Male scarred fae x female reader (Winter x Violet) (nsfw) (Patreon)

Gosh, Brenn the gnoll's story is one of my oldest ones, and finally we have a story for Winter and Violet! It's a whopping 9601 words long, but I hope you enjoy it!! We meet Oskar and Brenn again, as well as Florian, the centaur doctor. 

Violet is a named character, and apart from her dark hair (which I'd mentioned in the previous story), I leave the rest of her physical appearance pretty blank. 

No warnings other than that the contract that her mother formed with Winter in Brenn's story called for Winter to taste Violet's blood once a year, so there's a bit of that, but it's not graphic or gory. 

It'll  be up on Tumblr in a while, but I hope you folks enjoy it! Don't forget to let me know at the end if you did! 

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It was an almost impossible feeling to describe, growing up and knowing you belonged to one of the fae. 

Years before you had been born, your mother had made a pact with Winter, a fae who had been close friends with your father, and Winter had saved his life. To say that Brenn was your father was true in every sense except that of blood. Brenn was a gnoll, and had come into your life when you had been very small. Your earliest memories of him were of riding on his back on the sunny lawn at the back of Vineside, the former hunting lodge which your mother had inherited as her own after the death of your biological father. 

Your mother had always been open with you about the bargain she made, long before she had even met Tristan, your father, and you tried not to resent her for it. After all, the magic set the price, not the fae nor the human. Still, it was a little horrific, knowing that some fae was going to show up once you’d reached eighteen and drink your blood in payment for the mortal wound that had been healed. 

Yours was an unusual family unit, but you wouldn’t have swapped it for anything in all the world, not even when the ladies at court snickered behind their fans that your mother was an abomination who slept with a beast. While you enjoyed your time in the city, with the fine houses and summer parties, you enjoyed nothing so much as coming back to the lodge afterwards. 

The cool refreshing countryside swept away up the gentle rise towards the castle-like house, the river and lake away to the west and the woods behind, while rolling pastures and meadows surrounded it like a moat of blessed green. 

This time, as the carriage rattled and rumbled, you wished you’d insisted on riding. It was a hot, stuffy day in July, and the motion of the carriage had kindled a queasiness in your stomach that was hard to suppress. Focusing your attention on the still, golden grasses in the breathless meadow beyond, you thought about the upcoming celebrations for your birthday. 

You didn’t have long to let your mind wander, however, before a pair of very familiar gnollish laughs sounded in the distance and you leaned out of the window to see your half-brother, Oskar, and your father racing on all fours to greet the carriage. They snapped playfully at each other’s heels, one in the lead, then the other, and you called at the driver to stop, but before the horses had been drawn to a complete halt, you had flung yourself out of the door and were running along the road towards them. 

Oskar got there first, yipping and wiggling his butt, unable to speak behind the excited noises escaping him, but eventually he reined himself in and stood up on his hind legs and hugged you. At nearly fourteen, he was smaller than most gnolls, but he was half human, and although gnoll blood was the stronger in such a rare combination, he did have softer features than his father. His eyes were also a rare, icy blue. 

Not that being smaller than most gnolls stopped him from sweeping you up into a bone-crushing embrace that made your ribs creak. 

“Oski!” you grunted, smacking him on the shoulder. “Put me down!”

He gave your cheek a huge, wet lick and then he set you down. “Missed you,” he said. 

Chuckling, Brenn stepped forwards. He was panting hard after their run in the heat but he seemed only a little winded. “Welcome home, kiddo,” he grinned and you hugged him too. 

“Thanks, dad,” you murmured, feeling his coarse chest fur against your cheek. 

You’d always thought of him as your father, not remembering the human whom your mother had married while Brenn had been absent for all those years. Brenn didn’t talk much about his time as a gladiator in the fighting pit, but you knew it still haunted him. He never came to town, even though the laws had changed that said gnolls must be muzzled and leashed at all times. He had also taught both you and Oskar how to take care of yourselves, and mercifully you’d only needed it once in the city. You’d almost broken the bastard’s arm.  

“Come on,” Brenn said, “Will you walk the rest of the way with us?”

 You nodded. Your soft boots weren’t made for long distances, but they’d definitely manage the walk through the meadow up to the house. You turned to thank the driver and he knuckled his forehead at you and flicked his reins at the horses. 

“How’s everything been here since you last wrote to me then, Oski?” you asked, deliberately using the childish nickname he really hated now. Well, he pretended to hate, but you could see the fond light in his eyes when he heard it from you. 

He shrugged, swatting idly at a fly with his paw-like hand. “Lately it’s mostly been about preparing for your birthday party,” he said with a wide grin. 

“Dad…?” you turned to Brenn and raised an eyebrow at him. “Tell me you haven’t gone too overboard…”

His stumpy tail immediately tucked between his thighs and he let out an involuntary, nervous giggle. Gnolls would make terrible card players, you thought to yourself, not for the first time. 

Oskar barked a laugh and suddenly couldn’t contain himself any longer. Unable to stop laughing, your brother bent over almost double, unable to keep walking. 

“That is not reassuring in the least,” you muttered dryly. “Alright, what’s going on?”

Brenn shook his head. “Your mother is going to take you up to the cabin in the beech wood the day before your birthday while it’s all set up,” he said. “It’s going to be a surprise.”

“You know how I feel about surprises…” you growled. 

Your brother recovered himself and said, “I think you’ll like this one, sis. Honest. It’s gonna be amazing.”

You slid back into life in the country with no difficulty at all. Girls at court complained about the ennui of days spent with ‘nothing to do’ and no parties to attend, but honestly, you didn't have enough hours in the day. When you weren’t riding your favourite mare around the woods - sometimes alone and sometimes with Oskar bounding along beside you - you were reading in the rose garden or swimming in the stream-fed lake. Perhaps these weren’t typically ‘ladylike’ things to be doing, but there was no one here to criticise you, and anyway, you knew that as you got older, you would have more responsibilities. 

