“I see enough.”
“That’s not an answer.”
He turned away, gloved hands clasped behind his back. “You dream too loudly.”
“What does that even mean?”
“It means this Court is listening.”
He reached the door but stopped short, half-turned toward me again. The frostlight haloed him—cold, beautiful, infuriating.
“Whatever thaw you bring, mortal,” he said quietly, “don’t mistake it for mercy.”
And then he was gone, leaving the room colder than before.
The frostlight dimmed in his wake, but the gold refused to fade entirely. It pulsed faintly under my feet—steady, defiant.
I pressed my hand against the wall. The hum answered like a heartbeat.
I didn’t know if it belonged to the Hold, to the Veil … or to me.
The summons came not an hour later.
Maeryn stood in my doorway, framed by the pale light spilling through the frostglass. She held a folded parchment sealed with a crest of frozen wax—a snowflake overlaid with a single jagged crack. The Frostfather’s mark.
Her expression gave nothing away.
“You’re to attend the Feast of Glass tonight,” she said. “The Frostfather wishes the mortal to be ... visible.”
Visible. The word sat wrong, as if it were a synonym for exposed.
“Is it an order or an invitation?” I asked.
“In this Court,” Maeryn said softly, “they’re the same thing.”
She crossed the room and laid the parchment on the small table by the window. The frostlight around it pulsed faintly, as though echoing the cold authority behind the command.
“What kind of feast is it?”
“The kind that pretends to celebrate peace while feeding on humiliation,” she said. “Feasts here are battles in disguise.”
Something in her tone warned me not to ask who usually lost.
On the bed behind her lay a gown. I hadn’t noticed it at first—it looked as though it had been spun from ice itself. Pale silver silk threaded with frostlight that shimmered and faded like breath on glass. Even from across the room, I could feel the cold radiating from it.
“It was delivered this morning,” Maeryn said, following my gaze. “The seamstress called itthe Snowveil.Fitting, I suppose.”
“It’s beautiful,” I said, though the word felt wrong on my tongue.
“Yes,” she murmured. “So are storms, before they bury you.”
I ran my hand over the gown. The fabric hummed faintly beneath my fingers, alive in a way no cloth should be. “Is it enchanted?”
“Enchanted enough to keep you from overheating,” she said with a faint smile. “And to remind you where you stand.”
I looked at her. “Among predators?”
“Among witnesses.”
