Chapter 1 #2
Father sets a rough hand on my shoulder. When I lift my eyes to his, he only shakes his head. “He would not understand. He would show neither mercy nor kindness. He is Fae, Neve. They do not care what happens to us, so long as they get their coin.”
He glances at the riders again, glimpsing their pointed ears, and then leans closer to me, dropping his voice to a whisper. “Have you forgotten? He killed his wife. If he can do that…” His breath shudders out. “Imagine what he would do to us.”
“Enough,” the dark-haired rider snaps, patience thinning like steam off the horses’ flanks. “You will come with us. Lord Luceran demands to see you.”
“Now?” I shoot back, my glare sharp. “In this weather?”
“Yes,” he bites out.
I shake my head. “It’s freezing. Our horse won’t survive that ride.”
“I will take him,” the rider says flatly. “Now come.”
My jaw clenches. I step toward him, hard enough that his eyes flicker with the slightest pulse of alarm.
“I said it’s freezing,” I repeat, “and not just for the horse. My father is not a young man. These winters have gutted him. He can barely breathe.”
“He can either ride with me,” the rider says, gravel in his tone, “or I can drag him behind. Either way, we are going to House Frostwyn.”
I hold his stare. I don’t look away, don’t blink. I could keep arguing. Maybe they’d get sick of me and leave. But they’d return. With more riders. With worse intentions.
“At least let me get him another fur,” I grumble. “I won’t have him freezing to death before he can plead our case to your lord.”
The rider exhales through his nose. “Very well. But be quick.”
I give him a tight, mocking smile before turning to Father.
“Wait here. I’ll fetch another jacket and furs for us both.”
“Both?” Father echoes.
The rider stiffens. “Both? Only Bartal Devlin has been summoned.”
The cold wind slices through my red hair, snowflakes catching on the freckles of my cheeks as I lift my chin and meet the rider’s gaze once more.
“Then I am summoned too,” I say. “Wherever he goes… I go.”
I wonder if the rider will protest. His jaw flexes, working like he’s ready to spit another command, but eventually he swallows it. He submits, and it feels like a victory. Something I didn’t realize I needed. A smug little smirk tugs at my lips.
“I’ll be right back,” I say.
I stride toward the house, boots crunching over frostbitten earth. The moment I twist the handle, the door doesn’t just open, it rips inward, flung wide by the wind, a curl of winter chill sweeping through our little home like an uninvited guest.
I move quickly to my bedroom, to the only real piece of beauty left in our lives.
An intricately carved wardrobe, its panels painted with a spring meadow, flowers, drifting petals, a bright ribbon of river weaving through endless green.
I remember when the colors were fresh. When the paint glowed like sunlight and the blossoms looked soft enough to pluck.
Now the greens are faded, the yellows chipped and dull. But in my mind… it’s still vibrant. Still hers.
I curl my hand around the round wooden knob. It’s worn smooth from years of turning, but beneath my palm the carved initials still rise sharp as memory: L.D. — Lorraine Devlin.
My mother.
My throat tightens. I inhale once, steadying. Then, I open the wardrobe and reach for the meager furs we own. Nothing grand, just rabbit and fox, thin and patchy, cheap things meant for milder winters.
But they’re all we have.
I bundle the furs in my arms and rush out the door.
I pull the first fur tight around my father’s shoulders, tucking it under his chin, but the dark-haired rider doesn’t even wait for me to finish.
He snatches Father by his spindly arm and hauls him into the saddle behind him like he weighs nothing at all.
I swing the second fur over my own shoulders and clasp it at my neck. The blond rider leans down from his horse, pointed ears peeking through frost-dusted waves, his arm extended toward me.
I scoff at his outstretched hand. As if I need carrying like some delicate little thing.
Instead, I plant my boot in the lower stirrup, grip the back of the saddle, and haul myself up in one clean, practiced motion. The blond rider startles as I swing my leg over and settle behind him, my knee colliding with his ribs with far more force than necessary.
“I’m fine, thank you,” I say coolly. “Now can we get moving before my father freezes to death out here?”
The two riders stare at each other, silently weighing whether to follow my command or toss me straight onto my ass. But after a tense beat, the blond rider gives a curt nod, taps his horse’s flank, and the beast surges forward.
