Chapter 1
Chapter one
The bus dropped all of us at the bottom of the mountain.
Of course it did.
I shouldered my pack and watched the taillights disappear around the bend, leaving me with two miles of switchbacks and the kind of silence that only exists this far from civilization.
I adjusted the straps—weight centered, nothing shifting—and started walking.
The cold hit immediately, sharp and clean, the kind that woke you up whether you wanted it to or not. September above the Arctic Circle wasn't playing around. I breathed it in anyway, letting it settle into my lungs.
Missed you too.
The trail was well-maintained but steep, designed to make you work for every foot of elevation. I set a steady pace—not fast enough to burn out, not slow enough to let the cold seep in. Two miles. Two thousand feet of gain. I'd done worse in training.
What I hadn't done was this specific hike.
That bothered me.
Seven years of preparation. Every book on Frosthaven I could find, every former student I could corner at pack gatherings, every scrap of information about curriculum and culture and unwritten rules. I’d built a mental map of this place so detailed I could probably navigate it blindfolded.
And still, the hike caught me off guard.
Not because I’d never been here before — I had. Plenty of times. Carefully supervised visits. Annual check-ins. Field trips where we were shown exactly what Frosthaven wanted visitors to see.
But I’d never walked this path.
This wasn’t part of the tour.
Which meant it wasn’t an oversight.
It was a threshold.
And crossing it meant Frosthaven had finally decided I was old enough to be tested instead of protected.
I didn’t like how many other things that made me wonder about.
Either this was new, or they hadn't thought it mattered.
Both options sat wrong in my chest.
I filed it away and kept climbing.
The forest pressed close on either side—old-growth spruce, their branches holding the quiet in place. Every few minutes I'd pass another student making the same trek, most of them red-faced and breathing hard. A few nodded. Most didn't.
I didn't take it personally. We were all too focused on not embarrassing ourselves to make friends.
A girl with braids and a pack twice my size had stopped to adjust her boots. She looked up as I passed, expression somewhere between misery and murder.
"Please tell me we're almost there."
"Another mile. Maybe less."
"I'm going to die."
"Probably not." I kept walking. "But if you do, I'll tell them you fought bravely."
Her laugh followed me up the trail.
I checked my watch. Twenty-two minutes since the bus. Good pace, but not remarkable. Frosthaven had eyes everywhere—and showing up looking like I had something to prove was a good way to end up on someone's radar.
I had plans. None of them involved being interesting on day one.
The trees began to thin as I climbed higher, spruce giving way to scraggly birch, then to low alpine scrub that clung to the rocky soil like it was holding on for dear life. The wind picked up, carrying the smell of snow from somewhere above.
And then the ridge.
I crested it without warning—one moment surrounded by brush, the next standing at the edge of everything.
The world opened up.
Denali.
Twenty thousand feet of impossible, rising from the landscape like a fist punched through the earth. The summit caught the afternoon light, glaciers gleaming white and gold against a sky so blue it hurt to look at.
I stopped walking.
I'd seen it from a plane. Studied topographical maps until I could trace the routes in my sleep. Watched documentaries, read expedition journals, memorized the names of everyone who'd ever died on those slopes.
None of it prepared me for this.
The mountain didn't just exist. It pulled. Like gravity for me personally, like something in my chest was hooked to something in that ice and the line between us had just gone taut.
My vision blurred at the edges.
No. Not here. Not now.
I gripped the strap of my pack, forced myself to breathe. The world tilted anyway—pressure building behind my eyes, metallic taste flooding my mouth, that familiar sensation of standing in two places at once.
White. Endless white. Wind that screamed like something dying. And in the snow, barely visible—
The vision shattered before it finished.
I gasped, stumbling, one hand catching myself on a boulder. My heart was hammering.
Denali stood exactly where it had been, unchanged, unconcerned. Just a mountain. Just rock and ice and weather.
Except it wasn't.
Something up there knew I was here.
I'd been preparing for this mountain for seven years. I wasn't prepared for how it recognized me back.
I made myself stand. Made myself breathe. Made myself turn away, even though every cell in my body wanted to keep staring until the ice gave up its secrets.
Not yet. Not today.
