“What it’s doing to me?”
He stepped closer, his expression unreadable. “Every pulse of that light answers you. The Frostfather will see it soon—he’ll call it corruption, and Torrin will make it a sentence.”
Kael brushed frost from his cloak. “Then we leave before they do.”
“No.” Kaelith’s jaw tightened. “If the Veil has chosen her, then leaving Winter won’t stop it. I have to understand why.”
Kael laughed once, sharp and humorless. “Still pretending this is research?”
Something dangerous flickered in Kaelith’s eyes. “You wouldn’t understand.”
“Oh, I understand perfectly,” Kael said, stepping forward until they were almost chest to chest. “You’ve fallen for her, and it’s unraveling you. That’s the truth you keep locking behind duty.”
The frostlight flared—brief, blinding. Kaelith’s voice came low. “Say that again.”
Kael’s smile was faint and merciless. “You heard me.”
For the space of a breath, I thought they’d strike each other. Then another tremor shook the keep; a section of the ceiling gave way, spraying shards of ice between them. The shock broke whatever spell had formed.
Kaelith turned away first. “Fine. Run to Summer. Warn your court. But if you cross the Frostwood, you’ll see what this is really doing to the realm.”
Kael’s expression softened just enough to be regret. “Take care of her, Brother.”
“She’s safer with Fenrir than with me,” Kaelith muttered.
He didn’t watch Kael leave, but I did. The Summer prince vanished into the white glare of the courtyard, cloak snapping like flame against snow.
When he was gone, Kaelith finally looked at me again. His composure had cracked—subtly but enough. The light trembled in his eyes, and something like exhaustion haunted the edges of his voice.
“Stay close,” he said. “If the Veil wants you, I’m the only thing keeping it from taking you completely.”
I nodded. “And who keeps it from taking you?”
He didn’t answer.
The keep was collapsing in silence.
Not from stone or weight, but fromsounditself—as if the Veil’s light had swallowed every noise. The guards who shouted orders did so without voices. Even the crash of falling ice came muted, drowned in a low, bone-deep hum that lived under my ribs.
Kaelith dragged me through the northern corridor, the frostlight along his gloves sparking erratically, though much fainter since he’d been stripped of his title. Every step we took left black cracks in the ice, fissures glowing faintly like veins of moonlight.
“Where are we going?” I shouted, but the words died halfway between us.
He didn’t answer, just kept moving, jaw tight, eyes tracking the shifting glow that pulsed through the walls. The air itself had turned heavy; each breath shimmered in my throat like glass dust.
When we reached the stair that led down into the catacombs, he finally spoke—his voice oddly distant, like it came from underwater. “The lower wards are older. They might hold.”
The torches lining the descent burned silver instead of gold. I realized with a jolt that they weren’t fire at all—just raw light bleeding from the fractures above.
At the base of the stairs, the passage widened into a cavern I’d never seen before. The walls were carved smooth as mirrors. Frost draped the ceiling like veins of crystal, and in the center stood a pedestal—a slab of obsidian half-buried in ice.
A faint glow pulsed from within it.
The Dreamstone.
I could feel its heartbeat in my fingertips.
Kaelith stopped a few paces away, as though an invisible line kept him from coming closer. His breath came shallow, mist swirling in slow spirals around him. “Don’t touch it,” he said. “It’sunstable—”
