The Winter Palace liked to pretend it was above color. Necro ice climbed the walls in slabs of blue and black. Ribs arched. Skulls watched. Soulflame orchids burned a very dignified, very joyless cobalt. The great ascent hall felt less like a home and more like a very expensive tomb that was proud of its angles. Tonatiuh Xīhuitzin stood in the center of that hall with his hands on his hips and sighed like a disappointed artist.
“This palace,” he announced to no one in particular, “is serving frostbite in a sensible shoe.” Four skeletons waited around him in a loose half circle. Each wore a splash of his old work in place of uniforms. One had a violet sash tied like a beauty queen banner. One sported a crooked flower crown of bone orchids. Another had a shawl that kept sliding off non-existent shoulders. The last clutched a basket of beads with the solemnity of a holy relic.
“I have seen mausoleums with more flirtation,” Tona went on. “We are going to fix that. Politely. Offensively. Both.” He snapped his fingers. The Ghost Loom bloomed into being behind him. Threads of pale light pulled themselves into a floating frame. Shuttles of bone and shadow flickered. Cloth began to grow from the empty air, shot through with color that had no business existing in a place called the Palace of Winter Death.
Violet that flirted. Gold that smirked. Green that remembered jungles and refused to apologize. Phosphor, the tallest skeleton, lifted a bony hand. “Yes, Phosphor,” Tona said. “I am quite aware that Lady Winter did not specifically request a full gay reformation of her main hall. She also did not forbid it. And she has finally brought home a guest. We must help her pretend she owns more than three moods.” He had heard it at breakfast. Quiet, clipped reports traded over ledgers and patrol charts.
The Marchioness returned late. She was not alone. No one had seen the woman yet. Whispers said sand on her boots. Warm breath. A new shape in Ixqueya’s orbit. Tona had not chased the rumor. A surprise was better. Besides, poor Ixqueya could use a distraction that did not arrive carrying casualty figures. “Think of it as emotional support décor,” he told his crew. “If she has brought a guest up from the border, the least we can do is make sure the palace looks like a place where living people might have feelings.”
Skein, the smallest skeleton, pantomimed a swoon. “Exactly,” Tona said. “Tragic. Let us begin.” He turned in a slow circle, eyes narrowed, assessing the ascent hall the way a surgeon assessed a wound. The staircase climbed in shallow flights toward the upper galleries. Necro ice ribs crossed overhead. Orchid troughs lined the walls. The floor shone in cold stone veins. Footsteps here echoed in a very serious, very Frostmarrow way. Tona clucked his tongue. “This is all so… recruit intake. We are not hazing her guest. We are seducing her.”
He raised his voice. “Tally, love. Bring the frost-silk runners. The ones that shift from cobalt to jade. They are moody and therefore perfect.”
Tally shuffled off, basket rattling. The Ghost Loom thrummed at his back. A length of translucent silk poured down, pooling around his boots. He scooped it up, let it slide through his fingers. Orchid light hit the fabric and broke into shards of emerald, amethyst, pale gold. “Now that,” he said, “is a proper sin.”
He draped the first length over a low rib that jutted from the wall. The silk caught, hung in a graceful curve, then slowly adjusted its color to match the necro ice. Not the same shade. Never that. Just close enough to tease. “Up,” he said. Phosphor and Skein moved, long fingers sure from a hundred fittings. Silk went up across the arch. Beads followed. Tona chose necro ice spheres he had tinted with his most scandalous death-dyes. Some burned blue. Some glowed like captive sunrise. All of them knew how to flirt with cold light.
In a few breaths, the first landing changed. The ribs still gave the feel of a cage. The orchids still drank warmth. Yet the silk and beads turned it into a cage that wanted to be admired. “Better,” Tona decided. “Still ‘do not cross this border,’ but now we also say ‘do not cross this border unless you look worth my time.’” Skein did a little shoulder shimmy. Vertebra clicked in approval. They moved up one flight. Tally returned dragging a coiled runner behind him. The cloth shimmered dark and deep, patterned with ribs and branches so subtle they were only visible when light struck them at an angle.
“Oh, look at you,” Tona breathed. “You are mysterious. You are brooding. You are going right here.” He knelt at the top of the first stair and set the runner straight with the care of a priest placing an altar cloth. Phosphor and Tally took the far end and together they unrolled it down the long ascent. The cold stone vanished under shadowed cobalt. Orchid light hit the runner and woke hidden suns in the weave. They scattered into a slow, shifting constellation underfoot.
“Now every step says: I am entering a story, not a tax audit,” Tona said. “We approve.” He walked the first length to test the feel. Tap. The cloth answered with a muffled, almost musical thud. Tap. The echoes softened. “Yes,” he said. “Hear that. Less execution, more entrance. The palace is learning to say welcome, not guilty.” He spun, letting his own coat flare. The Ghost Loom hummed like a pleased cat. They repeated the process on each landing. Runners down. Silk up. Beads wherever bare bone screamed for earrings.
At one point he paused at a window of sheer necro ice overlooking the Winterwake Marches. The fens lay outside. Gray. Cold. Hung with distant spiderweb lines that only people from the March noticed. Beyond them, somewhere, the Pale Gate where Ixqueya had met this mysterious guest.
Tona considered the view. Considered the stark sill. “Absolutely not,” he muttered. “We are not giving the poor woman a panorama of emotional hypothermia.” He lifted his hand. The Ghost Loom answered with a heavy drape of fabric. Deep green fading to blue, embroidered along the edge with bone orchids and tiny stylized spiders. Each spider wore a thread of gold.
He hooked the drape above the window and tied it back with a length of jade ribbon. The view remained. The world beyond still looked like a wet grave. Now, though, it had a frame that implied someone inside knew how to enjoy being alive. “There,” he said, satisfied. “From funerary brochure to dramatic landscape. You are welcome, everyone.” A dry voice came from the hall behind him. “Master Xīhuitzin.”
One of the Quiet Line undead constables stood there. Bone lantern hanging from a pole. Necro ice shackles at its belt. It regarded the new runner as if it were a suspect at the gate. “The Lady gave no order for alterations,” it said. Tona smiled at it with pure sunshine. “My dear White Line,” he said. “These are not alterations. These are life support. I am simply helping the décor reach its full potential. Think of it as… embalming, but for taste.”
He gestured to the runner. The constable’s lantern light fell across the weave. Suns sparked and faded. The hall looked less like the throat of a beast and more like the inside of some solemn, very fashionable creature that had recently discovered accessories. “The passage remains clear,” Tona pointed out. “The ribs remain fortified. The sigils remain untouched. I have only suggested to the walls that they stop sulking.”
A pause. The constable’s jaw bones shifted.
“This will be recorded as decorative maintenance,” it said finally. “Perfect,” Tona replied. “Put it under ‘emergency measures, emotional.’” He turned away before the skeleton could answer and clapped twice. His crew snapped to attention. “Onward. Lady Winter will be back any moment, dragging some poor creature behind her frost. We must make sure the first thing this guest sees is not a hallway that looks like it bites.” They climbed.
The last stretch before Ixqueya’s great audience doors had always annoyed him. The designers had clearly woken up that morning and said, what if a corridor could actively judge people. Ribs swelled out from the walls, lacework of bone and ice. Bone orchids in troughs watched with empty mouths. Every footstep came back three times, as if the palace asked, are you sure, are you sure, are you sure. Tona stopped at the threshold and folded his arms.
