The aurora split the night like a silent wound—green veining through black, trembling over the frozen field where a hundred Northerners waited. Snow crackled under their boots. The bonfire at the center roared high enough to twist shadows into giants, but its heat died long before reaching the ring of ice where the candidates gathered.

  Elowen stood close to boys barely older than Lucan. Their breath ghosted out in quick, sharp bursts. Beyond them, broad-shouldered warriors watched with arms crossed, measuring each face with cool indifference. A few foreigners lingered at the edges, eyes wide, jaws tight with the kind of fear people tried to hide and always failed to.

  Thyra rolled her neck beside Elowen, as if preparing for a fistfight rather than a ritual.

  “Listen carefully, princess. This one kills the stupid.”

  “Lovely,” Elowen said. “A fitting end for me, then.”

  Thyra’s grin was all teeth. “First drum, you run. Reach the lake before the third or you’re out. The ice before the water’s thin—listen for the groan before it breaks. If you’re smart, you dodge it. If you’re not… you go through.”

  “And the water?” Elowen asked.

  “You wade in to your shoulders. Fill your lungs. Fourth drum, go under. You stay until the eighth. No earlier. And while you’re down there, find three stones. No stones, no honor. Come up too soon?” Thyra made a slicing motion across her throat. “You’ll wish the cold had killed you.”

  Elowen forced a swallow, slow. “And after?”

  Thyra pointed down the dark sheet of lake toward the far shore. “Floating ice pads. You jump across. Still carrying your stones. Drop one, you go back. Then you climb that thing.”

  A pale lump rose beyond the torches—a jagged wall of packed frost carved into narrow rungs.

  “The frost ladder. Slick, mean, unforgiving. Fall once, you start again. Fall twice…” She shrugged. “The North respects effort. But it only follows victors.”

  “How many make it to the end?” Elowen asked before she could stop herself.

  “Less than you want to hear.” Thyra smacked her shoulder affectionately. “Try not to drown. I’m not done beating you up.”

  Across the field, Roderic stood with the elders— the breeze lifted the hem of his cloak in restless flicks, jaw set in a way that looked carved. His gaze found Elowen. For a moment, something unguarded flickered there.

  The eldest of the Northerners stepped forward. His voice carried like a blade across the ice.

  “Tonight, you face the Breath of Winter. You cannot hide from it. You cannot plead with it. You endure—or you don’t.”

  A ripple of grim amusement passed through the crowd.

  Elowen flexed her fingers. They already ached from the cold.

  “Eyes forward,” Thyra murmured. “Not on the fire. Not on the distance. Just the next step.”

  Elowen nodded. “The next step.”

  The elders lifted their drumsticks.

  The first beat landed like a strike across the earth.

  Candidates surged forward in a wave of boots and desperate breath. Elowen’s pulse jolted. Snow tore under her feet as she sprinted. Air sliced her lungs raw.

  Second beat.

  The ground shifted in color—the safe snow giving way to the sheen of lake ice. Dark. Thin. Shining like glass under the aurora’s glow.

  A sharp crack split the cold. Someone yelled. Ice gave way behind her, swallowing a man to the waist. He screamed as the cold seized his bones.

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  Elowen didn’t slow. She shortened her stride—the thief in her remembering collapsing roofs and treacherous planks.

  Groan. Under her right foot.

  She leapt lightly sideways. A jagged split opened where she’d been moments before.

  Bodies moved around her—some sure-footed, some slipping, some plunging through and dragging themselves out. Every step was a gamble. Every breath was a fight.

  Third beat.

  She hit thick ice at last, chest heaving.

  “Into the water!” an elder barked.

  The lake swallowed her in a single, merciless breath. It bit through boots, wool, skin, thought. By the time she reached chest-deep, her ribs seized as if the cold had welded them shut.

  Her lungs strained against the cold.

  Fill them. Once. Twice.

  The fourth beat struck.

  She went under.

  The cold wasn’t cold. It was pain sharpened to a single, perfect point. Her body convulsed as every instinct screamed to surface—now, now, NOW.

  No.

  She forced her hands to the bottom. Stones scraped beneath her fingers, rough and shifting. She grasped one.

  One.

  Her grip felt foreign, numb, as if the stone belonged to someone else.