I grip the back of the saddle, the blond rider’s broad shoulders blocking most of the wind, but not enough as each gust slices through my threadbare fur. We leave our farm behind, the small, barren fields shrinking until they’re nothing but a smear of gray on the horizon.
The landscape that replaces it is worse.
Fields that should be green with early-spring shoots lie drowned beneath frost. Every fence post wears a crown of rime, and the trees, bare and skeletal, seem to claw at the sky as if begging the sun to remember them.
Smoke curls from the chimneys of a distant village, but even that looks weak, as though the fire inside is losing its battle.
The riders say nothing. The only sound is the wind in my ears, the crunch of ice beneath hooves, and my father’s rasping breaths. Every one feels like a dagger.
After some hours, the riders rein their horses toward an inn nestled between two snow-dusted pines. The Wayside. Warm light spills from the windows. Candle glow, soft and golden and inside, a hearth with an actual roaring fire, not the smoldering embers we’re used to.
“We stop here,” the dark-haired rider says gruffly.
I dip my chin. “Thank you. I’m grateful for your kindness.”
“Don’t be,” the rider says dryly. “Lord Luceran wants your father alive. If I show up with him frozen stiff as a fence post, he’ll send me to the mines.”
I help Father down from the horse. His legs buckle when he lands, and the riders pretend not to notice. Inside, the inn’s heat steals the ache from my fingers, and the smell of broth and bread nearly makes my knees give out.
We take a corner table. The innkeeper brings bowls of steaming soup, thin, but warm and I guide my father’s hands to his spoon.
That’s when I hear them.
Farmers at the next table. Their voices low and defeated.
“…lost the potatoes this week. All black from frost.”
“We’re pulling the children out. Going west to Rethmar. At least the soil isn’t frozen solid.”
“Lucky you can go west,” another mutters. “I’ve gotten so desperate I’m thinking of volunteering at the mines. At least you get three meals a day and a bed at night.”
At that, someone scoffs bitterly. “You’ll be dead before supper. Those tunnels aren’t right. Haven’t been for a long time.”
“They dug too deep,” an older man whispers. “Woke something that should’ve stayed buried.”
My spine stiffens.
Here it is. The ghost tale that’s seeped through these lands as deeply as the whisper that Luceran murdered not just his beautiful wife, but a dozen of his staff, humans and Fae alike.
The darkness within the Aurevault, the mines where Elarium ore is farmed for the great houses.
I sip my soup, pretending I’m not listening, but every word hooks into me.
“Been quiet there lately,” one murmurs. “Too cold even for the evil in those mines.”
They laugh.
“Still. I’ve heard the tales. Men go into the mines and come out… different. If they come out at all. They say there are some shafts they’re forbidden to enter. That there’s something down there.”
“Nonsense,” another grunts. “Just old stories to keep us obedient.”
But not all the men look convinced.
Neither am I.
The cold creeping over the Sundered Kingdoms, the killing frost swallowing farm after farm, didn’t come from nowhere, and the thought that something worse than Lord Luceran might lurk within the Aurevault is too terrifying to comprehend.
When our chests are warm with broth and feeling returns to our limbs, we head back to the horses. I help Father into the saddle, his breath smokes the air in thin, rattling bursts. Pulling my fur tighter around me, I mount behind the blond rider again.This time, he doesn’t offer a hand.
The road grows narrower as we ascend into the mountains. Snow drifts choke the path, frost climbing the cliffs like veins of silver until at last I see it.
House Frostwyn.
The castle rises on the hill ahead. Once, it was a beacon above the rolling green landscape, its pale stone drenched in sunlight, its wolf banners bright against the sky. I remember seeing it as a child, thinking it looked almost hopeful up there, watching over the valley.
But that was before the frost.
Now the sun rarely touches it. The sky hangs heavy and gray, a lid of cloud and sleet that swallows the light long before it reaches the towers. What used to gleam now broods.
The fortress looks carved from winter itself.
Stone cracked and crumbling, shot through with veins of ice that glow faintly beneath the storm-dark sky.
Spires spear upward like frozen fangs. Even the stained-glass windows, which should be beautiful, are black and hollow, offering no promise of hearthlight, no hint of warmth within.
My father shivers behind the dark-haired rider, and I swallow hard.
This is the heart of the winter that’s killing us.
This is where Lord Luceran Frostwyn waits.
This is where my fate begins.