“No,” he said out loud. “Absolutely not. This is not an interrogation. This is foreplay.” Phosphor slowly turned its skull. “Spatial foreplay,” Tona clarified. “Do not give me that look. We are not doing anything improper. We are doing something fabulous.” The Ghost Loom jumped, as if delighted by the word. Threads tightened. New cloth began to grow. This time heavier. Velvet weight. Silk sheen. “Runner,” Tona said. “Full length. Deep as midnight. Hidden pattern of her sigil and my good taste. Go.” Cloth fell. A shadowed river down the center of the hall. When he smoothed it with his palms, small designs glimmered. A stylized necro ice ribcage. A spider. A tiny, almost secret sun. The House, the March, and the scandalous little star that had moved into its attic.
Phosphor and Tally unrolled the runner all the way to the doors. Skein followed behind, setting necro ice beads in a careful rhythm along the edges like drops of frost. Next, the verticals. Tona summoned sheer silk in long strips and hung them from the overhead ribs. Each panel faded from pale white at the top to rich violet at the bottom. He stitched threadbound sigils for calm, confidence, and a very gentle warmth between them. Nothing that would offend Necro Ice. Just enough to tell anxious shoulders to drop.
When someone walked through that hall now, the silk would breathe with them. Not a cage. A curtain. At the halfway point he added alcove shrines to his own sensibilities. Small clusters of necro ice beads and carved bone lilies, anchored to the wall at intervals. They caught the orchid light and scattered it in unexpected sparks. From the doors, the effect was clear. The hall still belonged to House Frostmarrow. It just now understood that intimidation and allure were cousins. Tona tested it properly.
He stepped back to the far end, drew a breath, and walked as if he were that unknown woman. Not his usual lazy glide. A stranger’s careful pace. The runner muffled the ring of his boots. Secret suns blinked underfoot. Silk drifted at his shoulders. For a heartbeat he almost felt the nerves his threadbinding would taste when the real guest came. He reached the doors, turned, and walked back as himself. Hips loose. Arms relaxed. Expression pure trouble.
He imagined Ixqueya at the far end. Tall, cold, insufferably composed. He imagined the way her eyes would narrow when she saw what he had done, the tiny crease at the corner of her mouth when she realized it worked. “She is going to say it is frivolous,” he told his skeletons. “Then she will walk through it four times to ‘test sight lines’ and secretly enjoy every step.” Skein mimed zipping an invisible mouth. Tally did a little hip wiggle that almost counted as a strut. “Exactly. Discretion, my loves. We are enhancing security by distracting the enemy with thighs and light refraction.”
Farther down the hall, the Winter Palace woke up around them. Whispering Vein lines pulsed under the floor. The blue soulflame of the Winter Heart Tree above sent a faint ripple through the necro ice. Somewhere, a clerk paused over a ledger as a garland threw unexpected color across their page. Tona tilted his head, listening. “Do you feel that,” he asked quietly. “Even the building is nervous. New pattern. New warmth. New person on the way up.” He had not seen the guest. He did not know whether she was pretty, clever, doomed, or all three. He only knew this.
Ixqueya brought her into the heart of her house. That meant something. That meant the frost wanted company. And when frost wanted company, it was his holy duty to make sure the stage honored the moment. “Come,” he said, voice bright again. “We are not done. We must also rescue the vestibule outside her private hall. At present it looks like a waiting room for people about to be sentenced to tasteful execution.” The skeletons gathered up the remaining silk and bead baskets.
He led them toward the uppermost tiers. Necro ice creaked softly as they passed, adjusting to new weight, new color, new intent. The palace might not have invited joy. Tonatiuh brought it anyway. If Lady Winter was going to drag a guest through all this bone and frost, then by the time they reached the top, the palace would be dressed for it. Not just a fortress, but a runway.
“This palace,” he announced to no one in particular, “is serving frostbite in a sensible shoe.” Four skeletons waited around him in a loose half circle. Each wore a splash of his old work in place of uniforms. One had a violet sash tied like a beauty queen banner. One sported a crooked flower crown of bone orchids. Another had a shawl that kept sliding off non-existent shoulders. The last clutched a basket of beads with the solemnity of a holy relic.
“I have seen mausoleums with more flirtation,” Tona went on. “We are going to fix that. Politely. Offensively. Both.” He snapped his fingers. The Ghost Loom bloomed into being behind him. Threads of pale light pulled themselves into a floating frame. Shuttles of bone and shadow flickered. Cloth began to grow from the empty air, shot through with color that had no business existing in a place called the Palace of Winter Death.
Violet that flirted. Gold that smirked. Green that remembered jungles and refused to apologize. Phosphor, the tallest skeleton, lifted a bony hand. “Yes, Phosphor,” Tona said. “I am quite aware that Lady Winter did not specifically request a full gay reformation of her main hall. She also did not forbid it. And she has finally brought home a guest. We must help her pretend she owns more than three moods.” He had heard it at breakfast. Quiet, clipped reports traded over ledgers and patrol charts.
The Marchioness returned late. She was not alone. No one had seen the woman yet. Whispers said sand on her boots. Warm breath. A new shape in Ixqueya’s orbit. Tona had not chased the rumor. A surprise was better. Besides, poor Ixqueya could use a distraction that did not arrive carrying casualty figures. “Think of it as emotional support décor,” he told his crew. “If she has brought a guest up from the border, the least we can do is make sure the palace looks like a place where living people might have feelings.”
Skein, the smallest skeleton, pantomimed a swoon. “Exactly,” Tona said. “Tragic. Let us begin.” He turned in a slow circle, eyes narrowed, assessing the ascent hall the way a surgeon assessed a wound. The staircase climbed in shallow flights toward the upper galleries. Necro ice ribs crossed overhead. Orchid troughs lined the walls. The floor shone in cold stone veins. Footsteps here echoed in a very serious, very Frostmarrow way. Tona clucked his tongue. “This is all so… recruit intake. We are not hazing her guest. We are seducing her.”
He raised his voice. “Tally, love. Bring the frost-silk runners. The ones that shift from cobalt to jade. They are moody and therefore perfect.”
Tally shuffled off, basket rattling. The Ghost Loom thrummed at his back. A length of translucent silk poured down, pooling around his boots. He scooped it up, let it slide through his fingers. Orchid light hit the fabric and broke into shards of emerald, amethyst, pale gold. “Now that,” he said, “is a proper sin.”
He draped the first length over a low rib that jutted from the wall. The silk caught, hung in a graceful curve, then slowly adjusted its color to match the necro ice. Not the same shade. Never that. Just close enough to tease. “Up,” he said. Phosphor and Skein moved, long fingers sure from a hundred fittings. Silk went up across the arch. Beads followed. Tona chose necro ice spheres he had tinted with his most scandalous death-dyes. Some burned blue. Some glowed like captive sunrise. All of them knew how to flirt with cold light.
In a few breaths, the first landing changed. The ribs still gave the feel of a cage. The orchids still drank warmth. Yet the silk and beads turned it into a cage that wanted to be admired. “Better,” Tona decided. “Still ‘do not cross this border,’ but now we also say ‘do not cross this border unless you look worth my time.’” Skein did a little shoulder shimmy. Vertebra clicked in approval. They moved up one flight. Tally returned dragging a coiled runner behind him. The cloth shimmered dark and deep, patterned with ribs and branches so subtle they were only visible when light struck them at an angle.
