by Emma Savant
My knees felt wobbly, and I had to fight the urge to run, or maybe to just sit here so I couldn’t get on the floe.
But I couldn’t be afraid. I didn’t have time. The entire world was on Santa’s shoulders, and I had to keep Frost occupied long enough to give him a shot at saving us all.
Knees still trembling, I stepped onto the bobbing sheet of ice. The instant my full weight was on the floe, it began floating off the way it had come.
My stomach churned like the waves the further I got from the shore. On every side, I was surrounded by a black sky and a blacker sea, with only the stars and the glow of the ice there to prove that my eyes weren’t squeezed shut.
I crouched to keep my balance. The thought of tumbling into the water filled me with terror. Why had I agreed to this? Why had anyone let me put myself in danger like this?
The floe picked up speed. Behind me, the shore looked as if it could slip off the horizon at any moment. Ahead, the dome shimmered.
I braced myself as the vast wall approached. At the last possible moment, when I was certain I would bounce against the translucent barrier and fall back into the freezing sea, an arch opened in the translucent surface.
I floated underneath the almost-invisible barrier. The edges of the opening glinted with white light, then fell closed behind me like curtains. The temperature instantly plummeted.
Whatever magic Frost was using to get in and out of Santa’s territory was powerful, and now there was nothing to shield me from it.
Another shore approached ahead of me. It was made of the same blue ice as the ground beneath the Workshop, but the building atop it looked nothing like the warm snowflake I’d lived in since I’d arrived here. It was a palace, shimmering with towers that spiked toward the sky as if they were trying to pierce their way through the stars.
The palace was beautiful in a way that filled me with dread. When the floe bumped gently against the ice sheet, I stood still for a moment. It was a hard decision: stay precariously floating over a bottomless dark sea, or approach a palace that held the most dangerous man I’d ever met?
They seemed equally likely to kill me.
I took a deep breath and told myself to stop it, that Santa was right behind me and that he wouldn’t have a shot at saving the world if I didn’t get in there and dangle myself in front of the ice prince like the mediocre distraction I was.
The phoenix down coat warmed me. My breath came out in a cloud of white, and still I stood on the floe, unable to force myself to put one foot in front of the other.
“Miss North,” a silky voice said.
The ice floe shifted under my feet as though it were impatient to head back out to sea, and I stumbled forward onto the solid ice of Frost’s domain. I caught my balance and shoved my hands into my pockets so he couldn’t see them trembling.
“Prince Frost,” I said.
All the time I’d spent faking a good mood for grocery store customers had paid off. My stomach might be ready to hurl its contents out to sea, but my voice was almost a match for Frost’s in its artificial pleasantness.
He smoothed the lapel of his ice blue suit. I cringed at the thought of being out here without a coat, and an enchanted one at that—but, of course, he embraced the cold.
“Please, call me Jack,” he said. “We’re friends now.”
“I’ve always wanted to have friends in high places,” I said. “Especially when they take me home.”
He smiled coolly, and I smiled back. The air between us remained frigid.
“Allow me to show you proper Arctic hospitality first.”
Frost turned on his heel. My spine stiffened.
“I thought I was here so you could give me a ride,” I said.
He didn’t say anything, just raised one hand without looking back and beckoned me to follow him. After a long moment of deliberation—was it worse to go with him or risk his anger by saying no?—I jogged to catch up with him.
He glanced back at me, and a sly smile curled the corners of his mouth.
“Is this your palace?” I said, like an idiot.
I glanced at the dark sea behind me. There was no sign of Santa, or of anyone familiar and safe.
“One of them,” he said. “I have a winter home in the Alps, and a retreat in Siberia. This is where I spend most of the year.”
“Looks cozy,” I said dryly.
He made a low noise that might have passed for a chuckle in someone else.
“Cozy is the old man’s domain,” he said. “Grandeur suits me better.”
“Is Santa really an old man?” I said. “I mean, compared to you?”
“He’s younger,” Frost said. “And yet, he still ended up with the creaky joints. Life is so unfair, isn’t it?”
The palace loomed above us with its surfaces of gleaming ice and opaque, glittering snow. The front steps squeaked under my feet, too cold to be slippery. The double doors, etched with an elaborate pattern of frost, swung open at a wave of his hand.
I followed him into an enormous entrance hall. Cobalt shadows collected in the corners of the vaulted ceiling, and the walls shimmered with silver. I couldn’t see a light source; instead, everything seemed to glow faintly blue as if reflecting moonlight.
He slowed, long enough to let me admire the space, then led me up a sweeping flight of stairs. I followed, cautiously. These stairs were more slippery than the ones outside had been, and I had to grab onto the carved railing for balance. The ice burned my hands and I quickly pulled them back.
Frost turned to look at me with one of his delicate eyebrows raised, and I noticed tiny little roses of frost spreading out from wherever his feet touched. He couldn’t slip; he carried his cold with him, and it was enough to give him friction no matter where he stepped.
I straightened and kept walking up the stairs, careful to keep my feet under me.
