Woven by Gold

Returning to Castletree, Rosalina is shocked to see the castle and its grounds covered in a thick, unseasonable layer of ice. Dayton, back in his fae form, greets them on the bridge with a deep red gash across his skin and a slice along his right eye from his fight with Farron’s wolf. He assures Rosalina that Farron is physically unharmed and secured in a cell. Rosalina feels a magical spark and knows that Keldarion is aware of her return. Rosalina tells her father to stay with Lucas while she goes inside to confront her mate, Keldarion.

Flanked by Dayton and Ezryn in their wolf forms, Rosalina enters Castletree to find the entrance hall encased in ice and overgrown with thorns. At the top of the grand staircase, Keldarion appears as a giant white wolf, snarling that she should not have returned. Empowered by being back home, Rosalina feels no fear and steps forward. Overcome with a mix of love and anger, she throws her arms around his neck. Keldarion then transforms into his naked fae form and holds her tightly. Ezryn is stunned that Rosalina’s presence has caused Keldarion to take fae form at night. In that moment of connection, Rosalina announces to the others that Keldarion is her mate. Keldarion, however, immediately rejects the bond. He pushes her away, transforms back into a wolf, and declares that being mated to her is a crueler fate than any curse could ever be before storming away.

In Castletree’s healing chamber, Rosalina tends to the wounds on Dayton’s wolf form. Lucas remains unconscious but stable in a nearby bed. Dayton warns her to stay away from Farron’s wolf, as the beast is dangerously unpredictable. He also expresses fury over Keldarion’s rejection of the mate bond. The fae servants, Marigold and Astrid, arrive and joyfully reunite with Rosalina. They lead her to her old room, where they have brought her dinner. The servants tell her how miserable and withdrawn the princes were during her four-month absence, with Keldarion’s frost slowly creeping through the castle. After they leave, Rosalina feels a sense of unease about Farron’s suffering and resolves to go to him.

Hoping to soothe Farron’s beast, Rosalina goes to the dungeon with a book of Autumn Realm ballads he once recommended. She finds him in wolf form, thrashing against his chains. When she begins to read aloud, the beast becomes more frenzied and lunges at the cell bars, nearly breaking them. Rosalina screams, and Keldarion’s white wolf form appears instantly, using his ice magic to force the Autumn wolf to retreat into a corner. Without a word, Keldarion gently picks Rosalina up in his jaws, carries her back to her room, and leaves. The encounter solidifies Rosalina’s determination to save Farron from his curse.

In his ice-filled chambers before dawn, Keldarion reflects on having to protect Rosalina from Farron’s beast. Ezryn enters, also in wolf form, and angrily confronts him for hiding the fact that Rosalina is his mate. Ezryn, whose parents were mated, has a deep respect for the fated mate bond. Keldarion insists he acted for everyone’s good. Their argument escalates into a physical fight, during which Ezryn pins Keldarion and demands to know the truth about his bargain with Caspian, the prince of the Below—the fae underworld—whose briars are destroying Castletree and threatening the stability of the realms. He asks Keldarion how the bargain involves Rosalina. Keldarion refuses to answer, determined to bear the burden alone.

As dawn breaks and the curse lifts, Keldarion deliberately covers his eyes rather than look upon Ezryn’s uncovered face. As the High Prince of the Spring Realm, Ezryn’s culture dictates that his face is never seen by anyone but his eventual mate. Keldarion tells Ezryn he keeps a helmet in the wardrobe for him. Ezryn returns in his fae form with his face concealed and tells Keldarion he has a duty to his mate. Before leaving, Keldarion asks for forgiveness, but Ezryn refuses. Alone and feeling cold for the first time, Keldarion is ambushed by two figures who press a dagger to his throat.

The next morning in the healing chamber, Rosalina finds Ezryn cold and distant as he tends to the still-unconscious Lucas. She tries to talk to him, thanking him for rescuing her, but he ignores her and moves about the room with tense energy. Frustrated, she follows him into a small pantry and closes the door, asking if he is mad at her. In response, Ezryn smashes the lantern, plunging them into complete darkness. He removes his helmet and kisses her passionately. Rosalina kisses him back, running her hands through his hair and over his face, which the darkness prevents her from seeing. Just as abruptly, he pulls away, puts his helmet back on, and leaves the room without a word.

