Chapter 21 Kaelith
Chapter twenty-one
Kaelith
Snow drifted through the air, thick with the smell of cold iron and fear. The Frostwraiths were gone, but their echo clung to the stones, whispering through cracks like breath that refused to fade.
I stood among the wounded, armor still smoking faintly from where the frost had met fire. My pulse hadn’t slowed. My gloves hid the burn, but I could still feel it—her warmth seared into the leather, refusing to leave.
No mortal should have survived that contact. No mortal should have touched what she did and lived.
“Lock down the gates,” I said, my voice too even for what I felt. “Triple wards at every entrance. I want patrols rotating in pairs until I say otherwise.”
“Yes, my lord,” came the reply. Boots thudded across the courtyard. Steel scraped. The air filled with the sound of order rebuilding itself.
I was too wired for the monotony of it to calm me.
I caught fragments of what the soldiers whispered as they carried the wounded past:
“The mortal drove it off.”“Her hands burned like sunlight.”“Maybe the Frostfather will—”
“Enough,” I snapped. The word froze midair. They fell silent.
Fenrir padded to my side, fur spiked with ice. His growl was low and uncertain. He’d fought beside me for decades—had never flinched from frost or flame. But now his ears twitched toward the snowfield beyond the wall, hackles rising.
I followed his gaze.
Beyond Skadar Hold, the horizon glowed faintly red.
At first I thought it was dawn breaking early. Then the color deepened, rippling upward. It looked alive as it bled across the sky until it filled the clouds.
A crimson aurora.
It shimmered above the Hold like a wound in the heavens, its light reflecting off every frozen surface. I’d never seen one this far south. No one had.
Fenrir whimpered once, softly, like he understood before I did.
The storm had changed something.
I turned to the commander beside me, who looked one breath away from crossing himself. “Report to the Frostfather,” I ordered. “Tell him the Wraiths breached the wards.”
He hesitated. “And the mortal?”
“She is not your concern.”
But she was mine.
I looked down at my glove again. The faintest line of steam still curled from where I’d touched her skin. The memory hit like a physical blow—her pulse racing beneath my fingers, the way she’d looked up at me, defiant even when terrified.
My heart had been pounding long before I reached her.
I exhaled sharply, forcing my focus back to the field. The aurora’s light reflected across the ice, tinting everything blood-red. I’d fought wars, faced tempests, watched men turn to statues of frost mid-scream—but this? This felt different.
The world was bleeding color it was never meant to have.
Fenrir brushed against my leg. His breath misted once, then settled. He looked toward the Keep’s high balconies, where faint movement flickered—a pale figure framed against the light.
Her.
She shouldn’t have been up there. But of course she was.
I clenched my fist, the leather groaning around the heat still coiled beneath it. I could almost hear my father’s voice: Winter must not love.
No, it mustn’t.
But for the first time in centuries, I wasn’t certain that meant I couldn’t.
The crimson light reached her before I did.
It poured across the balcony like spilled wine, catching in her hair until it glowed pale gold against the night.
She stood at the railing, hands resting on cold stone, her cloak shifting in the wind.
Even from the doorway, I could see the faint tremor in her shoulders. The kind born of exhaustion, not fear.
I told myself I’d come here to reprimand her—to remind her what disobedience meant in Winter—but the lie dissolved as soon as I saw her.
“Do you ever listen?” I said.
She turned slowly. The wind caught a strand of hair and dragged it across her cheek. “Only when it’s worth hearing.”
“Defiance suits you less when half the guard nearly died because of it.”
“Half the guard nearly died because of your Frostwraiths.”
My jaw tightened. “They’re not mine.”
“They are when they answer to your Court.”
I crossed the balcony in three strides. The air between us grew sharp. “You think you understand Winter because you’ve seen one night of it?”
“I understand that you ordered me to hide while people froze to death.”
“I ordered you to live.”
The words came out harsher than I intended. She flinched, only slightly, but it was enough to make guilt scrape my throat. The aurora shifted overhead, streaks of red bleeding into violet and painting her face in strange, holy light.
I should have stepped back. My body refused to listen, so instead, I said, “You disobeyed me.”
She folded her arms. “You’re welcome.”
“Don’t mock me.”
“Then stop making it so easy.”
A sound escaped me—half-laugh, half-groan. “You don’t fear me at all, do you?”
“Should I?”
“Yes.” I clenched my fists.
The wind rose between us, dragging frost from the railing in a shimmering arc. She didn’t move. Gods, she never moved when she should.
