Chapter 17
Chapter seventeen
Katria
Sleep claimed me in pieces that night.
Maeryn’s tea still sat untouched beside the bed, its surface thinly iced over. I remember lying back, watching the faint glitter on the ceiling, telling myself I wouldn’t dream again.
That promise lasted minutes.
When the world folded, it did so gently, the way breath leaves lungs. One blink, and I was somewhere else.
The twilight field had returned. The same violet sky. The same faint hum beneath my feet. The air rippled gold, and the light bent toward me like a living thing.
“You hear it now,” the voice murmured.
The Dreamkeeper stood ahead again, clearer this time, though the face still flickered like a reflection on moving water.
“The frost listens to you. The stone remembers you.”
“What stone?” I asked. My voice came out smaller than I wanted.
“The one that binds what should not wake.”
He stepped forward, and the field trembled. Frost spread through the gold at my feet like veins of ice through glass.
“The Dreamstone stirs.”
The words weren’t shouted; they vibrated through the air, the ground, through me.
The light fractured. The hum rose into a low chord that resonated in my chest until I thought I’d split apart.
Then—nothing.
I woke gasping. My room was cold again. Too cold. The frostlight along the walls flickered violently, then steadied. For a heartbeat, everything seemed normal.
Until I saw the mirror.
Across its surface, the frost had formed words—clean, precise, and glowing faintly gold:
THE DREAMSTONE STIRS.
The letters pulsed once before fading, leaving the glass smooth and innocent.
I stared at my reflection, heart racing and breath shallow. “I’m not what you think I am,” I whispered, the same words I’d once told the frost before it rippled in reply.
The mirror didn’t answer this time.
But the hum beneath the floor did.
Dawn came before I was ready for it.
The frostlight outside the window had dulled to pewter, and the air felt thicker than usual, heavy with something unsaid. I hadn’t slept again. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw the golden shimmer on the courtyard below, pulsing like a heartbeat, and the strange rune-carved words on the mirror.
I told myself I wouldn’t think about Kael’s warmth or Kaelith’s eyes or the way both of them lingered in my mind like opposing storms. I told myself I didn’t care.
The knock came before I could finish the lie.
When I opened the door, Kaelith stood in the threshold, all frost and control.
He’d dressed for formality—dark tunic, gloves, no armor—but there was something restless beneath the surface.
His posture was perfect, his composure sharper than the air.
Only his eyes betrayed him, that steady gray flicker that caught too much.
“You’re awake early,” I said, echoing Maeryn’s tone from the day before.
“So are you.” His voice was even. Dangerous in how calm it sounded.
“I was thinking.”
He glanced past me into the room, to the faint traces of melted frost on the floorboards. The lines glowed faintly gold before fading again.
“I see that.”
I folded my arms. “You’re not here for conversation, are you?”
“No.” He stepped inside without waiting for invitation. The temperature dropped instantly. “You’ve been tampering with Winter’s runes.”
The accusation landed like a blade drawn halfway.
I blinked. “Tampering? I don’t even know what they are.”
“Don’t insult me, mortal.”
The word hit harder this time—not cruel, just clipped. He was using it as armor.
“I’m not insulting you,” I said. “I’m telling the truth. Why would I touch your—whatever they are?”
He didn’t answer immediately. His eyes moved across the room, scanning the frost patterns along the walls. They flickered when he passed, pale silver bleeding faint gold for a single heartbeat.
I watched his jaw tighten. “Because they respond to you.”
I took a step closer. “And that bothers you.”
His gaze snapped to mine. “It threatens everything I’m sworn to protect.”
“Why? Did you see something?”
The question hung between us like a spark caught in snow.
He didn’t move. Didn’t breathe. For a heartbeat, I thought he might actually answer.
Then his jaw flexed once, a restrained motion of fury or fear—I couldn’t tell which.
“I see enough.”
“That’s not an answer.”
He turned away, gloved hands clasped behind his back. “You dream too loudly.”
“What does that even mean?”
“It means this Court is listening.”
He reached the door but stopped short, half-turned toward me again. The frostlight haloed him—cold, beautiful, infuriating.
“Whatever thaw you bring, mortal,” he said quietly, “don’t mistake it for mercy.”
And then he was gone, leaving the room colder than before.
The frostlight dimmed in his wake, but the gold refused to fade entirely. It pulsed faintly under my feet—steady, defiant.
I pressed my hand against the wall. The hum answered like a heartbeat.
I didn’t know if it belonged to the Hold, to the Veil … or to me.
