The garden in February was cold enough to settle into your bones if you stood still for too long.
Jane had been moving for the past hour, so the biting air hadn't yet seeped through her layers of clothing.
Her hands were red and raw from working in the soil, the damp chill creeping through her gloves, but the rose bushes needed pruning before the new spring growth began.
She snipped another dead branch, the sharp crack of the shears breaking the silence, and dropped it into the wicker basket beside her knee. As she worked, she hummed a melody that might have been French or might have been nothing at all.
Morwenna was about three meters away, crouching beside the snowdrop patch. The flowers had spread much farther than anyone had expected. There were fifty or sixty now, perhaps more, forming a white drift against the dark hedge.
Cinder lay in the grass beside her, his ears turning toward every distant birdcall while his nose twitched at the scent of damp earth.
She wore her trainers, the blue ones with white stripes. They were still slightly too big for her feet, and their laces were tied in a bow that held but always looked ready to come undone.
She counted the flowers on her fingers, her lips moving silently and her brow furrowed in concentration.
Jack stood near the greenhouse door, watching his wife prune the roses and his daughter count the snowdrops. He held a teacup that had gone cold twenty minutes earlier, the dark liquid forgotten inside.
Through the condensation-streaked glass, he could see Seraphina checking the seedlings Lucien had started before leaving. She had rolled her sleeves up to her elbows, and her hands were just as deep in the soil as Jane's. Her expression remained calm as she worked.
Jane straightened and pressed a palm against her lower back. Her humming had stopped while she concentrated on pruning, but now it returned, soft and shapeless, a melody she had learned from her mother. She moved to the next bush, examined the old wood, and found another dead branch.
Snip.
Morwenna finished counting and stood. Her knees were damp and dark from kneeling in the grass. She looked at her hands, wiped them on her trousers, and walked over to the stone bench where Aldric sat.
Without asking permission, she climbed up beside him. Her legs swung rhythmically, and the soles of her oversized trainers hung just above the ground.
Aldric closed his book, keeping his thumb between the pages to mark his place.
"All counted?"
"Twenty-four." She held up her fingers and counted them again for him. "Four and twenty."
"Twenty-four," he agreed. "That's a lot of snowdrops."
"They keep coming."
"They do."
She leaned against his arm. He was warm, the stone bench was cold, and she had spent too long kneeling in the damp grass.
The letter arrived at half past ten.
Tilly appeared beside Jack with the soft pop of house-elf magic, a sound that still made Morwenna jump sometimes, even after all this time. The elf held out a folded parchment with both hands, treating it as though it were something precious.
"From the eldest miss, sir. The owl came just now. Tilly brought it straight away."
Jack accepted the letter, and Tilly vanished before anyone could thank him.
Jane straightened from the rose bushes, wiped her dirty hands on her apron, and came to stand beside Jack. Morwenna looked up from the snowdrops. When she saw the parchment in her father's hands, she returned to the bench and climbed up beside Aldric without a word.
Jack unfolded the letter. The paper was crisp and heavy, and Jane leaned against his shoulder to read along as he began.
---
"You won't believe where I have been. The Himalayas. Actual Himalayas. These are the kind of mountains that don't have names because the people who live there don't think they need them. I climbed for three weeks.
Do you know what altitude sickness feels like? Your head pounds, your lungs stop working, and you throw up everything you have eaten for the past two days. I did it anyway.
I found a monastery. Not the tourist kind, but the sort that's been there for a thousand years and will be there for another thousand, tucked into a valley so high that the air never warms, not even in summer.
The monks there don't use wands. They don't use magic the way we do at all. They have cultivated something else, something that doesn't need incantations, cores, or any of the things we were taught to consider important. They call it the Cold Light.
There's a phoenix. The monks call it Astra Gelida. The Starlight Phoenix. It doesn't live in the valley. It appears in the highest mountain passes during the darkest nights of winter, when the sky is clear and the stars are sharp as knives.
Its feathers are black, not the black of shadows, but the black of the space between stars, so deep it swallows light. Yet when it moves, the edges of its feathers catch the starlight and reflect colors that shouldn't exist. Violet that shifts to silver, blue that burns cold, and white that hurts to look at.
Its fire isn't heat. It's light. A cold, intense light that illuminates without warming and can be seen for miles in the darkness. The monks say it's like watching a star fall, then rise again.
When it dies, it doesn't crumble or burn. It goes dark. The light fades from its feathers, its eyes close, and it becomes a thing of shadow and stillness.
It remains that way until a new star appears in the sky above it, whether a meteor, a comet, or a star that wasn't there before. Then the light returns, and the phoenix rises again.
I have been there for six weeks. They let me stay because I asked the right questions and didn't pretend to understand things I didn't. They showed me their records. Children born with the Cold Light appear in their community every few generations.
They have the same traits we are seeing in Morwenna: fire that doesn't burn, stillness deeper than ordinary stillness, and a sense that they exist slightly outside the flow of time. They call it being 'star-touched.'
They don't treat it as a sickness. They don't try to make it behave like ordinary fire. They have a ritual called the Binding of Cold Light. It doesn't try to change the child's nature. Instead, it teaches them to hold the light inside, to let it burn without burning out, and to become a star that endures the long winter.
