How can I call her mother?

Be her daughter,

while my sun turns

her ice into summer?

—Berdorf, E. Poems of a Wingless Princess. Unpublished manuscript, Summer.

Fiona woke up, lying on flat snow. It clung to her, already melting on her skin. The ground under her was soft. Red blood. Not hers. Her rib cracked back into place with a wet pop. Her fingers twitched. She moved like a marionette, slowly remembering she had strings.

Snow fell in lazy spirals through the pine ceiling above. No palace walls. No torches. No guards. Just forest. And something else.

She saw the meat first, or what was left. Turning her head with a stiff neck, she found it: a grizzly split clean down the middle. Its ribcage peeled open. Half the beast was gone. What remained steamed in the morning chill, bones glistening where muscle had been torn away.

Her hand trembled as she braced against the snow, but not from cold. She couldn't feel it.

Fiona hadn't brought weapons. She didn't remember screaming or… growling. She rose slowly, bare feet sinking into the snow. No shiver or chill touched her spine. The cold curled around her legs; she was naked, pale as frost, but untouched by it.

Her fingers brushed her lips. It was wet. She pulled her hand back. Red streaked her skin. It was dark, sticky, already drying in the creases of her knuckles. She stared at it for a moment, and then Fiona walked. One foot, then the other, snow crunching beneath her feet. No rush. No reason. The palace didn't miss her. They never did.

Branches shifted up ahead, quick, rustling retreats. A bird startled from a branch without singing. In the underbrush, something snapped a twig and fled. Too light for a boar. Too clever for a deer.

The woods were listening, keeping safe her secret.

She smiled, just a sliver of a grin, and let out a breathless laugh which vanished into the frost like a ghost. Funny, really.

The corridors of Whitestone were cold, but the chill of Winter was slowly melting. Fiona didn't notice.

Her body moved with the slow grace of someone who had no reason to rush and even less reason to explain herself. If the world stared, she would not notice. If it were judged, she would not care. She was the Winterqueen after all.

She turned a corner, bored almost, as though even the palace's silence had grown too predictable to amuse her. The massive doors to her royal chambers loomed ahead, but she didn't enter. Instead, she slid through a narrow side door, one easily mistaken for the entrance to a pantry. It groaned as she pushed it open, revealing a ladder.

She climbed; the space beyond wasn't a room so much as a secret. Low beams crossed above her head, and the dim light pooled unevenly across dust-smeared planks.

It felt like an attic, though not quite; it was both sanctuary and prison, preserved in the way only something loved and feared to be lost could be.

Her hand brushed over the edge of a carved wooden table, its surface scarred with lines too deliberate to be accidents. She would imagine around her the scent of something that whispered of blood and a forgotten war. But for her, it was only aphantasia of her senses that she couldn't understand.

The attic wrapped around her like a shroud as she stepped deeper toward what she had managed to save and hide before he was gone—his name, Echternach, the Howling Night.

A painting on the floor leaned against the wall. A young elf gazed out from the canvas, his dark skin covered by constellations trapped. His hair, blacker than the moonless sky, framed features carved with the quiet arrogance of command. Sharp cheekbones, piercing black eyes, the mouth set in a smirk of someone born to rule everything and everyone.

Below the painting lay a scatter of strange trinkets. Their shapes made no sense to her and probably to anyone—maps of stars and world she couldn't comprehend, a box no larger than a hand with buttons made of soft rubber, a shard of glass that never reflected her face, making a strange beeping sound that had never stopped for the last centuries.

She had never asked him what these things were, or what worlds they came from.

The regret of it was a slight, dull ache, like a bruise she didn't want to press. She reached for the cloak draped across the corner of a massive chair—a heavy direwolf pelt. She would imagine it still smelled like him.

She pulled it around her shoulders, its weight sinking into her bones while she sat. There should have been grief here. Or anger. Or something. Instead, it was hollow, the silence of a room left untouched for too long.

Her gaze drifted back to the trinkets, the painting, the cloak, as though trying to understand why she hadn't burned them all, swept them from her life like she did to her Mother and sister. Why keep the relics of a liar? Of someone who left? A slave of a tailor girl? Her hand tightened on the cloak, but no answer came. Just the empty hum of memory.

