Finally, Maeryn said, “You shouldn’t walk the corridors alone for a while. Not until the frost stops whispering your name.”
I almost laughed, though there was no humor in it. “And when will that be?”
“When the Heir stops listening for it.”
I looked up sharply, but her expression had smoothed again, unreadable.
She rose, gathering the empty cups. “Eat something,” she said. “You’ll need your strength.”
“For what?”
Maeryn didn’t answer right away. She paused at the door, her reflection faint in the frostglass panel. “Winter is shifting,” she said finally. “When it does, things buried deep don’t stay buried long.”
Then she left, leaving the faint scent of jasmine and snow in her wake.
Great,I thought.Yet another cryptic answer.Winter seemed great at those.
I sat there for a long time after she was gone, tracing the rim of my cup and watching the frost creep slowly back over the table.
The Heir’s favor could be as fatal as his wrath.I didn’t know yet which one I had earned.
The frostgarden was the only place in Skadar Hold that didn’t feel entirely dead, where beauty didn’t feel as sharp and deadly.
Beneath the panes of translucent ice, faint glimmers of green shifted in the dim light, vines curling against their frozen prisons as if still reaching for spring. I’d started walking there when the corridors grew too heavy with stares.
Maeryn joined me without asking, falling into step beside me as if she’d known where I’d be. She carried a small bundle of herbs in her apron, their color dulled by the cold. I recognized half of them—frostmint, nightroot—but the rest were nothing I’d ever seen before. One of them pulsed faintly, as if it had a heartbeat.
“What do you use those for?” I asked.
“Keeping things alive,” she said, tone dry. “Or convincing them to stay that way.”
We walked for a while in silence. Above us, frostlight filtered through the ceiling in fractured beams. It made everything look like glass that had once been water, like memory caught mid-breath.
Finally, I said, “Maeryn … what exactly did I see that night?”
Her brow furrowed. “You’ll have to be more specific. There was quite a lot to see.”
“The Frostwraiths,” I said. “The way the air … moved. It was like it knew where to strike. And when Kaelith fought—he didn’t just wield ice. It was as if the frost obeyed him. Is that what Winter’s power really is? Ice and obedience?”
She stopped walking. For a long moment, she said nothing, just looked at the frozen vines around us. Then, quietly, she said, “Ice is only what you see. Winter’s power runs deeper.”
“How deep?”
“Far enough to remember everything that’s ever been lost.”
I frowned. “That sounds like poetry.”
“It’s not,” she said. “It’s history. The Wraiths you fought—they weren’t just spirits. They were memory made hungry. Winter doesn’t forget what it loses. It keeps those losses frozen until they can’t die. And sometimes, they learn to hunt.”
A shiver slid down my spine. “So everything in this Court … remembers?”
Maeryn nodded once. “Even the walls.”
I looked around at the frostglass, at my reflection warped by the ice. “And what happens when it remembers the wrong thing?”
She glanced at me sidelong. “Then it makes something new to replace it.”
We resumed walking. The garden curved inward, leading us toward a central fountain frozen mid-cascade. The ice shimmered faintly, threads of color twisting inside like captured light.
