The cold became a living thing.
It wasn't just the temperature, which plunged until the air itself felt like shards of glass in the lungs. It was the sound of the cold—a deep, resonant silence so profound it seemed to swallow all noise except the crunch of hooves on permafrost and the endless sigh of the wind through the pine needles. It was the light—a diffuse, silver-grey glow that made everything look etched in metal, shadows long and deep blue.
Naevia wore the cold like a second skin. She sat straighter in the saddle, her eyes constantly moving, reading the forest, the sky, the tracks in the snow. She was home, and home was a battlefield.
Zane, to her growing astonishment, did not complain. He didn't shiver violently. He didn't ask for extra furs. He simply pulled his grey cloak tighter, his white hair stark against the endless grey and white, and observed. He asked fewer questions now. He just watched.
On the afternoon of the second day beyond the Sentinel Wall, they found the river.
Or what was left of it.
The Ironflow was usually a torrent of meltwater and runoff, a roaring barrier across the path to Frostveil Keep. Now, it was a jagged, chaotic sculpture of ice. Massive plates had buckled and rammed into each other, forming a treacherous, uneven bridge across the gorge. The water still ran beneath, a dark, hungry murmur.
"The ford is gone," Naevia stated, dismounting. She approached the edge, her boots cracking the thin ice at the rim. "The early freeze was violent. It shattered the ice sheet."
"We go around?" Zane asked, coming to stand beside her.
"Adds three days. We don't have three days." Her jaw tightened. "We cross here."
She turned back to the horses, untying a coil of thick, hemp rope from her saddle. "We tether the horses. We go across on foot, leading them. One slip means a broken leg, or a fall into the water beneath. You will freeze and drown in minutes."
"Sounds invigorating," Zane murmured, eyeing the chaotic jumble of ice blocks. Some were the size of carriages, tilted at insane angles.
Naevia tied one end of the rope around her waist, then threw the coil to him. "Tie this. Keep ten feet of slack between us. Step where I step. Move when I move. Do not look down. Do not rush."
Zane tied the rope with a quick, efficient knot that made her pause for a fraction of a second. It was a sailor's knot. A soldier's knot. Not the knot of a pampered Capital idler.
She pushed the thought aside. "Follow."
The crossing was a nightmare of slow, deliberate agony. Every step was a calculation. The ice was not smooth; it was rough, frosted, and treacherously slick in patches. Wind howled through the gorge, threatening to pluck them from their precarious perches. Her horse, trained for this, picked its way with nervous care. Zane's dun gelding balked at the edge, eyes rolling.
"Come on, friend," Zane said, his voice calm, almost conversational. He gave a gentle, steady pull on the reins. "It's just a bit of uneven pavement. Think of the apples on the other side."
Miraculously, the horse followed.
They were halfway across, on a relatively flat but sloping plate of ice, when Naevia heard it. A deep, internal crack, like a giant's bone breaking.
The ice beneath her feet shifted.
Her instincts screamed. She didn't jump—a sudden move could collapse the whole fragile balance. She shifted her weight, spreading her stance, becoming part of the moving surface. "Zane! Hold position!"
Behind her, she felt the rope go taut. He had stopped.
The ice plate settled with a groaning sigh, now tilted five degrees more. A new, black fissure snaked across its surface, right between her and the horses.
"We can't go forward," she called back, her voice low and steady. "The fracture leads to a weak zone. We must go back three steps and take the lower path to the left."
"Understood," his reply came, calm as if discussing a change in dinner plans.
Retreating on ice was harder than advancing. Her heart hammered against her ribs, not from fear for herself, but from the catastrophic responsibility of it all. If he died here, a fool she brought into the North, it would be another failure. Another life lost under her command.
They inched back. Step by agonizing step. The wind stole their breath. Her fingers, gripping the horse's bridle, went numb.
Finally, they reached the safer, lower path—a series of smaller, more stable-looking blocks leading to the far side. The last challenge was a gap. A three-foot chasm of open, black, rushing water between two ice floes.
Naevia took a running start and jumped, leading her horse. It leaped with her, landing with a heavy thud and a skitter of hooves on the other side. She turned, breathing hard, steam billowing from her lips.
"Your turn! Untie the rope and throw the end to me! Then jump!"
Zane stood on the other side of the gap, the rope still around his waist, his gelding beside him. He looked at the gap, then at the icy water below, then at her.
And he smiled.
"Complicated," he said. Then, instead of untying the rope, he coiled the slack in his hand. He took three steps back on the unstable ice.
"What are you doing?!" Naevia shouted, a spike of real fear piercing her cold control.
"Simplifying!"
He ran forward, not toward the gap, but parallel to it, along the very edge of his ice floe. At the last second, he planted his foot and leaped—not across the gap, but down, onto a small, lone pillar of ice in the middle of the black water. It was a suicidal move. The pillar shouldn't have held his weight.
