Every sound I made felt wrong inside that stillness.
Rows of nobles stood on either side of the long aisle leading to the dais. Their clothing gleamed with threads of starlight, their faces sharp and beautiful and utterly detached. Their eyes—too bright, too pale—followed me as if cataloging every flaw.
No one whispered. The quiet itself was judgment.
I walked where Maeryn’s hand guided me, step after careful step. My pulse thudded loud in my ears, but I held my head high. The frostlight circlet hummed faintly against my temple—steadying, just as she’d said. I clung to that rhythm.
At the edges of my vision, I caught movement. Kael leaned against one of the silver pillars, copper glints in his hair catching the frostlight. He wasn’t dressed like the others; his uniform was looser, warmer, sunlight dulled into bronze. When our eyes met, he gave a half-smile—small, teasing, but not cruel. As if to sayYou’ll survive this. Probably.
It shouldn’t have helped. But it did. I inhaled a shallow breath, turning my gaze forward.
Then the air shifted. The temperature dropped so sharply my breath turned to mist. Every noble bowed in unison, their movements seamless, mechanical.
At the end of the hall, on the throne carved from solid ice, sat the Frostfather.
He looked carved from it too—regal, terrible, endless. His skin was the color of moonlight through snow, his eyes shards of silver without a hint of warmth. And when he spoke, his voice split—one echo too many.
“Bring her forward.”
The words rippled through the hall. The runes along the floor flared briefly beneath my feet, then dimmed.
Kaelith stepped from the shadows beside the throne.
He was as I remembered—composed, unreadable, cold as the air he commanded. Frostlight ran like veins through the black of his armor, pulsing once when his gaze found me.
He didn’t move closer.
My feet carried me forward without asking permission from the rest of me. The sound of my heartbeat filled the space where no one else breathed. Maeryn stopped just short of the dais, bowing deeply, and I followed, lowering my head but not my eyes.
The Frostfather’s gaze was heavy enough to feel.
“The mortal,” he said, as if the word itself tasted strange. “The offering Hollowmere sent to appease Winter’s hunger.”
The crowd murmured faintly, a ripple of motionless sound.
I swallowed hard. “I didn’t come to appease anyone.”
Kaelith’s head turned slightly at that—the barest motion, but I saw it.
The Frostfather’s lips curved. “Defiance is a flame. Do you know what flame becomes, here?”
“I know it burns,” I said. “Even when you can’t see it.”
The echo that followed wasn’t laughter, but it was close enough to chill me.
The Frostfather leaned forward, eyes catching the frostlight. “Let us see how long yours lasts.”
The throne room’s silence fractured into sound.
It wasn’t a roar or a whisper but something stranger—a hum that seemed to come from the walls themselves. The frostlight deepened, the color shifting toward gray-blue, as though the castle were drawing breath.
Maeryn stepped back, her bow held until the Frostfather gave a barely perceptible nod. Then she melted into the shadows of the hall, leaving me alone at the center.
I had thought I understood cold. I was wrong.
Here, cold wasn’t temperature; it was presence. It sank beneath the skin, quiet and watchful. The throne itself radiated it, an impossible stillness that pressed against my ribs until my lungs forgot how to move.
“Name,” the Frostfather said.
