She tilted her head. “Then explain it. Or glare some more. That seems to be your preferred language.”
Something in me broke open. I moved before I could think—my hand reaching for her, then stopping inches from her face. Heat pulsed under my glove, the frost melting at my fingertips. One more inch, and it would have burned.
Her eyes widened, but she didn’t flinch.
“Go on,” she whispered. “Show me what the cold heir of Winter does when someone stops bowing.”
The air between us cracked, frostlight crawling up the walls like veins of lightning. I tore my hand back before the tremor could reach her.
“Leave,” I said. It came out hoarse.
She didn’t move. “You think the Dreamstone is connected to me. What if you’re wrong? What if it’s connected toyou?”
I couldn’t answer that. The question was too close to what I’d already begun to suspect.
When she finally walked to the door, the sound of her footsteps felt louder than it should have. I forced myself not to look up, not until the door sealed behind her.
The silence that followed was unbearable. The mirrors had begun to fog from the heat of my untamed magic, and the frostlight pulsed weakly, like a dying star.
I pressed both hands against the nearest wall, head bowed, drawing in the cold until it hurt. The pain steadied me. The frost crept back up my gloves, sealing the cracks she’d left behind.
Distance was the answer.It had to be.
And yet when I turned toward the mirrored wall, I saw her reflection linger longer than it should have—not fading like the others, but watching me.
A trick of the light, I told myself.But the frostlight at my wrist flickered gold.
The frost hummed. Faint, uneven—like the breath of something dreaming. Each time I tried to steady the cold, it shifted under my command, fracturing, reforming. The runes carved into the walls pulsed too brightly, their rhythm no longer matching my own.
I pressed my palms flat against the desk until the light steadied. The surface was webbed with cracks, thin as veins beneath the ice. I could feel the pulse of the frost beneath my skin, answering me in the wrong language.
Once, Winter’s magic had obeyed cleanly. It was born of discipline—clarity over chaos. But now it wavered, uncertain whether to freeze or thaw. Emotion had crept into it, uninvited. Mine.
The frost responds to balance, not will. Every fae child knows that. Too much restraint, and the cold dulls to glass. Too much feeling, and it turns wild—alive in ways it shouldn’t be. I’d always prided myself on being the exception. Control had been my weapon, my inheritance.
Now, the frost no longer listened. It watched.
The sigil at the center of the desk glowed faint gold—wrong, foreign, beautiful. I stared until my reflection flickered in its light: eyes silver, rimmed faintly with warmth that didn’t belong.
Her warmth.
I pulled off my gloves. Thin burns striped my palms where the heat had bled through earlier, faint lines tracing the shape of my grip. The scent of melted frost lingered—sharp, clean, faintly metallic. I flexed my fingers once. They ached.
I told myself it was consequence. The truth was less noble.
Emotion feeds the frost; too much, and it fractures. Too little, and it dies. And the mortal brought every emotion long buried out of me with that sharp tongue of hers.
A soft sound came from the corridor—footsteps, lighter than a guard’s. I didn’t need to turn to know who it was. Kael never knocked.
“You’re still awake,” he said, stepping into the dim light. “The walls hum louder every hour. I thought I’d find you arguing with them.”
I sighed, not looking up. “The walls listen better than most.”
“They also echo your temper.”
“Then they’ll go quiet soon enough.”
He leaned against the doorway, golden armor dimmed by frostlight. “You know, the last time Winter’s magic hummed like that, an entire mountain cracked open. You might want to blink before it starts singing.”
