava discovers the wire, warns the others, and breaks it. As she closes the gap, Moria and another princess attack her, breaking two ribs and puncturing a lung. Ava hurls the blinding vapor at the leaders, swallows the anti-pain potion, and drags herself across the finish line as the only common fae to advance.

Torin heals Ava with sensual, overwhelming magic and begins training her in sword fighting every night in a secluded cemetery, the burial ground of human children once stolen by fae who left changeling babies as replacements. He calls Ava "changeling." Their sparring grows increasingly charged with mutual attraction. During the televised dating portion, Torin endures filmed meals with each princess while his thoughts drift to Ava. When her turn comes, she mixes him a Manhattan cocktail and tells the story of Andrew's betrayal on camera. When Torin touches her wrist, his curse flares, leaving a frostbite mark. That night, an assassin with a black dagger enters their room; Ava scares the intruder off with her fog vial, and Torin wards their door with frost magic.

In the royal library, they learn a massacre occurred the same month Ava was found in the human world; Torin suspects her parents were victims. At a formal ball, Ava and Torin share an intensely sensual dance and later a passionate kiss in a dark hallway. Days later, Princess Alice is found murdered with a knife matching the assassin's. Shalini discovers a hidden passage in their room leading to a tower containing a diary by "M," who describes falling in love with Torin, his warnings to stay away, and her sister's prophecy that he would freeze her to death. Shalini also identifies the unnamed monsters from fae history as the Unseelie, ancient dark fae with horns, wings, and fur—the dark counterpart to Torin's Seelie fae.

Torin takes Ava to the Temple of Ostara for training and gives her a crystal that enhances speed but awakens dark, feral instincts. They share a desperate kiss before Torin pulls away and declares it is only lust. Ava realizes he brought her to the temple to remind himself of Milisandia. At the final dinner, Moria reveals that Andrew has sold nude photos of Ava to the tabloids.

The fencing tournament takes place before fifty thousand spectators. Moria defeats Princess Cleena of the Banshee clan; Princess Sydoc of the Redcap clan kills Princess Etain of the Leannán Sídhe; and Ava mercifully defeats Princess Eliza of the Selkie clan. After Moria beheads Sydoc, Ava faces her in the final. Orla warns Ava that Moria's sword is glamoured to appear three inches from its true position and offers a protective royal pendant, but the pendant burns Ava's hand. Moria's blade scores deep wounds and an elbow strike blinds Ava. Fighting by sound and smell, Ava hears a mysterious voice declare she was born to rule and drives her blade into Moria's chest.

Moria reveals afterward that Milisandia was her sister and the diary's author, confirming Torin froze Milisandia to death. She delivers a premonition that Ava will die the same way and tells Ava something "evil" is wrong with her. Ava confronts Torin; when he touches her arm, the curse erupts, spreading frost over her body and cracking his throne. He gasps for her to reach the queen's throne.

Ava stumbles onto the queen's throne, and vernal magic flows through her, thawing the frost. Whispering that she wants to go home, she is plunged through a portal into a warm, primordial forest. Her hair has turned blue-green, and golden horns grow from her head. The throne brought her not to Faerie's Seelie court but to the realm of the Unseelie. The pendant burned her because she is an enemy of the Seelie king. Ava is a changeling of Unseelie origin, alone in the monster realm.