By the time I reached my chambers, Maeryn was already there, kneeling beside the hearth to coax a new shard of frostlight into its bowl. The flame flared pale blue, throwing sharp lines across her face.
“You came back early,” she said lightly. “That means you survived.”
“Barely,” I murmured. “Do they always eat in silence like that?”
Her hands stilled. “The Court thrives on silence,” she said, “until it doesn’t. Then everyone speaks at once, and someone usually bleeds for it.”
I tried to smile. “Comforting.”
“It is meant to be.” She rose and began smoothing the coverlet, a motion more for rhythm than order. “There are whispers already, my lady.”
“About me.” It wasn’t a question.
Her pause answered anyway. “They say Fenrir’s loyalty marks you. That no mortal could win his favor unless…”
“Unless what?”
“Unless something in you isn’t mortal.” She met my gaze, half apology, half warning. “They think you’re an omen—the thaw made flesh … or a herald of the Veil’s weakening.”
I barked a laugh that sounded too sharp in the frozen air. “An omen? I heal coughs and burns. Hardly the stuff of prophecy.”
“Here, simple things become symbols.” Maeryn folded her hands. “It keeps the Court entertained.”
“Or afraid.”
“Those are often the same.”
A sound beyond the doorway cut our talk short—bootsteps, heavy and measured. Two Frostguards passed, their voices low but clear enough through the thin ice walls.
“…the mortal,” one said. “You saw how he looked at her.”
The other snorted. “Attention isn’t favor. It’s warning.”
“Still,” the first murmured, “he never looks at anyone like that.”
Their steps faded down the hall.
I stared at the door until silence swallowed them. “The prince’s attention,” I whispered. “That sounds like the beginning of a tragedy.”
Maeryn didn’t answer. She only gathered the empty basin and left quietly, the frostlight flickering in her wake.
When the room was still again, Fenrir lifted his head from the floor, ears pricking. A low growl rumbled through his chest, soft but steady. The mirrored wall opposite us shimmered faintly, as if something moved behind it.
I crossed to it, pulse quickening. My reflection looked pale, unfamiliar, rimmed with light. I traced a finger down the glass.
“I’m not what you think I am,” I said.
For a moment, the reflection rippled—not like water but like breath frosting and then fading—before settling into stillness again.
Fenrir’s growl stopped. The silence returned, heavier than before.
The guard who came for me wouldn’t meet my eyes.He spoke my name like an order—soft but impossible to ignore—and led me through a corridor that narrowed the farther we walked. Frostlight burned in niches along the walls, each flame flickering inside a crystal cage, and the air smelled faintly of iron and pine.
At the end stood a pair of doors carved from black ice. When they opened, the temperature dropped, and the sound that followed wasn’t sound at all—just the low hum of restrained magic.
Kaelith waited inside.
He stood behind a long table made entirely of frozen glass, its surface etched with glowing lines—rivers, mountains, boundaries—an entire map carved from frost. His armor was gone; instead, he wore a dark tunic marked with the same faint runes that traced the table. Light slid down the single streak of frost running from wrist to fingertip on his glove, pulsing once as he looked up.