“Oh, look at you,” Tona breathed. “You are mysterious. You are brooding. You are going right here.” He knelt at the top of the first stair and set the runner straight with the care of a priest placing an altar cloth. Phosphor and Tally took the far end and together they unrolled it down the long ascent. The cold stone vanished under shadowed cobalt. Orchid light hit the runner and woke hidden suns in the weave. They scattered into a slow, shifting constellation underfoot.
“Now every step says: I am entering a story, not a tax audit,” Tona said. “We approve.” He walked the first length to test the feel. Tap. The cloth answered with a muffled, almost musical thud. Tap. The echoes softened. “Yes,” he said. “Hear that. Less execution, more entrance. The palace is learning to say welcome, not guilty.” He spun, letting his own coat flare. The Ghost Loom hummed like a pleased cat. They repeated the process on each landing. Runners down. Silk up. Beads wherever bare bone screamed for earrings.
At one point he paused at a window of sheer necro ice overlooking the Winterwake Marches. The fens lay outside. Gray. Cold. Hung with distant spiderweb lines that only people from the March noticed. Beyond them, somewhere, the Pale Gate where Ixqueya had met this mysterious guest.
Tona considered the view. Considered the stark sill. “Absolutely not,” he muttered. “We are not giving the poor woman a panorama of emotional hypothermia.” He lifted his hand. The Ghost Loom answered with a heavy drape of fabric. Deep green fading to blue, embroidered along the edge with bone orchids and tiny stylized spiders. Each spider wore a thread of gold.
He hooked the drape above the window and tied it back with a length of jade ribbon. The view remained. The world beyond still looked like a wet grave. Now, though, it had a frame that implied someone inside knew how to enjoy being alive. “There,” he said, satisfied. “From funerary brochure to dramatic landscape. You are welcome, everyone.” A dry voice came from the hall behind him. “Master Xīhuitzin.”
One of the Quiet Line undead constables stood there. Bone lantern hanging from a pole. Necro ice shackles at its belt. It regarded the new runner as if it were a suspect at the gate. “The Lady gave no order for alterations,” it said. Tona smiled at it with pure sunshine. “My dear White Line,” he said. “These are not alterations. These are life support. I am simply helping the décor reach its full potential. Think of it as… embalming, but for taste.”
He gestured to the runner. The constable’s lantern light fell across the weave. Suns sparked and faded. The hall looked less like the throat of a beast and more like the inside of some solemn, very fashionable creature that had recently discovered accessories. “The passage remains clear,” Tona pointed out. “The ribs remain fortified. The sigils remain untouched. I have only suggested to the walls that they stop sulking.”
A pause. The constable’s jaw bones shifted.
“This will be recorded as decorative maintenance,” it said finally. “Perfect,” Tona replied. “Put it under ‘emergency measures, emotional.’” He turned away before the skeleton could answer and clapped twice. His crew snapped to attention. “Onward. Lady Winter will be back any moment, dragging some poor creature behind her frost. We must make sure the first thing this guest sees is not a hallway that looks like it bites.” They climbed.
The last stretch before Ixqueya’s great audience doors had always annoyed him. The designers had clearly woken up that morning and said, what if a corridor could actively judge people. Ribs swelled out from the walls, lacework of bone and ice. Bone orchids in troughs watched with empty mouths. Every footstep came back three times, as if the palace asked, are you sure, are you sure, are you sure. Tona stopped at the threshold and folded his arms.
“No,” he said out loud. “Absolutely not. This is not an interrogation. This is foreplay.” Phosphor slowly turned its skull. “Spatial foreplay,” Tona clarified. “Do not give me that look. We are not doing anything improper. We are doing something fabulous.” The Ghost Loom jumped, as if delighted by the word. Threads tightened. New cloth began to grow. This time heavier. Velvet weight. Silk sheen. “Runner,” Tona said. “Full length. Deep as midnight. Hidden pattern of her sigil and my good taste. Go.” Cloth fell. A shadowed river down the center of the hall. When he smoothed it with his palms, small designs glimmered. A stylized necro ice ribcage. A spider. A tiny, almost secret sun. The House, the March, and the scandalous little star that had moved into its attic.
Phosphor and Tally unrolled the runner all the way to the doors. Skein followed behind, setting necro ice beads in a careful rhythm along the edges like drops of frost. Next, the verticals. Tona summoned sheer silk in long strips and hung them from the overhead ribs. Each panel faded from pale white at the top to rich violet at the bottom. He stitched threadbound sigils for calm, confidence, and a very gentle warmth between them. Nothing that would offend Necro Ice. Just enough to tell anxious shoulders to drop.
When someone walked through that hall now, the silk would breathe with them. Not a cage. A curtain. At the halfway point he added alcove shrines to his own sensibilities. Small clusters of necro ice beads and carved bone lilies, anchored to the wall at intervals. They caught the orchid light and scattered it in unexpected sparks. From the doors, the effect was clear. The hall still belonged to House Frostmarrow. It just now understood that intimidation and allure were cousins. Tona tested it properly.
He stepped back to the far end, drew a breath, and walked as if he were that unknown woman. Not his usual lazy glide. A stranger’s careful pace. The runner muffled the ring of his boots. Secret suns blinked underfoot. Silk drifted at his shoulders. For a heartbeat he almost felt the nerves his threadbinding would taste when the real guest came. He reached the doors, turned, and walked back as himself. Hips loose. Arms relaxed. Expression pure trouble.
He imagined Ixqueya at the far end. Tall, cold, insufferably composed. He imagined the way her eyes would narrow when she saw what he had done, the tiny crease at the corner of her mouth when she realized it worked. “She is going to say it is frivolous,” he told his skeletons. “Then she will walk through it four times to ‘test sight lines’ and secretly enjoy every step.” Skein mimed zipping an invisible mouth. Tally did a little hip wiggle that almost counted as a strut. “Exactly. Discretion, my loves. We are enhancing security by distracting the enemy with thighs and light refraction.”
Farther down the hall, the Winter Palace woke up around them. Whispering Vein lines pulsed under the floor. The blue soulflame of the Winter Heart Tree above sent a faint ripple through the necro ice. Somewhere, a clerk paused over a ledger as a garland threw unexpected color across their page. Tona tilted his head, listening. “Do you feel that,” he asked quietly. “Even the building is nervous. New pattern. New warmth. New person on the way up.” He had not seen the guest. He did not know whether she was pretty, clever, doomed, or all three. He only knew this.
Ixqueya brought her into the heart of her house. That meant something. That meant the frost wanted company. And when frost wanted company, it was his holy duty to make sure the stage honored the moment. “Come,” he said, voice bright again. “We are not done. We must also rescue the vestibule outside her private hall. At present it looks like a waiting room for people about to be sentenced to tasteful execution.” The skeletons gathered up the remaining silk and bead baskets.
He led them toward the uppermost tiers. Necro ice creaked softly as they passed, adjusting to new weight, new color, new intent. The palace might not have invited joy. Tonatiuh brought it anyway. If Lady Winter was going to drag a guest through all this bone and frost, then by the time they reached the top, the palace would be dressed for it. Not just a fortress, but a runway.