Your mother greeted you at the door with a hug and a much needed glass of iced lemon cordial which was gulped down in three seconds flat. After the initial hubbub of your arrival with bustling trunks and flurries of questions had abated, your mother took you by the hand and led you to one side. 

“Mother?” you asked with a little trepidation. “What’s going on?”

“I… I don’t want to dampen the spirit of your return, Violet, but… now that you are almost of age… do you remember what I told you about my contract with the fae?”

“Winter?” you asked and nodded. “He’ll come for me on my eighteenth birthday to claim the price for his magic.”

“And you know what that price was?”

“Blood calls to blood,” you quoted. Swallowing nervously, you asked, “He’s not going to kill me, is he?”

Your mother cupped your cheek with her cool hand and smiled. “Winter is a good soul. He will not hurt you. But please remember that he is fae, and to watch what you say around him. I don’t know when he will show up either. Part of the contract was that he and I could never see each other again.”

“But… You said he came here, to the estate…?” you asked. “That was years after you made the bargain…”

With a rueful smile your mother chuckled and crossed to the window. She didn’t usually wear the clothes of a lady, but a rather more practical outfit of loose trousers and a linen shirt. As a child, you’d thought she looked like a pirate from one of the stories Brenn used to read you. Now she just looked… ordinary in the best way possible. 

Glancing back at you, pushing her hair back over her shoulder, she sighed. “He came to protect me. There was some Unseelie creature sniffing around here, apparently, and he came to protect the boundaries. I never ‘saw’ him though, so we technically never broke the magic’s contract.”

Laughing you said, “If fae can bend the rules of their contracts, why not you, right?”

“I’m serious though, Violet,” she warned you. “This is nothing to be taken lightly. Winter is fair and honest, but the magic and laws by which he is bound are not always so. You promise me you’ll watch your words very carefully if he appears on your birthday?”

You nodded and promised. 

The day before the celebrations, your mother and you rode up through the estate to an old hunting cabin, so that you could remain out of the way while the party was set up. She made even this special, with a picnic of your favourite food, and the two of you stayed up late around the campfire, talking and laughing. 

One of the woodland cervitaurs stopped by, drawn by the light of your fire, and when he saw who was sitting there in the dark, lit only by the small, dancing flames, he bowed his antlered head and said in a very softly spoken baritone, “Happy birthday, Violet.” 

His coat was white as the moon, his skin equally colourless, and his eyes glimmered a dark, rich brown. His antlers were unusually pale as well, and the curly hair that tumbled around them like the froth of river rapids was pure white. You barely recognised him, but suddenly you leapt to your feet - startling him rather adorably - and flung yourself at your childhood friend. “Sæla!” 

His eyes crinkled and he laughed, bowing one knee to embrace you. Full-grown now, he was significantly taller than you. “I missed you, Violet,” he murmured. “It’s been too long since you rode through the woods on that rude little pony of yours.”

You hugged him and he smelled of moss and starlight. “I thought of you often,” you said. In truth it had been years since you’d seen him. The two of you had used to play in the glades of this part of the forest, but life had got in the way, and his kind tended to be more nomadic. “You look well,” you added. “And you’re every bit as beautiful now that you’re grown up as I knew you would be!”

A flush gilded his cheeks as he drew back and he looked you up and down. “You too,” he grinned. 

A twig cracked in the forest behind him and he jumped, tensing, and when Oskar nosed his way out of the thicket, Sæla skittered sideways like a spooked horse, chest heaving. 

Oskar’s unusual grey-blue eyes blinked and he stood up, hand on his chest. “Sorry,” he said. “Didn’t mean to scare you. Hey mum,” he added when she fixed him with a stern look. “I know you said not to come up,” he said in a rush, “But I just wanted to say that everything is all ready now and that dad is going nuts down there without you. He’s had three major panics over nothing already…”

“Oh for heaven’s sake,” your mother sighed, standing up and brushing her loose trousers down and crossing the little clearing over to her half-gnoll son. Because he was so much smaller than most gnolls his age would have been, she was able to reach up and take his face gently in her hands. He went very still, ears swivelling back nervously, tail wagging. 

You shot Sæla a look and he winked at you. 

“Now, my darling, you tell your father that he is a grown gnoll, and that I believe in him. He’s not a little cub, and everything will be perfect. Can you do that for me?”

“Yes mama,” he grinned and shot forward to lick her nose before darting away into the undergrowth on all fours like a coursing hound. A second later he was back, burrs in his fur, and he said, “I forgot to collect the horses.” He shot you a look and said, “You won’t need them tomorrow.” 

“Oh?”

He grinned and tapped his muzzle conspiratorially, and then went over to where the horses were picketed and dozing quietly. They were used to him, and followed him without question. 

“Crazy cub,” your mother muttered, shaking her head and wiping her still-damp face on her shirt. 

A moment later she caught you stifling a yawn, and shooed you towards the log hunting cabin, but not before you had said goodbye to Sæla and promised to come and visit his forest more often. “You know,” you added, “You’re welcome to come to the party tomorrow if you’d like?” you added. 

He was naturally an anxious soul, and he shook his head. Being an exceptionally rare, milk-white stag also didn’t help, since many people still thought his hide and antlers would make a nice trophy, though he was safe enough on your mother’s lands. “Thank you, but I’d rather not if it’s all the same to you.”

“Of course,” you smiled. “I understand. I’ll see you around though.”

He bowed his antlered head and stalked off silently into the forest. 

