Chapter two
Katria
The road to the Frostgate climbed through a spine of mountains that seemed carved from moonlight. Snow swallowed the path hours ago, leaving only pale drifts and a thin scar of wagon tracks. The horse labored, breath steaming, hooves muffled by the powder.
No one spoke much after dawn. Words turned brittle in the cold, shattering the moment they left your mouth.
I kept my hood drawn low, my gloves stiff with frost. The soldiers trudged ahead, their armor dull with a skin of rime. Only the envoy looked untouched by the weather. He sat straight-backed beside the driver, cloak unmoving even as the wind howled through the pass.
When we stopped to rest, the younger of the two guards offered me his canteen. His face was red from the wind, his beard rimmed with ice. “Careful drinkin’ too fast,” he said. “Hurts your teeth in this cold.”
“Thank you.” My voice cracked anyway.
The older guard crouched by the wheel, checking the harness. His eyes flicked to me briefly. “You know what they’ll do with you, don’t you?”
I blinked. “I was told I’d serve as envoy.”
He grunted. “That what they’re callin’ it these days.”
The younger one glanced nervously at the envoy’s back before lowering his voice. “My cousin’s garrison saw the last envoy that went through the Gate. Said he came back a month later with his hair turned white and his mind gone to smoke.”
“Not entirely true,” the older guard muttered. “He didn’t come back alive enough to tell stories.”
The younger swallowed hard. “They say the Winter Court—”
“Mind your tongue,” the envoy called without turning. His voice carried easily through the wind.
The younger guard flinched, muttering something under his breath. The older one gave me a sideways look. “Best you keep quiet once we cross. They don’t like noise. They say even your thoughts freeze in there.”
“I’ve spent a lifetime being ignored,” I said dryly. “Shouldn’t be difficult.”
The younger huffed a laugh that came out as a cloud. “You’ve got spirit, I’ll give you that. Hope it keeps you warm.”
We moved again before the light could fade. The path narrowed into a ledge carved into the cliffside, where the air felt too thin and the cold too clean. The rocks glittered beneath a film of ice, and when I looked down, I saw nothing but cloud.
By late afternoon, the world turned blue with shadow. Even the snow changed color, pale as bone. The mountains rose higher still, until the peaks vanished into stormlight.
That was when the wind stopped.
The silence came so suddenly it felt like a blow. The horse halted on its own, ears flicking back. I could hear my own heartbeat, loud and wrong against the stillness.
The envoy raised his hand. “This is where we dismount.”
We stood at the edge of a broad hollow, where the snow glowed faintly from within. It wasn’t natural light—it pulsed like a vein beneath the earth. In the center of that hollow stood a shimmering column of air, tall as a tower and twice as thin. It rippled with color: blue, violet, pale green.
The Veil.
I had imagined it as something distant, unreachable. Not this—this wound in the world that hummed like a heartbeat gone wrong.
The envoy dismounted, unfastened a silver sigil from his cloak, and held it aloft. The air around us thickened. The light bent. Then, with a sound like a sigh, the Veil parted—opening a narrow corridor of black ice stretching forward into white nothingness.
“Don’t look too long,” the older guard murmured beside me. “They say if you stare into it, it remembers your face.”
The younger guard gave a nervous chuckle. “Better that than forgettin’ it. Least then someone’d know if I go missin’.”
“Enough,” the envoy said sharply. “We cross now.”
The soldiers exchanged uneasy glances. The older one muttered, “Best keep close, lass. They say Winter’s the only place cold enough to burn.”
