Frost Bitten, Twice Shy: A Short Story

By Amalia Dillin

A short story from the author of the Fate of the Gods trilogy and the Orc Saga.

 Kate isn't exactly human. Too bad her father died in a snowstorm before he could tell her the truth, if he was ever going to tell her at all. 

 Now, determined to conquer her bone-deep fear of the snow, after years away in the south, she's returned home to the house her father left her in winter.

 But she never expected a trip to face her fears would mean watching herself turn ice blue in the cold. Or that she'd be dealing with some yeti with a talent for building emotive snowmen who seems determined to tell her everything she never wanted to know.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Thorskona Books
• Release date: May 16, 2019
• ISBN: 9781393140276

Book preview

Frost Bitten,

Twice Shy

THIRTY SECONDS. THAT’S how long it takes the snowflake to melt on my glove, hand fresh from my pocket, the thin knit material warm and damp from making snowballs into a snowman with a snow top hat and a willow branch smile.

Thirty seconds seems like an awful long time for the delicate vanes to melt and disappear into the cloth. It’s so small, and its brothers are raining down around me with soft pings against my fleece hood. The drop of ice left from the snowflake winks into water, and the water fades into my glove, and my hands are empty.

Before the next lonely flake catches my eye, I shove my hands in my pockets again. The worst of the snow dislodges from the crook of my elbow, falling into the inches already covering the ground. There’s nothing left but to watch it whirl and twirl around me, hoping to swallow me one melting snowflake at a time

I exhale, my breath turning to frost, floating away at the same angle as the snow. Thirty seconds is plenty of time to escape, even if you’re slow and cold, and my nose isn’t numb yet, even if my cheeks are red. I have nothing to fear from the snow. Not here, not now. I stand in it until my shoulders are coated in thick white flakes, just to prove it to myself. It isn’t the snow that kills, not really. It’s the cold that makes such a murderous friend.

It was the cold that killed my father, and the snow, piled