Chapter 7
Chapter seven
Katria
When I woke, the light in the room was wrong.
It wasn’t dawn—the Winter Court didn’t keep such mortal habits—but the frostlight in the sconces had dimmed to a color closer to bone than blue. The mirror across the chamber had cracked in three thin lines, each one pulsing faintly as if something beneath the glass still breathed.
Fenrir paced before it, claws clicking softly against the floor. His fur stood on end, the faint shimmer along his spine brighter than usual.
“Easy,” I said, my voice coming out small.
He turned his head toward me, eyes catching the dying light. For a moment, I swore he understood the word, then he resumed pacing, a low whine rising from his chest.
I climbed out of bed. The air bit harder than usual, stinging the skin of my feet even through the rugs. When I reached the mirror, the cracks glowed brighter, like veins filled with cold fire. I touched one lightly.
It pulsed once and stilled.
A flake of frost drifted down, landing on the back of my hand. It didn’t melt. It throbbed once—almost like a heartbeat—and then turned to dust.
Fenrir growled, deep and warning. “All right,” I whispered, backing away. “We’ll leave it alone.”
A knock came—soft but urgent—and Maeryn slipped inside, arms full of folded linens and breathless from haste. The frostlight caught in her hair made her look nearly translucent.
“You felt it,” she said, not a question.
“I think the palace did.” I gestured to the mirror. “It cracked.”
Maeryn’s gaze followed my hand, and her lips tightened. “You should not touch it again. When the glass breaks here, it’s never only glass.”
“What happened?”
“The Veil tremored at dawn. The Frostfather convened the council within the hour.” She set the linens down, fingers trembling slightly. “They say something on the other side pushed back.”
“Something?” I asked. “Or someone?”
She shook her head. “No one agrees. They argue about omens and breaches and signs.” Her eyes flicked to Fenrir. “They also speak your name.”
“Mine?”
“And the hound’s.” Maeryn hesitated then lowered her voice. “They believe his loyalty marks you as a conduit—proof that the mortal realm has begun to influence ours. Some say you brought the tremor with you.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“It is,” she agreed softly, “but fear makes better stories than reason.”
I leaned against the bedpost. “So now I’m an omen again.”
Maeryn folded her hands, gaze lowered. “Omen or scapegoat. The words are different; the ending seldom is.”
For a long moment, the only sound was Fenrir’s slow pacing. The frostlight guttered, throwing brief shadows that darted like wings across the walls.
“What about Kaelith?” I asked. “He was in the observatory yesterday. Does he believe any of this?”
“He believes what duty allows him to believe,” Maeryn said. “But he argued with the council before dawn. Loudly, by Winter’s standards.”
“That’s nearly shouting.”
“Exactly. I would keep my distance until tempers cool.” She hesitated again before adding, “Especially his.”
I almost laughed, though there was no humor in it. “You make him sound dangerous.”
Maeryn’s gaze lifted then, sharp for once. “He is. Just not in the ways people assume.”
The frostlight flared once, silencing both of us. Somewhere deep in the palace, a door slammed—the echo carried through the walls like thunder muted by snow.
When it faded, Maeryn straightened. “I’ll bring food. Stay inside. Let no one but me enter.”
“Maeryn—”
She was already gone, leaving only the faint scent of frostlight oil behind.
Fenrir padded to the door and lay across the threshold, massive head resting on his paws, guarding without being asked. I knelt beside him, tracing one of the cracked patterns along the floor with my fingertip. The frost there felt warm.
The Veil, they said, had tremored. But standing in that silence, I couldn’t shake the feeling it wasn’t the world that had shifted—it was something inside of it.
By the time Maeryn returned, the frostlight had steadied, but the palace hadn’t. The walls seemed to hold their breath; every sound echoed longer than it should, as if the air had thickened around us.
“The council’s been meeting since first glimmer,” she said while setting down a tray she hadn’t tasted from. “No mortal attendants are allowed.”
“I wasn’t planning to attend,” I said, though the lie sat poorly. I wanted to hear. The tremor in the night had left my thoughts too loud to ignore.
Maeryn’s glance darted to the door. “Then stay clear of the west hall. The Frostfather’s temper has become … unpredictable.”
“Unpredictable how?”
She folded the napkin with meticulous care, which was answer enough. “Just stay inside,” she murmured, then she left before I could argue.
I lasted ten minutes.
The corridor outside the council chamber was colder than any I’d walked before. Frost feathered the walls in intricate, spiraling runes—fresh ones, still wet with magic. Two guards stood at the doors, motionless, faces hidden by helms that breathed pale mist.
I stopped short of them, pretending to study the carvings. The doors themselves were carved with scenes of conquest: fae against ice beasts, mortals kneeling at their feet. The irony wasn’t lost on me.
A low vibration came through the floor, faint but steady—the rhythm of voices rising behind the doors. At first I heard nothing distinct, then a sharp tone cut through.
Kaelith.
Even muffled by the walls, his voice carried weight—measured and precise, like a blade wrapped in silk. I pressed closer, hands braced on the cold surface.
“… you’re chasing ghosts,” he said. “The tremor predates her arrival by days—”
Another voice, brittle with age: “Coincidence? Or consequence?”
“She is a healer, not a sorceress.”
“Then explain the hound’s bond,” someone else snapped. “It has never chosen mortal company.”
Silence, then the scrape of chairs. The older voice again, darker. “The Frostfather commands that she be contained until—”
A crack like ice splitting cut the sentence short. Then Kaelith again, lower now, almost dangerous. I couldn’t make out the words, only the sound of them: controlled fury. The temperature in the hall dropped a degree with each phrase.
