Chapter 1:
Calla lay in the snowdrift and let the winter flurry settle in a thin outer coat on her back, tickling her long ears and eyelashes as she trained her ice bow on the snow leopard. The fae beast was nearly invisible, a ghost amongst the foothills and evergreens of the mountainous border separating the Winter and Autumn Courts. It made no sound as it slinked along the massive tree limb yards away, eyes locked on its prey: an elk out on the endless frozen lake.
The elk wouldn't run, of course; it wasn't real. She'd spun it from ice and snow, light and illusion. She hoped the distraction would be enough to land her shot. Once the leopard realized her trick, it would be hard to pin.
Squinting against the biting cold, Calla searched that feline face again, marking the scar that bisected its eye and curved along its cheek, courtesy of one of the Winter fairies. This snow leopard was a child killer, stalking her court's young despite the abundance of prey along the border lands. It had failed the first time it had attacked, but the last time… the last time it had been too late and the child had been lost.
The grief had been terrible. The loss of any fae child was terrible, but even more so when the slaughter of Winter's children under Amarantha's reign was only a few decades ago. Still fresh, still painful in the minds of the immortal fae.
The snow leopard was marked for death, and she would end it.
The beast's haunches bunched, ready for the spring. Calla let out an icy breath in response, turning her strung ice arrow the palest of blues—almost clear. It would be nearly invisible in the low light: a ghost to kill a ghost.
The leopard pounced, and she released the shot.
Too wide. It had struck its back thigh—a wound, but not a killing shot. She cursed, leaping up as the snow leopard regained its footing, snarling as it stood within the shattered remains of her elk illusion.
Calla strung another arrow, pacing a circle around it. Cauldron, it was huge. Easily 160 pounds and five feet in length—the largest snow leopard she'd ever seen.
It bared its fangs, watching her with those luminous eyes. The light was fading fast now, the sun cresting the mountain peaks. Soon the only light would be from the distant stars above. There would be no moon tonight.
Calla shifted her weight as she came to a stop, her back to the ice. She gripped her magic, the deathly cold, the wind and snow. Her inheritance. She would not falter; she would not flinch. She would be as the snow: silent, unseen. Deadly.
The leopard leaped for her.
She couldn't help but gasp as she shot for its chest, even as she stepped back onto that dark ice, its power resonating up her legs to her very core. The ice bolt hit the leopard's chest with a thump, but still the beast did not stop. It was going to hit her, sink its claws into her, but then—she vanished, winnowing several yards away, farther out on the ice.
Ice shards sticking out from its leg and chest, the snow leopard barely stopped, barely faltered as it changed its direction and charged her.
She hadn't accounted for that speed, that grace.
Before she could breathe, before she could call upon the ice beneath her feet, it landed on top of her, snapping her bow and pushing her down, down, its claws tearing the light armor at her shoulders and sinking in. She screamed.
There was red—blood, so much of it, but she couldn't know whose it was anymore, and she couldn't bring herself to care.
The snow leopard was going for her throat.
Ice, snow, crack and flow, her mind chanted, sang out to the lake.
Please, please.
Spinning an ice shard out of air, she swung for the leopard's throat as it came down—
And landed her mark as the ice gave out beneath them and the world turned cold and wet and black.
—-
The world beneath the ice was silent, dark and deep.
And so unbearably cold, even for her.
Across from her in that dark womb, the snow leopard slowed and stilled, its mouth still opened in that final snarl of defeat. Dead.
And if she didn't move, didn't reach that surface, she would be too. She let her magic flow out of her as her fingers skimmed the underside of the ice. It was rough and pitted, so different than that deceptive smoothness above. Except for the spot she'd broken through, the ice was easily a foot thick, and even her entry point had frozen over again.
She sent that magic pulsing out of her, asking the ice, begging it, to weave to her will, to spin apart and together in a different way. A pocket, a gap, something to get her out, out, out. Her chest felt like it was caving in, her sight was darkening, and she wanted desperately to gasp for air that wasn't there. She would die here, beneath the ice, and no one would ever know what had happened to her.
The ice was giving, thinning beneath her hand. Too slow.
Spin, weave, set me free. Ice and… ice…
Her mouth opened. The water came in, icy death come to claim.
Her hand broke through the ice.
She clung to the thin layer of snow above. She was choking, drowning, oh Cauldron. Calla blindly shot out her other hand, pushing the ice back, willing it to part like a blanket, like a caul, like a shroud, and somehow—somehow she was able to pull herself up enough to breathe.
She threw up water. She couldn't remember how to pull in air. Everything was numb and dark and she had to get out, had to pull herself out before her muscles locked up completely, ice magic be damned.
Nails scrabbling against the ice, she used the last of her power to create chinks in the ice, hand holds for her to grip as she slowly pulled herself from that small hole in the unforgiving ice.
Heaving herself onto her back, she looked up at those cold, bright stars far above, the only witnesses at the edge of that watery grave. She let their familiar light caress her frigid skin as she remembered how to breathe. In and out, in…
She had begun to fall into a dangerous sleep when she heard a clatter and a startled gasp somewhere behind her, and then—
"Calla!"a familiar female voice broke the night. "Cauldron, you idiot, what did you do? I've been winnowing looking everywhere for you! Everyone's been frantic…"
Hands were heaving her into an upright position, and she was looking at gray eyes in a heart-shaped face dusted with freckles like freshly fallen snow—the face of her best friend in the entire world. Oh thank the gods…
"Hi, Varya," she whispered, and grinned like an idiot.
"What were you doing?" Varya hissed, patting at Calla's clothes. "Are you hurt? There's so much blood…"
"That would mostly be from the dead snow leopard," Calla muttered. "I think it got my shoulders, but it's hard to tell how ba—"
"What snow leopard? Where is it?"
Calla looked down at the ice beneath them, and Varya muttered a stream of curses that would make even the Winter guard raise their brows. For all her pretty face, Calla could curse with the best of them.
"Let me get this right," Varya said, shaking her head, even as she tentatively touched Calla's shoulders with her healer's hands, sending blessed relief into the gashes Calla hadn't realized she'd still felt. "You fought a snow leopard and trapped it beneath the ice? Wait, you didn't—of course you did, you're soaked. Gods, Kallias is going to kill me, and your mother—"
Calla placed a calming hand on Varya's shoulder. "And why would they blame you? It's not your fault what I do on border patrol."
Varya raised a pale blond brow. "No, but I am the one that told them to let you go tonight of all nights."
Calla stared at her blankly. "What do you mean—"
"Don't tell me you forgot it was tonight. Calla, you had one job."
Oh gods, no. No, no, no, that couldn't be tonight. They couldn't be coming tonight—in the thrill of the chase she had completely forgotten, and it had to be closing in on midnight…
"Please," she whispered, "no—"
"The High Lord and High Lady of the Night Court—"
"Are waiting at the Winter Palace," a new voice cut in. Deep, smooth, and utterly male, that voice was one she hadn't heard in years, but it was impossible to forget. It set her blood boiling just hearing it. Why him? Anyone but him.
If Rhysand and Feyre had arrived, then that meant that the male standing behind Varya could only be—
"Hello, Calla," he crooned.
And indeed, looking beyond Varya's shoulder, she met the crushing blue eyes and the sardonic smirk of the male who had come to retrieve them: none other than the heir of the Night Court himself.
"Cian."