Your mother watched you as you stared after him in awe and smiled softly. 

“What?” you asked when you turned back to go inside and found her looking at you. 

With an affectionate smile, she tucked a strand of your long, wavy hair behind your ear. “You may have some of your father’s looks, Violet, but you’re more like me than you realise.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

She didn’t elaborate, and guided you towards the door of the cabin. 

People from all walks of life had been invited to the celebration, from those who worked on and ran the estate, to nobility from the city. Humans and non-humans alike began to arrive around midday, and you and your mother got ready at the hunting cabin. She’d told you that a carriage would collect you, though quite how something as big as the carriage you were used to was going to get all the way up the rutted little track through the woods, you couldn’t fathom. 

In fact, it wasn’t one you recognised at all, and when you heard the sound of hooves outside, you opened the door to find one of your mother’s best friends, Florian, standing outside. The large, blond centaur had a very small, light, two-wheeled chaise harnessed to him, and you gaped at the sight. For a centaur to allow someone to tack them up like a common horse was an immense honour, and as you simply stood there, mouth open on the stairs of the cabin, your mother’s soft laughter echoed behind you. 

“Uncle Florian, you… you didn’t… you didn’t have to do that for me…” you whispered as you walked over the smooth, leaf-strewn ground of the little forest clearing towards him. 

“My darling,” the centaur laughed, spreading his arms wide. “It’s your eighteenth birthday! It is my absolute honour to convey you down to your party!” 

Tears sparkled in your eyes as you hugged him, and your mother scolded him fondly for messing up your hair. In truth, it was merely half tied back off your face and secured with a few pins decorated with flowers, and your dress, though long, was simple and elegant, with clean lines, and a colour that complemented your skin tone perfectly. 

“You look glorious,” Florian laughed. “Come on, girls, climb on and let’s go!” He danced his hooves impatiently, and the two of you giggled. He had a pale bow in his golden blond tail and his long blond hair was tied back in a plait that hung to his withers and was decorated with white ribbons and little white flowers. 

“Gods,” you snorted darkly to your mother when you saw them, “I feel like I’m going to a wedding, not a birthday party!”

She smiled and said, more loudly for Florian’s benefit, “Oh trust me, darling, if you do get married, he’ll be even more over the top. I can promise you that. This was his idea, you know?”

“Somehow I’m not surprised,” you muttered and Florian whinnied a loud laugh. 

He glanced back at you. “All set, my beauties?”

“Yes, thank you,” your mother chuckled. “Let’s arrive in one piece though, eh Florian? Not too quick…”

The centaur feigned outrage and hurt, bringing his hands to his heart and staggering slightly, making the tiny chaise rock. “You wound me, my lady!” 

“Get on with it,” she growled, but her words had no bite, and the three of you left the hunting cabin behind and made your way down towards the house again. 

Your hand flew to your mouth as you gasped when you saw the way that the formal gardens had all been decorated, with archways of roses and fluttering ribbons, cascades of white wisteria, and glowing fairy lights - which you knew were in fact the little torch bugs that woodland fairies and sprites used more as transport animals than lighting solutions. In fact, what you had taken as a large cloud of butterflies gathered above the entrance way to the walled rose garden turned out to be a group of woodland sprites, their shimmering glass-like wings catching the midday sun, flashing and glittering in a myriad colours. 

Beings of all kinds were gathering below, some already dancing, but most chatting and sharing drinks and conversation. Fauns and cervitaurs had decorated their antlers with ribbons and flowers, centaurs their tails with garlands of flowers, and everyone looked festive and beautiful. It was totally over the top, and you knew you’d have to make your father pay for that later, but as you drew nearer in the little delicate carriage, you simply sat there and stared. 

“Oh my gods,” you breathed as Florian brought you down the hill and out onto the sloping hill above the formal gardens. 

“Happy birthday,” your mother whispered, kissing your cheek. 

Still feeling more than a little overwhelmed by the efforts your family had gone to in order to make today’s celebrations so special, you smoothed out the creases in the front of your dress, feeling no more an adult than you had the day before. 

As Florian drew to a halt, Brenn stepped out from the yew hedge which bordered the formal gardens where the main celebrations were just beginning, and at his side was Oskar. “My two beautiful ladies,” he smiled, his short, stump of a tail wagging. He laughed gnollishly, lips peeling back to reveal his teeth a little as you stood and he padded quietly over to help you down. 

You hugged him, plonked a big kiss on his dark, velvety muzzle, and then pulled back and went over to Florian. “Thank you. It meant a lot that you would honour me like that, Florian,” you said. “Would you like me to help untack you?”

The large centaur chuckled and said, “No, lass, you go and enjoy your party. I’m sure your parents will lend me a hand. Your dad’s the one who got me into all this in the first place”

“Of course we’ll help you, Florian,” your mother laughed, and Oskar bounded forwards and hugged you, earning him a warning from your mother not to crumple your dress or ruin your hair. 

The party itself was incredible. Friends from the city were there, as well as friends from the estate, and you spent so long talking with all of them, and dancing and laughing as the afternoon wore on, that it was sunset almost before you realised it. 

As the fireworks went up, you stared at the night sky and sighed happily. Everyone seemed to be having such a wonderful time, and so much effort had been gone to on your behalf, but there was something strange about the atmosphere now. It reminded you of the last few breaths before a thunderstorm, or the calm before a thundering breaker crashed onto the shore. Something was coming. 

You glanced about you as the goblin-made fireworks continued to rocket into the sky, green and blue, purple and gold, and your heart beat suddenly cold at the sight of a figure standing in the stone archway to the rose garden. He had flowing white hair down to his waist, cascading down over the dark jerkin he wore, and his skin was pale as milk. You licked your lips and squinted nervously trying to get a better look at him. 