I met a woman there. She is the abbess, and she was born with the Cold Light as a child. They thought she would die young. They said the fire would consume her from within. She is ninety now. She taught me something, Jack. Something about holding. About letting the light be light instead of trying to make it into something else.
I'm sending something with this letter. A stone from the hermitage, touched by the Cold Light for so long that it never grows warm, even under the hottest sun. It might help Morwenna learn to hold her own fire.
I will be home next month. I promised I would return before she turns four. I keep my promises.
—S
P.S. The stone will arrive separately. The monks insisted on sending it their own way. They said it needed to travel through the earth, not through the air. I didn't argue with people who have been cultivating the Cold Light for a thousand years.
---
Jack folded the letter. Jane remained leaning against his shoulder, her hand resting flat on his arm. Her grip had tightened as he read.
Morwenna sat beside Aldric, her legs swinging as she watched her parents. She hadn't understood every word, but she understood enough.
"She found it," she said.
Aldric looked down at her and rested a hand on her head.
"She found something."
"The Cold Light. That's mine."
Jane turned away from Jack and returned to the rose bushes. She knelt in the damp soil, picked up her pruning shears, and resumed her work. Her hands moved automatically as she found the dead wood, cut it away, and dropped it into the basket.
Snip. Drop.
Snip. Drop.
She no longer hummed.
Jack folded the letter again and tucked it into his coat pocket. He looked at his father, who was watching Jane work with one hand still resting on Morwenna's head.
"The Binding of Cold Light," Aldric said. "It isn't a blood ritual or a potion. It's a technique."
"Something we can learn," Jack replied.
"Something we can adapt."
Jane snipped another branch, the sharp sound cutting through the quiet.
"She is ninety," she said. "The abbess. She was born with the same thing Morwenna has, and she survived."
Jack walked over and crouched beside her on the cold earth.
"We have time. We have a method, and we have the stone she is sending."
Jane's hands continued moving.
Snip. Drop.
Snip. Drop.
"She will be home next month."
Morwenna slid off the bench and returned to the snowdrop patch. She knelt in the damp grass, letting the moisture soak through her trousers, and looked at the white flowers nodding in the wind. There were twenty-four of them. She had counted correctly.
She held her hand above the nearest flower without touching its petals, close enough to feel the cold radiating from it.
Cinder sat beside her, his ears pointed forward and his nose aimed at the snowdrops.
"She is coming home," Morwenna told him.
The fox swept his tail through the grass once.
Jane continued pruning. Jack stood and walked toward the greenhouse, where Seraphina was still checking the seedlings.
Aldric opened his book again, though his attention had wandered from the pages. He watched Morwenna crouching among the snowdrops, her hand hovering over the flowers as her lips moved in a whisper too quiet for anyone else to hear.
The morning slowly warmed toward noon. Frost melted from the grass, leaving droplets clinging to the blades and catching the weak sunlight. Jane finished pruning the rose bushes and moved to the herb bed, pulling dead growth from the rosemary.
Jack emerged from the greenhouse carrying a tray of seedlings that Seraphina had decided needed more sunlight before planting. At last, Aldric closed his book and went inside to retrieve something he had left in the library.
Morwenna stayed with the snowdrops. She had stopped counting and was simply looking at them now, her chin resting on her knees and her arms wrapped around her legs. Cinder had abandoned his watch and curled up against her side, his eyes half-closed.
Jane came to stand beside her. She said nothing, only stood there with her dirty hands and loose hair, her breath misting in the cold air.
"The stone," Morwenna said. "The one Saoirse is sending. It never gets warm."
Jane looked down at her. "That's what she wrote."
"Cold doesn't hurt me."
"I know."
Morwenna reached up and took her mother's hand. Jane's fingers were cold from the soil and winter air, while Morwenna's were warm. She held on for a moment before letting go.
"I'm hungry."
Jane almost smiled. "You are always hungry."
Morwenna stood, brushed the grass from her trousers, and headed toward the manor. Cinder scrambled to his feet and followed, his tail wagging and his ears alert.
Jane watched them go, taking in the oversized blue trainers, the laces that would surely come undone before lunch, and the white hair catching the weak February sunlight.
Jack came to stand beside her.
"She is fine."
"I know."
"The ritual worked. The strengthening has settled. The bloodlines aren't fighting."
"I know."
He took her hand. Her fingers were cold, but he held them anyway.
"She is going to be four," Jane said.
"Two months."
"The next Keith ritual is in April. Fifteen runes. More than last time."
"She handled ten. She will handle fifteen."
Jane turned to look at him.
"She is going to be fine," Jack said.
Jane looked toward the greenhouse, where Seraphina was still working among the seedlings. Then she glanced at Aldric's empty bench and the patch of snowdrops where Morwenna had been crouching.
Beyond them stood the manor, its gray stone walls and dark windows rising above the garden. The fountain in the entrance hall reflected the health of every family member. She had checked it that morning, and the water had been clear.
At last, she turned toward the manor and started walking. Her steps were steady on the gravel, her shoulders straight. Jack watched her for a moment before following.
Inside the greenhouse, Seraphina returned the last seedling to its tray and brushed the soil from her hands. She had heard most of the letter through the glass, enough to understand its importance.
She looked at the rows of seedlings waiting for warmer weather, at the promise of spring still weeks away, and at the pale sun struggling through the clouds.
Then she went inside to wash her hands before lunch.