The moon sat huge and white above the Winter Palace, a cold coin pressed into the bruise of the sky. Its light poured through the necro ice apertures of House Frostmarrow’s great hall, shattered on the ribs and skulls and sigils, then gathered itself again on the figure seated at the top of the steps.
Ixqueya Jorgenskull did not soften under that light. She sharpened.
The throne had been carved from fused ribs and thick plates of Necro Ice, a glacier that had learned geometry. No cushions. No fur. The seat was a statement that comfort was for guests and weakness. Bone orchids clustered along the risers below, pale petals veined in cobalt, each bloom drinking what little warmth dared the air and giving it back as ghostfire. Behind the throne, the Undying Tree rose in relief, its roots and branches picked out in bone and frost. Every limb was stripped bare, a winter icon, a god of endurance rather than mercy.
She was the warmest thing in the chamber and that was deliberate theology.
Bronze skin, rich and deep, gleamed against the blue of the Necro Ice. The hall’s cold light turned the long lines of her legs into carved pillars, all muscle and presence. One leg hooked over the arm of the throne, thigh cutting an arrogant diagonal across the moon that hung behind her in the aperture. The other foot planted lower on the steps, heel biting the ice, calf flexed in quiet readiness. Gold sandals gripped her feet, high heels catching light. In the March they would have been absurd. Here they rang like little bells of sacrilege against the stone.
The habilment she wore clung like a dare.
Across her chest the leather harness cupped and lifted the heavy weight of her bust, more architecture than indulgence. Straps crossed her ribs and back, each line cut with an engineer’s certainty, distributing strain like a bridge carries stone. From the central housing, fans of feather burst in teal, cobalt, and rust red, edged with threads of Necro Ice so fine they caught the orchid glow like hoarfrost along a wing. Enough fabric existed to keep the Temple clergy from swooning. The rest was unapologetic geometry.
At her waist a broad belt of turquoise bead, bone, and patterned cloth cinched the narrow point of her torso, a bright ring between the sculpture of her ribs and the broad flare of her hips. From it fell feathered panels, short and bright and treacherous. They swung when she moved, a suggestion more than a barrier. The rest of her midriff was bare. Hard muscle. Smooth skin. Evidence that the Winterwake Marches bred function before ornament and that she had never forgotten it.
Her legs, almost entirely exposed, were the kind that made poets either devout or profane, depending on their prior convictions. Thighs thick with a hunter’s power. Knees scarred in small white crescents where training had bitten deep. Calves corded and clean, the line of Achilles tendon setting off each heel like a knife edge. She did not hide the scars. They read like notches in a weapon. Each one said that something had tried and failed.
Her hair fell in a black cascade down her back, heavy and liquid, streaked through with veins of cobalt that caught the moonlight whenever she turned her head. The front sections had been braided back from her face, thick cords threaded with turquoise, bone, and small shards of Necro Ice that kissed the skin beneath in small, precise chills. Those braids framed her features. The rest of the hair poured loose, over shoulder and down the line of her spine, a night river that had decided to stay.
Her face was a study in hard inheritance. High cheekbones that spoke of old Jorgenskull lines, broad jaw that would not yield. Her nose was straight, with a faint ridge where a training mace had broken it and been forced back into place without fuss. Kohl hugged the upper lids, narrowing her eyes into blades. Those eyes themselves shone a pale, glacial blue, clear and flat. When she drew deep on her power they glazed to molten gold. Tonight they remained the color of a lake that killed quietly in early winter.
Her mouth was full, shaped in a natural softness that her expression never allowed. Painted in a red that sat between fresh blood and dried flower, it curled now into the smallest of smiles. Not warm. Not wide. A curved line of knowledge and verdict.
The expression in the animated image of her that lived in rumor and whispered sketches was the expression she wore now. Chin tipped a fraction downward. Eyes half lidded. Amused and contemptuous and profoundly sure of her own place in this world of bone.
Around her, the hall told the rest of the story.
House Frostmarrow’s great audience chamber had been designed as a devotional to doctrine. Necro Ice climbed in stepped walls. Ribs arched overhead, their undersides carved with sigils of the Undying Tree and the Court of Blessed Bone. Bone orchids filled recessed troughs along the floor. The Whispering Vein grid hummed below, sending messages and soul weights through frozen nerves. At the far end, gigantic doors of ribbed metal and ice recorded each visitor’s name in ghost script, a ledger the hall itself refused to forget.
It had once felt like a perfectly carved tomb that occasionally permitted the living to petition it.
Now it glittered.
Tonatiuh’s handiwork had dressed the severity in spectacle. Frost-silk runners drowned the stone floor in a deep, almost black cobalt. Patterns of ribs, branches, and tiny stylized suns were woven into the cloth so subtly that one only saw them when light struck from an angle. Vertical sheets of sheer fabric hung between the stone ribs above, fading from snow white near the ceiling to bruised violet near the ground. Necro Ice beads and carved bone lilies had been fastened in small clusters along the walls. They caught the blue orchid glow and fractured it into peacock flashes and small sudden stars.
The god of the room had not changed. The altar cloth had.
Ixqueya had permitted that desecration. Quietly. For him.
She had heard him earlier in the day, humming his Loom Quarter work songs as he dragged his fabrics up the ascent, his skeleton crew clacking behind him. She had allowed the Ghost Loom to set up in the main hall. Allowed the silk to go down over stone that had seen only blood and boot heel for years. Allowed the woman she had brought up from the border to be greeted by something other than judgment on the way to the throne.
It was a concession to the Shaitan she respected and to the strategy she lived by. If you brought someone into the heart of your organ, you chose whether the first sensation was awe, fear, or wonder. Today she allowed a controlled dose of wonder. It cost the frost nothing. It bought her options.
She sat on the throne while he finished, letting him believe she did not watch.
He moved below, not far from the foot of the stairs, adjusting the fall of some last sheer panel, speaking in low, rapid cadence to a skeleton that clutched a basket of beads. His coat shimmered in violet and gold, his hair catching glitter like pollen. His skeletons wore ribbons and sashes like absurdly earnest acolytes. He clapped once to test the echo. The hall answered him differently now, softer, the way a temple changed its voice when new tapestries were hung.
Ixqueya watched the way he held himself.
There was more brightness in the set of his shoulders than usual. More rhythm in his hands. He had always been theatrical. Today there was something behind it. A secret pact with his own joy.
The Marchioness of Winterwake rose.
She did not do so gently. The throne made a small sound as her weight left it, ice answering muscle. Feathers shivered. Necro Ice threads in the harness chimed. She unhooked her long leg from the arm, planted both feet, and stood in one fluid, deliberate motion, the way a glacier might decide to move after a century of patience.
Every line of her body fell into place as she stepped forward.
Shoulders back. Spine tall. One hip rolling with each step because a frame like hers made it inevitable, not because she sought to charm. Arms relaxed, but with a predator’s economy. Her face stayed carved in that half smile. Her eyes said winter.
As she descended the steps, the hall reacted. Orchid petals shifted, turning toward her as if tracking heat. The Whispering Vein pulses quickened under the Necro Ice. Above them all, in the unseen crown of the ziggurat, the Winter Heart Tree’s blue flame leaned a fraction in her direction, a ghostly acknowledgement from the organ that she walked.
