e

y would look me in t

versations stopped when I came into a room and started again, softer, after I had passed. In the dining hall

ered, was that he had gone home to demand that I be thrown out. If that were true, it wouldn't have worked. Nobody c

in a house where something had broken upsta

ne and willed the floor to move. I tried to raise a single flake of frost

. The ice ignore

ugh. The ice had never moved while I was alone. It had moved in the Rime Hall because Vaelo

g time. A power that only woke when he was near wasn't a power I owned. It was one I borrowed, like a coat from a stranger, and a

what to do about it w

al red, and a crowd was already pressed around it. Nysselle shouldered her w

" she said. "They'r

he Glacie

t for thirty years. Something happened there, a whole class of third-years, and the school put up wards and swore never to open it again." She swallowed. "Now the Cr

's in

't embarrass us in front of the king's men." She scrubbed her face. "We're in

n my stomach, though I couldn't say why. Thaerion hadn't been put with us by the dra

use I had lain awake listening to forty first-yea

d it in silence with our breath rising in clouds. At the top the land fell away into a huge wall of blue-white ice, cracked

o men in royal grey at her shoulders and crowns embroidered on their sleeves. The o

to one side, ap

e from the side, and it stopped me in my tracks. He looked exhausted, and not the way a student looks bef

n in, but the cold crept along my collarbone as he walked, and when someth

t isn't a beast. It's older than that. It's awake, an

n't look at him. "Th

dmis

ked and found sound." Her mouth barely moved. "You will take your place and finish the tri

le jump in his cheek. He knew. I could see that he knew exactly how bad it w

other choice was to be called a coward by the people who ran his life. I understood that more th

s gaze with my heart pounding, and he walked all the way across the snow and st

said. "Don't wander off. If the

t give me

was rough, and he seemed to hea

them to me like that, as if my answer was something he might tr

the ice sin

"A name," he said, and he walked alon

nels we

light came from everywhere at once. Thaerion led the way with a small ball of lightning held in his palm. Nysselle clutched my elbow. Ou

had been smiling since we went in, smooth and

natural," s

e same easy voice, he said, "What do

ned. "I don't kno

to be careful." He glanced back, and for a moment the pleasantness thinned into

ust decent,"

ack to the tunnel. I felt very strongly

watchful. Nysselle's fingers tightened on my sleeve, and I knew she had felt it to

we passed a stretch where the blue was so clear I could see straight inside it, and there, caught in the wall at the height of my eye

bed the wall, and Nysselle said, "What? What i

frightened. It isn't one moment. It's a long string of small choices to pu

lve

d layered and so gentle that it frightened me more. It seemed to

ou are al

ok my arm. "You've g

second lie I had told her, and

it was changing, growing sharper and more urgent, pulsing to a rhythm I couldn't place. He was coming closer, or

ged note, and Thaerion's smile vanished. "That's the re

oor lu

e crystals rained from the roof. Nysselle screamed, and Thaerion grabbed her, and

an that. There was a voice inside it, a thousand voi

ld went white, and I felt Vaelor. He was so close and so powerful that

it st

nuffed out, or like a hand that had been gr

ay. The silence rushed in behind it. Nysselle was calling my name. Thaerion was

r the dead, empty place on my collarbone. I knew, with a certainty

n in the world who had f