A long corridor at the top of the stairs led off into a hazy blue distance, but Frost stopped at an early archway and led me inside. Once I was in the room, he waved his hand. The clouds from my breath swirled in the air and spiraled into the archway, then solidified and hardened into a door of thin marbled ice.
I made a noise of protest and stepped toward the door, but Frost cleared his throat.
“Simply trying to protect you from drafts, Miss North,” he said. He eyed me up and down, his piercing blue eyes lingering for a long moment on my too-bright red coat. “You seem chilled.”
“It’s freezing.”
He nodded once, then stepped around me and pulled up a chair. The chair, like everything else, was made of ice, but the seat and back were draped with an enormous white fur. A polar bear’s pelt, maybe. I felt a moment of sadness for the bear, then an uncomfortable gratitude for the warmth it would provide as Frost waved me into the seat.
It was next to a fireplace, I realized. The irony of a fireplace made of hard-packed snow almost made me laugh. Was he trying to taunt me and make me realize how cold it was? Or did he realize my coat kept me warm, and was trying to put me in surroundings that felt familiar?
I settled carefully on the seat. Frost draped himself on the chair opposite me, which didn’t have a pelt to warm or soften it, and pointed at the fireplace. Blue flames sprung to life. I jumped and let out a soft cry, but the flames stayed small and contained. Frost blinked at me with an amused expression.
The flames didn’t give off any warmth, I realized, but they did provide light. I scrutinized Frost’s face in the pale glow.
“This isn’t Colorado,” I said.
He leaned back in his hard chair and crossed one leg elegantly over the other.
“Miss Frost, you are tenacious.”
“I want to go home,” I said.
“You’re not frightened of me, I hope?”
“Should I be?”
“What stories did the old man tell you?” Frost said. “That I freeze anyone who crosses my path? That I plan to send the whole world into a land of always winter, never Christmas?”
> “What?”
“It’s from a children’s book,” he said, waving a dismissive hand. “Claus’s stories are for children, too, or ought to be.” A flicker of judgment crossed his serene face, so faint it might have been a trick of the cool firelight. “My only interest in Claus was about my scepter. Now that I have that back, he and his army of innocents are welcome to make toys until they drive themselves mad. I don’t intend to trouble them again.”
“I don’t care what you’re going to do with them,” I said. I dug my fingers into the rough polar bear fur. It wasn’t warm, exactly, but it was warmer than any other surface in this room aside from me. “Claus is your business. I’m interested in whether you’re going to take me home.”
“That’s all?”
The intensity of his gaze belied his calm expression. I silently weighed how much I could lie to him, and how much he would see through me.
“I am worried about whether you’ll try to make everywhere feel like the Arctic,” I said. “This is pretty, don’t get me wrong, but I’m a human. We don’t eat if we don’t have summer.”
“I’m aware of your frailties,” Frost said. “Would it comfort you to know that I find them endearing?”
I pressed my lips together.
“Would you like a drink?” he said.
A high arched window was behind me, lined in filmy blue drapes. I’d glimpsed it when I’d come in, and now I could sense it behind me, just a thin pane of glistening ice and beyond it, the night sky. I ached to turn around and look through it—to scan the sky for Santa. I rubbed the polar bear fur between my fingers and forced my eyes to stay on Frost.
“No, thank you.”
“Are you sure?”
I nodded, and he shrugged slightly, his shoulders bony underneath his suit. He held up his hand and blew into it. A swirl of fog emerged from his thin lips and formed into a small glass, the same way my breath had formed into a door.
I glanced at the door, but it was still there and seemed solid, or at least like it would take a good kick to break through it.
Frost pointed a finger at the glass and it swirled with fog, which settled into a clear liquid.
“That’s a nice trick,” I said.
He took a long sip, closing his eyes to savor whatever it was.
“Couldn’t do it without my scepter,” he said. He swirled the drink in the glass. “That’s why we’re still here, by the way.”
“Because of your scepter?”
He dipped his head. “It’s been in the hands of the old man for too long. I intend to take it with me, but it needs time to readjust its magic to the magic here. It’s fussy like a wand that way.” He waited for a moment, then raised an eyebrow. “No, I don’t suppose that makes sense to you, either.”
“I’m a Humdrum,” I said with a shrug.
“How odd that must be.” He tapped his long fingers on the icy arm of his chair. “To have no concept of magic, no sense for how it works. Don’t you find it exhausting?”
“I find my life generally exhausting,” I said. “Maybe it would be different if I had magic.”
“Undoubtably.”
We looked at each other as a long silence settled between us. It was an awkward silence on my end, but his relaxed posture and the slight smile on his lips made me think that he didn’t feel the awkwardness—and had maybe never experienced awkwardness in his life.
I worried the coarse polar bear fur between my fingers. It was absolutely silent in this palace, aside from the occasional distant creak of ice settling. Every creak made me jump, which seemed to amuse Frost.
I had to keep him distracted. Silence wasn’t good.
“How long have you been here?” I said. “I got the impression Santa’s been where he is for a while.”
He thought about it. “You know, I couldn’t tell you,” he said after a few moments. “It’s been a devilish long while, I can say that much.”
“Are you an elf?” I said, although I already knew the answer. Anything to keep him talking. “Or something else?”
