Chapter 2
The horses come to a roaring stop at the front steps, hooves skidding across frost-bitten stone. I lift my head and the first thing I notice isn’t attendants or servants waiting to greet us. It’s the lack of them. This place might as well be abandoned.
The dark-haired rider actually shows my father a sliver of kindness, placing steady hands on his ribs and lowering him gently from the saddle. The blond rider doesn’t even pretend to help me. He knows exactly what he’d get for the attempt. I swing down on my own, boots crunching on the steps.
The two riders climb quickly, throwing sharp looks over their shoulders, glares that urge us to hurry, move, keep up. As they reach the great doors, they brace their shoulders against the ancient wood and shove.
The sound is a deep, grinding groan… like an ancient beast dragged from sleep.
I grip my father’s arm, guiding him up the last steps, always half a protective step ahead, shielding him from whatever waits in the dark behind those doors. His breath wheezes beside me. I squeeze gently.
When we step inside, I can’t stop the small gasp that escapes me.
The foyer is breathtaking.
Ivory columns soar upward, vanishing into vaults of veined marble. Above them, a domed ceiling unfolds like a sky of its own, painted with wild silver deer leaping across endless green fields, their bodies caught mid-flight in sweeping strokes of color now chipped and faded with age.
But in one shadowed corner, half-hidden among the painted pines, a white wolf watches. A predator stalking its prey. My skin prickles.
We continue along the hall, where a long row of tall glass doors stands open, inviting the evening wind to cut straight through the space.
Gossamer curtains whip violently in the draft, snapping like ghostly wings.
Beyond them, the frozen lake lies silent beneath a bruised twilight sky, the world blurred into blue-gray haze as snow falls in soft, relentless sheets.
It is frightening. It is beautiful. And before it, I can hardly breathe.
But there’s no time to stand in awe or fear.
Father and I are herded like cattle toward the immense wooden doors at the end of the foyer, wolf heads carved into the ancient panels as if watching our approach.
The riders halt before them, exchanging tense glances.
I watch them straighten their shoulders, draw in slow, steadying breaths, nervous, almost reluctant.
If the Fae themselves fear what waits beyond that door, then I’m a fool for not trembling harder.
With one final exhale, they lift their fists and pound on the wood. The hollow thud reverberates through the castle, a sound that seems to echo in my bones.
“Enter.”
The riders shove against the heavy doors, and they groan open inch by inch.
The air in the throne room hits like a blow.
A wall of cold slams into me the moment we cross the threshold, so sharp it burns, so deep it feels carved from the marrow of winter itself.
My breath fogs instantly, curling white in front of my face.
My lips sting, going numb. Each inhale sears my chest, and my lashes prickle, frosting over as though tiny crystals are forming on them.
Father shudders violently beside me. I wrap my arm tighter around his middle, pulling him close.
The throne room is vast and cavernous, a cathedral shaped from snow and ancient stone. A sheen of frost clings to everything, the columns, the sweeping arches, the tapestries that must once have been rich and warm but now hang stiff and colorless.
And at the far end, raised upon a dais of pale stone, sits the lord of this frozen ruin.
Luceran Frostwyn.
His throne catches the dappled light like cut crystal, its surface shifting and shimmering with every breath of wind.
Curtains drift around him like restless spirits, stirred by the cold drafts pouring in from the open windows at his back, their movement framing the powerful line of his shoulders.
He sits half-turned from us, one elbow braced on the armrest, his cheek resting against a closed fist.
He is… arresting.
Long hair, stark white as freshly fallen snow, falls in windswept strands around his shoulders.
A thick fur cloak drapes over him, the pelts pale and plush, but not softening the hard, powerful lines of him beneath.
His shirt embroidered with golden thread lies open at the top, just enough to expose the faint curl of runes etched into fair skin, runes that pulse faintly with cold blue light.
But his eyes… by the gods.
One glacial blue, cold and cutting enough to freeze bone.The other molten gold, bright as sunlight.
Two mismatched worlds in one gaze.
And that gaze, distant a heartbeat ago, snaps into focus the moment he sees me.
It’s as if something inside him… stirs.
His posture shifts, subtly but unmistakably, his back straightening, shoulders rising from their lazy slump. The frost around the throne seems to still, listening. That mismatched gaze pins me in place with a force that steals the air from my lungs.
