Biting morning winds blew mercilessly through the high, skeletal canopy of the Hidden Forest outside the gorge, carrying the freezing promise of a cruel winter day.
As the camp of the Witch Cooperation Association emerged from the underground tunnels into the gray, swirling mist of dawn, the cold seemed to slice straight through even the thickest layers of wool and fur.
For Wendy, however, the chill of that morning reached much deeper than her skin; it struck straight at the center of her chest, freezing away the last scrap of comfort she had left in the world.
Standing at the outer edge of the snow-packed clearing, Wendy watched the eight young witches who had just been separated from the rest of the column.
Huddled together in a small, fragile circle in the middle of that desolate white landscape stood Cherry, Selena, Library, Eyesight, Feather, Mystery Moon, Soraya Zoen, and Ellen.
Eight of her little sisters. Eight of the dozens of young lives she had sworn to feed, shelter, and protect with every breath in her body.
Am I truly doing the right thing by standing here and letting them walk into the hands of a mortal lord? Wendy asked herself, swallowing hard as a painful knot tightened in her throat.
Inside the command tent before dawn, Fringe's promise to escort the girls alongside Violetta had given Wendy a lifeline to cling to, saving the camp from tearing itself apart in a bloody mutiny. Yet looking at their small, shivering backs now as they checked the straps on their nearly empty leather bags, the maternal guilt came crashing back over her.
She couldn't let them see her break down. If she cried now, the girls would walk into those dark trees convinced they were marching to their graves. She had to be the unshakeable pillar she had always been for them.
Forcing her boots to move with slow, steady steps across the frost, Wendy walked up to the small circle.
— "Girls, look at me for a moment," — Wendy called out, her gentle voice thick with restrained emotion.
All eight heads turned toward her at once.
The gazes that met her eyes held a heartbreaking mixture of desperate hope and deep sorrow over the parting that had been forced upon them. Unable to hold back the motherly instinct that guided every bone in her body, Wendy simply opened her arms wide in the freezing mist, inviting them in for one last embrace.
The very first girl to break from the circle and run into her arms was Mystery Moon.
Burying her face against Wendy's shoulder, the timid girl with the dark violet-blue hair wrapped both arms tightly around the older witch's waist.
— "We'll be alright down there, Wendy, please don't worry about us," — Mystery Moon murmured, her muffled voice trembling slightly against the wool cloak.
Wendy stroked the back of the girl's head, trying to lighten the suffocating weight of the moment with a soft, teasing smile.
— "I know you will, sweetheart," — Wendy whispered warmly. — "Just promise me you won't get nervous and cause any accidental magnetic explosions along the trail, alright?"
Mystery Moon pulled back half an inch and let out a weak, watery laugh that helped loosen the tension around them.
— "I'll keep my hands in my pockets and try to control myself as much as I can," — the girl promised.
Releasing Mystery Moon with a gentle pat on the cheek, Wendy turned next to Soraya Zoen.
Even on a morning like this, quiet Soraya seemed half-adrift in her own private world of imaginary colors and silent shapes. Stepping close, Wendy cupped the young girl's cold cheeks between both of her warm palms, looking straight into her eyes with deep affection.
— "Listen to me, Soraya. Your magic is a precious, beautiful gift," — Wendy told her softly. — "No matter where you go, don't ever let fear make you put down your brush, and never let anyone make you feel like an outcast for what you create."
Soraya blinked slowly, a faint spark warming her quiet eyes as she nodded.
— "I won't forget, Wendy," — Soraya whispered. — "When we reach that town, I am going to paint a brand-new, safe world for all of us."
Stepping forward, Wendy pulled both Cherry and Selena into a tight hug at the same time, holding their shoulders against her chest.
— "The two of you have the sharpest street sense in this group," — Wendy murmured between their ears. — "Watch over each other on the road, hear me? Be the shields and the comfort for your younger sisters when the nights get cold."
Selena pulled back and nodded firmly, her tear-washed eyes shining with fierce resolve.
— "Leave them to us, Wendy," — Selena vowed. — "Nobody gets left behind on this march."
Then, as Wendy released the two girls, her gaze landed on the smallest figure standing two paces behind the others.
Feather was standing all by herself near a snow-covered stump, her thin shoulders shaking so hard beneath her threadbare wool cloak that her teeth clicked audibly in the cold air.