He was leaning against the brickwork, arms folded across his slim chest, and his intensely pale blue eyes were fixed on you. As you continued to stare, he bowed his head once and walked away. As he’d lowered his face, you thought you’d glimpsed extensive scarring that ran from left to right across his entire face. 

Intrigued, you slipped silently away from the group of friends on the shores of the lake, leaving them with entranced eyes fixed upwards into the sky, and as the reflections of the fireworks glimmered on the lake’s surface, you wove through the guests almost unnoticed. 

The rose garden was still and empty when you entered, but the fragrance of summer blossoms was almost overpowering at this time of night. You inhaled deeply, reflexively, enjoying the heady rush, and then remembered why you were here. 

“Hello?” you asked quietly, searching around. 

You trod carefully along the stone path in your soft slippers, glancing left and right, seeing nothing but shifting shadows and the brief blushes of colour from the display in the sky. 

Then, right at the end of the garden, where a wrought iron gate stood open and led out into the parkland beyond, you saw him again. One pale hand rested lightly against the masonry of the arched gateway, and he had his back to you, the shimmering waterfall of his loose, white-blond hair looking more like tangible starlight than anything real… You knew what he was. 

He was fae. 

Not only that, he was your fae; you were certain of it.

“Winter?” you murmured as you came to a halt at a crossing of two paths in the formal rose garden. 

The cacophony of the fireworks ended in a deafening thunderclap, leaving nothing but silence in its wake and the hint of smoke on the moonlit air. 

“She told you of me then,” he said without turning around. His voice was a gentle baritone, slightly husky as though from long disuse. 

You cleared your throat and stepped a little closer. “Yes,” you said carefully. “At least, she told me the terms of the contract…”

At that, he huffed a harsh laugh. He still hadn’t turned around. “Do you fear me, human? Resent me?”

“You saved my father’s - Brenn’s - life. I could never resent you for that. Just tell me something… Exactly how much blood do you need?”

“Just a taste, once a year,” he said. “I will not trouble you other than that.”

“Right.”

After another pause, during which time he had remained perfectly still with his back to you, he said, “Did she warn you of… of what I look like?”

Your brows twitched into a frown, heartbeat thudding faster now. “Warn me? No… She only told me that you’re fae - Unseelie if I remember rightly - and that you were my father’s friend for a long time.”

“You keep referring to him as your father. Do you really regard Brenn as such?”

You shrugged and turned away slightly to pluck absently at the petals of a fading rose. They all fell suddenly from the stem and lay at your feet like wedding confetti. The thought almost made you laugh. “I do. I never got to know the man my mother married first, my ‘real’ father you might say, but Brenn raised me as if I were his own.” You waited a second or two and then added, “Why would I need warning?”

Slowly, tentatively almost, Winter turned around. Your first impressions of him from a distance had been correct. He was breathtakingly beautiful, with incredible bone structure and piercing blue eyes the colour of ice in the depths of the coldest months, but his face was also bisected again and again by deep gullies and trenches of scar tissue. He’d been lucky not to lose his eyes. 

A smile crept across your face as he stood there staring at you. “I don’t think that needs a warning,” you said gently, moving a little closer to him. “I think she gave me warning enough about you when she said to watch my words around a fae…”

His puckered, scarred face twisted into a wry smile and he snorted a laugh out through his nose, bowing his head again so that his long, silky white hair slid forwards over his shoulder like a veil. “Ah, your mother is a gentle soul,” was all he offered. Then he straightened up and walked towards you. “Shall we get this over with so that you can return to your party and enjoy the rest of your evening?”

“Here?” you asked. 

“It won’t take long,” he muttered, and he jutted his chin out at a nearby wooden bench. “Sit.”

You crossed to it and sat obediently, heart still racing. “So… I mean… how is this going to work?” you asked, wide eyed. 

He held out his hand, and you saw that it too was flecked with scars, most of them bite marks of some kind on the backs of his hands, and his fingers twitched when your eyes took in the marks. You raised your hand uncertainly, and Winter nodded. 

You couldn’t have described in any detail the sensation that shot through your whole body when your fingertips touched his palm, but both of you jolted slightly. Even the fae’s icy facade flickered momentarily, though he hid whatever emotions lay behind those inhuman eyes immediately. His skin was cool, his palms callused like a soldier’s as if from years of weapons training, but the sensation had been about more than a difference in temperature. There was a connection that ran deeper than the physical. Perhaps it was simply the fulfilling of the contract made so many years before that you felt, but something in the back of your mind made you doubt it. 

He raised your wrist to his lips and you gasped as you glimpsed two pairs of sharp, upper canines, one pair in the place of his smaller incisors. 

“Will it hurt?” you whispered. 

Winter shook his head. “I will make it painless; perhaps it will even be pleasurable for you. I will certainly try…”

“Thank you.”

His smile was soft as gentle spring rain, and you warmed even more to this strange creature. 

His lips brushed against your skin, tentative as autumn gossamer, and then his sharp teeth scratched you slightly. A flood of euphoria swept through you as he sank his strange, double canines deep into your skin, and you tipped your head back, spine arching, heat flushing between your legs. A decadent, luxuriant groan left your throat as he began to drink, just enough to taste you and fulfil the contract that the magic of his kind had set, and then he was withdrawing, leaving a kiss on your throbbing wrist. 

He licked his pale, scarred lips and as you opened your eyes, breathing hard, you caught the faintest blush in his cheeks. 

“Done,” he murmured as he ran his thumb once over the place where he’d bitten you. There wasn’t even the faintest trace of a puncture wound in your skin. “Are you alright?”