Gold heels bit into the runner. The frost-silk muted the sound, turning each impact into a heavy, controlled thud instead of a ringing threat. Feathers at her harness and hip stirred with her motion, little storms of color against bronze skin. The Necro Ice shards braided into her hair caught the changing angles of moonlight, flashing like frost along river stone.
She stopped just where the last step met the cloth, at the edge of his new-made runway.
Tonatiuh turned toward her. One of the Quiet Line lanterns had guttered near the doors, a wordless herald. His gaze climbed from heel to crown. She saw the recognition in the first heartbeat, the aesthetic cataloguing in the second, the almost-religious appreciation in the third. He was wise enough not to let his mouth fall open.
She did not speak at once.
Silence, here, was a tool she wielded better than any mace. She let it run out to its natural end, until the hall itself seemed to hold its breath. Only then did she lower her chin a fraction more and let the small curve at the corner of her mouth sharpen into something like approval.
“You have done well,” she said.
Her voice carried easily in the cold. It never needed to be raised. The hall had been built to hear her.
“The palace looks less like a sentencing chamber. More like a place the living might endure for an afternoon. That is an improvement.”
In her mouth, that was lavish praise.
Her gaze slipped from his face to the silk, to the beads, to the curtained ribs overhead. She weighed the choices he had made. The palette had obeyed Frostmarrow. They were still colors of ice and bruise and bone. Yet he had brought in other notes. Greens that remembered far jungles. Hints of sun caught in necro ice beads. It was a priest’s trick, she decided. Dress the altar in new cloth, never change the god.
“You have dressed my house,” she observed, “the way a clever cleric dresses an altar. Different fabric. Same doctrine. You know when not to lie. I respect that.”
Her eyes returned to his.
Whatever warmth had touched her words did not reach them. The gaze was still a ledger, still measuring.
“But tell me,” she went on, tone flattening into something colder, “what has you in such a chipper mood?”
She moved forward a little, just enough that her scent reached him. Snowmelt. Dried citrus. A thread of marrow. His own blend on her skin, chosen this morning because it pleased her to weaponize the gift.
“You are humming,” she said. “You are whistling at my guards. You have turned the main ascent of Thanal Iztac into what looks very much like a festival route instead of an interrogation gauntlet.”
Her gaze flicked to the nearest skeleton, then back.
“That is not simple vanity. You are vain, but you are not a fool. A man who spends this much cloth on an ordinary day is trying to hide something. You have never needed to hide.”
She tilted her head, the movement small, the way a judge leans over a new line in a long column of numbers.
“So,” she asked, voice soft as falling frost, “have you won something I have not yet heard about, or are you merely gambling that my guest is worth the effort you have lavished on her steps?”
The question settled between them. The orchids listened. The ribs above caught and held the sound.
Ixqueya let the silence grow teeth.
The March had taught her that sermons were not always shouted. Some simply asked a question and waited to see who sweated. Here, in her ice-dressed cathedral, draped in sinful feathers and holy scars, she watched the most famous clothier in the realms and waited to see which kind of answer he offered her.
Her eyes did not waver. Her posture did not soften. Whatever color now painted the hall, her deportment remained what it always was.
Frigid. Beautiful. And utterly convinced that she was the cold at the heart of Hextor, and everything else was either weather or décor.
Ixqueya Jorgenskull did not soften under that light. She sharpened.
The throne had been carved from fused ribs and thick plates of Necro Ice, a glacier that had learned geometry. No cushions. No fur. The seat was a statement that comfort was for guests and weakness. Bone orchids clustered along the risers below, pale petals veined in cobalt, each bloom drinking what little warmth dared the air and giving it back as ghostfire. Behind the throne, the Undying Tree rose in relief, its roots and branches picked out in bone and frost. Every limb was stripped bare, a winter icon, a god of endurance rather than mercy.
She was the warmest thing in the chamber and that was deliberate theology.
Bronze skin, rich and deep, gleamed against the blue of the Necro Ice. The hall’s cold light turned the long lines of her legs into carved pillars, all muscle and presence. One leg hooked over the arm of the throne, thigh cutting an arrogant diagonal across the moon that hung behind her in the aperture. The other foot planted lower on the steps, heel biting the ice, calf flexed in quiet readiness. Gold sandals gripped her feet, high heels catching light. In the March they would have been absurd. Here they rang like little bells of sacrilege against the stone.
The habilment she wore clung like a dare.
Across her chest the leather harness cupped and lifted the heavy weight of her bust, more architecture than indulgence. Straps crossed her ribs and back, each line cut with an engineer’s certainty, distributing strain like a bridge carries stone. From the central housing, fans of feather burst in teal, cobalt, and rust red, edged with threads of Necro Ice so fine they caught the orchid glow like hoarfrost along a wing. Enough fabric existed to keep the Temple clergy from swooning. The rest was unapologetic geometry.
At her waist a broad belt of turquoise bead, bone, and patterned cloth cinched the narrow point of her torso, a bright ring between the sculpture of her ribs and the broad flare of her hips. From it fell feathered panels, short and bright and treacherous. They swung when she moved, a suggestion more than a barrier. The rest of her midriff was bare. Hard muscle. Smooth skin. Evidence that the Winterwake Marches bred function before ornament and that she had never forgotten it.
Her legs, almost entirely exposed, were the kind that made poets either devout or profane, depending on their prior convictions. Thighs thick with a hunter’s power. Knees scarred in small white crescents where training had bitten deep. Calves corded and clean, the line of Achilles tendon setting off each heel like a knife edge. She did not hide the scars. They read like notches in a weapon. Each one said that something had tried and failed.
Her hair fell in a black cascade down her back, heavy and liquid, streaked through with veins of cobalt that caught the moonlight whenever she turned her head. The front sections had been braided back from her face, thick cords threaded with turquoise, bone, and small shards of Necro Ice that kissed the skin beneath in small, precise chills. Those braids framed her features. The rest of the hair poured loose, over shoulder and down the line of her spine, a night river that had decided to stay.
Her face was a study in hard inheritance. High cheekbones that spoke of old Jorgenskull lines, broad jaw that would not yield. Her nose was straight, with a faint ridge where a training mace had broken it and been forced back into place without fuss. Kohl hugged the upper lids, narrowing her eyes into blades. Those eyes themselves shone a pale, glacial blue, clear and flat. When she drew deep on her power they glazed to molten gold. Tonight they remained the color of a lake that killed quietly in early winter.
Her mouth was full, shaped in a natural softness that her expression never allowed. Painted in a red that sat between fresh blood and dried flower, it curled now into the smallest of smiles. Not warm. Not wide. A curved line of knowledge and verdict.
The expression in the animated image of her that lived in rumor and whispered sketches was the expression she wore now. Chin tipped a fraction downward. Eyes half lidded. Amused and contemptuous and profoundly sure of her own place in this world of bone.
Around her, the hall told the rest of the story.
House Frostmarrow’s great audience chamber had been designed as a devotional to doctrine. Necro Ice climbed in stepped walls. Ribs arched overhead, their undersides carved with sigils of the Undying Tree and the Court of Blessed Bone. Bone orchids filled recessed troughs along the floor. The Whispering Vein grid hummed below, sending messages and soul weights through frozen nerves. At the far end, gigantic doors of ribbed metal and ice recorded each visitor’s name in ghost script, a ledger the hall itself refused to forget.
