Chapter 31
Chapter thirty-one
Kaelith
By the time I reached the throne hall, the frost along the corridor walls had stopped pretending to sleep.
It hissed in recognition when I passed, light crawling up the columns like veins of lightning under glass.
The guards watched me with wide eyes but said nothing.
They knew better. They could feel it—the way the air around me bent out of rhythm.
The doors opened on their own. The sound cracked like ice splitting on a river.
Unkempt, the Frostfather sat slumped on his throne, crown askew, frostlight bleeding from the seams of his armor. His breath misted unevenly, words forming in it before he even spoke. Fragments of sentences. Fragments of sanity.
“My son,” he said. “The Hold trembles. The Veil cries. What have you done?”
I bowed low, forcing the motion through locked muscles. “The Dreamstone stirred, Father. The mortal’s touch woke it.”
“Mortal,” he repeated, as if tasting the word. “Infection. I can smell her on you.”
His eyes burned white for a heartbeat then cleared. “Containment,” he whispered. “Before the frost breaks.”
I held my ground. “Katria is not the cause. She’s the key. The Stone responds to her, not against her.”
He laughed, and the sound fractured the air. “You think you understand the Stone better than its king?”
“No,” I said quietly. “Of course not, Father.”
The Frostfather leaned forward, fingers digging into the armrest until cracks webbed through the ice. “You’ve grown reckless.”
“Perhaps.”
He tilted his head, studying me. “Or corrupted.”
The accusation struck colder than the air. “By what?”
“By warmth.”
That word—so simple, so human—fell from his lips like a curse. I said nothing. He smiled then, thin and cruel. “Deliver her to the Council at dawn. They will decide what remains of her.”
I straightened. “And if I refuse?”
“Then I will assume you share her taint.”
The frostlight surged around his throne, crawling up the walls in jagged patterns. He looked magnificent in his ruin—half king, half storm. I bowed once more to hide the tremor in my hands.
“As you command.”
When I turned to leave, Chancellor Torrin was already waiting by the door. His expression was smooth as polished ice, voice low and venom-sweet. “A tragedy, my lord. Some infections cannot be cured.”
I met his gaze. “You mistake her for a disease. She is the symptom of something much older.”
He smiled thinly. “I take comfort in your poetry, prince. It makes your downfall sound so much prettier.”
I kept walking. I didn’t look back.
But as I reached the stairwell, the frost beneath my boots cracked again—tiny fissures forming a word I hadn’t seen in centuries:
“Run.”
The word still glowed beneath the ice when I reached the landing—faint, golden, wrong. Run. No fae magic bled gold. That was mortal color, mortal pulse. Hers.
The frost underfoot dimmed as I turned toward the east corridor, every instinct braced for ambush. The Hold’s silence had changed. It wasn’t still anymore; it was listening.
Assassins in Winter never made noise. They removed it.
The corridors curved downward into shadow, frostlight flickering in uneven lines along the walls.
Every few steps the glow would die, plunging me into half-darkness, as if the Hold itself wanted to hide what it knew.
My pulse measured the distance between torches.
Thirty heartbeats, silence, then another faint gleam of light. The rhythm was wrong.
Something had broken that rhythm.
I reached for the hilt at my hip. The frost responded—thin filaments of silver webbing outward, forming a low shimmer around my hand. The runes etched into my sword flared once, then dulled again. Even the blade could sense it: blood about to be spilled.
At the next junction, I caught a flicker of movement. Two shadows glided past the frostglass wall ahead, their reflections warped by the ice. I pressed myself to the stone, waiting for sound. Nothing. Just the faintest drag of a boot across frozen floor.
Torrin had moved faster than I thought. He’d never waste the Council’s time with trials when poison or steel would suffice.
The Frostfather’s command still burned in my ears—deliver her to the Council at dawn—but Torrin wouldn’t wait for dawn. Dawn risked questions. Dawn risked me.
The frost at my feet shivered. Go.
I moved. Fast. Quiet.
Through the lower stairwells, across the echoing bridge that overlooked the underhalls.
The Dreamstone’s light flickered far below, faint as the dying pulse of a star.
I could feel it calling to her still—proof that wherever she was, she hadn’t stopped being a danger. Or salvation. I no longer knew which.
The first assassin stepped from the archway at the far end of the bridge. Pale-blue frost-colored armor, hood drawn low, a curved blade of condensed frost in his grip. Another emerged behind him, then a third, their movements precise, synchronized.
“Prince,” the lead one said, voice muffled by his mask. “Orders are to remove the corruption.”
“I wasn’t aware you took orders from anyone but me.”
“The Chancellor outranks sentiment.”
His blade caught the light. “Step aside.”