It did.
He didn't pause. In one continuous, fluid motion, he pushed off the pillar, launching himself upwards and across the remaining distance. He landed lightly on her side of the gap, bending his knees to absorb the impact. The rope, which he had never untied, snapped taut behind him.
His gelding, on the other side, saw its master on the far bank. It gave a loud, anxious whinny, pawed at the ice, and then, with a surge of powerful muscle, jumped the gap itself, clearing the black water easily to land beside Zane.
The whole maneuver had taken less than five seconds.
Naevia stood frozen, not from the cold. She stared at him. He stood there, brushing a bit of frost from his cloak, his breathing slightly elevated. He looked at the chasm, then at her, and winked.
"See? Simple."
The casual, impossible physicality of it. The perfect confidence. The sheer, absurd luck of that ice pillar holding...
"You..." she began, her voice a rasp. "You could have died."
"But I didn't." He walked up to her, untying the rope from his waist. His amber eyes were bright, alive with the thrill of it. "And we saved time. And my horse got some excellent exercise. Everyone wins."
He was insane. Or he was something else entirely.
She couldn't process it. Not here. Not now. She snatched the rope from him, her numb fingers fumbling. "Do not ever do something that stupid again. You are under my command. Your life is not yours to gamble."
The words were her father's. They tasted like ash.
Zane's smile softened, just a little. "Noted, Boss."
They made the final climb to the far bank in silence. The rest of the journey to Frostveil Keep was a blur of cold and swirling thoughts for Naevia.
Frostveil Keep did not rise from the landscape. It clawed its way out of it.
Built into the side of a mountain, it was a grim fusion of black basalt and ancient, enchanted ice. Its walls were sheer, its towers like broken teeth against the grey sky. Smoke, thin and precious, rose from a few chimneys. The great gate, banded with iron, was shut.
As they approached, a horn blew from the battlements—a low, mournful sound that echoed through the valley. Slowly, with the groan of frozen machinery, the gate began to rise.
A figure stood in the opening, backlit by the torches within. A big man, broader than he was tall, wearing a battered captain's armor and a beard thick with ice. In his hands was a heavy war axe.
Naevia rode up to the gate and stopped.
The man's eyes, small and fierce like a boar's, swept over her. Relief warred with grim assessment. Then they moved to Zane, and the relief died, replaced by pure, unadulterated suspicion.
"Duchess," the man rumbled, his voice like stones grinding. "You're back early. And you brought... a guest." The word 'guest' was pronounced like 'plague'.
"Captain Erikson," Naevia said, dismounting. "This is Zane. He is my new personal attendant. He will be assisting with our... situation."
Erikson didn't move. His eyes raked over Zane's fine clothes, his lack of weapons, his perfect, unmarked face and white hair. "An attendant." He said it flatly. "From the Capital."
"Yes."
"We are drowning in ice and ogres, and you bring us a... a singer?" The contempt was hot enough to melt the ice on his beard.
Zane dismounted, his movements easy. He walked up to Erikson, stopping just outside the range of the axe. He smiled, that bright, Capital smile, utterly out of place in the grim courtyard.
"Captain! A pleasure. I don't sing, I'm afraid. My talents are more... administrative. And I make a mean cup of tea. I hear it's helpful for thawing out frozen dispositions."
The courtyard, where a handful of hard-bitten soldiers and servants had gathered, went utterly silent.
Erikson's face darkened to the colour of old brick. He looked past Zane to Naevia. "My Lady. A word. Inside. Now."
He turned and stomped into the keep, not waiting for a reply.
Naevia closed her eyes for a second. She felt the weight of every starving face, every crumbling wall, every mile of lost territory. And now, she had brought a beautiful, chaotic stranger into the heart of it.
She looked at Zane. He was watching Erikson's retreating back with an expression of mild curiosity, as if studying an interesting breed of angry badger.
"Stay here," she ordered. "Do not move. Do not talk to anyone."
"Wouldn't dream of it," Zane said, clasping his hands behind his back, the picture of obedient innocence.
Naevia followed Erikson into the dark, cold throat of her home, the dread in her stomach heavier than any sword.
In the courtyard, Zane—Emperor Voren—stood still, letting the true cold of the North seep into his bones. He looked up at the oppressive sky, at the grim faces of the soldiers who watched him with open hostility, at the sheer, stark struggle for survival etched into every stone of the keep.
The last trace of his playful smile faded, replaced by something ancient and thoughtful.
"It's worse than the reports," he murmured to himself, so softly only the wind could hear. "So much worse."
His amber eyes, for a fleeting moment, were not the eyes of a bored emperor or a playful attendant.
They were the eyes of a man looking at a broken piece of his realm, and calculating the cost to fix it.