The boy slept for three hours.
Faust held the old man through all of it.
Isbert's breath rasped in and out against his shoulder, shallower with each passing minute.
Neither man spoke.
There was nothing left that needed saying, and the dragon-cold of the undercroft pressed against them like a held hand.
Then, a little before dawn, Isfrid opened his eyes.
They were not quite the same eyes.
They were the same dark brown, but something moved behind them, something vast and slow and patient, and for a moment a pale light flickered in each iris like flame under ice.
On his right forearm, where Faust had bandaged him after the road, the linen had split. Beneath it, across the skin, a pattern of faint silver scales lay like frost on a window.
"I saw it," Isfrid whispered. "Grandfather. I saw it."
"Not it. He doesn't like being called like that. Did he speak?"
"No." Isfrid looked down at the cane, still steaming across his knees. "It looked at me. For a very long time. And then it..." He swallowed. "He let me touch its nose."
Isbert made a soft sound that might have been a laugh.
"That is all he ever does, with the ones he likes. When I die, you'll be able to fully embrace the power of Frost..."
Faust shifted, and the old man's head fell gently back against his arm.
Isfrid saw it then, saw the greyness in his grandfather's face, and rose from the plinth so fast the cane clattered across the stone.
"Grandfather—"
"Don't make a fuss." Isbert's voice was a breath. His eyes had gone very soft, fixed on something above the boy's head, something none of them could see. "It is a fine morning, I think. I can feel it. It is going to be cold and clear."
"Stay. Please. Stay a little longer—"
"I have stayed a very long time, little wolf." The old man's hand moved, trembling, and found the boy's cheek. "Listen to Frost, he'll teach you everything just like he always does... Be afraid of the right things. Be kind to your mother. Do not let Faust teach you to gamble." The grey-blue eyes slid sideways, and the old, wicked gleam flickered one last time. "He cheats."
"Constantly," said Faust, and his voice cracked clean down the middle.
"Look after him, my friend."
"I will."
"I know."
The hand slid from the boy's cheek.
The grey-blue eyes stayed open on the ceiling, serene, and the last of the long breath went out of him, quiet as snow settling.
And the dragon exhaled.
Great pale wind rolled through the undercroft, up the stair, through the cold halls of the estate and out into the dawn. Every window frosted white at once, ten thousand ferns of ice blooming across the glass. Every roof, every spire, every dripping gutter sealed in an instant under a clean white skin. The thaw undid itself. The house was winter again, glittering and silent.
The Frost estate had never looked so beautiful, and Isfrid, holding his grandfather's body in the pale light, wept without a sound.
Faust stood beside them with the card of Death burning cold against his thigh.
It spoke to him anyway.
"An ending is a thing that happens. It's not the end of everything. We think it is."
He closed his eyes and let the grief go through him like a blade he had stopped trying to avoid.