No one had ever said that to her either. She swallowed.

“Why?” She said. “Why me? Why a human wife at all? Why not a bear?”

“Because I do not wish my children to be cubs,” he said.

For a second, Cassie could not breathe. Children.

“Only the children of munaqsri can choose to accept the power and responsibility, and we need more munaqsri with human intelligence. We are spread too thin; our regions are too large. We lose too many souls, and species dwindle.”

She didn’t know what he meant by regions or losing souls, and she didn’t care. “You married me to breed me?”

“Of course it is not the sole reason—I meant what I said about your brightness and light—but our children were a prime consideration.” He sounded so calm. She couldn’t believe how calm he sounded. Our children?

“You want a human incubator.” Cassie felt nauseous again. She clutched the edge of the banquet table. “Count me out. Absolutely not.”

“You agreed,” he said.

“Not to kids.” She wasn’t ready to be a mother. Especially to furry children. “You’re a bear. You aren’t even bipedal.”

“I can be,” he reminded her.

“Kids were not part of the bargain,” she said. “Deal is off.” Turning sharply, she walked out of the banquet hall.

She made it to the corridor before her nerve broke and she ran.

Crossing through the crystal lattice archway, Cassie slowed. She couldn’t run all the way home. She was thirteen hundred miles from home—thirteen hundred plus one if the bear was to be believed. She couldn’t reach home on her own. She needed the bear to take her there.

Cassie looked back at the castle. Its soaring spires and elegant arches glowed as golden as dawn. A sculptor had carved delicate lines of icy leaves on the ice walls. More roses, carved to petal precision, curled around the window arches. It was so beautiful that it made her feel an ache inside that she couldn’t describe.

Why did such a place have to come with a bear husband?

She walked farther, rounding the corner of the castle, and halted in her tracks. “Oh, wow,” she breathed. Spread before her was a topiary garden of ice. Hundreds of sculptures sparkled in the liquid light of the low sun. Hedges, flowers, apple trees, figures of dragons and mermaids and unicorns. With her breath caught in her throat, Cassie touched a leaf on an ice rosebush. She could see veins traced on the thin folds of ice petals.

She walked down paths between ice griffins, frozen fountains, and trees with glittering glasslike fruit. She ducked under a trellis of grape leaves. She’d never seen anything like this. It was the Garden of Eden in ice. Who had created this? She turned to look back at the castle—

— and saw the Bear King standing two feet away from her, silent between the roses. She jumped backward. “Don’t do that,” she said.

He said nothing, and she was aware of sweat forming in her armpits. She lifted her chin and met his stare.

“I did not think you were the kind to give up without trying,” the Bear King said.

“I don’t give up,” Cassie said automatically. She thought about it for an instant and then repeated, “I don’t give up.” He’d seen her stubbornness firsthand. She had tracked him until she was nearly out of fuel, despite knowing she was disobeying station rules. That chase felt like it had happened a lifetime ago.

“It is not an easy thing to have your world turned upside down,” he said. “I do not blame you for not being strong enough to accept what you have seen here, or not being brave enough to want to see more.”

She winced—two insults in one breath. She was not leaving because she was weak or cowardly. Was she?

He added, “I had thought that you would have the strength for this. It is not your fault that I was wrong.”

That was not… Wait. “Are you daring me?”

He considered it. “Yes,” he said.

“You think it’s a joke?”

“I think you are frightened,” he said.

“Like hell I am,” she said.

He lumbered toward her between the crystalline shrubbery. His fur brushed ice leaves, and they tinkled like crystal. She retreated, bumping into a statue of a mermaid. “I can show you a new world,” the Bear King said. “I can give you wonders that you cannot imagine, that you do not know exist, that you cannot yet comprehend.”

“I comprehend enough,” Cassie said, inching around the statue, away from the bear. “You want me to mother your children. Your cubs.” She heard the pitch of her voice rising, and she stopped. I’m not afraid, she repeated like a mantra. I’m not.

“I will wait until you are ready,” he said.

“I’ll never be ready.”

“I can wait beyond never.”

Cassie shivered and hugged her arms, even though she wasn’t cold. Her breath was condensing into miniature clouds, but she felt just as warm as she’d felt inside the castle. How long did he intend to keep her here? How long was “beyond never”?

“You have nothing to fear from me,” he said gently.

“Then take me home.” Home. Home to a mother she’d never met and a father who had lied to her.

“You have stepped into a larger world, Cassie,” he said. “Why do you wish to throw it away so quickly? You have barely glimpsed it.”

Involuntarily, she glanced again at the castle with its soaring ice turrets and crystalline ivy. If he was real, then all she knew of the world—all she knew of science and the rules of the universe—was false. Half of her wanted to explore every inch of this place. The other half wanted to turn back the clock and redo the day before.

He padded closer to her, and this time she didn’t retreat. “You can return to your ‘research’ station and pretend all is the same as before. But it is not the same, and it will never be the same. You cannot erase what you now know. Your world has changed.”

He was right. She couldn’t go back to pretending none of this existed, especially with her mother there to prove that it did. His gaze burned, and she had to look away. She watched the sun dance in the topiary garden. Lemon and pink, the sculptures winked in the light.

“Do you like it?” he asked. He sounded oddly hesitant.

“It’s beautiful,” she admitted. “Impressive sculptor.”

“The castle itself was complete before my tenure here,” he said. “I have concentrated on the gardens.”

A polar bear artist? Staring at his massive paws, she could not imagine him creating anything as beautiful and delicate as the ice topiaries. His paws were designed for killing seals, not shaping roses.

“I sculpt every day except in polar bear birth season,” he said. “During the heart of winter, I must patrol the ice near the denning sites. My munaqsri skills—the speed, the ability to sense an impending birth or death, the ability to transform the physical world—make my work possible, but they do not ensure success. I cannot risk being late for a birth for the sake of my gardens.” He hesitated, and then added, “Or even for spending time with you.”

“I won’t still be here then,” she said as firmly as she could.

“We shall see,” said the Bear King.