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The snow falls like ash all around me, thick and relentless. Each step is a battle against knee-deep drifts that seem to grab at my legs, trying to drag me down into their frozen depths. My borrowed boots—stolen from a dead soldier outside Millrath's walls—have long since soaked through, leaving my feet numb and clumsy as I forge ahead through the desolate forest.

I've lost track of how long I've been walking. Days blend into weeks, marked only by the endless cycle of dawn and dusk, each sunrise bringing a colder wind than the last. The forest stretches endlessly before me, a maze of black tree trunks against white snow, their bare branches clawing at a steel-gray sky.

Something is wrong with this winter.

I feel it in my bones, in the way the storms follow me like hungry wolves, growing stronger with each surge of fear or exhaustion that ripples through me. The snow falls harder when I stumble, when my resolve weakens. Sometimes, in the dead of night while huddled beneath pine boughs, I could swear I hear the wind whispering my name.

I curl around my midsection and try to remember how to breathe on those nights. I have one sole thing in this world to protect, I know. One purpose, a lone pillar in the endless cold.

My magic, once dormant, though it seems a lifetime ago, now pulses beneath my skin like a second heartbeat. It responds to every emotion, every fragment of fear or anger or despair. Each day I can feel it tearing at something inside me like delicate lace, a barrier I had not previously known was there; of course, now I know. All I have in the long, cold nights is this knowledge, my deep, eerie certainty that something is coming apart. I try to control the force of it, to keep it contained, but it slips free anyway—wild and untamed as the ancient power that flows through my veins.

The forest has grown preternaturally quiet tonight, as if holding its breath. No birds call, no small creatures rustle through the underbrush. Even the wind seems muffled, creating an eerie stillness that makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up. I've learned to trust the feeling in my gut during these silences, or perhaps simply the silences themselves—they usually mean soldiers are nearby, combing the wilderness for any sign of their runaway queen. I can kid myself into believing the storm is quelling to warn me, sheltering me in the eye of the hurricane. Or perhaps it, too, wishes that I be found and dragged back south to my gilded cage.

But the wind does not know I am queen. The thought is a scant comfort.

I pause to catch my breath, leaning against a massive pine tree, listening hard. Its rough bark bites into my shoulder through the layers of stolen clothes—a guard's leather jerkin beneath a refugee's worn cloak. Neither meant for this kind of cold. My hand drifts unconsciously to my stomach, still flat beneath the leather, though I know what grows there. Their presence is sharply rendered in my mind every day, stronger all the time.

"We'll be alright," I whisper into the cold, breath turning silver upon the air. My voice sounds small and lost in the vast silence.

What pitiful words they are. What a pitiful thing I have become. At least I am free, I think, wildly, furiously. At least I am free.

But where might house me now? Who would take me, this thing I have become, the danger it brings? Where could I possibly escape from the fearsome cold, the near-endless night? Essenborn, my home village, now merely rubble, is west of where I stand. I know Fort Caddell lies somewhere ahead, further north, beyond these endless trees at the foothills of the jagged mountains that loom on the horizon like teeth of the jaws closing endlessly around this nation. The last human stronghold in Kaldoria, where dragons are forbidden to enter. It might offer sanctuary, if I can reach it before Arvoren's forces find me. If the brutal cold doesn't claim me first.

Arvoren . His name sends a painful twinge through my chest. In my weaker moments, usually in the dark hours before dawn, I let myself remember: the warmth of his arms around me, the fierce protectiveness in his golden eyes, the way his voice softened when he spoke my name. But those memories are dangerous. They make me want impossible things.

A distant horn blast shatters the silence, sending my heart racing. The sound echoes through the trees, followed by answering calls that seem to come from all directions at once.

They're closer than I thought. I have to move.

I push away from the tree, forcing my frozen legs to move. The snow is falling faster now, responding to my fear, thick flakes swirling around me in a dizzying dance. My magic rises unbidden, making the temperature plummet until the very air seems to crack with the cold.

The horns sound again, closer this time. The soldiers are coordinating, moving in formation through the forest. Hunting. Always hunting—hunting me, though I know they do not know I’m here. They’re hunting me everywhere, I know. Across all of Kaldoria, they howl my name, or the only name that matters now: heretic, heretic, heretic .

I stumble forward, no longer trying to be quiet. Speed matters more than stealth now. The snow pulls at my feet, dragging me down, each step requiring more effort than the last. My breath comes in ragged gasps that tear at my throat. The cold seems to reach inside me, turning my lungs to ice.

Through the curtain of snow, I catch glimpses of movement—dark shapes moving between the trees, too precise to be shadows. The soldiers are spreading out, trying to encircle their prey. Me.

My grandmother's voice echoes in my memory. Magic responds to need, little one. The greater the need, the stronger it flows. At the time, I cared not for the meaning of her words, nor why she suspected I might need them. I only wished to hide in the soft warmth of her voice.

Somehow, she must have sensed that need would arise someday in me. I need it now. Need it desperately.

I reach deep inside myself, past the exhaustion and fear, past the bone-deep cold, to that well of power that broke free in Millrath, worlds away from this place. It shies for a single moment from my grasp, a startled animal. Then, seeming to sense I am as desperately afraid and furious as it is, it rises eagerly, too eagerly, surging through my veins like liquid fire.

My ears begin to ring. As my vision spots with black, tiny dots swimming up into my sight, I hear shouting in the trees, though I cannot see what is happening. The wind howls and my legs tingle fiercely, then my arms, then my entire body.

The world disappears into white. I hear more shouts of alarm from the soldiers as their carefully coordinated hunt dissolves into chaos—a distant scream, a harrowing yelp from a hunting dog. The smell of death. The wind howls, drowning out their voices, driving the snow horizontally through the trees with enough force to strip bark from trunks.