Farron sits outside the dungeon, overwhelmed with guilt for hurting Dayton and feeling his wolf’s influence growing stronger. Hearing Keldarion shouting his name from the entrance hall, he rushes down to find Keldarion naked, standing at the top of the grand staircase. Ezryn and Dayton converge from their wings, with Rosalina following behind Ezryn. Keldarion throws two young men down the stairs, whom Farron recognizes as his younger twin brothers, Dominic and Billagin. Keldarion announces that the brothers attempted to assassinate him in his chambers. The twins admit to the act, explaining they traveled through the dangerous Briar to reach Castletree on their mother’s orders. A mysterious frost is destroying the Autumn Realm, killing crops and people, and Farron’s mother, who is ruling Autumn in his place, believe Keldarion is responsible.

Keldarion chains Farron’s brothers, Dominic and Billagin, to the staircase. The twins explain that the frost has been spreading for two months and has frozen hundreds of people. Their mother did not inform Farron because she has lost faith in him, but she sent letters to the Winter Realm that went unanswered. Keldarion realizes his vizier, Perth Quellos, received those letters but failed to bring them to his attention. The twins deliver an ultimatum: Their mother is preparing the Autumn armies for a war against the Winter Realm unless the frost is stopped immediately. Overwhelmed, Farron rushes outside. Dayton unchains the boys and takes them to a room, while Ezryn tells Farron he must decide on a course of action as High Prince of Autumn.

Seeking solace, Rosalina goes to the library and finds a new librarian’s desk has been built for her by the princes. Farron appears, and they share a warm embrace. He shows her a book she had left for Keldarion, which contains a note from him with feedback on the story. As Rosalina reads the note, her anger at Keldarion causes a thorn to rise from the ground and spear it to the desk. Rosalina reflects on her ability to command the briars entwined with the castle in ways that none of the princes can. Dayton arrives and teases Farron, who looks down, ashamed of the scars he gave Dayton. To lift their spirits, Dayton suggests they all go to the hot springs.

Naked in the hot springs, Dayton watches Farron brood on the edge as Rosalina approaches in a sheer dress. When Rosalina joins them, she gives Farron her broken moonstone necklace to fix and tells them about Keldarion’s cruel rejection of their mate bond, which enrages Dayton. When she confesses that Ezryn kissed her, both Dayton and Farron are surprised but not jealous—they’re happy thinking of “that big metal lug finally getting some […] something has got to fill his dark soul with joy, right?” (121). Dayton declares that she may be with him, Farron, Ezryn, and even Keldarion, but if anyone else touches her, he will kill them. He then pulls her into the water for a fierce kiss.

Dayton pulls Rosalina into the hot springs, and they kiss passionately. Aroused, Farron watches them. Dayton uses his magic to reveal a beautiful underwater landscape at the bottom of the springs. He lays Rosalina on a rock and initiates a sexual encounter. He tries to convince Farron to join them, but Farron refuses, confessing he is afraid of losing them both to their fated mates someday. Dayton continues to pleasure Rosalina while Farron watches.

Rosalina, Dayton, and Farron head to a formal dinner to discuss the crisis in the Autumn Realm. Dayton advises Rosalina to be confident, reminding her that as Keldarion’s mate, she is his equal and that Kel will be able to smell Dayton’s scent on her. In the dining hall, Keldarion looks unwell and Ezryn is silent. Rosalina asserts herself by moving a chair to the head of the table next to Keldarion. During the tense discussion about Autumn’s attempted assassination of Keldarion, the servant Astrid announces an unexpected visitor: Caspian, the Prince of Thorns. Rosalina remembers with horror that she jokingly invited him to dinner at the winter solstice ball.

Rosalina and Keldarion go to the entrance hall, where they find a well-dressed Caspian. Realizing Caspian is too powerful to be forced out, they allow him to join them for dinner. At the table, Caspian charms everyone but Ezryn by reminiscing about a time when the five of them were friends. He compliments Rosalina, touching both her and Keldarion’s legs under the table. Furious, Rosalina shouts at him to get his hands off her mate, and the thorns in the room obey her command, throwing Caspian against a wall. 

Everyone is stunned by her newfound power, but Caspian smirks, “You couldn’t possibly think the mate of the High Prince of Winter was a mere human. She’s got power bubbling beneath the surface. All of you are too distracted to see it” (154). Rosalina successfully commands the thorns to retract from the window area, but the wall collapses as a result. Caspian restores them, then turns to Farron and offers him a bargain to control his beast.