You bit your lower lip and stared up at him. “You’re beautiful,” you blurted breathlessly, instantly regretting it. You sounded like a teenager drunk on their first taste of wine. “I mean…” you cleared your throat and looked away. “Yes. I’m fine. Thank you.”

The odd set of his lips, a slight twisting smile to them, reassured you when you next looked up at him. 

“Well, Miss Violet,” he said, standing and giving you a curt bow from the waist. His long, silken hair slipped forwards again, and you barely resisted the urge to reach up and run it through your fingers. “I shall leave you to enjoy the rest of your celebrations. Please, do not discuss what happened with anyone, except perhaps your mother. You must not tell your father, Brenn…”

“I know,” you managed to mumble. Your heart was racing as though you’d galloped the length of the summer pasture bareback on your mare, and you could still feel every place his skin had touched yours with incredible clarity. The ghost of his touch pressed into your skin and you half expected to see silvery marks where his fingers and lips had been. 

“Until next year,” he said, nodding and striding down the rough, brick path towards the wrought iron gate at the far end of the garden. It was open, and he was very careful not to touch it as he stepped out into the meadow beyond. He turned out of sight, and at that moment something seemed to snap in the air like a pricked bubble.

Leaping to your feet, you flew down the path after him, but when you reached the archway, the autumn grasses and the silent oaks in the parkland beyond were all that moved there. 

“Until next year,” you whispered, and an answering breeze swept across the meadow like a sigh, swirling once around you, whipping your hair across your face, and then dying away to nothing. 

For the next two birthdays, Winter would appear just before midnight, lead you away, and enact your strange ritual. He hardly spoke to you, refused to answer many of your questions, kept his distance as much as possible, and left as soon as it was over. Neither subsequent birthday celebration had been as decadent as your eighteenth, spent with just your parents and brother at the family home which, if you were honest, you greatly preferred. With each successive year that passed, that moment when your skin touched his became ever more intense, to the point that when you turned twenty, you gasped, squeezing your legs together as the rush hit you. It was remarkably like a rush of a different kind, not that you were any particular expert in matters of sex.

The year you turned twenty one, you and your friends celebrated with a masquerade ball in the city. Brenn remained at Vineside with your mother, but Oskar came and spent most of the evening dancing with Jasper, his childhood best friend. Your dress was fantastic, made by the very best drider tailor in the city, to look like hoarfrost on lichen and bracken; it was all ‘Jack Frost’ twirls wrought in silver-satin, with pearls and elegant lines, and a silvery mask to match. Your dark hair was studded with a net of diamonds and pearls, and you felt, in a word, spectacular. 

You’d been asked to dance any number of times, and you firmly agreed to only one dance with each. Your favourite partner though was one of your best friends from university, a faun by the name of Aloysia. You managed more than a few dances with her. Her head of curly white-gold hair spilled around her small horns which had been decorated with vibrant orange calendula flowers, and her dark eyes glittered as she spun you round the hall. 

It was as you and she spiralled wildly past the group of satyrs and fauns who had provided the music for the evening, that you glimpsed a familiar white-haired figure in the doorway and your heart stopped. It was him. He bore no mask and wore no fancy clothes; he was clad in his usual dark, close-fitting tunic, leggings which hugged his slender legs, and knee-high buckskin boots. His hair was loose as always, and he watched you with the intensity of an arctic-white gyrfalcon. 

Aloysia kissed you squarely on the cheek and thanked you for the dancing before you’d even realised that the music had stopped and the dance had come to an end. In the heartbeats it had taken her to reach up and kiss you, Winter had vanished to leave an empty doorway full of shadows. 

“Thank you,” you said, breathless from the exertion of the dancing. “Excuse me…” and you slipped from the ballroom as the musicians prepared for another dance and the guests found new partners. 

Outside in the hallway, the sounds of the party were muted, but you quickly realised you were still alone. “Winter?” 

Nothing. 

Searching a little through the city ballroom, you discovered him standing on a balcony gazing out at the rooftops beyond. 

“There you are,” you smiled, your slippered feet hardly making any sound as you stepped out to join him. “You’re a tricky fae to find…”

Winter glanced back over his shoulder at you with a playful half-smile on his scarred face. “I like it that way.”

“That makes one of us,” you muttered. “I suppose you’ll want to get it over with as quickly as possible, as usual.”

His white brows drew together in a scowl and he turned to face you. “What makes you say that?”

You snorted. “You can’t wait to leave normally.”

“I… That’s… That’s not true,” he said, his smooth speech faltering for the first time since you’d known him. “That’s not true,” he repeated softly, turning back to stare out at the night. 

Taking a chance, you stepped close to him and laid your hand on the small of his back. Tension ratcheted up his spine and he inhaled sharply, but he let your palm remain pressed to the back of his jerkin. The tips of his long hair brushed against your knuckles, lifting occasionally with a passing breath of air. “If it’s not true, then why do you always leave so quickly.”

“Because what I do to you is disgusting,” he said through gritted teeth. “Surely you see that?”

“I told you the very first time that I don’t resent it. Not one bit. I’ve lost more blood play fighting with Oskar than you take to fulfil the contract, Winter. You treat me with respect, and… I’ve come to look forward to our meetings.”

He fixed you with an icy stare. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

“It’s the truth. Can’t you tell?” you asked archly, knowing full well that a fae could taste a lie on the air like stale beer on the breath of a drunk. 

“Aren’t you afraid of me?” he hissed. 

With a shake of your head you took his hands in yours. They were as cold as his namesake, his fingers stiff and tense as though ready to yank them back from your touch. “Winter,” you laughed softly. “How could I be afraid of you? After all you’ve done for our family? After the way you treat me?” You bowed your head slightly without breaking eye contact with him and added, “After the way you look at me?”