“I’m a frost sprite,” he said. “And no, our lives are generally not as long as mine. Being a prince comes with certain advantages. Or disadvantages, I suppose, depending on one’s outlook.”
“Advantages, for you,” I said. “You like being the prince.”
“Very much.”
He swallowed the last of his drink and leaned back in the chair. The hard surface looked uncomfortable to me, but his tall, thin body melded around it as though he were made of liquid or the same fog as my breath.
“What does being a prince involve?” I said. I looked around the quiet room. “It doesn’t look like you have a court.”
“Oh, I do,” he said. “Ordinarily. I sent them away. I needed to focus on getting my scepter back, and I couldn’t do that with every Glimmer who likes the cold vying for my attention. I suppose I ought to invite them all to return.”
He rubbed the arm of the chair and watched me.
Where was Santa?
I cast around for another question.
“So what do you—”
My voice died in the air. Footsteps sounded outside. I coughed and tried to cover the sound with my question, but Frost held up a slender hand before I could get a word in. He leaned on the edge of his seat, as poised as a cat.
A sharp bang sounded at the icy door, and I looked around the room. Santa had warned me that I’d need to get out of the way quickly when he showed up, and the only way out was through the door he was about to burst through.
The ice shattered. A woman with a cloud of red curls walked in, the stolen pole in her hand.
“Jack, what’s taking you so long?” she said.
She stopped and looked at me, and her face turned white under its freckles. I clenched my hand around a fistful of fur.
I felt my mouth drop open in surprise.
“Joy,” I said.
Chapter 25
Frost sighed and stood.
“Darling,” he said.
She grabbed his arm and pulled him roughly toward her.
“What is she doing here?” she hissed. “I thought she wasn’t supposed to get here until it was time to go.”
“I miscalculated how long the scepter would need to settle in and sent the floe too early,” Frost said. He took the pole from Joy and ran his fingers along its smooth surface as though he were stroking a lover. “It’s no great matter. We’ll leave soon.”
She raised her eyebrows at him, and he patted her cheek.
“Calm yourself,” he ordered coolly. “It’s not as if she can go running back to Santa now. You needn’t concern yourself with tattling.”
He threw off the word like it was distasteful, and I could imagine that, to him, it was. Tattling meant Santa had authority, and it was clear that Frost considered no one an authority but himself. Joy pursed her lips and nodded, and her eyes flickered briefly to me.
“Are you all right?” she said.
Her voice and expression were cautious but kind. That couldn’t be right. I squinted, trying to make sure it was really her, but her delicate face and large eyes were unmistakable.
How much did she know? What was she doing here? My mind couldn’t wrap around it.
She was here, and it didn’t seem like she’d been forced into the palace against her will.
Then again, neither had I.
“I’m fine,” I said. “Prince Frost is taking me home. I thought you didn’t want me talking to him.” I allowed myself the relief of a smile. “Although it looks like we’ve both been chatting with him more than we let on.”
She shrugged, but her shoulders relaxed.
“I didn’t think you should get involved,” she said. She put a protective hand on Frost’s arm. “Well, more to the point, I didn’t think Jack should get involved with you. It’s nothing against you, Holly,” she added quickly. “I really like you, I do. It’s just that you’re an outsider, and without the pole, Jack had one hand tied behind his bac
k. That wasn’t a time to be taking risks.”
“No reward comes without risks,” Frost said. He inclined his head to me. “I saw you as more of an opportunity.”
I forced myself to stay relaxed, to lean back in my seat and behave as though this were only a friendly chat instead of the dangerous dance it was.
“I thought it was Noelle,” I said. “Helping him.”
Joy laughed, the sound echoing off the high ceiling.
“She does seem like the type, doesn’t she?” She rolled her eyes. “Noelle would never, though. She’s a Santa’s girl through and through.”
“I thought you were, too,” I said.
She didn’t seem afraid of me, or like she was trying to threaten me. Instead, she came over and sat down cross-legged on Frost’s abandoned chair as though we were friends. I offered her the fur pelt, but she waved a hand.
“Jack’s loaded me up with spells to make this place more comfortable,” she said. “I’m so glad you thought that about me, Holly. It’s been so stressful trying to act like a loyal Workshop elf every day. I couldn’t talk to anyone. None of them would understand.”
I tilted my head. “Understand?”
She looked up at Frost, who was watching us as though we were a mildly entertaining television program. She smiled up at him, and he smiled back. The expression was almost—almost—warm.
“The pole never belonged with Santa,” Joy said. “Frost is the prince of his region. Just because an ancient faerie queen stole the pole from him, does that mean he should always be missing part of himself?”
“We certainly don’t think so,” Frost said.
He put a hand on Joy’s shoulder, and she patted the hand affectionately. Outside, a gust of wind whipped at the building. I couldn’t stop myself from turning to look, but there was no Santa, and no indication that he was coming.
“When you took the pole back,” I said. “Joy, you helped.”
“Of course,” she said. “When he appeared to you in the Christmas Eve closet, he was already in the Workshop.”
“Made the old man feel safe to think I was only a projection,” Frost said.