Wendy didn't need to ask why the seventeen-year-old was shivering like that. It wasn't just the morning frost. Feather's dreaded eighteenth birthday was right around the corner, and the early physical tremors of the Day of Awakening were already sinking their claws into her body.
Hurrying over to her, Wendy knelt slightly in the snow and took both of Feather's small hands into her own. The girl's fingers felt like solid blocks of river ice.
— "It's the Awakening, isn't it, little one?" — Wendy asked gently, keeping her voice low so only the two of them could hear.
Feather lowered her head, completely defeated by the betrayal of her own blood as silent tears spilled down her pale cheeks and dripped onto their joined hands.
— "It already started hurting last night, Wendy," — Feather whispered, her voice barely a breath. — "The older girls always said it hurts so much... like your whole body is being chewed open from the inside out."
She is far too young and frail to carry a terror like this out into the wilderness, Wendy thought, her heart aching as she remembered the unbearable agony of her own eighteenth birthday years ago.
Even though Nightingale had sworn four nights ago that Anna had passed through her eighteenth birthday in Border Town without a single stab of pain, Wendy didn't know if these girls would even reach the town gates before Feather's birthday hit. If the surge caught Feather on the mountain trail, the girl needed to know how to survive it the hard way.
Sliding a hand under Feather's chin, Wendy lifted the girl's face and forced her to look straight into her eyes.
— "Listen to every word I say, Feather," — Wendy said, her voice firm and steady. — "If the transition hits you before you reach shelter, those hours will be the hardest test of your life."
— "I'm terrified I won't be strong enough to bear it, Wendy!" — Feather sobbed, her fingers clutching desperately at Wendy's sleeves. — "I'm afraid I'll lose my mind and die in the middle of the snow like Airy and Abby!"
— "You are ten times stronger than you think you are," — Wendy told her fiercely, stroking the girl's tear-stained cheek with her thumb. — "When the Demonic Bite starts, the pain will try to trick your mind into giving up. It will feel as though hundreds of biting insects are crawling beneath your skin, and your bones will feel as if they are melting into hot embers."
Feather shuddered violently from head to toe at the description of her worst nightmare, yet Wendy held her gaze without blinking.
— "When the peak of that fire hits your chest, you must not surrender to panic," — Wendy instructed in an unshakeable maternal tone. — "Have the girls put a thick piece of clean wood between your teeth, bite down with everything you have, draw deep breaths until your lungs burn, and tell yourself over and over that every stab of pain is just one step closer to your true power."
— "Will... will the others stay beside me when it happens?" — Feather whispered, her eyes wide and pleading.
— "Every single one of them," — Wendy promised. — "They will hold your hands through every second of the night and never let go. Trust your sisters."
With a choked cry, Feather threw both arms around Wendy's neck, burying her face against the older witch's chest and clinging to her with all her remaining strength. Closing her eyes tightly, Wendy wrapped her arms around the shivering teenager and finally allowed a single, silent tear to slip down her own cheek, losing itself in Feather's hair.
Ten paces away from Wendy and Feather, an even louder, more heartbreaking scene was tearing through the quiet morning air.
Thirteen-year-old Sun had dropped straight onto her knees in the frost-covered dirt at the edge of the trees, her small body wracked by shrill, devastating sobs that echoed across the clearing like a wounded fawn.
With both tiny hands, she was clutching desperately at the hems of Library's and Eyesight's wool cloaks, refusing to let them take another step toward the trail.
— "Please don't go! Don't leave me behind in this place by myself!" — Sun wailed, the raw, childlike terror in her voice cutting through the chest of everyone standing nearby.
Ever since the three of them had been assigned to the same sleeping alcove months ago, Library, Eyesight, and little Sun had been inseparable—eating from the same pot, sharing blankets on freezing nights, and holding one another whenever nightmares struck.
Unable to keep up her cool, scholarly composure for another second, seventeen-year-old Library dropped to her knees in the snow directly in front of the crying child, her own blue eyes brimming with hot tears.
— "We aren't abandoning you, Sun! Stop thinking like that!" — Library said, her voice cracking slightly as she used the cuff of her own blouse to wipe the mud and tears off the younger girl's cheeks. — "Just as Mentor Cara said, we are only marching ahead of the camp as scouts to make sure that human lord hasn't set a trap for us, that's all!"
Right behind Sun, Eyesight dropped onto her knees in the thin snow as well, wrapping both arms warmly around the thirteen-year-old's shaking shoulders.
