My boots slipped on the ice. Wind sliced at my face. The wraith turned, mist curling toward me like a reaching hand.I didn’t think. I just moved.
I slid to my knees beside the soldier, grabbing his arm to pull him away. His breath hitched; frost was already crawling up his skin.
“No, no, no—come on,” I muttered, trying to warm his chest the way I had before. My palms burned. A faint orange glow flickered against the white snow.
Heat. Real heat. It spread from my hands into his body, steam curling where the frost retreated.
The wraith hesitated. Its faceless head tilted toward the light.
Then everything froze.
The storm stopped moving. Every flake of snow hung suspended in the air, every breath caught mid-exhale.Only the wraith and I moved—and Kaelith, across the yard, frozen in disbelief.
The wraith’s gaze locked on me. It drifted closer, cocking its featureless head as though I were something it recognized.A low hum filled the air, resonant and deep—the same pitch that had haunted my dream.
The Frostwraith reached out. My instinct screamed to run, but I couldn’t move. Its hand—if it was a hand—hovered just above mine. The air between us shimmered with heat and cold colliding.
And then, as if exhaling, the creature dissolved.
Not shattered, not slain—simply gone.
The snow fell again in silence.
I didn’t realize I was shaking until Kaelith’s hand caught my wrist.“What did you do?” His voice was low and unsteady.
“I—” My throat felt dry. “I saved him.”
The soldier coughed weakly beside us, alive, and Kaelith’s grip tightened. His hold on me was desperate, not harsh. “No mortal should be able to touch one and live. You shouldn’t even—”He stopped, glancing at my hands.
The skin where the wraith had hovered still glowed faintly. A trace of light pulsed beneath it, something warmer than frostlight.
Kaelith stared, eyes wide, the storm’s reflection burning in them. “You’re changing.”
Before I could answer, a horn sounded from the wall—the all-clear.
He released me so abruptly that I nearly fell.“Get inside,” he said, voice raw. “Now.”
“Kaelith—”
“Go.”
I went.
But as I crossed the threshold, I felt it again—that faint hum under my skin. The wraith’s parting breath.It wasn’t gone.
And neither, I suspected, was whatever it had woken.
Chapter twenty-one
Kaelith
Snow drifted through the air, thick with the smell of cold iron and fear. The Frostwraiths were gone, but their echo clung to the stones, whispering through cracks like breath that refused to fade.
I stood among the wounded, armor still smoking faintly from where the frost had met fire. My pulse hadn’t slowed. My gloves hid the burn, but I could still feel it—her warmth seared into the leather, refusing to leave.
No mortal should have survived that contact. No mortal should have touched what she did and lived.
“Lock down the gates,” I said, my voice too even for what I felt. “Triple wards at every entrance. I want patrols rotating in pairs until I say otherwise.”