It had once felt like a perfectly carved tomb that occasionally permitted the living to petition it.
Now it glittered.
Tonatiuh’s handiwork had dressed the severity in spectacle. Frost-silk runners drowned the stone floor in a deep, almost black cobalt. Patterns of ribs, branches, and tiny stylized suns were woven into the cloth so subtly that one only saw them when light struck from an angle. Vertical sheets of sheer fabric hung between the stone ribs above, fading from snow white near the ceiling to bruised violet near the ground. Necro Ice beads and carved bone lilies had been fastened in small clusters along the walls. They caught the blue orchid glow and fractured it into peacock flashes and small sudden stars.
The god of the room had not changed. The altar cloth had.
Ixqueya had permitted that desecration. Quietly. For him.
She had heard him earlier in the day, humming his Loom Quarter work songs as he dragged his fabrics up the ascent, his skeleton crew clacking behind him. She had allowed the Ghost Loom to set up in the main hall. Allowed the silk to go down over stone that had seen only blood and boot heel for years. Allowed the woman she had brought up from the border to be greeted by something other than judgment on the way to the throne.
It was a concession to the Shaitan she respected and to the strategy she lived by. If you brought someone into the heart of your organ, you chose whether the first sensation was awe, fear, or wonder. Today she allowed a controlled dose of wonder. It cost the frost nothing. It bought her options.
She sat on the throne while he finished, letting him believe she did not watch.
He moved below, not far from the foot of the stairs, adjusting the fall of some last sheer panel, speaking in low, rapid cadence to a skeleton that clutched a basket of beads. His coat shimmered in violet and gold, his hair catching glitter like pollen. His skeletons wore ribbons and sashes like absurdly earnest acolytes. He clapped once to test the echo. The hall answered him differently now, softer, the way a temple changed its voice when new tapestries were hung.
Ixqueya watched the way he held himself.
There was more brightness in the set of his shoulders than usual. More rhythm in his hands. He had always been theatrical. Today there was something behind it. A secret pact with his own joy.
The Marchioness of Winterwake rose.
She did not do so gently. The throne made a small sound as her weight left it, ice answering muscle. Feathers shivered. Necro Ice threads in the harness chimed. She unhooked her long leg from the arm, planted both feet, and stood in one fluid, deliberate motion, the way a glacier might decide to move after a century of patience.
Every line of her body fell into place as she stepped forward.
Shoulders back. Spine tall. One hip rolling with each step because a frame like hers made it inevitable, not because she sought to charm. Arms relaxed, but with a predator’s economy. Her face stayed carved in that half smile. Her eyes said winter.
As she descended the steps, the hall reacted. Orchid petals shifted, turning toward her as if tracking heat. The Whispering Vein pulses quickened under the Necro Ice. Above them all, in the unseen crown of the ziggurat, the Winter Heart Tree’s blue flame leaned a fraction in her direction, a ghostly acknowledgement from the organ that she walked.
Gold heels bit into the runner. The frost-silk muted the sound, turning each impact into a heavy, controlled thud instead of a ringing threat. Feathers at her harness and hip stirred with her motion, little storms of color against bronze skin. The Necro Ice shards braided into her hair caught the changing angles of moonlight, flashing like frost along river stone.
She stopped just where the last step met the cloth, at the edge of his new-made runway.
Tonatiuh turned toward her. One of the Quiet Line lanterns had guttered near the doors, a wordless herald. His gaze climbed from heel to crown. She saw the recognition in the first heartbeat, the aesthetic cataloguing in the second, the almost-religious appreciation in the third. He was wise enough not to let his mouth fall open.
She did not speak at once.
Silence, here, was a tool she wielded better than any mace. She let it run out to its natural end, until the hall itself seemed to hold its breath. Only then did she lower her chin a fraction more and let the small curve at the corner of her mouth sharpen into something like approval.
“You have done well,” she said.
Her voice carried easily in the cold. It never needed to be raised. The hall had been built to hear her.
“The palace looks less like a sentencing chamber. More like a place the living might endure for an afternoon. That is an improvement.”
In her mouth, that was lavish praise.
Her gaze slipped from his face to the silk, to the beads, to the curtained ribs overhead. She weighed the choices he had made. The palette had obeyed Frostmarrow. They were still colors of ice and bruise and bone. Yet he had brought in other notes. Greens that remembered far jungles. Hints of sun caught in necro ice beads. It was a priest’s trick, she decided. Dress the altar in new cloth, never change the god.
“You have dressed my house,” she observed, “the way a clever cleric dresses an altar. Different fabric. Same doctrine. You know when not to lie. I respect that.”
Her eyes returned to his.
Whatever warmth had touched her words did not reach them. The gaze was still a ledger, still measuring.
“But tell me,” she went on, tone flattening into something colder, “what has you in such a chipper mood?”
She moved forward a little, just enough that her scent reached him. Snowmelt. Dried citrus. A thread of marrow. His own blend on her skin, chosen this morning because it pleased her to weaponize the gift.
“You are humming,” she said. “You are whistling at my guards. You have turned the main ascent of Thanal Iztac into what looks very much like a festival route instead of an interrogation gauntlet.”
Her gaze flicked to the nearest skeleton, then back.
“That is not simple vanity. You are vain, but you are not a fool. A man who spends this much cloth on an ordinary day is trying to hide something. You have never needed to hide.”
She tilted her head, the movement small, the way a judge leans over a new line in a long column of numbers.
“So,” she asked, voice soft as falling frost, “have you won something I have not yet heard about, or are you merely gambling that my guest is worth the effort you have lavished on her steps?”
The question settled between them. The orchids listened. The ribs above caught and held the sound.
Ixqueya let the silence grow teeth.
The March had taught her that sermons were not always shouted. Some simply asked a question and waited to see who sweated. Here, in her ice-dressed cathedral, draped in sinful feathers and holy scars, she watched the most famous clothier in the realms and waited to see which kind of answer he offered her.
Her eyes did not waver. Her posture did not soften. Whatever color now painted the hall, her deportment remained what it always was.
Frigid. Beautiful. And utterly convinced that she was the cold at the heart of Hextor, and everything else was either weather or décor.
Tonatiuh had dressed cathedrals, war councils, courtesans and corpses. None of them walked like this. For a heartbeat, as Ixqueya descended, the Necrocouturier simply watched. The frost-silk he had laid down took her weight like an oath. The feathers he had trimmed himself fanned perfectly with each measured step. The harness sat exactly where he had intended, lifting the heavy gifts of her chest as if the Undying Tree itself had decided to grow in curves.
His heart did something undignified under his ribs. He ignored it. Instead, he smiled. It was not his shop smile, all easy warmth and low prices. It was the rare one. Bright and sharp and edged with a craftsman’s satisfaction. The smile a sculptor wore when stone finally admitted what it had always been. When she finished speaking, when that quiet blade of a question about his mood hung between them, he swept into a bow deep enough to appease even the frost.
“First,” he said, voice rich and unhurried, “we will address the miracle in the room.” He rose, letting his gaze travel up her body with the frank appreciation of a man who knew measurements to the finger width and still allowed himself to be stunned. “Look at you,” Tona breathed. “My Lady Winter, seated under Yohualtzin like some very specific prayer that has finally been answered. The harness sits as if your ribs were carved for it. The belt does not dare slip. The feathers behave. This is, I confess, offensive. The gods should not let a tailor be this right on the first fitting.”
