Chapter 2
Chapter two
Katria
The road to the Frostgate climbed through a spine of mountains that seemed carved from moonlight. Snow swallowed the path hours ago, leaving only pale drifts and a thin scar of wagon tracks. The horse labored, breath steaming, hooves muffled by the powder.
No one spoke much after dawn. Words turned brittle in the cold, shattering the moment they left your mouth.
I kept my hood drawn low, my gloves stiff with frost. The soldiers trudged ahead, their armor dull with a skin of rime. Only the envoy looked untouched by the weather. He sat straight-backed beside the driver, cloak unmoving even as the wind howled through the pass.
When we stopped to rest, the younger of the two guards offered me his canteen. His face was red from the wind, his beard rimmed with ice. “Careful drinkin’ too fast,” he said. “Hurts your teeth in this cold.”
“Thank you.” My voice cracked anyway.
The older guard crouched by the wheel, checking the harness. His eyes flicked to me briefly. “You know what they’ll do with you, don’t you?”
I blinked. “I was told I’d serve as envoy.”
He grunted. “That what they’re callin’ it these days.”
The younger one glanced nervously at the envoy’s back before lowering his voice. “My cousin’s garrison saw the last envoy that went through the Gate. Said he came back a month later with his hair turned white and his mind gone to smoke.”
“Not entirely true,” the older guard muttered. “He didn’t come back alive enough to tell stories.”
The younger swallowed hard. “They say the Winter Court—”
“Mind your tongue,” the envoy called without turning. His voice carried easily through the wind.
The younger guard flinched, muttering something under his breath. The older one gave me a sideways look. “Best you keep quiet once we cross. They don’t like noise. They say even your thoughts freeze in there.”
“I’ve spent a lifetime being ignored,” I said dryly. “Shouldn’t be difficult.”
The younger huffed a laugh that came out as a cloud. “You’ve got spirit, I’ll give you that. Hope it keeps you warm.”
We moved again before the light could fade. The path narrowed into a ledge carved into the cliffside, where the air felt too thin and the cold too clean. The rocks glittered beneath a film of ice, and when I looked down, I saw nothing but cloud.
By late afternoon, the world turned blue with shadow. Even the snow changed color, pale as bone. The mountains rose higher still, until the peaks vanished into stormlight.
That was when the wind stopped.
The silence came so suddenly it felt like a blow. The horse halted on its own, ears flicking back. I could hear my own heartbeat, loud and wrong against the stillness.
The envoy raised his hand. “This is where we dismount.”
We stood at the edge of a broad hollow, where the snow glowed faintly from within. It wasn’t natural light—it pulsed like a vein beneath the earth. In the center of that hollow stood a shimmering column of air, tall as a tower and twice as thin. It rippled with color: blue, violet, pale green.
The Veil.
I had imagined it as something distant, unreachable. Not this—this wound in the world that hummed like a heartbeat gone wrong.
The envoy dismounted, unfastened a silver sigil from his cloak, and held it aloft. The air around us thickened. The light bent. Then, with a sound like a sigh, the Veil parted—opening a narrow corridor of black ice stretching forward into white nothingness.
“Don’t look too long,” the older guard murmured beside me. “They say if you stare into it, it remembers your face.”
The younger guard gave a nervous chuckle. “Better that than forgettin’ it. Least then someone’d know if I go missin’.”
“Enough,” the envoy said sharply. “We cross now.”
The soldiers exchanged uneasy glances. The older one muttered, “Best keep close, lass. They say Winter’s the only place cold enough to burn.”
I wanted to ask what that meant, but the wind rose again—thin, slicing, full of strange whispers that didn’t sound like any language I knew.
Then I stepped through.
It was like plunging into icy water. Every sense vanished at once—the sound, the air, the weight of my body. For an instant I existed only as breath, suspended in light. Then the cold struck. Not pain, exactly, but a total absence of warmth that scraped at my lungs when I tried to inhale.
When the world steadied, I stood on ice so clear it reflected the sky like glass. The others followed, pale and wordless.