— "Sun, listen to me," — Eyesight whispered against the girl's golden curls, her own voice trembling as the memories of their hardest days rose in her mind. — "Do you remember the promise the three of us made that night in the rain, when we swore we would never go hungry in the streets again?"
— "I remember... I remember every word..." — Sun hiccuped through her tears.
— "Then trust the two of us now," — Eyesight said, resting her forehead gently against the back of Sun's small shoulder. — "Library and I are going to go down that mountain and find a warm, safe house full of fresh bread and meat for all of our sisters. And the very day we know for sure that the Prince of Border Town is a man of his word, we will bring you down there so the three of us can live under the same roof again."
— "Only... what if he's just as cruel as all the other lords?!" — Sun cried hysterically, centuries of Church terror overflowing in every choked syllable. — "What if the priests find you on the road and send templars with nets?!"
Seeing the sheer panic in the little girl's eyes, Library forced a cocky, self-assured smirk onto her face, doing everything she could to break the suffocating dread of the moment.
— "Hey, who do you think you're talking to?" — Library said, tapping a finger lightly against her own temple. — "Eyesight and I know how to take care of ourselves. You know what my magic does better than anyone in this camp, don't you? Before we packed our bags this morning, I copied and memorized every single map Scroll had of the southern ridges, every old logging trail, and every blind spot in the valley. No clumsy town guard on earth is going to corner the two of us."
Sun sniffled hard, looking back and forth between her two older friends before slowly raising her small, trembling right hand into the freezing air between them, her little pinky finger extended.
— "Do you promise me... by everything sacred... that both of you will stay alive until we meet again?" — Sun demanded in a tiny, fierce voice.
Neither Library nor Eyesight hesitated for half a heartbeat. Reaching out together, both girls hooked their own pinky fingers firmly around Sun's.
— "We promise, Sun. On our lives," — they said in unison, pulling the little girl into one final, tight tangle of dirty wool cloaks, hot tears, and whispered vows.
Just a few yards away from Sun's tearful goodbye, near the cold, ash-strewn remains of the outer campfires, a much quieter parting was taking place.
Sixteen-year-old Cherry stood with her jaw clenched, methodically pulling the cracked leather straps of her small travel sack as tight as they would go.
She didn't cry, and she didn't make a single sound. Yet the heavy, suffocating stiffness in her narrow shoulders said more than a hundred screams ever could.
Two paces behind her back, Red Pepper and Leaf stood watching every movement of her hands with heavy, sorrowful eyes.
The bond tying the three of them together was far older than the Witch Cooperation Association itself. Long before Catherine and Wendy had found them shivering in an abandoned dockside cellar, the three girls had survived the filthy, cutthroat back alleys of Port of Clearwater side by side—stealing moldy crusts of bread from tavern bins, huddling under the same flea-bitten rags during coastal storms, and beating off wharf rats with sticks just to sleep through the night.
Crossing her arms tightly over her heavy bear-fur coat, Red Pepper tilted her chin up, fighting tooth and nail to keep her usual tough, sarcastic street mask locked in place.
— "Well, I'll be damned," — Red Pepper muttered dryly. — "Never thought I'd live to see the day our jumpy little Cherry volunteered to be the first one marching straight into a nobleman's castle."
Cherry finished tying the knot on her bag and glanced back over her shoulder, forcing a crooked, defiant smirk onto her freckled face.
— "Somebody in our trio has to show a little backbone, Pepper, since you're clearly too scared to come down the hill with me," — Cherry shot back, though the joke wavered halfway through and never quite reached her tired eyes.
Stepping quietly between them, Leaf held out her right hand and uncurled her fingers.
Resting in the center of the healer's palm was a small, smooth river stone of dark slate, drilled through the middle and tied onto a frayed loop of hemp string worn dark by years of handling.
— "Here, Cherry. Put this around your neck before you go," — Leaf said softly, holding out the simple makeshift charm.
Cherry blinked, looking down at the worn cord.
— "Wait... what is this, Leaf?"
— "Don't you recognize it?" — Leaf offered a gentle, nostalgic smile. — "You picked that stone out of the gutter the afternoon the three of us finally shook off those corrupt harbor guards outside Silver City. I've kept it in my medicine pouch through all these dark years to bring good luck to the three of us."
Cherry stared at the grimy little stone for two seconds, her frost-reddened fingers trembling slightly as they brushed the cold surface of the slate.