His eyes flicked to her face, to the cold line of her mouth, the faint curl at one corner. “And then there is the matter of your beauty,” he went on, letting the word sit without flinch. “The border has seen crusaders, caravans, monsters, saints. None of them ever marched in with bronze like hammered dawn and eyes like ice that has learned to read accounts.” He circled a fraction, careful not to invade the space she held at the head of the runner. His skeletons shuffled aside, sashes swaying.
“If any fool sings that death is ugly after seeing you in that ensemble,” he added, “they are lying to themselves and insulting my craft.” Only then did he let mischief lighten his tone. “And yes,” he said, fingers tapping against his lips in mock thought, “I may also be in a good mood because the halls are buzzing. I heard a rumor that Lady Winter has brought home quite the exotic little morsel.” He tilted his head, earrings chiming softly.
“Now, this is purely professional curiosity, of course,” he said. “I must know what sort of creature is important enough to climb this runway. Is it a man, My Lady. Please tell me it is a man.” His grin widened, wicked and bright. “And if it is, how hot is he. On a scale from 'respectable kiln' to 'I will need to reinforce the stone to keep the heels from sinking'.” He lifted a hand, fingers miming the line of a throat.
“Does he like men,” Tona asked, utterly unashamed. “Specifically, men who can sew on the run, command a dance line of skeletons, and perform a very respectable sword swallowing act when the mood and the stage are right.” He let the innuendo hang, light as incense. Nothing explicit, only suggestion and the gleam in his eye. The skeleton nearest him, festooned in a violet sash, did a tiny hip wiggle in solidarity. Then he rolled his shoulders as if physically brushing away her accusation about his decorating.
“As for my alleged festival,” he said, flicking his wrist toward the garlands, “you wound me. This is not a festival. This is triage. I had almost no notice, the halls of Iztāmictlān are large enough to make lesser men weep, and your guards insist on standing exactly where I want accent pieces.” He clicked his tongue, feigning outrage.
“On such short time, there is only so much a poor mortal can do,” he went on. “A few runners. Some silk to teach the ribs how to behave. A handful of necro ice beads to remind the orchids that color exists. I assure you, if I had a full cycle and fewer regulations about 'structural integrity' and 'not blinding the Household Guard', we would be having a very different conversation.” He sobered a fraction, enough that she would hear the conviction under the glitter.
“But no,” Tona said, “I will not apologize for fighting the macabre.” He gestured around them, taking in the ribs, the ice, the ghostfire. “Yes, this is the world of the dead,” he said. “Yes, the border is sacred, the ledger must balance, the Tree drinks our marrow, and all that very serious doctrine. I have embroidered it on enough vestments that I can recite it in my sleep.” His hand fell back to his chest, thumb pressing lightly against his sternum.
“Yet even in the land of winter death, people still breathe,” he added quietly. “They still feel fear on these steps. Hope. Pride. Whatever strange thing your exotic morsel brings with her boots.” His smile returned, bright as cut glass. “Why should our walls pretend they do not,” he finished. “Cold keeps the border. Certainly. Color keeps the living from turning into more bones for my crew before their time.” He flicked a fond glance at the skeletons, as if to say they were already enough company.
“So forgive me, My Lady,” Tonatiuh said, bowing again with a dancer’s flourish, “if I prefer that Hextor’s guests walk through a cathedral that looks like it remembers joy, instead of yet another corridor that only knows how to practice its own funeral.” He straightened, eyes meeting hers again, steady despite the sparkle.
“You asked why I am chipper,” he said, softer. “The answer is simple. You are glorious, I have an excuse to make your house match, and there is possibly a handsome stranger climbing my fabric at this very moment.” A flash of teeth. “If that does not put a spring in a man’s step, My Lady Winter, he belongs in your organ vaults, not on my runway.”
His heart did something undignified under his ribs. He ignored it. Instead, he smiled. It was not his shop smile, all easy warmth and low prices. It was the rare one. Bright and sharp and edged with a craftsman’s satisfaction. The smile a sculptor wore when stone finally admitted what it had always been. When she finished speaking, when that quiet blade of a question about his mood hung between them, he swept into a bow deep enough to appease even the frost.
“First,” he said, voice rich and unhurried, “we will address the miracle in the room.” He rose, letting his gaze travel up her body with the frank appreciation of a man who knew measurements to the finger width and still allowed himself to be stunned. “Look at you,” Tona breathed. “My Lady Winter, seated under Yohualtzin like some very specific prayer that has finally been answered. The harness sits as if your ribs were carved for it. The belt does not dare slip. The feathers behave. This is, I confess, offensive. The gods should not let a tailor be this right on the first fitting.”
His eyes flicked to her face, to the cold line of her mouth, the faint curl at one corner. “And then there is the matter of your beauty,” he went on, letting the word sit without flinch. “The border has seen crusaders, caravans, monsters, saints. None of them ever marched in with bronze like hammered dawn and eyes like ice that has learned to read accounts.” He circled a fraction, careful not to invade the space she held at the head of the runner. His skeletons shuffled aside, sashes swaying.
“If any fool sings that death is ugly after seeing you in that ensemble,” he added, “they are lying to themselves and insulting my craft.” Only then did he let mischief lighten his tone. “And yes,” he said, fingers tapping against his lips in mock thought, “I may also be in a good mood because the halls are buzzing. I heard a rumor that Lady Winter has brought home quite the exotic little morsel.” He tilted his head, earrings chiming softly.
“Now, this is purely professional curiosity, of course,” he said. “I must know what sort of creature is important enough to climb this runway. Is it a man, My Lady. Please tell me it is a man.” His grin widened, wicked and bright. “And if it is, how hot is he. On a scale from 'respectable kiln' to 'I will need to reinforce the stone to keep the heels from sinking'.” He lifted a hand, fingers miming the line of a throat.
“Does he like men,” Tona asked, utterly unashamed. “Specifically, men who can sew on the run, command a dance line of skeletons, and perform a very respectable sword swallowing act when the mood and the stage are right.” He let the innuendo hang, light as incense. Nothing explicit, only suggestion and the gleam in his eye. The skeleton nearest him, festooned in a violet sash, did a tiny hip wiggle in solidarity. Then he rolled his shoulders as if physically brushing away her accusation about his decorating.
“As for my alleged festival,” he said, flicking his wrist toward the garlands, “you wound me. This is not a festival. This is triage. I had almost no notice, the halls of Iztāmictlān are large enough to make lesser men weep, and your guards insist on standing exactly where I want accent pieces.” He clicked his tongue, feigning outrage.
“On such short time, there is only so much a poor mortal can do,” he went on. “A few runners. Some silk to teach the ribs how to behave. A handful of necro ice beads to remind the orchids that color exists. I assure you, if I had a full cycle and fewer regulations about 'structural integrity' and 'not blinding the Household Guard', we would be having a very different conversation.” He sobered a fraction, enough that she would hear the conviction under the glitter.