Farron is wary but intrigued by Caspian’s offer. Keldarion attacks Caspian, forbidding him from making a deal with any of the other princes, but Farron insists on hearing the terms. Caspian offers a magical spell that will allow Farron to control his wolf form, preventing him from harming anyone. In exchange, he demands that all four princes and Rosalina attend his birthday party in the Below in two months. The princes suspect a trap, but Rosalina agrees to support Farron for his people’s sake, noting she suspects Caspian simply has no real friends. Dayton, Keldarion, and Ezryn reluctantly agree as well. Farron accepts the bargain, and Caspian seals it by placing a choker of thorns around both of their necks.

The bargain leaves Farron feeling dizzy and the other princes enraged. Keldarion orders Ezryn to escort Caspian out before his vizier, Perth Quellos, arrives. However, Caspian stalls by challenging Ezryn to a game of moonlight mastery, a board game from their shared past. Ezryn reluctantly agrees. As the intense game begins, Rosalina feels a pull from her mate bond and sensing Keldarion’s distress, goes to find him in the entrance hall, promising to return.

Rosalina finds Keldarion overwhelmed by the recent events. He tells her that her presence is agony because he can smell Dayton on her, admitting he felt each of her orgasms in the hot springs. However, he confesses that instead of jealousy, he ultimately felt content that she was satisfied. When Rosalina tests this by threatening to visit an orgy in the Summer Realm, Keldarion immediately becomes possessive, trapping her against a table. The moment becomes charged, and she begs him for a kiss. As he leans in, her dress rips on the thorns, exposing the scar on her wrist bearing Lucas’s name. Seeing it, Keldarion’s demeanor shifts from passion to pure rage.

Keldarion is furious upon seeing the scar. Rosalina fears he is ashamed of her, but he corrects her, “My anger arises because I was not there to protect you” (173). He threatens to kill Lucas, but just then, Perth Quellos, his vizier, arrives. At Rosalina’s urging, Keldarion agrees to meet with Perth. After they leave, Rosalina decides she must get Lucas out of Castletree before Keldarion finds him. She successfully carries a groggy Lucas to the mirror portal, but it fails to open for her. Just then, Keldarion and Perth descend the stairs. Before Rosalina can lie, Lucas declares that she is his fiancée, triggering an explosion of icy fury from Keldarion, who snarls, “Get your hands off my mate” (180).

Keldarion’s rage is absolute. Rosalina calls for help, and the other three princes rush in, forming a protective circle around her. She shows them the scar on her wrist, and their fury matches Keldarion’s. They all declare their support for him. Keldarion brutally attacks Lucas, breaking both his hands and encasing him in ice against a pillar, vowing to carve his own name into Lucas’s chest. He creates an ice knife and offers it to Rosalina, telling her that vengeance is hers.

 As she prepares to carve into Lucas, Caspian appears and stops her, urging her not to fall into darkness. He offers to take Lucas to the Below for a fate worse than death. However, Perth Quellos suggests an alternative: He will heal Lucas’s hands and send him away via an entrance to the human world in the Winter Realm. Rosalina agrees. As Lucas is led away, he whispers a gruesome threat and lunges at her with the ice knife, managing to cut her arm. The sight of her blood makes Keldarion lose control. He transforms into his white wolf, mauls Lucas to death, and throws the body through the portal into the Winter Realm, revealing the princes’ curse to his horrified vizier.

Keldarion cleans Lucas’s blood off himself in the hot springs. He worries whether Perth will remain loyal now that he knows about the curse. Afterward, he sees Rosalina laughing with the castle staff and feels comforted knowing she is safe and happy in her new home. Back in his chambers, he finds Caspian lounging on his bed. They exchange cryptic words about Rosalina and Keldarion’s long celibacy. Suddenly, Caspian suffers a violent convulsion, vomiting black sludge. Keldarion realizes that maintaining the thorns across Castletree and the Briar is severely weakening Caspian and draining his magic. He has an opportunity to kill his weakened enemy but cannot bring himself to do it. He tells Caspian to return to the Below. As Caspian vanishes, Keldarion reflects that while he told Rosalina he would let the world burn for her, he cannot admit that he started the fire for Caspian.