Something in the back of my brain, the strain of animal instinct we all have within ourselves, tells me to run.

I run. Or try to. My legs are leaden, my whole body trembling with the effort of maintaining whatever fury my power has unleashed upon the forest. The ringing gets louder. I feel tiny, sharp skittering like static electricity in all my limbs now, travelling up and down. Too much. It's too much power, too fast. But I can't stop. Can't let them find me. Can't let them take me back to him.

Can’t let them hurt my child.

A wave of nausea hits without warning. I stumble, catching myself against a tree as my stomach heaves. Nothing comes up. I haven't eaten since yesterday. The storm falters with my lack of concentration, the wind dying momentarily.

Through the trees, I hear the stampeding of horses, the single distant, solitary crack of an arrow hitting something hard not far from me. A brief, sharp snap of laughter echoing in the night. A viscerally angry shout, then dozens of voices calling out to regroup.

Heretic, heretic.

Something shifts inside me then, a strange pulse of awareness that makes me gasp. The magic flowing through my veins feels different suddenly—wilder, more unpredictable. There is an untold well inside me. I feel it and know it all at once, as if it has been there for some time now. An untold beacon of force, pushing out from me.

The temperature drops so rapidly that tree branches in all directions crack and shatter in the cold. Their breaking sounds ring like thunder in the eerie silence. There is suddenly no more shouting, no more stampeding. No more hunting. The hunt is over.

I press myself against the ancient trunk of a massive pine, trying to steady my breathing, to rein in this savage power somehow, though it is far too large for me; I feel its furious shrieking and straining like a physical tearing. But it's too late—I can feel the winter deepening around me, spreading outward like ripples in a pond.

This storm is mine, born of my fear and desperation, but it's growing beyond my control.

Voices carry through the whiteout, closer now. But they are not the voices of the hunt, now dead. They are not even the voices of the dead.

Mine, Arvoren says in my mind, in my soul. Little bird.

I hold my breath, pressing deeper into the shadows of the ancient forest. Only the gods could possibly know why I am so afraid. There is nothing to be afraid of here, naught but the dead. The thick trunk shields me from view as dark shapes seem to flurry past in the wind, barely visible through the curtain of snow. My heart hammers against my ribs, every beat seeming to echo in the strange silence.

Time stretches like frozen honey as I wait, scarcely daring to breathe. My legs tremble with exhaustion, and I can feel sweat freezing on my skin despite the bitter cold. The child's presence feels stronger somehow, as if they know we're in danger. As if they’re lending me their strength, helping me stay conscious even as my body screams for rest.

Gradually, the shadows seem to fade, moving deeper into the forest. Somewhere far beyond this stretch of woods, soldiers are still searching, but here, I am alone. Not even ghosts linger to watch me tread stubbornly on.

I wait longer still, counting my heartbeats.

“It’s okay,” I find myself murmuring, over and over, time and again, into the eerie quiet. I’m not sure whether I’m speaking to myself or my child. “It’s okay. It’s all going to be alright. It’s okay.”

When I finally dare to move, my muscles protest every motion. I push away from the tree, stumbling slightly as a fresh wave of dizziness washes over me. The magic is still there, humming beneath my skin, but it feels muted now, drained. Like me.

I need shelter. Need rest and warmth and food, or neither of us will survive another night in this wilderness.

As if in answer to my desperate thoughts, a glimmer of gold catches my eye through the trees, far in the distance, set against a far-away hill—warm and steady, unlike the harsh white of snow-reflected sunlight.

Lamplight. Or firelight. Somehow, my fury did not snuff it out.

My breath catches in my throat. After so many days of endless forest, the sight of that gentle glow feels impossible, like a mirage or a fever dream. But as I squint through the falling snow, I can make out more details: the dark bulk of a building, smoke rising from a chimney to disappear into the white sky.

Every instinct screams that this is dangerous. Any shelter could be a trap, any warmth a lure to draw me into the open. But what choice do I have? My body is failing, the child sapping what little strength remains. I won't survive another night exposed to this cold, especially not with my magic so volatile, so hungry for release.

I take a hesitant step toward the light, then another. The glow seems to beckon, promising warmth and safety, though I know better than to trust such promises. Still, I move forward, drawn like a moth to flame.

The storm eases slightly as I trek toward the distant glow, as if my magic recognizes the possibility of sanctuary. Through the thinning snowfall, I can see eventually that it's a house—large and well-built, with thick stone walls and heavy shutters drawn against the cold. Smoke curls from two chimneys, and lamplight spills from gaps in those shutters, painting the snow in stripes of amber.

Beyond it, a handful of other tiny golden lights glimmer through the night. A village, albeit a tiny one. Perhaps close enough to Fort Caddell that it may be a human village. Wishful thinking on my part, I know. Yet I wish fiercely for an ally.

I pause at the edge of the clearing, my hand resting protectively over my stomach. Everything in me yearns to rush forward, to pound on that solid wooden door and beg for shelter. But I force myself to wait, to watch. To be sure.

No soldiers' horses in the yard. No tracks in the fresh snow save those of wildlife. No sign that anyone has passed this way recently. Just a house, isolated and somehow untouched by the chaos that's consumed the rest of Kaldoria.

I take a deep breath of knife-sharp air, steeling myself for whatever comes next. Then I step out of the forest's shadows and into the light, knowing that this choice—like so many before it—could mean either salvation or doom.

But I'm out of options, out of time, out of strength. Whatever waits behind that door, it has to be better than freezing to death in the endless dark of the forest. Not even the storm that has, for reasons beyond my comprehension, shielded me from harm will shield me from that fate.

Holding fast to my faltering bravery, I move forward into the light.