Nova's POV
The camp at the gate had been Seraphine.
Just Seraphine no army, no creatures, no darkness. Just an ancient witch standing in the snow outside the northern gate at dusk with her hands open and her silver eyes patient, looking at the palace the way you looked at a place you had been waiting to visit for a very long time.
Nova had met her at the gate.
They had talked for an hour, alone, with the winter wolves arranged behind Nova in a line that was equal parts escort and statement.
She had received what her mother left.
She was not ready to talk about what that meant yet. The magic was inside her now not the Crown's warmth, not her own familiar cold, but something layered beneath both, old as the Moonstone bloodline itself, the accumulated power of every Winter Queen who had come before her, compressed into something that felt less like an addition and more like a door opening into a room that had always been there.
She needed time with it.
