Even muffled by the walls, his voice carried weight—measured and precise, like a blade wrapped in silk. I pressed closer, hands braced on the cold surface.
“… you’re chasing ghosts,” he said. “The tremor predates her arrival by days—”
Another voice, brittle with age: “Coincidence? Or consequence?”
“She is a healer, not a sorceress.”
“Then explain the hound’s bond,” someone else snapped. “It has never chosen mortal company.”
Silence, then the scrape of chairs. The older voice again, darker. “The Frostfather commands that she be contained until—”
A crack like ice splitting cut the sentence short. Then Kaelith again, lower now, almost dangerous. I couldn’t make out the words, only the sound of them: controlled fury. The temperature in the hall dropped a degree with each phrase.
The guards didn’t flinch. I wondered if they even could.
When the noise stopped, I stepped back, heart hammering. The doors opened before I could retreat farther.
Courtiers filed out, eyes downcast, every face pale with that polished, perfect composure Winter seemed to breed. None looked at me until the last figure emerged.
Kaelith.
His armor caught the light—black metal veined with frostlight that pulsed along his sleeves. The expression he wore wasn’t anger; it was exhaustion carved into discipline. He didn’t acknowledge me at first, only adjusted his glove. I saw the faint tremor in his left hand before he caught it, curling his fingers into a fist.
“Lady Katria,” he said, voice level but hoarse around the edges. “You were told to stay in your chambers.”
“I was.” I kept my tone even. “The walls there listen. I thought to give them a rest.”
The slightest pause—then a breath through his nose that might have been amusement, might have been restraint. “This corridor is not safe.”
“Neither is ignorance.”
He looked at me properly then, and the weight of his stare froze whatever cleverness I had left. The gray of his eyes had gone nearly silver, ringed with faint light.
“Return to your quarters,” he said softly. “Please.”
The wordpleaseunsettled me more than any threat. It sounded learned, not native to him.
I hesitated. “Did they blame me?”
He didn’t answer.
“Kaelith—”
“Enough.” His voice cracked once, the first imperfect sound I’d heard from him. He turned away, shoulders rigid, and walked down the corridor until the frostlight eclipsed him.
I stood in the silence he left behind, the frost on the wall still humming faintly from whatever magic he’d used to hold himself together.
Fenrir’s distant howl echoed somewhere deep in the palace—a reminder, maybe, that even in Winter, restraint had teeth.
I wasn’t meant to be outside.
Maeryn said as much when she found me at the archway leading to the gardens, but she didn’t stop me. She only pressed a gloved hand to the latch, murmured, “Five minutes, no more,” and let me pass.
The air beyond the door tasted sharper, less filtered by frostlight. The Winter Gardens spread out beneath a domed ceiling of glass, vast and glimmering. Every branch and leaf was carved from translucent ice, catching the faint aurora bleeding through the roof. The rivers that wound between them glowed from within, light moving like liquid crystal.
It was breathtaking.
It was dead.
