“We’ll need to let the last farmhand go,” I exhale.
Father snaps around to stare at me. “Absolutely not.”
“We can’t pay him!”
“He has a family to feed.”
“So do you,” I choke, pointing at his boots. The left one has a hole at the toe so large I can see the gray wool of his sock beneath. “You won’t even buy yourself new shoes. You’re coughing so hard at night I think you might spit up a lung. We can’t keep pretending we’re one good harvest away from fixing everything.”
Father coughs, as if the mention alone summons the thing clawing at his chest. He covers his mouth, shoulders shaking.
I step forward, hand outstretched, but he waves me off. “I’m fine.”
“You’re not,” I whisper.
He turns back to the field. Both of us stare at the frost that clings to the earth in jagged veins. It’s beautiful in a cruel way. Glittering in the pale morning light, shimmering over barren soil.
I breathe out a slow exhale and watch it bloom white in the air, a pale cloud that vanishes as quickly as it forms. This cold… this endless cold… it began long before I was born. By the time I was old enough to understand, it was still nothing more than a distant shiver along the horizon, a whisper of winter bleeding down from House Frostwyn. A thing far away and harmless, the way storms look small from miles off.
But every year it crept closer.
Quiet. Patient. Hungry.
Two seasons ago, it finally reached us. Reached our fields and the little life Father has fought himself half to death to hold together, and it hasn’t left since.
It’s killing everything. The crops, the soil, the warmth in our home… and the strength in Father’s body.
Another gust knifes through the dying fields, sharp with the scent of ice from somewhere impossibly far north, yet close enough to scrape its claws across our land. I pull my coat tighter, though it’s useless.
Frostwyn.
Lord Luceran’s domain.
The winter that never ends.
And the thing that is slowly swallowing our farm whole.
Father rests his rough, chilled hand over mine.
“This is not your concern anymore,” he murmurs, giving my fingers a gentle squeeze. “In a few weeks, you’ll leave for the city. Begin your studies, just as you dreamed.”
I shake my head immediately. “Not anymore. I’m needed here.”
Father grumbles under his breath. “Nonsense. I can manage. The winter will end… Lord Luceran will have to end it if he wants his taxes.”
But his gaze drifts to the frost-bitten horizon, and I see the hollow truth behind his words. Empty hope. A lie he needs to survive another day.
He turns back to me too quickly, forcing a smile that never reaches his tired eyes.“I want you to go, Neve. There’s nothing here for you. I’ve already kept you on this farm far too long.”
My throat tightens. “But who will do the bookkeeping?”
His brows lift. “We’ve barely got a coin between us. What do I need a bookkeeper for when I can count everything we have on one hand and still have fingers to spare?”
He tries to laugh, but it falls flat. The smile wilts, the lines around his mouth deepening as the cold wind cuts through us.
“Come on,” he says softly. “Let’s go inside, have a nice cup of tea, talk more there.”
I nod, letting him slip his arm around my shoulders as we turn back toward the house. The warmth of him, faint as it is, steadies me.