— "Keep it in your pouch, Leaf. I don't need a lucky rock to survive out there," — Cherry said, trying to sound tough even as her chin quivered. — "I've got the two of you looking out for me, don't I?"
— "Not starting today, you idiot. Starting today, you're on your own out there," — Red Pepper snapped back.
Her voice cracked wide open on the last word.
Unable to keep up the tough-girl act for another fraction of a second, Red Pepper's emotional armor shattered completely; lunging forward across the snow, the fire witch threw both arms around Cherry's shoulders in a bone-crushing hug, burying her face against the younger girl's neck as Leaf let out a quiet sob and wrapped her arms around both of them to complete the circle.
— "Don't you dare die out there in those woods, Cherry, do you hear me?!" — Red Pepper whispered fiercely against her friend's ear, her hot tears soaking into Cherry's collar. — "If you let some human lord or a stray wolf kill you on that road, I swear I'll march straight down to hell and beat you up myself!"
Cherry let out a watery laugh through the tears that finally broke free and spilled down her freckled cheeks, hugging her two oldest friends back with everything she had.
— "Save your threats, Pepper," — Cherry choked out. — "I'll have a warm pot of real meat stew waiting for the two of you on the other side of this mountain. Just do me a favor and don't take forever getting there."
Crunch. Crunch. Crunch.
Before anyone else could say another word, the heavy, unmistakable tread of boots breaking through the frozen crust at the head of the clearing drew every pair of eyes in the camp.
Wrapped in thick dark pelts over her bandaged ribs, Mentor Cara walked stiffly past the extinguished fire pits and came to an abrupt halt directly in front of Violetta and Fringe, who stood waiting with their weapons strapped on at the mouth of the southern trail.
Even worn down by four days of coma fever, blood loss, and sleepless paranoia, the founder's tall frame still cast a long, suffocating shadow across the snow.
— "Are the two of you finally ready to move?" — Cara asked, her cold, raspy voice slicing through the morning mist like a rusted blade.
— "Yes, Respected Mentor. The girls are packed, and we await your final orders," — Violetta and Fringe answered in unison, bowing their heads slightly.
Raising a gloved hand, Cara pointed her index finger past the tree line toward the towering, jagged white peaks of the Impassable Mountain Range to the northwest.
— "Listen carefully. Because of the deep drifts on the upper slopes, the main body of the Association will be forced to march at a much slower pace starting today," — Cara announced, speaking loud enough for Wendy and the entire clearing to hear the lie.
Beside Violetta, Fringe gave a solemn, practiced nod, playing her part in the theater without missing a beat.
— "While Violetta and I push this small group of eight down the southern trail as quickly as possible," — Fringe supplied smoothly.
— "Precisely," — Cara said, her sunken eyes fixed coldly on the snowy ridge ahead. — "I want the two of you to drive these eight girls down through the Hidden Forest to the transition road at the exact foot of the mountain as fast as their legs can carry them. Make sure no beasts intercept their path, leave them at the boundary line where the valley road begins, and turn around immediately to rejoin our main column."
— "Understood, Mentor. We will not fail your trust," — Fringe replied, her voice ringing with a flawless imitation of blind loyalty.
Cara didn't offer a word of thanks, nor did she spare a single glance for the eight shivering teenagers standing behind her two vanguards. Turning her back in dead silence, the founder walked straight back toward Scroll and Windseeker to begin barking orders for the main column's departure.
As Fringe immediately turned and walked briskly over to the eight girls—checking their meager ration sacks and gently adjusting the wool collars on Selena's and Ellen's coats with an encouraging smile—Violetta didn't move a muscle.
Standing alone at the head of the trail in her heavy white wolf-fur mantle, the purple-haired warrior stared straight at the back of Fringe's silver-white head.
The public orders Cara had just given in front of the camp had been simple, logical, and straightforward.
Yet ringing like a funeral bell inside Violetta's head were the venomous, secret words Cara had hissed into her ear behind the leather curtain before dawn:
Keep an eye on Fringe. Never turn your back on her in the snow—and if she shows a single sign of betrayal or desertion, deal with her on the spot.
Watching Cecilia speak softly to terrified little Ellen and help adjust the strap on the girl's bag, Violetta frowned deeply, an ugly, bitter taste coating the back of her tongue.
