Chapter 1: A Stranger in the Snow
The last thing Kiki remembered was the smell of old paper and lavender tea. She’d been re-shelving fantasy novels, her fingers brushing against embossed titles, daydreaming about elves in a way that was entirely professional, of course. Then the air behind the ‘Myth & Legend’ shelf had started to waver, like asphalt on a hot day. A low hum vibrated in her molars. Before she could even think earthquake?, a silent, shimmering tear split the world open, and a force like a giant’s hand yanked her forward.
There was no tunnel of light, no psychedelic swirl. Just a gut-wrenching lurch, a sensation of being folded, and then—
Cold.
A cold so absolute it stole the scream from her lungs. It was a physical slap, a burning, crystalline invasion that rushed into her nose, her mouth, her cotton cardigan. She stumbled forward, legs tangling in a deep, unyielding blanket of white, and collapsed face-first into the snow.
It was powder-soft and murderously cold. She sputtered, pushing herself up on trembling arms. Her glasses were askew, one lens packed with snow. She blinked, her brain buffering.
Wellington was green. Wellington was hills and wind and coffee. This… this was flat, endless white under a bruised purple sky. Frozen, skeletal trees stood sentinel in the distance, their branches clawing at the air. The silence was a weight. Then, a sound—a sharp, clean shink of metal leaving a sheath.
The point came to rest just below her chin, tilting her head up. It wasn’t steel. It was ice, or something like it, forged into a blade of breathtaking lethality, glowing with a faint, internal blue light. Her own ragged breath plumed in the air between them, obscuring for a moment the figure holding the sword.
As the mist cleared, she saw him.
He was tall, clad in armour that seemed grown rather than forged, plates of silvery white adorned with intricate, frost-touched patterns. Long, silver hair, the colour of a winter moon, was woven into a complex braid intertwined with tiny, frozen flowers that glimmered with their own light. His eyes were the blue of glacier fissures, piercing and utterly devoid of warmth. He looked at her not like a person, but like a strange, mangled insect that had crawled out of a log.
“Speak,” he commanded. His voice was low, crisp, and carried the sharp edge of the landscape. “What manner of creature are you, and who sent you to this blighted verge?”
Kiki’s mind, which had been cycling through panic, scientific disbelief, and sheer horror, finally landed on indignation. “Creature?” she croaked, her Kiwi accent thick with shock. “I’m a… I work at a bookstore. Pages to Pay the Rent. On Lambton Quay.” The words sounded insane. She fumbled her glasses back into place, the world snapping into a cruel, clear focus. Him, the sword, the impossible winter.
His glacial eyes narrowed, sweeping over her: the messy bun coming undone, the oversized knitted cardigan now soggy and rimed with frost, the denim jeans utterly inadequate. His gaze held no recognition, only a deepening suspicion. “Your garb is strange. Your speech is stranger. A human, then. But how came you here? The wards are intact.”
“A human? Yes, obviously. The last I checked.” She tried to shift, but the sword point pressed a fraction closer, a biting chill kissing her skin. “Look, mate, I don’t know about any wards. There was a… a wobble. By the Margaret Mahy shelf. Next thing I know, I’m eating snow. Can you maybe point me toward the tram? Or, I dunno, a decent flat white?”
Cassian did not lower his sword. A human, speaking nonsense. But a human who had appeared, alone and utterly vulnerable, in the heart of the Winter Court’s outermost territory—a place where the very air should have killed her in minutes. She was shivering violently, her lips taking on a blue tinge, yet she lived. She met his gaze not with the cowering fear of an intruder, but with the bewildered frustration of someone who had missed their bus.
“There are no trams here,” he said, slowly, as if speaking to a simple child. “This is the Whispering Wastes, territory of Her Eternal Majesty, the Queen of the Winter Court. Mortals do not walk here.”
Kiki stared at him. The words ‘Winter Court’ landed in her mind, stirring the dusty shelves of her bookshop knowledge. Fantasy. Faerie. Oh, you have got to be kidding me. Her dreamy, after-hours musings had never included hypothermia.
“Right,” she said, her voice thin. “Winter Court. Okay. Well, I’m not walking, I’m freezing. And I didn’t exactly choose to pop in for a visit.” A violent shiver racked her body, interrupting her. The initial adrenaline was bleeding away, leaving a hollow, terrifying void. This was real. The cold was burrowing into her bones. She was utterly, monumentally screwed.
For the first time, Cassian’s expression shifted minutely. The sheer, authentic helplessness in her eyes, the way her body was failing against the cold—it didn’t match the profile of a spy or an assassin. She was an anomaly. A potentially dangerous one. Duty demanded he report this. Duty demanded many things.
He watched a single snowflake catch in her tangled hair and not melt. An oddity.
With a fluid, practiced motion, he withdrew his blade, sheathing it in a smooth arc at his back. He then unfastened the thick, fur-lined cloak from his own shoulders. “You will die before the next hour if you remain as you are,” he stated, matter-of-fact. He swirled the cloak around her, its heavy weight immediately dulling the knife’s edge of the wind.
The warmth that seeped into her was profound, carrying a faint, clean scent of pine and cold stone. Kiki clutched the fabric, pulling it tight. “Thank you,” she whispered, the gratitude stark and genuine.
“Do not thank me yet,” Cassian said, his brow furrowed. “You are a breach. A mystery. My duty is to bring you before the Queen. She will decide your fate.” He extended a hand, not in kindness, but in necessity. “Can you stand?”
Her legs felt like wet cardboard. She took his hand. His grip was firm, his skin surprisingly not cold, but cool like polished stone. He pulled her up with ease. As she found her feet, wobbling, she got a proper look at their surroundings. The vast, white expanse was beautiful in a terribly lonely way. It was also completely, utterly alien.
“The Queen,” Kiki repeated, her breath clouding between them. “And if she decides my fate is, I dunno, to be a popsicle?”
A faint, almost imperceptible flicker touched Cassian’s mouth. It wasn’t a smile. It was the ghost of one. “Her Majesty is just. And curious. Your very existence here is… impossible. That may stay your execution long enough for answers.” He turned, beginning to tread a path through the deep snow with effortless grace. “Walk where I walk. Step off the path, and the wards will consume what little heat you have left.”
Execution. The word hung in the frozen air. Kiki looked back, but there was no shimmer, no portal, no ‘Myth & Legend’ shelf. There was only white, and the tall, silver-haired knight moving away from her. She had no choice.
She took a shaky step, then another, her sneakers sinking into his footprints. The cloak dragged heavily, but it was life. She followed him, this stranger with winter in his hair and a sword of ice, toward a court of fae and a queen who held her life in her hands. The adventure she’d daydreamed about had found her, and it was nothing like the stories.
All she felt was cold, and a dread so deep it was quieter than the falling snow.