  Her chest convulsed again. Her mouth nearly opened on instinct.

  She clamped it shut.

  Her fingers brushed another stone.

  Two.

  Her lungs were fire. Panic flared hot, wild.

  Move. Move now—

  No.

  Not yet.

  She swept her hand across the lakebed. Nothing. Silt. Her nails bent against something buried. She dug, pain lancing up her fingers even through the numbness. The stone came loose.

  Three.

  Her body made the decision for her. She kicked upward, breaking the surface with a gasp that stabbed like knives.

  “Move!” someone yelled. “Pads!”

  She stumbled toward the ice platforms—pale shapes drifting on the water’s surface. A woman ahead of her jumped and nearly slid off, arms thrashing. Someone else slipped entirely and vanished under the water. Shouts rose from the shore.

  Elowen dragged herself onto the first pad. It lurched violently. She bent her knees, let it move under her. A thief’s balance—yielding first, then correcting.

  The next pad smacked into the first. She jumped. Landed wrong. One stone skittered toward the edge. She lunged, fingers closing over it just before it slid away.

  “Don’t think,” she muttered. “Move.”

  Pad.

  Pad.

  Leap.

  Slip—brace—recover.

  Behind her, another pad cracked clean in half beneath a girl. She screamed, swallowed water, then was dragged onto a remaining pad by two strangers.

  Elowen didn’t look back.

  The last pad pitched dangerously under her weight. She threw herself to shore, hitting hard enough to rattle her ribs. The breath tore out of her lungs in steam.

  “Ladder!” someone roared.

  The frost ladder rose above her like a pale spine, its rungs hacked into the ice with cruel economy.

  Three stones. Altar. Before the drums end.

  Elowen’s legs trembled as she staggered toward the wall.

  Her palms hit the ice. It burned—an agony that felt like fire turned inside out. Her fingers refused to grip properly. She splayed them wide, relying on friction, will, desperation.

  “Climb,” she whispered.

  Hands.

  Feet.

  Groan.

  Hands.

  Feet.

  Her shin slammed a rung. Pain burst white behind her eyes. She bit down on the sound threatening to escape.

  Someone above her slipped and fell—crashing past her, hitting the ground with a thud that made her bones flinch. Two people dragged the fallen climber out of the way.

  Halfway up, her right hand slid free.

  Her body swung away from the ladder—dangling, boots scraping against thin air.

  If she fell now, she’d never climb again.

  Her throat tightened. The old voice whispered: You’re alone. No one is coming. Let go.

  She bared her teeth.

  “No.”

  She slammed her palm back to the wall, fingers spread wide. Her toes found the barest edge of a rung. She pulled herself close and held, panting.

  “You’ve survived worse,” she told herself. “This is just cold. Just cold.”

  The last few rungs blurred into instinct.

  Then—open sky. She dragged herself over the lip and collapsed onto the frost, vision flickering at the edges.

  “Stones!” someone barked. “Altar! Drum’s still going!”

  Naturally. Everything else keeps moving, whether I can or not.

  She shoved herself onto her feet—one staggering step after another—toward the altar.

  One stone slid from her grip.

  Then another.

  The third nearly rolled off the cliff entirely. She crawled after it, numb hands digging into snow, breath sawing in and out of her chest.

  Her vision pulsed black.

  She grabbed the last stone.

  Forced herself up.

  Her arm trembled violently as she reached the altar and dropped all three stones—one rolling dangerously close before stopping on the far edge.

  The final drumbeat landed.

  Silence fell like snowfall—thick, absolute, echoing.

  “Elowen.”

  She blinked. Roderic was beside her, closer than she expected, and relief hit her hard enough to feel like pain. His expression was carved from fear he was trying very hard not to show.

  “You finished,” he said, voice low. “You’re done.”

  She looked at her hands—red, white, mottled, shaking. The stones under them. The proof.

  A laugh broke from her chest—thin, raw, half-sobbing.

  Then her knees gave out, and she let them.

  Roderic caught her before she faceplanted into the altar.

  The world wavered—torches smearing into streaks, aurora trembling overhead.

  She had no breath left.

  No strength left.

  But the stones were on the altar.

  And then everything went black.