The snowhound didn’t move. His unreadable eyes were mirror-bright.
Outside the glass, the snow changed again. It darkened—white to gray, gray to something heavier. A few flakes hit the glass and clung there, smoldering faintly before they cooled. The first ash-fall.
I lifted my hand toward it then stopped when Fenrir gave a low, warning growl.
“All right,” I whispered. “I won’t touch.”
But my heart was already racing. Because for one moment, just before the ash dimmed, I could’ve sworn I saw something reflected inside it—light, soft and human-shaped, standing between the snow and the sky.
And then it was gone.
Chapter fourteen
Kaelith
From the western terrace, the world looked drowned in silence. The horizon blurred where the frozen mountains met the sky, and between them, the ash drifted—slow, almost graceful. Each flake glowed faintly gold before dying to gray. Even the air tasted strange, sharp with something too alive to be ice.
A scout knelt beside me, his armor dusted in the same ash. “It’s spreading, my lord. From the Dreamscar to the western gate.”
“Has anyone touched it?”
He hesitated. “One of the sentries tried. It burned him through the gauntlet.”
I nodded once, dismissing him. He didn’t wait to be told twice.
The terrace was empty again. Just me, the frost, and the sky unraveling. I should have gone below to the scholars or the Frostguard. I should have been measuring, commanding, proving control. Instead, my gaze drifted toward the gardens.
Even through the falling ash, I saw her. A pale figure among the glass arches, her hair catching the gray light. The mortal. Katria.
She stood still, face tilted to the sky, letting the strange snow fall into her hair as though she’d forgotten where she was. Every instinct I had told meto turn away—to let the guards pull her inside before she burned herself like the sentry. But I didn’t. I watched.
She moved differently than the fae—unmeasured, unaware of how fragile the world was beneath her feet. The frost around her didn’t bite; it shimmered, as if trying to learn her shape.
I told myself I was observing. Studying the anomaly. But the lie was thin even in my own mind.
When the ash brushed her cheek and didn’t mark her, I felt something in my chest tighten, sharp and unbidden. My hand gripped the stone railing until it cracked. Gold flickered under the fracture, a pulse that shouldn’t exist.
What’s happening to me?
I drew a slow breath and forced my fingers open. The light retreated—obedient for now.
Behind me, a voice broke the silence. “My lord?”
Thalen, my second, waited at the threshold of the terrace. His face was grim beneath the frostlight.
“Report,” I said.
“The scholars can’t identify the residue. It isn’t ash. It isn’t snow, either.”
“Then what is it?”
He hesitated. “Wrong, my lord. That’s all we can say.”
Wrong. The word fit too well.
When I looked down again, the garden was empty. She’d gone back inside. The frost around the spot where she’d stood still shimmered faintly gold, refusing to fade even as the snow covered it.
I turned away. The railing beneath my palm hissed where I’d touched it—frost retreating, stone sweating under sudden warmth.
