A Rumpelstiltskin Reimagining. Sold into the king and queen's service as an alchemist meant to save the royal treasury from destitution, Kristoff has no choice but to deliver on his drunken father's lies. But what is the nearly twenty-four-year-old to do, when the alchemist he's been apprenticing under hasn't been able to teach him a thing for the past three winters? It is in the depths of his despair that a charming-and handsome-stranger appears. He can do what Kristoff cannot; turn mounds of coal into gold and gemstones beyond counting. All he asks for in return are mere trinkets. Trinkets Kristoff gives away all too willingly, if it means sparing him from the queen's wrath. With each visit, Kristoff finds himself more smitten with the stranger, but when the princess appears-sweet, gentle and intelligent, all the things the queen is not-he finds his heart torn between them. With the kingdom on the brink of war and the queen's demands growing insurmountable, Kristoff finds himself desperate, and in that desperation, he promises the stranger the impossible-for if he cannot give the stranger his heart, then he must give up his first-born child. Now it is only a matter of time before Kristoff must honour their bargain, or find another means of satisfying the stranger's desires... *Some mature content*