For over a year, Fringe had fought in the vanguard right beside her. Violetta had seen the former noblewoman stand her ground against packs of starving wolves, seen her work until her hands were raw ladling out soup by the cauldron, and watched her bleed for the safety of the younger sisters. Not once in all those months of grueling marches and sleepless night watches had Fringe ever shown a flicker of cowardice or disloyalty.
Why does the Mentor distrust her deeply enough to order me to spy on her like an enemy? Violetta wondered, clenching her calloused hands into tight fists inside the deep pockets of her cloak to stop her fingers from trembling. Did I miss some whispered conversation in the dark? Or has the terror of four nights ago poisoned Cara's mind so badly that she is starting to see traitors in her own shadow?
Violetta squeezed her dark purple eyes shut for a second.
She didn't even want to think about what she would have to do on that lonely mountain trail if Cara's suspicion turned out to be right. To a silent, honorable warrior like Violetta, secretly watching a comrade's back for an excuse to strike her down felt like spitting on the only vow of sisterhood that kept them warm in this cruel world.
Letting out a long, heavy sigh that turned into a thick cloud of white fog in the freezing air, Violetta stepped forward to take her place at the flank of the ten-witch formation.
The march down to the foot of the mountain hadn't even taken its first step, yet the road ahead already felt like a mile of broken glass.
Hundreds of miles south of that freezing, grief-stricken clearing in the Hidden Forest, the morning inside Border Town's castle keep belonged to another century entirely.
Inside the spacious third-floor library, a stack of seasoned birch logs crackled merrily inside the wide stone hearth, filling the room with a dry, steady warmth that kept the winter frost restricted to the outside of the tall glass windows.
Seated comfortably behind the massive, polished oak table in the center of the room—where the rich smell of pine resin, beeswax candles, and old parchment hung in the air—Arthur leaned forward over a spread of detailed cartographic maps of the Impassable Mountain Range, a brass compass and a charcoal pencil in his hand as he calculated distances and elevation gradients.
Then, without a single creak of a floorboard, a soft ripple of pearlescent, black-and-white mist twisted open in the darkest corner of the library beside the bookshelves.
Stepping smoothly out of the monochrome veil into the warm morning light, Nightingale materialized without making a sound, her deep blue eyes gleaming with a mixture of quiet respect and curiosity as she walked up to the edge of the oak table.
Reaching into the fold of her white cloak, the assassin extended a pale, gloved hand and set a small, thick booklet bound in heavy parchment and tied shut with a neat brown satin ribbon squarely onto the blotter in front of Arthur.
— "Lady Diana Argus just finished the assignment you gave her last night," — Nightingale informed him, crossing her arms over her leather doublet as she waited for the strategist's reaction. — "She stayed up by candlelight until dawn writing and organizing every page. I went over the older names with her myself—she didn't miss a single detail. I hope it proves useful for that crazy plan of yours."
Arthur didn't waste a second. Setting his brass compass aside, he pulled the booklet across the oak surface and untied the brown ribbon with brisk, practiced fingers.
The heavy sheets of paper still carried the sharp, distinct scent of fresh iron-gall ink, proving that Diana had indeed worked right up until breakfast.
As Arthur flipped open the cover page, a genuine smile of professional appreciation touched his lips.
Educated in the library of Baron Argus's estate, Diana possessed exquisite, sweeping penmanship, and better still, she had organized the entire roster with the clean, methodical structure of a seasoned clerk.
It wasn't just a list of nicknames. Page after page, the booklet laid out a complete tactical and psychological dossier on every single member of the Witch Cooperation Association currently marching on that mountain—recording each witch's name, approximate age, physical description, background before awakening, personal fears, and a meticulous breakdown of how her magic worked and where its limits lay.
For a modern strategist who had already read the original novel back on Earth, holding this physical guidebook to the altered reality of this world was worth its weight in diamonds.
Flipping slowly through the pages, Arthur absorbed every line with his Intelligence 14 memory, his dark eyes widening slightly as he read through the sheer variety of powers hidden inside Cara's camp.
Halfway through the booklet, his finger paused on the entry dedicated to a quiet girl he already remembered from the book: Soraya Zoen.
Reading Diana's precise description of how Soraya could summon a magical brush to create hyper-realistic, durable coatings of color and texture out of pure memory, Arthur nodded slowly to himself.
To a short-sighted brute like Cara, Soraya is a useless burden who can only paint pretty pictures on cave walls, Arthur thought, turning the page to read the entries on Library's instant document duplication, Eyesight's shared vision network, and Mystery Moon's raw electromagnetic fields. In an industrial city, however, once Soraya's magic evolves after her eighteenth birthday, she is a one-woman chemical coating plant, a camouflage factory, and a topographic printing press rolled into one.
