Pressing my palm flat to the door anyway, I tested the temperature. The ice there wasn’t the ordinary kind; it pulsed faintly, like it recognized me. The pulse synced with mine for half a beat, then stopped.
The frostlight above me flickered, I stepped away, heart racing.
When I turned, my reflection rippled in the wall—a distortion moving through glass, quick as breath. Nothing followed, but the sense of beingseendidn’t leave.
I busied my hands with the basin Maeryn had left. The water had gone cold, but I washed the remnants of sleep from my face anyway. My reflection blurred with every movement. When I wiped the mirror dry, another shape seemed to fade from behind it—a shadow like a tall figure, gone the instant I focused.
It wasn’t the first time the palace played tricks. I didn’t need it to start whispering now.
I sank back onto the bed. The mattress gave under my weight, warm from the lingering heat. Someone had laid a folded cloak across the footboard—black, trimmed with silver thread. His. It smelled faintly of frost and pine and something sharper, metallic. I stared at it too long before forcing my gaze elsewhere.
If Kaelith had ordered me confined, it made sense he wasn’t here. Still, the absence pressed like a bruise I couldn’t name. The last time I’d seen him, his face had been carved of composure—but I remembered the tremor in his voice when he’d said,Breathe.I remembered the heat that had answered it.
The frost along the window shimmered again, pale light trembling between blue and gold. The same unstable color I’d seen in the circle when everything went wrong.
“Don’t,” I whispered to the empty air. “Not again.”
It steadied, as if it had listened. That frightened me more than the flicker itself.
I lay back, exhaustion pulling harder than fear. The ceiling above was carved with constellations I didn’t know—patterns etched in ice, faintly luminous. As I watched, a thin crack split one of them in two. A droplet fell, landing on my wrist right over the faint gold mark his touch had left. The warmth from that mark hadn’t faded in the hours—or days—I’d been asleep. It pulsed now, soft but insistent, like memory refusing to die.
The thought came unbidden:Maybe he stayed away because he felt it too.
The air responded with a single tremor, the sound of ice shifting deep within the walls. I told myself it was coincidence. Winter’s palaces settled like any structure.
But when I finally closed my eyes, the last thing I felt was warmth at my wrist, spreading inward until sleep took it.
And somewhere far away, or maybe just beyond the wall, something sighed—as though exhaling the name of the one who had left me behind.
Chapter twelve
Kaelith
The corridor to the throne hall stretched longer than it should have, each step weighted.Mirrors lined the walls, their surfaces veined with frostlight. My reflection followed at half a heartbeat’s delay, flickering at the edges as though it, too, struggled to stay solid. Each step I took echoed twice—one sound real, the other distant and fractured.
A trick of the frost, I told myself. Or the Veil again.
By the time the hall doors loomed, two guards stood waiting in polished armor that caught the torchlight and split it into shards. They bowed as I passed, but neither met my eyes. Rumor traveled faster than command; they’d heard what happened. They all had.
The doors opened with a sound like the world cracking.
Cold poured out, sharp and merciless. The throne hall glittered, a cathedral of ice and silence. Frostlight rippled across the floor, pulsing faintly from the veins of magic that fed the Winter Palace. Rows of courtiers flanked the main aisle, their faces pale and watchful. At the far end sat the Frostfather, motionless, his crown a web of frozen veins glowing faintly with inner light.
But he wasn’t alone.
Kael stood beside the dais, half bathed in the faint gold of imported Summersteel. He looked painfully out of place—sun-warmed skin, the faintest curl of a smile, and a presence that made the cold hesitate before touching him. The sight of him hit like an unexpected gust of heat.
I hadn’t known he was coming. That wasn’t coincidence. Father meant for this.
“You let the frost burn,” the Frostfather said, voice soft and cold enough to cut.
I dropped to one knee, head bowed. “The trial was unstable. The runes failed to bind the circle when the Veil tremor hit.”
“The Veil tremor hit,” he echoed slowly, tasting the excuse. “So you say.”
“It’s what the readings showed. The mortal’s presence was coincidence, not cause.”
Kael’s laugh broke the stillness. Warm, melodic, infuriating.