I didn’t. My own sword hissed free. The air around us contracted, frost rising in sharp spirals from the bridge. For one frozen heartbeat, none of us moved.
Then I breathed once—and the world snapped.
Frost erupted from my boots, crawling up the walls, spearing outward in razor-sharp veins.
The nearest assassin leapt back, but too late; the ice caught his ankle, shattering bone.
He fell, blade clattering across the bridge.
The second came from the right—fast, silent, deadly.
I turned into the strike, caught his wrist, and drove the hilt of my sword into his chest. The frost answered the impact with a burst of light. He fell without a sound.
The third hesitated. “My lord—”
“Tell Torrin,” I said, voice steady, “if he wants her blood, he can come spill it himself.”
He faltered. That was all I needed. The frost climbed him like a living thing, locking him in place, eyes wide. I left him there. He’d thaw. Eventually.
By the time I reached the next hall, the frostlight in the walls had gone dim again, as if the Hold were ashamed of what it had just done.
I was shaking. Not from fear. From the echo of it—the pull that kept dragging me toward her.
She would be in my chamber still, asleep or pretending to be. Maeryn might be with her. Fenrir certainly would. And if Torrin’s men reached her before I did—
I pushed harder, boots skidding on the frost-slick steps. The air ahead shimmered faintly with heat, which was wrong—nothing in the Hold shimmered with heat. Not unless she was there.
The door was ajar. Frostlight leaked from the crack in uneven pulses.
“Stay,” I murmured to the frost at my feet, and it obeyed, spreading outward in a silent ripple. Any footstep on that floor would sing to me now.
I pushed the door open. The scent of herbs and faint ash met me—her potions, the ones the Court whispered were forbidden. She stood near the window, already dressed, Fenrir at her side, his ears flat and eyes trained on me. Her posture was taut, like she was ready to flee.
“You knew,” I said.
“I heard them.” Her voice was steady, but the tremor in her hand betrayed her. “They’re not subtle.”
I looked past her. The frost on the far wall was cracked, faint gold leaking through the seams. She’d touched it again. It had answered again.
“You shouldn’t have—”
“I didn’t call them,” she cut in. “I was trying to stop them.”
My jaw tightened. “They won’t stop.”
Her chin lifted, the same stubborn line I’d come to recognize. “Then neither will I.”
Frost and magic, how I admired this woman.
A heartbeat of silence. Then the frostlight dimmed. The Hold was listening again, waiting.
“There’s no time,” I said. “Torrin sent blades. The Frostfather will follow when he realizes they failed.”
“Failed?”
I nodded toward the blood still drying on my gloves. “Briefly.”
Her eyes widened. “You killed them.”
“They would have killed you.”
For a moment, we just looked at each other. Then she exhaled, slow. “So what now?”
“Now we run.”
Fenrir made a low sound, almost agreement.
I crossed the room in three strides, grabbed the cloak from her chair, and fastened it around her shoulders. She didn’t resist, but her eyes searched mine the entire time.
“Where?” she asked.
“The Frostwood. There are paths even Torrin’s men won’t tread.”
“That sounds like a lie.”
“It is,” I said, and I couldn’t help the faint smile that followed. “But it’s all we have.”
The frost at the door began to hum again—soft, urgent. Footsteps. More than one. Closer.
I drew my sword, met her gaze, and nodded toward the far archway. “Stay behind me.”
The door burst open.
Three more assassins surged through, blades drawn, eyes burning pale blue.
The first fell before he cleared the threshold—Fenrir lunged, jaws clamping on his arm.
The second swung low; I parried, sparks of frost scattering across the floor.
The third tried to circle toward her—a mistake.
The air thickened, the frost snapping up from the ground and trapping him mid-step.
“Go!” I shouted.
Katria hesitated only a moment before running for the side corridor. Fenrir released the body and followed. I turned to block the archway, giving her those precious seconds.
The frostlight along my arms flared bright enough to blind. I didn’t think; I let Winter speak for me. The last thing I saw before I turned to follow her was the frost sealing the hall behind us like a closing wound.
We ran. Past the galleries, down the servants’ stair, through the lower gate where the aurora burned crimson over the peaks. The wind howled, carrying the faint sound of horns. The Frostfather’s guards were waking.
Katria stumbled once, catching herself on the ice. I caught her arm before she fell, and for a breath too long, I didn’t let go.
“Don’t look back,” I said. “The Frostwood will hide us if we reach it before dawn.”
“And if we don’t?”
“Then the dawn won’t matter.”
She nodded once. Determined. Terrified. Beautiful.
We kept running, the world ahead glowing faintly red beneath the aurora, the snow whispering under our boots as the Winter Court behind us began to crack.