I wanted to ask what that meant, but the wind rose again—thin, slicing, full of strange whispers that didn’t sound like any language I knew.
Then I stepped through.
It was like plunging into icy water. Every sense vanished at once—the sound, the air, the weight of my body. For an instant I existed only as breath, suspended in light. Then the cold struck. Not pain, exactly, but a total absence of warmth that scraped at my lungs when I tried to inhale.
When the world steadied, I stood on ice so clear it reflected the sky like glass. The others followed, pale and wordless.
The Frostgate shimmered behind us—a narrowing slit of light that sealed shut with a faint ripple, as though the world exhaled.
And then there was only silence.
Snow drifted down in ribbons, slow and ceaseless. The air here wasn’t dead—it was sharp and alive, humming faintly beneath the skin. The mountains glowed from within, veins of light running deep through the ice.
Ahead, the fortress rose—a palace of blue-white stone carved straight into the mountain’s heart. Towers spiraled upward like frozen spires. The gates gleamed black, flanked by statues of wolves made of glass.
The younger guard swallowed hard. “By the saints…”
The older one spat into the snow. The spit froze before it hit the ground. “Don’t pray too loud. The fae don’t like competition.”
We crossed the courtyard. The air grew heavier the closer we came, until even breathing felt like breaking a rule.
The gates opened without touch or sound. Inside, the light shifted to a dim, crystalline glow. Frost ran in perfect veins along the walls, and the silence pressed close enough to taste.
That was when I saw him.
He stood at the far end of the great hall, half-shadowed beneath the fractured light of the high windows. His armor caught the glow of the ice, turning silver at the edges. White fur lined his mantle. He didn’t wear a crown, yet everyone seemed smaller when he looked their way.
Prince Kaelith.
Even before he moved, I knew who he was.
The envoy bowed low. The guards knelt, their armor creaking. I didn’t.
He descended the dais with slow, deliberate grace. The kind of stillness that isn’t restraint—it’s power held in check. His eyes were gray, not pale but deep, the color of storm clouds over the sea. Dark hair swept over his forehead, threatening to block his view of me. It was shot through with faint threads of silver that caught the light like frost.
“You’re mortal,” he said. His voice was smooth, quiet, and terribly certain.
“Unfortunate but true.”
A faint sound broke the silence—one of the guards muffling a nervous laugh that died as quickly as it came.
Kaelith’s gaze didn’t waver. “And yet you do not kneel.”
“I wasn’t told it was required.”
“Most would assume it.”
“Most aren’t me.”
Something flickered at the corner of his mouth—not amusement, exactly, but a kind of curiosity. It vanished as quickly as it came.
He turned to the envoy. “You will remain until the Frostfather’s decree. The mortal will be housed in the eastern wing.”
He spoke as though I weren’t there at all. I almost preferred it.
The envoy bowed again. “Your Highness.”
Kaelith turned back toward the dais, his cloak sweeping the floor in a whisper of fur and frost. For an instant, light caught in his hair, and it looked like the aurora itself bent toward him.