To your immense surprise, his glacially pale cheeks warmed behind the aggressive scars that cut horizontally across his face. Not for the first time you wondered how he had come by them, and as if he had read the question on your face he let go of your left hand and gestured at them. “What about these? Don’t these scare you?”

You shook your head firmly. 

Taking a deep breath, his expression softened and he said, “You are a remarkable woman. You carry a lot of your mother in your soul. You know… I admired her the moment I met her. Did she tell you the circumstances?”

“Dad got himself bitten by some half-rabid gnoll and it was going nasty because he’s an idiot and probably tried to lick it better…” you grinned. 

Winter echoed the gesture, features twisting slightly and he nodded. “She knew what I was and was wary, but she was willing to risk dealing with a fae to heal a stranger - and a gnoll at that. She was hardly any older than you were the first time I met you.”

“You must think me little more than a child,” you muttered, letting go of his hand and resting your palms on the cool stone of the balcony balustrade. 

“Relative to my own age, you are young, but you are no child,” he said. He wasn’t looking at you, but you knew he’d been paying attention. 

“Where do you go when you’re not fulfilling this contract?” you asked suddenly. “What do you do?”

“Here and there,” he murmured. “This and that.”

“Mysterious fae business?” you poked, and he chuckled, taken by surprise. 

He shot a look askance and said with a lopsided smile, “I live a very quiet and private life in the woods. Many would think it boring. I tend to the forest, heal those who need it - by conventional means, mind you  - and protect those whom I can.”

“Why ‘conventional means’?”

“Your mother left that part out, did she? Odd.”

“Left what out?” you asked, half turning to face him. 

“I have very little innate magic of my own. I may access the collective magic of the Fae by means of a bargain or a contract, as all those born in the Fae Realm can, but I can make little or no magic of my own. A bargain must usually be struck.”

“Oh.”

A silence stretched between you and he sighed just as the moon sailed out from behind a bank of cloud. “Come on, let’s get this over with.”

“You always say that,” you grumbled, even as you undid the cuff of your lace glove. 

His eyes were transfixed by the sight of your bared wrist and he took your hand so gently in his fingers that you might have thought he were handling a spun sugar rose. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. 

“You always say that too,” you smiled, even as he bit deep. The rush followed the same as ever, though this time it was so intense your knees buckled and he caught you easily with his spare hand, bearing you up under your arms as he healed you with a kiss as always. 

“Steady,” he said gruffly. 

“I don’t think I can bear it next year…” you slurred dazedly. 

“Does it hurt that much?”

“Hurt?” you exclaimed with a wild bark of laughter. “Hurt? Winter, it’s… it’s the opposite of pain.”

“Oh.”

The euphoria eased quickly, leaving you tingling and flushed as though from a different kind of release, and you sighed. “Winter, will you stay this time? Come to the masquerade?”

“I can’t,” he said immediately, standing and backing away. 

“Wait… can’t you… I don’t know, use a glamour?”

“Weren’t you listening to me?” he snarled, baring his teeth. “I have no magic! Don’t you think I’d hide all this if I could?” he added savagely, waving a hand at his face. “Don’t you think that when people see me, all they see is a ruined face? A disgraced Fae? You’re the first person in a long time whose first question wasn’t ‘what the hell happened to you’ or ‘did you lose an argument with your razor this morning?’. I’m sick of it.”

“Winter, I’m sorry. I… I barely see them any more. I mean, I see them, but…”

“I know,” he said in a hushed whisper. “You don’t stare. You just look.”

“If you could make a bargain with me, would that work?”

He tilted his head curiously. His hair lifted slightly in the breeze like a silk pennant and you saw his fine bone structure and piercing eyes, slim figure and lean willow-strength, and wished for nothing more than to spend at least an evening with him. 

“Please…?”

“I…” he faltered. “It… might? What would you propose?”

You thought carefully for a moment and then said, “How about you glamour yourself into a mask and outfit for the evening so that you can come to the masquerade with me and dance with me? What would be the price of that?”

He held out his palms and you slid your fingers instinctively into his grasp. He closed his hands slowly around yours and let his eyelids fall shut. His lashes were white too you realised as you watched him reaching out for the Fae magic. 

Suddenly he began to laugh. The true, deep mirth in his voice surprised you, even as his chest danced and his eyes crinkled. 

“Winter? What do I have to do? Strip naked and dance through the streets of town?”

“Nothing quite so shocking,” he said, still chuckling softly. “The price for such a contract would be a kiss at midnight.”

“You’re kidding me? That’s it?”

“A kiss can be a powerful thing,” he said, eyes smiling. 

“Yeah, but… isn’t it supposed to be a sacrifice?” 

“Not necessarily,” he said. “You’ll pay that price? Willingly and of your own volition?”

“Let me get this straight: I not only get to dance with you, but I get to kiss you as a bonus as well?” 

He seemed taken aback by that, but nodded. “Yes.”

“Done,” you said immediately. Perhaps there was such a thing as luck after all.

A wind whipped around you, the air seeming to split assunder the way the sky tears itself in two at the strike of lightning, and he smiled. “It is done.”

And before you could blink, the person standing there was no longer the Winter you recognised. His scars were gone and over his eyes was a mask made of frost. His black jerkin had been replaced with a damask coat of pale blue, the same shade as his eyes and, you realised with a smile, your own dress. His hair was half tied back off his face in a series of elaborate plaits, studded with tiny pearls. 

You reached carefully up and traced a fingertip around the lower rim of his mask which sat on his porcelain cheekbones. “Is it real?” you asked.

“Yes. A glamour this strong is real. You must really have meant it when you agreed to this. I’ve not had such a strong conviction in a bargain in a long time.”