I’d spent centuries mastering control. But she stood there with snow gathering in her hair and ruin written across her palm, and all I wanted was to close the distance that had become unbearable.
“You could have been killed,” I said again, lower this time.
“So could you.”
“I’m not mortal.”
“Maybe that’s the problem.”
Her tone was quiet, not cruel. It landed harder than a shout.
Something in me broke rank. I reached out before I could stop myself. My gloved hand brushed the edge of her cloak, then her wrist. The heat under her skin answered instantly, flaring against the cold until it ached.
She looked down at where we touched. “I thought frost didn’t burn,” she murmured.
“It does,” I said, voice rough. “You just have to hold it long enough.”
For a moment neither of us moved. The aurora rippled, a slow pulse of crimson and gold sliding across the ice. Her breath misted between us as she tilted her chin upward, unafraid.
Then she smiled—small, impossible. “Was that supposed to scare me?”
“No,” I admitted. “That was supposed to stop you.”
“From what?”
“Becoming the reason I forget who I am.”
The silence after that wasn’t empty. It was heavy with all the things neither of us would name.
I stepped back first. The air cooled instantly, the frost reclaiming the space between us. She turned away, back toward the endless stretch of snow below.
“Why does it bother you so much?” she asked. “That I won’t stay out of your wars?”
“Because you don’t belong in them.”
“Tell me why you protect me when you should punish me instead.”
Her voice was steady. It shouldn’t have been. I’d seen battlefields crumble for less than the weight of that question.
I looked past her, to the aurora twisting like veins of light through the night. It shouldn’t have been crimson. It shouldn’t have existed here at all. The world itself was starting to break its own rules, and somehow, she stood at the center of it.
“I can’t,” I said finally.
“Or you won’t.”
“Both.”
She sighed, a soft, tired sound. “Then stop pretending it’s only my defiance you can’t stand.”
Her words hit clean through the armor I hadn’t realized I still wore. I couldn’t breathe for a moment. She didn’t know. She couldn’t.
I turned away, gripping the stone railing hard enough to make it crack beneath my palm. The heat under my glove flared again, licking through the leather, eager. I wanted—no, needed—to leave.
Gritting my teeth, I said, “Go inside. You’ll freeze.”
She laughed once. “That’s your line, isn’t it? Order and obedience. Cold and distance.”
I should’ve walked away. But I’d already failed that test once tonight.
“I mean it, Katria.”
She met my eyes, and the aurora caught there too—red fire flickering in gray storm. “You always do.”
She didn’t move when I told her to go.Neither did I.
The wind had stilled. Even the snow seemed to hesitate between falling and flight. The crimson aurora arced above us, rippling like breath trapped inside glass.
Then Katria turned back to the railing, fingers brushing frost until it melted under her skin. “Do you ever tire of it?” she asked softly. “Being the one who feels nothing?”
“I feel,” I said.
“Then prove it.”
She faced me fully, and for one impossible heartbeat the world narrowed to the space between us.
Her hair had loosened in the wind, strands catching the red light. A faint smudge of ash streaked her jaw where a wraith’s shard had grazed her. I should have noticed the imperfection first, but all I saw was how alive she looked against a kingdom built to freeze everything it touched.
I took one step forward.
“You shouldn’t test me,” I said quietly.
“Why not?”
“Because I’m not as restrained as I should be.”
Her mouth curved—somewhere between a smile and a dare. “I’ve noticed.”
Something in me cracked. All the rules, all the vows, all the centuries of control I’d built into the shape of who I was—they fractured under that look.
“Perhaps the villagers were right,” I said, the words rougher than I intended.
Her brow furrowed. “About what?”
“You are a witch.”
She blinked, startled. “Excuse me?”
“Because I’ve been ensnared,” I said, stepping closer, “since the moment you opened your mouth.”
The confession hit the air like a blade dropped point-first. No taking it back.
She didn’t laugh. Didn’t recoil. Her breath caught, quick and shallow, the way it does when someone realizes the danger is mutual.
I reached up, fingertips brushing a strand of hair from her face. My glove hissed as frost melted beneath it, a thin line of steam rising between us. The scent of thawed snow filled the air—sharp, clean, human.
Her gaze lifted to mine, and for an instant I forgot why touching her was forbidden.
One more inch. One more heartbeat.
Then Fenrir growled.
The sound was low but commanding—the kind that breaks spells. He stood in the doorway, hackles raised, eyes fixed not on me but the horizon beyond the balcony.