I nodded, my mittened fingers sliding into his. “If we turn into ghosts, you owe me tea for eternity.”
He smiled faintly. “Deal.”
Twobble adjusted his earmuffs and grinned up at the looming frost-line. “Onward! Into the freezing mystery! If we perish, I want it noted that I looked magnificent doing it.”
Stella gave him a little shove. “Go before I start narrating.”
The bramble mule stepped first, unbothered, his garland of flowers frosting white in the chill. The cold folded around him but didn’t bite, and he snorted approvingly.
Keegan went next, boots crunching softly on the frost. The air rippled, faint and soundless, like silk being tugged. Then he was through, haloed in faint silver light that glowed briefly at his shoulders before fading.
When it was my turn, I hesitated only a breath. The field, the bridge, the sound of summer behind us all seemed to pull away at once. I felt the magic brush over my skin, cool and searching, and then a whisper, quiet as Luna’s laugh:
Intent steady. Heart true. Proceed.
And I did.
The first step across the Luminary felt like stepping into the reflection of a world—familiar but painted in silver. The air hummed, alive and waiting. Somewhere, far beyond sight, magic thrummed through the cold like the start of a song.
Nova’s voice carried from behind, serene and sure. “Welcome to the Northern Luminary. Remember, you can’t be trapped by a threshold that was built to hold balance.”
Keegan glanced at me, his breath misting white. “You okay?”
“For now,” I said, smiling despite the shiver that ran down my spine. “Let’s find our storm.”
And with that, we took our first true step forward, the frost whispering beneath us like the turning of a page.
Chapter Seven
The first breath inside the Luminary tasted like ribboned frost if that were even a thing.
It wasn’t the kind that bites your nose and makes you grumpy, but the delicate, silvery sort that curls along windowpanes and writes poems in elegant script. It slid into my lungs and made everything feel defined. The cold here wasn’t punishment. It was precision.
Light behaved differently, too. It spilled from nowhere and everywhere at once. A pearlescent wash turned the world to opal, and there was no sun and no moon. Instead, a soft brightness threaded through the air like spun glass and cotton candy.
Snowflakes hovered in the quiet, not falling so much as drifting. Some were star-pricked and needle-thin, others fat and drowsy as a dandelion puff. They didn’t melt on my gloves; they chose to linger, chiming faintly when they kissed the wool.
“Welcome to forever winter,” Twobble whispered in awe, his breath puffing into a speech bubble of white. “Do you think the cocoa here is pre-charmed?”
He stretched one hand into the air, caught a snowflake, and held it to his ear as if it might announce the specials. Thesnowflake rang like a distant bell, one note, bright and pure, and Twobble flinched, then grinned. “It has opinions.”
“Everything here does,” Nova murmured. She moved like a priestess through a quiet hall, staff leaving no mark on the frost. “Don’t ask the snow for directions. It will tell the truth and still get you lost.”
The ground, if you could call it that, alternated between smooth sheets of ice and pale grass preserved under frost, each blade outlined with a faint, luminescent edge as if sketched by a careful hand. It almost looked like it belonged in an Easter basket.
We walked across a field that felt half meadow and half mirror. The bramble mule’s hooves made the gentlest cracking sounds, like someone breaking a sugar crust with a spoon.
Bella gave a little shiver, shoulders rolling under her coat, as the foxlet rode with her. It didn’t look like a transformation here so much as a decision the air allowed. One breath and she was Bella, with the sly grin, and the wicked twinkle, and the next she was a bronze-red fox with a plume of a tail and eyes too clever to belong to anything that hunted chickens for a living. She danced sideways, delighted, paws swatting at the suspended snow as if it might play chase while the yarn foxlet rode her haunches.
“Don’t eat anything that sparkles,” Keegan warned, watching her with the private softness he reserved for those he’d bleed for and tease later.
“I only lick the snow,” Bella said as she pounced on a drifting flake, missing it by a whisker. Her joy cut through my nerves like sunlight through lace.
We reconvened around an outcrop of ice that rose from the plain like a frozen wave, its face veined with pale blue and trapped bubbles.
My dad stood stoically, looking at the realm before us.
The bramble mule nosed at it with artistic appreciation, then sneezed a blizzard of confetti that tinkled when it landed. The confetti didn’t melt either. It sat in the frost like an improbable celebration the Hollows had decided to tolerate.