You slid your finger along his jaw and watched his lips part softly as a breath escaped him. Before you got carried away and paid your price early, you slid your hand into his and led him away towards the ballroom, too embarrassed by his words to answer him. The truth, of course, was that you had wanted to kiss him for years. 

Entering the ballroom again, this time accompanied, drew more than a few looks. People knew who you were - as much as it felt like a fairytale, true disguise with a mere half-mask was tricky - but Winter was unknown. 

You caught Aloysia’s eye and she let her jaw drop dramatically and then giggled, giving you a thumbs up. 

“Friend of yours?” Winter murmured right in your ear, leaning over slightly to do so and sending shivers up your entire right side. 

“Jealous?” you shot and he blinked. 

A slight incline of his head was the only acknowledgement he was prepared to give you, and you laughed. 

Winter was, as you’d expected, a very good dancer. He guided you through all the steps with kind patience, ignoring the fact that you trod on his toes at least three times, but when it happened a fourth time, he frowned. “Are you nervous?”

“What gave it away? The fact that I’ve grown two left feet, or that I’m suddenly super hot and sweaty?” you blurted. 

“You look beautiful. Relax,” he said. “I won’t let you make a fool of yourself.”

With a deep breath, you convinced yourself to focus on the comfort that his strong, graceful stance gave you, and after a few more bars of music, you began to ease into it, and then to enjoy it. 

“That’s better,” he said, leaning close and then stepping away in the pattern of the dance before spinning you gracefully under his arm. 

And just like that it was all over. 

Midnight was announced, and you found yourself with Winter in the centre of the ballroom. 

He raised one eyebrow and said, “Ready to fulfil that bargain, Violet?” 

As he spoke your name, a shiver ran down your spine like a trickle of icy water. “Yes,” you gasped breathlessly. 

With a smile, he raised your chin gently in his fingertip, as though you were a bowing flower, and his lips met yours. He was tentative at first, and infinitely respectful, but his left hand found its way to your waist and he drew you closer to him, his right hand tightening slightly on your jawline, his thumb caressing your cheek, his fingers digging into your neck as he deepened the kiss. 

Dizzy as the contract was fulfilled, you parted, breathing hard. Winter’s intensely blue eyes had been almost eclipsed by his blown pupils and his pale lips were pink and puffy, his own chest rising and falling rapidly. “I hadn’t… I mean… I… I didn’t… expect…” he faltered, taking half a step back from you. 

“Winter?”

“I should go.”

“No,” you said, a little too loudly. Eyes were drawn to you and suddenly you wanted to be anywhere other than in the centre of the ballroom in the middle of your own party. Having no choice but to turn to everyone, you addressed them, voice a little shaky. “Thank you all for coming this evening,” you said. “It’s been wonderful to share my birthday with you all, and I’m so grateful that you were able to share it with me.”

Those with glasses in hands, standing at the edges of the dance floor, raised a toast to you, and you blushed, bowing your head. 

As their applause died down, you turned back to your side, expecting to find Winter still standing there, but he was nowhere to be seen. It was as though he had never been there at all. No one had reacted to his leaving - certainly not the way they had reacted to his entrance - and you suspected the illusion magic of the fae at work. It wouldn’t take much for him to flit unseen from the ballroom. 

Anger flared, hot and acrid in your stomach, and you nodded once at those guests still with their eyes on you, and you left the room. The first place you went was back to the balcony, but there was no one there. On the balustrade, however, was his mask made of enchanted ice. It was slowly melting, forming a pool on the stonework. In a fit of spite, you brought your fist down on it and shattered it with a broken cry of frustration. “You didn't have to just vanish like that!” you growled at the empty air. 

Tears pricked at your eyes and you blinked desperately to clear your vision, but it was no good. “Is this the real price?” you snarled. “You steal a kiss and break my heart? I suppose I should have known better than to trust a fae after all!” You glared at the eyes of the mask as they slid down into the growing puddle of water and hissed bitterly, “I’ll see you next year.”

You didn’t linger at the party, and once back in your room in your family’s townhouse, your maidservant undressed you, letting you out of the dress that suddenly felt like it had a choke-hold on you ribcage. You thanked her and she left, sensing that you needed to be alone. 

Wearing your thin nightdress in the warm summer evening, you lay on your back on your bed, arms spread wide, staring up at the ceiling. 

At a soft rapping at your window a little while later, you shot upright and stared in shock to see Winter standing on the little balcony outside. His glamour was gone, and his monochrome appearance seemed somehow harsher after the soft silks and pale colours of earlier. 

Striding over to open the glass doors, you flung one open and stood there with a face like thunder. “What?” you barked. 

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have left like that.”

“You made everyone forget that you’d even been there, didn’t you? I thought you didn’t have magic?”

“I said I have very little,” he said quietly. “That much I can do. And I’m sorry.”

“Why did you do it?”

“The glamour was wearing off,” he said. “I didn’t think it would go down well if I suddenly changed in their midst.”

“So you can make everyone forget you were ever there, but you can’t make a glamour? Will I ever understand your magic?”

“Probably not,” he said. “I didn’t want you to think I had just abandoned you. I’m… I’m sorry. I… I feel I should also tell you that I heard what you said on the balcony.”

“You did, huh?” you said, jutting one hip out and pouting pointedly. “Good.”

“Did you really mean it? Did I really hurt you?”

You rolled your eyes. “You’re letting the mosquitoes in,” you growled, stepping to one side and ushering him into your room. He obliged and you shut the door with a firm click. “I behaved like a slighted princess, I suppose,” you admitted. “I was just… I thought… I thought maybe I meant a bit more to you than I obviously do.”

