That night, they camped in a narrow gorge where the rock walls rose like the spines of some ancient beast. The wind could not reach them there, but the cold seeped up from the stone itself, curling into Seraphira's bones.
Kaelreth kept the fire small, a pale flicker that cast long shadows across the walls. "Too much light draws attention," he said, seating himself opposite her. His eyes gleamed in the dim glow, molten and watchful.
She tried to sleep, curling beneath her cloak, but rest came fitfully. Her thoughts kept returning to the crest on the Frostborne's gauntlet. Who had sent them? And how had they found her?
When sleep finally claimed her, it was not the peaceful darkness she sought.
She stood in a hall of mirrors, each pane misted with frost. Her reflection wavered, sometimes her own face, sometimes a stranger's crowned, cloaked in shadow. Between the mirrors, a figure moved, too fast to focus on, its presence pressing against her skin like cold hands.
A voice, low and venom-smooth, whispered from everywhere at once.
"Little flame…"
The frost deepened, crawling across the mirrors like veins. One cracked with a sharp, glassy sigh, revealing an eye behind it, silver and slit-pupiled, watching her with an intensity that made her stomach turn.
"He cannot keep you," the voice murmured. "You are promised."
She tried to speak, but the air in her lungs was like ice. The eye blinked slowly, and in its reflection, she saw herself not in the cloak and leathers she wore now, but in a gown of black and crimson, a crown of thorns resting on her brow.
The figure in the mirrors moved closer. The frost began to crawl over her boots, climbing her legs.
Who are you? she demanded, forcing the words past the tightness in her chest.
The voice chuckled, deep and cold. "One who remembers your true name."
A sharp crack shattered the dream. She woke to find Kaelreth's hand on her shoulder, his expression dark.
You cried out, he said quietly.
She swallowed hard, sitting up. Someone was… watching me. In a dream.
His gaze sharpened. Describe it.
When she told him of the eye, the frost, the voice that called her little flame, his jaw clenched. He rose without another word, pacing to the edge of the gorge, scanning the shadows beyond the firelight.
What is it? she pressed.
He looked back at her, the fire painting his face in gold and black. "It means," he said, "that they've found another way to reach you."