The room below fell silent.
I stood frozen at the top of the stairs, the silence expanding until it filled every corner of my body. What’s the point? Three little words that somehow managed to both break something inside me and ignite it at the same time.
Warmth flooded my cheeks as humiliation turned quickly to anger. All this time, I thought Rudy was distant because of some deep, complicated reason. But no, he didn’t think I was worth the effort.
I stepped back from the stairs, frost now coating the floor. The temperature around me plummeted, and my breath clouded in front of my face as emotions surged through me like a winter storm.
Who the fuck did he think he was? The almighty leader of the herd, too important to waste time on Santa’s broken daughter? The ice beneath my feet thickened, crackling as it spread outward in jagged patterns.
My skin tingled, magic pulsing in waves that matched my racing heart. I was tired of Rudy looking at me like I was simultaneously the answer to everything and nothing worth his time.
The magic built inside me, a pressure behind my ribs that demanded release. I didn’t stop it this time, didn’t control the surge of power that raced through my veins. I welcomed it, letting it consume me until my vision blurred with swirling silver.
Take me away from here. Somewhere I can breathe.
The thought had barely formed before the world compressed around me, squeezing the air from my lungs. For one terrifying moment, I existed everywhere and nowhere, my body dissolving into particles of ice and starlight.
Then, with a disorienting lurch, reality snapped back into focus.
Cold bit into my feet, snow soaking through my socks and the hem of my pajama pants. I stood at the summit of a hill, the vast expanse of snow-covered landscape stretching toward mountains in the distance.
My arms wrapped around my middle, partly from the biting cold, partly to hold myself together.
This was Rudy’s hill.
Why here? Of all the places my magic could have taken me, why the fuck here?
I sank to my knees in the snow, too overwhelmed to care about the cold seeping into my bones. My magic had responded to my emotions, to my need to escape, and it had brought me to the one place associated with the man who’d dismissed me entirely.
Was this a sick cosmic joke? Or was it my subconscious betraying me, revealing that even in my anger, some part of me was still drawn to him?
A tear slid down my cheek, freezing before it could fall. The wind picked up, snow swirling around me in a miniature cyclone that reflected the chaos inside me.
What was I even doing here? In this place, with these men, chasing memories of a life I wasn’t sure I wanted to reclaim? Myparents had let me lose my memories. My magic was unpredictable at best, dangerous at worst. And the one person who seemed to truly understand what I was going through couldn’t be bothered to help me.
The cyclone of snow grew, responding to my spiraling thoughts. Ice crystals formed in the surrounding air, suspended like frozen stars.
I could leave. I could teleport myself back to Palm Springs, back to my house with its desert heat and complete lack of Christmas decorations. Back to a life where magic was something that happened in movies, not something that pulsed through my veins.
But even as the thought formed, I knew it wasn’t true. I couldn’t go back, not really. That life had never been mine.
Plus, my father needed me.
So where did that leave me? Kneeling in the snow on a hilltop with magic I couldn’t control and a heart I couldn’t protect?
I didn’t belong anywhere. Not in Palm Springs, not at the North Pole, not even here with a herd of shapeshifting men who seemed determined to help me find joy while their leader kept his distance.
I was utterly alone.
The snow swirled around me, each icy crystal reflecting my isolation like tiny, frozen mirrors. I buried my face in my hands, trying to steady my breathing against the rising panic.
A strange shuffling sound pulled me from my spiraling thoughts. My head snapped up, eyes widening as I peered through the swirling snow.
Something was moving toward me.
I froze, every muscle tensing in refusal to move as the shape grew closer. It wasn’t human; it was round, lumpy, and had an odd, waddling gait that made it look like a sentient pile of laundry pushing through the snow.
My magic sparked defensively at my fingertips, but instead of attacking, the creature that was roughly the size of a smallcar simply approached and dropped something soft and heavy around my shoulders.