The guards didn’t flinch. I wondered if they even could.
When the noise stopped, I stepped back, heart hammering. The doors opened before I could retreat farther.
Courtiers filed out, eyes downcast, every face pale with that polished, perfect composure Winter seemed to breed. None looked at me until the last figure emerged.
Kaelith.
His armor caught the light—black metal veined with frostlight that pulsed along his sleeves.
The expression he wore wasn’t anger; it was exhaustion carved into discipline.
He didn’t acknowledge me at first, only adjusted his glove.
I saw the faint tremor in his left hand before he caught it, curling his fingers into a fist.
“Lady Katria,” he said, voice level but hoarse around the edges. “You were told to stay in your chambers.”
“I was.” I kept my tone even. “The walls there listen. I thought to give them a rest.”
The slightest pause—then a breath through his nose that might have been amusement, might have been restraint. “This corridor is not safe.”
“Neither is ignorance.”
He looked at me properly then, and the weight of his stare froze whatever cleverness I had left. The gray of his eyes had gone nearly silver, ringed with faint light.
“Return to your quarters,” he said softly. “Please.”
The word please unsettled me more than any threat. It sounded learned, not native to him.
I hesitated. “Did they blame me?”
He didn’t answer.
“Kaelith—”
“Enough.” His voice cracked once, the first imperfect sound I’d heard from him. He turned away, shoulders rigid, and walked down the corridor until the frostlight eclipsed him.
I stood in the silence he left behind, the frost on the wall still humming faintly from whatever magic he’d used to hold himself together.
Fenrir’s distant howl echoed somewhere deep in the palace—a reminder, maybe, that even in Winter, restraint had teeth.
I wasn’t meant to be outside.
Maeryn said as much when she found me at the archway leading to the gardens, but she didn’t stop me. She only pressed a gloved hand to the latch, murmured, “Five minutes, no more,” and let me pass.
The air beyond the door tasted sharper, less filtered by frostlight.
The Winter Gardens spread out beneath a domed ceiling of glass, vast and glimmering.
Every branch and leaf was carved from translucent ice, catching the faint aurora bleeding through the roof.
The rivers that wound between them glowed from within, light moving like liquid crystal.
It was breathtaking.
It was dead.
I traced the edge of an ice-bloom with my bare fingertip. It didn’t melt, but the frost fogged faintly where I touched it, as if startled by warmth. For a place that had mastered stillness, this one felt almost too silent. Even the air waited.
“You shouldn’t be here.”
His voice came from behind me—smooth, low, too close. I turned.
Kaelith stood near the entrance, armor half-shed, frostlight lines dimmed. The look he wore was unreadable, though exhaustion shadowed the edges of it. He wasn’t supposed to be out here either.
“I could say the same to you,” I said.
“I’m not the one disobeying orders.”
I gestured toward the frozen flowers. “Then consider it a study in cultural botany.”
His brow arched. “Does defiance count as botany?”
“Depends on the gardener.”
For a moment, the air between us softened—not warmer, but less hostile.
Then he stepped closer, and the garden seemed to shrink around him.
His boots made no sound on the frost; the only sign of his movement was the faint brightening of the light that traced his gloves.
Without thinking, I reached to touch it, curious whether it was cold, too.
“You were warned to stay indoors,” he said, his jaw tightening at the sight of my hand on his, then he pulled away.
My cheeks heated at what I’d done. “I was restless.”
“That restlessness could cost you.”
“And silence could kill me,” I said quietly. “Your court already decided I’m dangerous. I might as well look the part.”
He stopped an arm’s length away, gray eyes catching the aurora overhead. In their reflection, the colors looked wrong—violet turned to smoke, green to steel. “They fear what they don’t understand.”
“Then you must be terrified of me.”
That earned a sound like a breathless laugh. “Hardly.”
“Then what are you?”
He hesitated, and for once, his composure didn’t hold. The line of frostlight running from wrist to fingertip brightened once, then steadied. He clasped his hands behind his back, as if to hide them.
“Cautious,” he said finally. “That’s all.”
“You don’t look cautious.”
“How would you know what I look like?”
“Because I’ve seen how you don’t look at me,” I said, the words out before I could stop them. “You look past me, like you’re afraid to see what’s actually there.”
He went very still. The frost nearest his boots cracked faintly. Then, slowly, he took one step forward. “That’s because mortals mistake observation for interest.”
“Do they?” I asked. “Or do you?”
He didn’t answer. His gaze lingered, moving from my eyes to my mouth and back again, and for the first time, I felt something in the air that wasn’t cold—it was pressure. The kind that builds before thunder.
Fenrir’s distant bark echoed through the halls, sharp and sudden. Kaelith blinked, as if waking. The light on his glove dimmed; the temperature dropped back to Winter.
“You should return inside,” he said, voice flat again. “Before someone notices.”
I didn’t move. “You still haven’t answered me.”
“I don’t intend to.”
“That’s avoidance, not authority.”
“And that,” he said, turning toward the archway, “is precisely why you’re a problem.”
I smiled faintly. “You sound almost fond when you say that.”
He froze at the threshold, just long enough for the silence to thicken again. Then, without looking back, he said, “Don’t mistake tolerance for fondness, Katria Vale.”
The way he said my name—soft yet dangerous—undid every ounce of that warning.
He left before I could reply.
The frost-blooms beside me began to drip, each droplet catching light before freezing again midair. I touched one. It stung.