Evren
Ten winters since she vanished, and my people still looked at me like I could pull her back with a word.
I braced my hands on the stone rail of the balcony and watched the snow fall over the Everfrost. The storm obeyed the wards, drifting in slow spirals above the courtyards, never quite touching the inner walls. To anyone else, it would look like beauty. To me, it looked like a clock.
Ten Solstices.
The Fates had said that if her soul was strong enough to escape the Hollow Frost, she would return on the tenth. The same night she’d first appeared—strange, furious, alive. If not, she was gone. Not dead, not really. Just… ground down into the dark until there was nothing left to remember.
I hadn’t asked them for that prophecy. They’d handed it to me anyway, like a knife I was supp