I had a plan. The plan required patience. Required preparation and training I couldn't get anywhere else. Required not dying on a mountainside because I got impatient.
I started walking again.
My hands didn't stop shaking for another quarter mile.
Frosthaven appeared gradually—first the old stone watchtower marking the eastern boundary, then the rooftops of the main buildings, then the full sprawl of the academy laid out across the mountainside like something that had grown there instead of been built.
I paused at the boundary marker.
I looked back, once.
Denali was gone. Hidden behind the curve of the mountain, swallowed by the angle of the terrain. From here, you'd never know the most dangerous peak in North America was less than fifty miles away.
That felt deliberate.
Frosthaven was built to contain. To focus. To make sure students looked inward instead of outward, at the academy instead of the wilderness beyond.
I wondered how many people noticed.
I wondered if that was the point.
The main hall was warm after the climb, and smelled like wood smoke and floor wax and the particular staleness of buildings that had housed generations of students. I slipped through the crowd of new arrivals without making eye contact, heading for the administrative wing.
Check-in first, then dormitory assignment, then I could disappear into my room and start the real work.
That was the plan.
The plan lasted about thirty seconds.
"Miss Orlav."
The voice came from my left—low, gravel-rough, carrying the kind of authority that didn't need volume. I turned and found Headmaster Twilson standing in the corridor like he'd been waiting for me specifically.
He probably had.
"Headmaster." I kept my voice neutral. Polite. Nothing he could object to.
He studied me with eyes that had seen too much to be impressed by anything. Silver hair cropped short, hands clasped behind his back in a posture that tried to look casual.
"You are finally here as a student I see," he said.
Something flickered across his face—not quite sympathy, not quite warning. "The rules apply to everyone, Miss Orlav. Even students with something to prove."
"I'm not here to prove anything."
The lie hung between us, obvious and unacknowledged.
Twilson's expression didn't change. "Dormitory C, third floor. Orientation begins at seven tomorrow. Don't be late."
He turned and walked away before I could respond.
I watched him go, cataloging the interaction. He knew why I was here. Knew and disapproved, but hadn't stopped me from coming. That meant something. I just wasn't sure what yet.
Still angry. Still watching.
Good. At least he was consistent.
Dormitory C was old stone and narrow hallways, with the particular smell of a building that had been cleaned on a schedule for decades without ever quite getting clean. I found my room on the third floor—a double, which I'd expected but not wanted.
My roommate had already claimed her territory. The bed by the window was buried under a bright quilt, string lights hung half-finished above it, and snacks covered most of the desk. The girl herself was nowhere in sight.
Small mercies.
I dropped my pack on the bare mattress and gave myself exactly five minutes to decompress before unpacking.
The stairwell called to me the way it always did—concrete steps, metal railings, the kind of vertical space that was perfect for training when you couldn't get outside. I'd been running stairs since I was twelve, building the leg strength I'd need for high-altitude climbing.
Old habits didn't break just because I was tired.
I changed into running clothes and headed back out, taking the stairs two at a time to warm up. Third floor to ground level, then back up. Again. Again. My legs burned in that familiar way that meant progress.
I was on my sixth round, coming down fast, when I turned the corner and ran directly into a wall.
A warm wall. A wall that smelled like pine and woodsmoke and something wilder underneath, something that made my hindbrain sit up and pay very close attention.
Hands caught my shoulders—big hands, steadying me before I could bounce off and tumble backwards. I looked up, ready to apologize, and forgot how to speak.
He was tall. Broad. Built like someone who did actual physical labor instead of just lifting weights in a gym. Dark hair curling slightly at his temples, jaw sharp enough to cut glass, and—
A cowboy hat.
He was wearing a cowboy hat. Indoors. In Alaska.
My brain short-circuited for a solid two seconds before the absurdity of it snapped me back to reality.
But those two seconds were enough.
Something shifted between us. The air got heavier. My skin prickled everywhere we touched—his hands still on my shoulders, burning through the thin fabric of my shirt like brands.
He made a sound. Low, involuntary, somewhere between a growl and a groan. His pupils blew wide, dark swallowing the color of his eyes, and his whole body went rigid in a way that had nothing to do with the collision.
My heart stuttered.