The Frostgate shimmered behind us—a narrowing slit of light that sealed shut with a faint ripple, as though the world exhaled.
And then there was only silence.
Snow drifted down in ribbons, slow and ceaseless. The air here wasn’t dead—it was sharp and alive, humming faintly beneath the skin. The mountains glowed from within, veins of light running deep through the ice.
Ahead, the fortress rose—a palace of blue-white stone carved straight into the mountain’s heart. Towers spiraled upward like frozen spires. The gates gleamed black, flanked by statues of wolves made of glass.
The younger guard swallowed hard. “By the saints…”
The older one spat into the snow. The spit froze before it hit the ground. “Don’t pray too loud. The fae don’t like competition.”
We crossed the courtyard. The air grew heavier the closer we came, until even breathing felt like breaking a rule.
The gates opened without touch or sound. Inside, the light shifted to a dim, crystalline glow. Frost ran in perfect veins along the walls, and the silence pressed close enough to taste.
That was when I saw him.
He stood at the far end of the great hall, half-shadowed beneath the fractured light of the high windows. His armor caught the glow of the ice, turning silver at the edges. White fur lined his mantle. He didn’t wear a crown, yet everyone seemed smaller when he looked their way.
Prince Kaelith.
Even before he moved, I knew who he was.
The envoy bowed low. The guards knelt, their armor creaking. I didn’t.
He descended the dais with slow, deliberate grace.
The kind of stillness that isn’t restraint—it’s power held in check.
His eyes were gray, not pale but deep, the color of storm clouds over the sea.
Dark hair swept over his forehead, threatening to block his view of me.
It was shot through with faint threads of silver that caught the light like frost.
“You’re mortal,” he said. His voice was smooth, quiet, and terribly certain.
“Unfortunate but true.”
A faint sound broke the silence—one of the guards muffling a nervous laugh that died as quickly as it came.
Kaelith’s gaze didn’t waver. “And yet you do not kneel.”
“I wasn’t told it was required.”
“Most would assume it.”
“Most aren’t me.”
Something flickered at the corner of his mouth—not amusement, exactly, but a kind of curiosity. It vanished as quickly as it came.
He turned to the envoy. “You will remain until the Frostfather’s decree. The mortal will be housed in the eastern wing.”
He spoke as though I weren’t there at all. I almost preferred it.
The envoy bowed again. “Your Highness.”
Kaelith turned back toward the dais, his cloak sweeping the floor in a whisper of fur and frost. For an instant, light caught in his hair, and it looked like the aurora itself bent toward him.
When he vanished through the far archway, the silence felt colder.
A Winter Court guard escorted us through echoing corridors carved from ice, keeping several paces ahead. Frost etched every wall, glimmering faintly with reflected light. The older human guard spoke low as we walked.
“You see him?” he muttered. “That’s what they say the fae are—beautiful till you realize they’ve forgotten what hearts are for.”
“Shut it,” the younger hissed. “He’ll hear you.”
“He’s gone,” the older said. “And she ought to know what she’s walkin’ into.” His eyes flicked to me. “If he looks at you like that again, lass, don’t hold it. Some say they steal warmth from whatever they fancy, just to remember what it feels like.”
“I’ll take that under advisement,” I said dryly.
He huffed, almost a laugh. “Got a mouth on you. Good. Might be the last thing that keeps you human in this place.”
The fae stopped before a door framed in silver filigree. Then he opened it and stepped aside. “Your room. Best you stay in it. This castle doesn’t take kindly to wanderers.”
When he and the human guards left, the door sealed with a soft thud.
The chamber was vast and cold. Frost traced the windows in perfect lattices. A single fire burned in a shallow hearth, its flames blue and quiet. I set my satchel on the table and stood still, listening.
In this room, the air hummed faintly, as if the palace itself were alive. Outside, snow fell in endless ribbons across the dark horizon, glowing green where the auroras bent through the clouds.
I pressed a hand to the glass. The cold bit deep, sharp enough to sting.
He was made of winter. I had no doubt about that now.
But standing there, my breath fogging the glass, I couldn’t tell if it was fear or anticipation that kept my heart from freezing.