At those words, Winter’s seemingly impenetrable resolve suddenly cracked and crumbled. “You do, dammit,” he rumbled, hands balled at his sides as he turned and strode three paces away from you. “I swore to myself I would never fall for another human again. It brings nothing but pain…”

You padded silently up behind him and touched him just the same way as you had back at the dance, your hand steadying him in the small of his back before you ducked round in front of him and searched his face, finding swirling emotions there amid the scars. You raised your hand and gently touched his puckered cheek. “You mean these?”

He nodded. “A gift from the Unseelie Queen herself. Well,” he added bitterly, “Her hounds at least.”

You couldn’t help the curious and horrified frown that flickered across your face and he smiled ruefully. 

“I… I am related to her, you know? My father is her brother. He rutted with some lowly fae girl with no magic and got her with child. I was allowed to join the royal guard, but the Queen never openly acknowledge me as family. As for my father, he treated me as the lowest kind of gutter-leech if ever our paths crossed. I was assigned guard duty in the dungeons, and one of my charges was a young human girl. She was gentle and sweet, but too trusting.” He sighed deeply. “She had fallen foul of a fae bargain and couldn’t get out of it, so they brought her in and locked her up. What they’d planned to do with her, I dread to think.”

“You broke her out?” you suggested tentatively, and he nodded. 

When they discovered what I’d done, they set the hounds on me. She got away while I distracted them. They left me to bleed out in the mortal realm and tied an iron curse to me. I can never return. Not that I’d ever want to,” he added venomously. 

You took his fingers delicately in your own and led him away from the window. Pliant as a child, he allowed himself to follow, and when you sat down on your bed and drew him down beside you, he didn’t object. 

“Stay,” you breathed. “You don’t have to do anything, but… you also don’t have to be alone tonight.”

His pale lips twitched into a smile and he cupped your cheek briefly in his cool hand. “Thank you.”

You slept beside him that night, and when you woke in the morning, you found that he had indeed stayed. You were facing him, your poses mirroring each other. His hair spilled across the pillow and his face looked peaceful and untroubled for the first time since you’d met him. His right hand lay with his fingers softly curled by his cheek and his lips were slightly parted, his breath slow and even. He was still wearing the white shirt he wore beneath his black jerkin, and his slim-fitting leggings, his boots abandoned beside the bed, but he was lying atop the blankets while you were curled beneath them. 

A moment later, he drew a deeper breath as he surfaced from sleep and his eyes fluttered open to find you staring. 

“Morning,” you smiled. 

For a moment he only blinked slowly but then a smile dawned on his face, stretching his scars. “Morning.”

He reached for your face and thumbed your cheekbone tenderly, the motion leaving a tingling trail in its wake. You gasped and found your body coming alive under his touch already. “Winter,” you whispered, voice rough with want. 

Winter’s hand skimmed down your neck, fingertips lingering at the ‘v’ above your collarbones, before cupping the curve of your breast with the heel of his palm, just teasing weight of it before brushing his thumb over your hardening nipple through the fabric of your nightdress. 

Your spine arched off the bed and he shifted his touch down to your hip, pressing hard against the bone, urging you back to the bed. His fingertips snuck beneath the hem of your dress, drawing it slowly up, revealing your bare thighs inch by inch, and you rolled your head to watch him uncovering you. His eyes burned unnaturally bright, inhumanly bright, and your eyes found his double canines as he opened his mouth almost as though he could taste your arousal on the air. 

He whispered your name and you felt the power of it thrum inside you. He spoke it again and you slid your legs apart, inviting him closer. 

With one final glance up at you, waiting for your nod, he moved his fingertip between your legs and smiled. “So wet,” he almost purred as he stroked the length of your lips and then circled your clit just once. As Winter withdrew his touch from you, a little whine escaped your lips and he smiled, raising his fingers to his own scarred lips and tasting you briefly. “So wet for me…” he murmured. 

“Please…” you begged, fingers twisting in the sheets beneath you. 

He moved then and placed himself between your legs, his strong hands on your soft thighs, holding them apart. At first he simply stared at you, savouring the sight of you, and you felt the searing impact of that gaze as a tingling heat that made your hips writhe.

“Winter, please…”

With a smile, he lowered his lips to you and licked a luxurious line up your wetness, curling his tongue even as he used his hands to spread you further. A groan left him and his eyes fluttered shut as he repeated the gesture with infinite tenderness behind which lay a heated fervour that promised so much more. It was unbearably not enough. You threw your head back against the pillows, chin jutted high, and mewled. 

Carefully, he slid two fingers inside you and he matched the movements of his tongue on your clit with deliberate slowness. The pace he set was almost painfully slow at first, but gradually, eventually, after a very long time spent enjoying you and wringing all kinds of curses out of you that even you didn’t know you knew, he picked up his pace, pressing harder inside you as he sucked harder at your throbbing, searingly sensitive clit, releasing it to the cold air of the room for a moment before lapping gently at you with the tip of his tongue. 

“Winter!” you gasped as he hit the spot inside you that lit you up like a lightning strike. “Winter! I’m… I’m…”

“Come for me,” he growled against your skin, his breath a cool whisper against your wetness, pressing harder, fingers knuckle deep inside you. 

The heat that had been building to white hot suddenly broke and you came with a wail, clenching around him as he continued that blissful pressure inside you, his mouth pressed tight against you. Your body shivered and convulsed as your vision went blank and all you could think about was how he felt, inside and against you. 

“Beautiful,” you just caught him whisper between your legs as you collapsed, still twitching, against the pillows, a sheen of sweat between your breasts and your heart racing wildly. “So beautiful,” he smiled. 

“So are you,” you slurred dazedly. 

In answer, he simply pressed a gentle kiss against your clit and slowly withdrew his fingers from your heat, licking himself clean. 

As he sat back you saw, with bleary eyes, that he was hard. 

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