Solene inhaled slowly—a sharp sensation. She exhaled, feeling the warmth of her own breath dissipate into the air. She opened her eyes, lowered her arms—only to gasp at what she saw.

Everything—and everyone was completely frozen.

There was no life, no movement. Even the snow itself hung still in the air. All that was left was Solene, Willa, Dorian, and Valo.

Willa finally wrenched herself out of the kitsune boy's grip. Solene and Dorian rushed to her side, as Valo reached out for the girl who had fled him.

"What have you done?" Willa cried as she looked around frantically.

"They're just asleep, underneath the ice." His voice was surprisingly calm, unbothered. "They won't remember any of this, when they wake up." "When?" Relief slumped Dorian's shoulders.

Solene couldn't help but exhale a silent prayer.

"The Astarte are not interested in their deaths." Valo tilted his head, regarding the two girls and the boy with a kind of pity, ignoring Dorian's question. "They only do what is necessary."

"The murders of seven students including my father—that was necessary, then?" Solene snapped.

"Unfortunately, yes." He bit his lip. "I take no joy in this, Solene Frey. Don't worry, they aren't in pain."

Dorian stepped forward, placing himself between Solene, Willa, and Valo. "Then what do you want?"

"An excellent question, Fenrir." Valo smiled. "Perhaps now that both you and

Solene Frey are here, we can have a productive discussion on the behalf of the Astarte— "

"The Astarte?" Dorian recoiled. His gaze hardened, and his hands curled again to fists at his side. "I'm not Fenrir."

Valo exhaled a light note, something like a laugh. "The aura around you says otherwise. You might have been given another name in this life, but it is unmistakable nonetheless. You are Fenrir, the Badwolf reincarnated."

He raised his hand, and a blinding flash of silver light overcame the ballroom with the permeating sense of the cold.

But before it could pierce at her heart and skin, the light vanished.

In its place, lights of sea green and magenta danced in the shape of wolves, forming a pack around the three of them. The light was vanquished.

But Dorian was changed. His eyes were not their usual brown and blue, however —they were as red as blood, as red as Solene's dress. There was a cold fury about him, the way his hands tightened into white-knuckled fists in a way that strangely resembled claws.

"Ah," Valo said, a triumphant gleam in his icy blue eyes. "Fenrir's arrived." 

Dorian flinched and stumbled back, as if he'd been struck.

Willa darted away, recoiled with horror in her eyes directed at Dorian. They narrowed when she caught Solene's. "You knew!"

No. Solene's stomach lurched. Her heart pounded against her chest, all words choked in the pit of her throat.

She had tried to keep his secret, meant to. But then he'd come here, shown the power for her. . .

Not you, she tried to tell herself.

She then made the mistake of catching Dorian's eyes, and seeing that brief relief, reassurance, and then the panic that could only come with the risk of losing someone important to you. Her heart beat faster.

Valo's eyes softened. "It cannot be easy. The Astarte recognize your pain, your curse. And they have an offer that could change everything for you."

"What could they even offer me?" The words had bite—but there was uncertainty in Dorian's eyes and beyond that, something more dangerous. Hope.

"As much as they offered me, and more." Valo nodded emphatically. "A new start in a new world."

"A new world that comes at the cost of the old one," Solene reminded them, and she stepped in between Dorian and Valo. "The world we live in now."

Valo raised an eyebrow. "Tell me, Solene Frey, do you think the world in now is really so worth saving?"

"Why wouldn't it be?"

Valo laughed. "As disaster after disaster rolls through your cities, as the omens of apocalypse become plentiful, you still believe that nothing is wrong?"

He made a sweeping motion, accented by his billowing indigo sleeves. "The world is sick, the World Tree itself is rotting from within, corrupted by the mistakes of those who came before—surely you can see that? All the curses in Verana are evidence enough of that. Fenrir has been reborn—because even the world itself knows it is in its dying throes, choked by powers that never should have been here!"

Solene tilted her head. "What are you even talking about?"

"I've seen the World Tree for myself, I've watched it for years as it has grown sicker and sicker, with no one even caring!" Valo grew louder, more hysterical.

"The World Tree?" Willa's words cut through the agonized shout. "But I thought that was a myth. No one's seen it in centuries."

"That is because of my mother." Valo curled his hands into fists, a glint appeared his eyes as he snarled the word. "You should ask your father about what she's done."

Willa frowned. "My father?"

"There's so much he hasn't told you, Willa." For a moment he was pitying. "He hasn't even told you that you're a kitsune. Much less the secrets of his past and the crimes of Aurinko Durendal."

He even turned contemplative. "We were born from the same tragedy, you and I."

He raised his hand, and Solene could feel the chill deepening, the ice-cold winds rising around her. She racked her brain for a spell to combat this kind of power that did not require a wand, this kind of command of the Circle of Ice.

"Now, please get out of my way, Willa, I'd rather not hurt you, but I will complete my mission."

"No, wait, wait, we're listening, I promise, we just want to understand!" She threw herself in front of Valo, his open hand hovering over her heart. "We just want to understand—who is your mother?"

"The Queen of the Kitsunes." He spoke with such disdain, such disgust, that Solene recoiled. "You all think that the Astarte are evil, but they are nothing compared to Aurinko Durendal! The Astarte—they saved me, while Aurinko left me to die to protect her darkest secrets!"

He stopped, closing his eyes. His shoulders sank down, and when he opened his eyes, a cold placidity had taken over.

"But you'll all see, soon enough." The manic glint had returned. "Now, Willa, I will not ask again."

"Willa, get out of his way." Dorian's voice had turned hard, and his eyes had turned red.

"I won't—"

Solene grabbed her free hand, and pulled her out just as an icy blast filled the ballroom, with the ghosts of the Aurora Borealis dancing through the air.

Where Dorian had stood, there was now a large black wolf, larger than Solene generally knew wolves to be. The mere sight of him was cold, piercing deeper than skin-deep. It awakened a primal sort of fear, the one that all civilization could not remove the memory of, the inheritance that the wild left for all of humankind. Those sinister, glowing red eyes, the way the northern lights and the wind danced around him, she knew she was looking at death itself.

Fenrir.

How long had she heard stories of the ancient wolf, the monster in the Long Winter? And yet all the stories in the world could not truly represent the terror in front of Solene's very eyes at this moment.

Valo did not flinch, nor did he show any sign of terror at all. How he managed it, Solene wasn't sure.

That's Dorian, you know him, she reminded herself as she began to shake, whether from the sustained cold or the fear, she wasn't sure.

"Ah, so there you are, Fenrir." A small smile curled up Valo's lips. "If this is the way you wish for it to go—well then, I'll enjoy testing the power of the Durendal line against the Badwolf."

Yet as he raised his hands, one thing was clear—there was no contest.

The wolf did not even have to move, for the northern lights to shine eerily bright, for them to take the shape of wolves, for them to charge all at once—

The light was terrible, the light was all-blinding as the wolves of the Aurora all merged together.

When Solene could see again, Valo was on the ground on the fetal position, eerily still. The ice in the ballroom was gone, and all of the students and faculty came back to life.

And all of them watched as the Badwolf shifted back into Dorian.

Solene let go of Willa, and ran to him—only for her vision to darken and her knees to give out completely as she fell into his arms. It was in the dark that the cold greeted her.