The summons came not an hour later.
Maeryn stood in my doorway, framed by the pale light spilling through the frostglass. She held a folded parchment sealed with a crest of frozen wax—a snowflake overlaid with a single jagged crack. The Frostfather’s mark.
Her expression gave nothing away.
“You’re to attend the Feast of Glass tonight,” she said. “The Frostfather wishes the mortal to be ... visible.”
Visible. The word sat wrong, as if it were a synonym for exposed.
“Is it an order or an invitation?” I asked.
“In this Court,” Maeryn said softly, “they’re the same thing.”
She crossed the room and laid the parchment on the small table by the window. The frostlight around it pulsed faintly, as though echoing the cold authority behind the command.
“What kind of feast is it?”
“The kind that pretends to celebrate peace while feeding on humiliation,” she said. “Feasts here are battles in disguise.”
Something in her tone warned me not to ask who usually lost.
On the bed behind her lay a gown. I hadn’t noticed it at first—it looked as though it had been spun from ice itself. Pale silver silk threaded with frostlight that shimmered and faded like breath on glass. Even from across the room, I could feel the cold radiating from it.
“It was delivered this morning,” Maeryn said, following my gaze. “The seamstress called it the Snowveil. Fitting, I suppose.”
“It’s beautiful,” I said, though the word felt wrong on my tongue.
“Yes,” she murmured. “So are storms, before they bury you.”
I ran my hand over the gown. The fabric hummed faintly beneath my fingers, alive in a way no cloth should be. “Is it enchanted?”
“Enchanted enough to keep you from overheating,” she said with a faint smile. “And to remind you where you stand.”
I looked at her. “Among predators?”
“Among witnesses.”
The line was so precise it almost hurt.
When she left me to prepare, the room fell back into silence.
The frostlight on the walls glowed faintly blue, shadows cutting thin and sharp across the floor.
I brushed a stray curl behind my ear and caught my reflection in the mirror—pale skin, a dress of impossible cold, eyes that looked both frightened and defiant.
I didn’t recognize the woman staring back. I wasn’t sure I liked her, either.
A knock broke the silence.
“Enter,” I called, expecting Maeryn.
Kael slipped through instead. His usual warmth filled the space before he even spoke, a brightness Winter didn’t deserve. He looked at the gown, then at me, his smile tilting somewhere between teasing, flirtatious, and protective.
“So it’s true,” he said. “They’re parading you tonight.”
“Apparently.”
He walked closer, careful not to touch the dress. “Feasts here aren’t for eating, you know. They’re for testing.”
“I’m getting that impression.”
“Don’t let them rattle you.” He reached out, adjusting one of the frost clasps at the gown’s collar. “They’ll want to see you flinch. Don’t give them the satisfaction.”
“I’m not sure I can promise that.”
“Then promise to look good while failing.”
Despite myself, I laughed. “Is that your advice?”
“It’s the only kind that works in Winter.” His fingers lingered a second too long near my throat before he stepped back. “You’ll outshine half the Court.”
“And the other half?”
“They’ll hate you for it,” he said, smiling. “But that’s the price of being alive in a room full of ice.”
His tone softened then. “You look ... dangerous, you know. They won’t see it yet, but I do.”
“That sounds like a warning.”
“It is,” he said quietly. “And a compliment.”
He gave a shallow bow before leaving, the door closing on a whisper of warmth.
I looked back at the gown. It pulsed faintly in the dim light, like it had a heartbeat of its own.
Maybe it did.
And maybe I was a fool for wearing it anyway.
The feast hall gleamed like a cathedral carved from ice.
Light fractured through the ceiling, scattering across the floor in ribbons of pale blue and silver. Every surface reflected something—movement, laughter, cruelty—until it was impossible to tell which faces were real and which belonged to the glass.
The moment I entered, conversation faltered.
Hundreds of eyes turned toward me, each one too sharp, too bright, like light glancing off a blade. No one blinked. They only stared—the mortal curiosity in their gaze indistinguishable from contempt.
Maeryn had warned me. Feasts here are battles in disguise.
I walked anyway. One careful step, then another, my gown whispering against the frostglass floor. The cold bit through the silk, settling into my bones, but I refused to shiver. I would not give them that.
Music began again, hesitant at first—thin, crystalline notes from an unseen ensemble that shimmered through the air like icicles breaking. Fae nobles resumed their murmured conversations, though I caught my name between their words like a splinter.
The mortal.The thaw-bringer.His distraction.
I tried not to listen.