"Why are you hiding here?"

The voice pulled her from the weight of the cloak. Fiona's small head peeked out from under the direwolf fur.

"Daddy?"

He stepped closer, "Does it hurt?" His hand lifted, brushing a stray of her white hair behind her ear. The skin there was raw, freshly stitched.

Her lower lip jutted out, not quite trembling. "Only my pride."

"It will heal beautifully," he said. "Instead of ugly pointy ears like mine, you'll have beautiful round ears like your mother."

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"This is stealing my identity," Fiona said with too much rage for someone so young. Her fingers clenched the direwolf cloak.

"You'll be protected," he countered, carrying the weight of someone who had argued this far too many times before. "If anyone knew who you truly were, you and your sister would have your heads on pikes. That wouldn't be pretty, don't you think?"

"I'm a Noitelven, not a Menschen like Mum! I'm like you!"

With a sudden burst of movement, she sprang out of the cloak, with a too swift motion for a child, unsheathing his dagger from his belt. Before he could stop her, she dragged it across her palm. The skin split, blue beading along the line, but she didn't flinch.

"You see? I don't feel. Like you!" Her defiance burned in her eyes as she thrust the bloodied trinket toward him. "Go on. Do it too!"

He stared at the blade. "Princess…" His voice faltered as he took a long breath, the kind that tasted of regret. "I… I feel now. I changed, you know that. I told you since the day you were born what happened to me. What I did and how I paid the price of… my arrogance."

Her face twisted in disbelief, anger, maybe fear. "You became a slave!" she spat, the words trembling like a curse that hurt her as much as it hurt him.

"A slave doesn't get to choose." He knelt so his eyes were level with hers, his hands resting on her tiny shoulders. "I chose your Mother. And with that choice, I got you and your sister. I choose to be happy and make a better world instead of destroying it."

Fiona's brows knitted, defiance burning in her blue ice eyes.

"I chose love," he said, the word love carrying a weight that seemed foreign to her ears. His thumb brushed the edge of her collarbone.

"I was tired of war. Tired of blood soaking into this world like it meant nothing. All I want is you, your sister and your Mother… a life with her, with our family. But I've committed too many crimes to walk free. My punishment… I accepted it—with honour."

Her lip curled, her voice snapping like a whip. "You're a slave to a little woman! How dare you! That is not a choice, it's humiliation!"

He flinched—not from her words, but from the venom in them. His gaze softened, almost pitying. "She's more powerful than you and I combined," he said. "I wish you could see it—what she can do. She could freeze time itself, and you would never even know you'd stopped. And yet, she works beside creatures who want nothing more than peace. I'm learning little Snowflake, and I think I will learn for a long time. And so should you."

"Those are the words of a loser!"

"No, Snowflake, I became... wiser," he murmured, not with pride but with the quiet certainty of someone who had bled for the truth. "I am learning, always. I wish you could understand."

He reached out, the back of his knuckles brushing her cheek, his thumb catching the tears that clung stubbornly to her skin. "It's true, Fiona… You are Noitelven, you are mine. You are Menschen, you are from your Mother. And a Spirit because I have chosen so. Just promise me—"

She jerked her head back. "You're leaving again, aren't you? You are always leaving."

His hand lingered in the air for a moment before falling to his side. "You know the deal, Fiona. I go where I want, I stay where I want, as long as my Master doesn't call me. And she did, so I came to say goodbye for now. And things… Things are changing. Too fast. The humans... they... we need to protect your Mother. We need to protect her legacy—You and Fiorna."

Her face hardened, her small fists trembling as she spat the words like poison. "You traitor!"

"My little Snowflake… you're stronger than all the storms I've seen." His hands cupped her small face, thumbs brushing away the wetness on her cheeks as if the world would shatter if she broke.

"Promise me," he whispered, "you'll keep them safe—your Mother and Fiorna. Promise me."

Fiona woke up from her daydream. Her lips curled into something bitter and knowing. Safe? She had cut the head of Fiorna in broad daylight and made sure Veilla would die in shame, uncrowded, ripping her last child out.

She had watched the world fall. Ormgrund lay distant now, pulled far from the world of humans, the bridge between them shattered beyond repair.

