From USA Today bestseller and award-winner Karpov Kinrade and award-winning author Heather Hildenbrand comes a love story that blends fable and fairytale with fantasy romance to create a spellbinding tale.

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In the remote village of Willowdale there lives a people haunted by an ancient curse. Once a prosperous and lush land, for thousands of years the kingdom has suffered under perpetual winter. Crops refuse to grow, poverty and hunger spread. People die.

Their only chance of survival depends on trade. But the one road between the lands passes through the treacherous Ice Mountains, where the cursed and banished prince lives. The prince who holds his kingdom in an icy grip.

To keep the trade path open, the prince demands a sacrifice. Once a year, a villager is chosen and must trek to the peak of the Ice Mountains to offer their life in exchange for safe passage between lands.

This year, I'm the sacrifice.

There's one big difference, however. I'm not an ordinary villager being sent to die. I'm a powerful winter witch, the first born to our village in over a thousand years, and I've been sent to kill.

But when the banished prince saves me from imminent death, everything changes. He's not the monster I believed him to be, and his tenderness and keen intelligence grips my heart and makes me question everything I once thought true.

Now I must decide the impossible. Do I kill him to save my kingdom? Or let what is growing between us save us both, thus damning everyone I love in the process?

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The Winter Witch is a standalone love story that blends fairytale elements of Beauty and the Beast and the Bulgarian fable The Little Girl and the Winter Whirlwinds with a paranormal romance / fantasy romance twist. We hope you enjoy this standalone novella that is part of the Season of the Witch fantasy world.

For more from Karpov Kinrade and Heather Hildenbrand, check out The Spring Witch (Season of the Witch, 2).