If all fifty-seven witches listed in Diana's booklet were half as talented as these profiles indicated, bringing them into Border Town wouldn't just help Roland win the spring war against Duke Ryan—it would vault their fledgling industrial revolution forward by decades in a single winter.
And to make sure that happened, Arthur needed them to walk through Border Town's gates willingly. Not as frightened prisoners or disposable human shields, but as valued citizens who trusted Roland's government with their lives.
Having Diana's notes on their deepest traumas, their friendships, and their exact combat blind spots meant Arthur could tailor his first contact with them down to the millimeter before he even laid eyes on their column.
— "Tell Lady Diana she just earned her first month's bonus, Nightingale. This booklet is pure gold," — Arthur murmured, tapping the back of his hand against the open pages with a sharp, satisfied gleam in his eyes. — "Knowing how every single girl in that camp thinks and fights ahead of time takes all the guesswork out of the equation. Now I can plot the exact interception coordinates, neutralize their guards without hurting anyone, and bring the whole group home."
BANG!
Before Nightingale could answer, the heavy oak door of the library flew wide open and slammed back against the stone wall with a loud crash that echoed down the hallway.
It wasn't an assassin, and it wasn't a guard bringing bad news.
Zooming straight across the threshold about ten inches above the floorboards—her short golden hair sticking out from beneath her leather aviator cap and a pair of custom brass-and-glass wind goggles strapped crookedly across her forehead—came Lightning.
Floating effortlessly over the edge of the thick bear-skin rug, the teenage witch dropped down in front of Arthur's table as light as a drifting feather.
Her cheeks were flushed pink from a huge breakfast, and her bright blue eyes shone with a borderline-manic mixture of excitement and impatience. Even with her boots touching the rug, she seemed physically incapable of standing still for five seconds, bouncing from heel to toe as she swung her arms.
— "Lord Arthur! I ate three bowls of porridge, my coat is buttoned up, and I'm 100% ready for the mission!" — Lightning practically shouted, grinning from ear to ear as if they were heading out on a summer picnic. — "When do we take off?! Are we leaving right now?!"
By the fireplace, Nightingale couldn't help letting out a quiet laugh as the girl's chaotic energy instantly turned the serious war room upside down.
— "Take a breath, Lightning. We aren't jumping out the window this exact second," — Arthur replied evenly, though the corner of his mouth twitched upward at her enthusiasm. — "I still need twenty minutes to finish plotting our flight vector across the lower ridges and run one final check down in the courtyard."
Lightning's shoulders drooped an inch, her lower lip jutting out in an exaggerated pout.
— "Aw, come on! Yesterday afternoon you told His Highness that I was going to be the most important piece of your grand rescue adventure!" — she complained, leaning both palms on the edge of the oak table.
— "And I meant every word of it," — Arthur said, rising smoothly to his feet and tapping his index finger against the charcoal ridgelines drawn across the northern map. — "That mountain range covers hundreds of square miles of whiteout blizzards and deep ravines. Without your eyes scanning the valleys from the clouds, finding a moving column of witches in that snow would take weeks."
At the words grand rescue adventure and hearing how indispensable she was, all the wind returned to Lightning's sails at once. For a young girl who had spent months cooped up in a dark cave being yelled at by Cara whenever she flew too high, being given an official, heroic mission by the Prince's chief strategist was everything she had ever dreamed of.
Clapping her gloved hands together with a loud smack, Lightning floated half a foot back into the air and snapped a crooked salute.
— "You can count on me, Boss! I won't let you or the Prince down!" — she declared proudly. — "With my eyes up in the sky, I'll spot every single one of my sisters in the snow before their boots even get close to the bottom of the mountain!"
Carefully rolling up Diana's parchment dossier and sliding it safely into the deep inner breast pocket of his heavy winter coat, Arthur walked past the table and stopped in front of the tall glass window overlooking the northern ramparts.
Out beyond the smoking brick chimneys of Border Town, the vast, frozen gray wall of the Impassable Mountain Range loomed against the horizon.
Up there in those lethal peaks, separated by miles of ice and driven by Cara's paranoia, ten exiled witches were already marching south into the storm—completely unaware that the strategist of Border Town was about to step into the sky to meet them.