For a breath, for a flicker, I forget how to stand.
Heat, impossible heat, rolls low through me, battling the cold biting at my skin. It is unwanted. Unexpected. Entirely ill-timed, and yet there it is… a spark threading through my ribs.
Fear follows swiftly. A deeper chill than the winter around us.
Because this is the male the people whisper about.The monster in the frost.The widower lord whose wife died screaming under cracked ice.
The male they say watched her drown.
Father trembles beside me, half from cold, half from the weight of what stands before us.
I tighten my arm around him, even as Luceran’s attention never leaves me.
Not for a second. The riders bow low, announcing our names, but it feels irrelevant.
The room has narrowed to that throne, those eyes, that impossible tension coiling tighter with each beat of my heart.
His gaze travels over me slowly, assessing, like he’s searching for something.
I swallow hard against the dryness in my throat.
Gods help me.
I cannot tell if the thing I see in his eyes is danger or an invitation.
Those eyes narrow as if drawing me into their depths. Frost curls through the air between us, pricking along my skin as he leans forward on his throne, and I catch another glimpse of the faintly glowing runes on his broad chest.
For a heartbeat, the world shrinks to nothing but the sound of the wind howling through the windows and the heavy silence of the Fae lord staring straight through me.
His throat works once. A muscle ticks in his jaw, and every instinct in me screams to look away, to bow, to run, but I can’t. Something about him pins me there, caught like prey under a predator’s shadow. A silver deer, oblivious to the white wolf that hunts it.
Then, in a voice low enough to shake the frost from the columns, he asks.
“Who are you?”
The air tightens.“I am Neve Devlin.”
My voice comes out steadier than I feel. It hangs in the frigid air, a small, fragile thing swallowed by this hall.
His eyes drag over me, slow as the turning of a season. From my old boots a size too small and worn at the seams, to the cheap fur clenched white-knuckled at my throat, to the ink stains on my fingers from too many nights at the ledger. Every inch of me is weighed. Measured. Judged.
“And what,” he says at last, “are you doing in my hall, Neve Devlin?”
The way he says my name steals the warmth from it.
I part my lips to answer, but Father stumbles forward first, dragging in a ragged cough of air.
“L-Lord Luceran,” he wheezes, bowing so low I’m afraid his spine will snap. “Forgive us. My daughter is…”
“Speaking for you,” Lord Luceran cuts in.
Father flinches.
Those eyes return to me, pinning me anew. My lungs burn with the urge to suck in a full breath, but the cold has teeth here, biting at every inhale.
“I… came with my father,” I say, forcing my chin not to duck. “He is not well. The ride from the farm…”
“I did not summon you,” he says to me, dismissing the explanation with a flicker of his gaze. “I summoned Bartal Devlin.”
His gaze shifts, just enough to skim Father. “You were due here last week.”
The words are quiet. No bellowing. No roar and yet they land like a hammer.
Father swallows. “My apologies, my lord. I… there was work to be done. The fields… the harvest…”
“The dead fields,” Luceran says softly. “The failed harvest.”
Frost spreads a little farther along the marble floor, spiderwebbing out from the dais.
“That does not change the terms of your tithe,” he goes on. “You owe crops and coin to your lord.”
“We don’t have it,” I say before I can stop myself.
Father’s fingers clamp around my wrist, a warning squeeze that nearly grinds the bones together. I ignore it.
“The snows came early,” I continue, the words bursting free, steaming in the air between us. “The frost never left. The crops died in the ground. We barely feed ourselves, let alone have anything left for you.”
“Neve,” Father hisses under his breath. “Enough.”
Luceran’s head tilts.
“My tithe,” he says, “is not a topic for debate.”
His voice stays low. Calm. That might be what unnerves me most. I’ve dealt with men who shout, who slam fists on tables, who bluster about what they’ll do. This is not that.
This is a winter that sees no reason to explain itself to the crops it kills.
“And yet,” he continues, “you chose not to come when summoned. You chose to ignore your obligation to House Frostwyn.”
He descends a single step from the throne. The air drops at least ten degrees.
Snowflakes begin to drift lazily from somewhere above. Indoors.
“I had no wish to waste your time, my lord,” Father manages, the words shaking. “Not when I had nothing to bring you except excuses.”
“That, at least, is honest,” Luceran says.
He walks another step down.