Fairies were almost gone. She missed how it felt to crunch her wings under her teeth. And the child who would dethrone her walked through Sorgenstein weak with no wings.

She turned the land of the Blue-Ones into a white desert. And Echternach… that name had been erased from everything—carved out, starved, forgotten. She had made sure of it. He would only survive in her memories until he didn't.

A smile spread slowly across her lips, but it was not the smile of a child remembering love. It was the smile of a Dame who had crushed every dream he once held, ground them into dust that would never be remembered—a child who never kept her promises.

The kitchen smelled of soap bubbles and broth, but all anyone could hear was the ragged breathing of a young maid slumped on the stool. A damp towel clung to her shoulders, dripping warm water into a puddle at her feet. Her lips parted as if trying to swallow back the scream still trapped in her throat.

"What's wrong with her?" Dorielle asked the older maid scrubbing at a pan, though her wide eyes betrayed she was more watching than working.

"She said she saw a wolf."

"A wolf?"

The girl on the bench shivered violently, breath rasping through clenched teeth. "Not… just a wolf," she stammered. "It—It turned into her."

The older maid snorted nervously, shaking her head. "She's babbling again. Good."

"No!" the young maid snapped. "The Winterqueen! I saw her. I saw her change! One moment it was a wolf—huge, white as Winter—and the next…" Her eyes went glassy, as if staring into a memory no one else could see. "She stood there. With blood on her mouth. A bear—She ate an entire bear!"

"The Winterqueen is a wolf now?" Dorielle leaned against the table, one eyebrow arched. "What is she—a collection of all evil things? First, she drags Ormgrund like it's the middle of nowhere, then eats faeries like they're snacks, and now she's a wolf? Am I missing something?"

The older maid didn't look up from the pan she was scrubbing. The water hissed and frothed as her hands moved in steady circles. "We've had those kinds of wolves before," she said flatly.

Dorielle blinked. "Before what?"

"Before the Fall," the older maid said without pausing her scrubbing. "Or did you think the world began with Veilla Mageschstea? No, girl. Before the Fall, we had the Monsoonqueen—Astroea Mageschstea. She didn't have much luck at the end. Dark elves came from the stars. We all thought we'd lose. How do you fight creatures that don't feel a thing? No hunger. No thirst. No pain. Just bloodlust. They were hounds, or wolves… whatever your imagination fears most."

"Wolves?" Dorielle asked, as though testing the word on her tongue. She didn't dare to ask if those wolves were like Lolth.

"Big and bad," the older maid muttered, wiping her hands on her apron. "If not for Sorgenstein, we'd all be dead—or worse, chained like cattle. People love to complain that elves are arrogant and full of themselves." She turned off the faucet with a twist and looked Dorielle square in the eye. "Me? I'd kiss their arrogant arses every single day if it meant I got to live another Monsoon, another Fall, another Winter, and I will kiss twice if I live until Summer."

Dorielle blinked. "Well, that explains nothing…"

The older maid smirked without humour. "If you want to kill one of them, you need human red blood—or you take the head clean off. That's how Fiona killed her sister. Chopped it right to the ground."

The words hung heavy in the kitchen. Then, with a wet clatter, the maid went back to scrubbing a pan. "Fucking dark elves," she muttered. "Just when you think you've killed them out, they crawl back up like cockroaches and fucking like rabbits."

"I know what you want to ask: who was Echternach, what was the Monsoon era, and what war is whispered so quietly that even the shadows refuse to remember? I didn't know. I didn't care. I had my job from nine to five, then I'd crawl back over my desk tracing patterns and events like I could out-stare fate and stop the End of Times with ink and insomnia.

If I'd known that the Monsoon era was the key… maybe I would have stopped. If I'd read Eura's letter—really read it—maybe I'd have had the answers to find the Point of No Return. Maybe. Well, maybe is a grand word for cowards.

I worked alone. Sometimes I'd glare at the door of my flat, daring some future version of myself to walk in and help me fix this mess. Never happened. Wise choice.

And now? I'm tired. I'm scraping at the edges of an impossible ending, and I feel… empty. I miss my distraction. I miss her. I miss my Hexe."

—The Hexe – Book Three by Professor Edgar O. Duvencrune, First Edition, 555th Summer.

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