“But no,” Tona said, “I will not apologize for fighting the macabre.” He gestured around them, taking in the ribs, the ice, the ghostfire. “Yes, this is the world of the dead,” he said. “Yes, the border is sacred, the ledger must balance, the Tree drinks our marrow, and all that very serious doctrine. I have embroidered it on enough vestments that I can recite it in my sleep.” His hand fell back to his chest, thumb pressing lightly against his sternum.
“Yet even in the land of winter death, people still breathe,” he added quietly. “They still feel fear on these steps. Hope. Pride. Whatever strange thing your exotic morsel brings with her boots.” His smile returned, bright as cut glass. “Why should our walls pretend they do not,” he finished. “Cold keeps the border. Certainly. Color keeps the living from turning into more bones for my crew before their time.” He flicked a fond glance at the skeletons, as if to say they were already enough company.
“So forgive me, My Lady,” Tonatiuh said, bowing again with a dancer’s flourish, “if I prefer that Hextor’s guests walk through a cathedral that looks like it remembers joy, instead of yet another corridor that only knows how to practice its own funeral.” He straightened, eyes meeting hers again, steady despite the sparkle.
“You asked why I am chipper,” he said, softer. “The answer is simple. You are glorious, I have an excuse to make your house match, and there is possibly a handsome stranger climbing my fabric at this very moment.” A flash of teeth. “If that does not put a spring in a man’s step, My Lady Winter, he belongs in your organ vaults, not on my runway.”
Ixqueya listened without interrupting, the way a shrine listens to candles. His praise, his innuendo, his defense of color all poured toward her like incense. None of it moved the ice in her eyes.
Yet something in the line of her shoulders eased.
The corner of her mouth twitched. It was not a smile, not quite. More the ghost of one. A crack in a glacier that only the attentive would notice.
“When a man flatters me,” she said at last, “I usually assume he wants something. In your case, Tonatiuh, I accept the compliment as simple professional honesty.”
Her gaze swept down herself and back up, not with vanity, but with the calm inventory of a commander checking gear before a march.
“You should approve of the dress,” she added. “You made it. If it failed, we would both look foolish, and I have no intention of sharing that stain with you or anyone.”
The hall tasted of her voice. Quiet. Precise. Each word laid like a stone in cold water.
She regarded him for a moment longer. Threads of ouroboros gold in his eyes. Silk clinging to his shoulders. Skeletons standing at respectful attention, wrapped in his scraps of joy like altar cloths on borrowed saints.
“If death must dress itself,” she said, “better it wear the work of a man who understands that a shroud can preach as fiercely as a sermon.”
There. For anyone else, it would have been effusive. For her, it was a benediction.
“As for this ‘exotic morsel’,” she went on, voice flattening again, “you may relax. You will not be deprived of your theater. She is warm. She is foreign. She is not yet accustomed to the March. That is all you need to know until I decide whether she belongs in my ledgers as guest, asset, or problem.”
A pause. The faintest dry gleam entered her eyes.
“If she turns out to be a man,” Ixqueya said, “I will inform you of his temperature in degrees of your concern. Until then, do not measure people by how easily they are charmed by your throat tricks. The God Beneath measures by use. Not by who swoons when you threaten to swallow steel for them.”
The rebuke landed soft as snow and just as cold.
She let her gaze travel once more over his silk and beads, the way the frost-silk runner altered the sound of her own heartbeat when she moved. There was a kind of holy service in what he had done. A jester’s liturgy. Brightness held up like a mirror to the tomb.
“The Undying Tree needs many roots,” she said more softly. “Some drink rot. Some drink blood. Some drink fear. You, it seems, drink boredom.”
Her chin dipped in a fraction of a nod.
“I will not begrudge you that. The border is ugly enough. If your work keeps the living from becoming statues before their time, then consider your flamboyance an approved rite of the Cold Way.”
She stepped past him then, perfume and frost and feather brushing the air.
“Keep the palace brushed and bedecked, Tonatiuh,” she said over her shoulder. “You may prance, preen, and flirt at will, so long as the ribs stay sharp and the doors still close when I give the word.”
A beat, the faintest hint of humor threading the ice.
“And if this guest survives my questions,” Ixqueya finished, “you may discover for yourself whether he is worth a sword or only a needle.”
Yet something in the line of her shoulders eased.
The corner of her mouth twitched. It was not a smile, not quite. More the ghost of one. A crack in a glacier that only the attentive would notice.
“When a man flatters me,” she said at last, “I usually assume he wants something. In your case, Tonatiuh, I accept the compliment as simple professional honesty.”
Her gaze swept down herself and back up, not with vanity, but with the calm inventory of a commander checking gear before a march.
“You should approve of the dress,” she added. “You made it. If it failed, we would both look foolish, and I have no intention of sharing that stain with you or anyone.”
The hall tasted of her voice. Quiet. Precise. Each word laid like a stone in cold water.
She regarded him for a moment longer. Threads of ouroboros gold in his eyes. Silk clinging to his shoulders. Skeletons standing at respectful attention, wrapped in his scraps of joy like altar cloths on borrowed saints.
“If death must dress itself,” she said, “better it wear the work of a man who understands that a shroud can preach as fiercely as a sermon.”
There. For anyone else, it would have been effusive. For her, it was a benediction.
“As for this ‘exotic morsel’,” she went on, voice flattening again, “you may relax. You will not be deprived of your theater. She is warm. She is foreign. She is not yet accustomed to the March. That is all you need to know until I decide whether she belongs in my ledgers as guest, asset, or problem.”
A pause. The faintest dry gleam entered her eyes.
“If she turns out to be a man,” Ixqueya said, “I will inform you of his temperature in degrees of your concern. Until then, do not measure people by how easily they are charmed by your throat tricks. The God Beneath measures by use. Not by who swoons when you threaten to swallow steel for them.”
The rebuke landed soft as snow and just as cold.
She let her gaze travel once more over his silk and beads, the way the frost-silk runner altered the sound of her own heartbeat when she moved. There was a kind of holy service in what he had done. A jester’s liturgy. Brightness held up like a mirror to the tomb.
“The Undying Tree needs many roots,” she said more softly. “Some drink rot. Some drink blood. Some drink fear. You, it seems, drink boredom.”
Her chin dipped in a fraction of a nod.
“I will not begrudge you that. The border is ugly enough. If your work keeps the living from becoming statues before their time, then consider your flamboyance an approved rite of the Cold Way.”
She stepped past him then, perfume and frost and feather brushing the air.
“Keep the palace brushed and bedecked, Tonatiuh,” she said over her shoulder. “You may prance, preen, and flirt at will, so long as the ribs stay sharp and the doors still close when I give the word.”
A beat, the faintest hint of humor threading the ice.
“And if this guest survives my questions,” Ixqueya finished, “you may discover for yourself whether he is worth a sword or only a needle.”
Tonatiuh made a small, tragic sound in his throat when she named the guest “she.” “Of course,” he sighed, hand to heart, head tipping back in operatic despair. “The one time I get advance gossip and it is not about a handsome prince in need of having his inseam redeemed for the glory of Hextor.”
His skeletons shifted, as if they had heard this lament before. One offered him the bead basket in consolation. He waved it away and straightened, theatrics smoothing into something quieter. The pout lingered for a heartbeat, then he folded it neatly away, like a costume between acts. When he spoke again, his voice was still warm, still bright, but the edges had changed. “Well, if our foreign morsel is not a prince, she will at least have the decency to be impressed. I will make do.”
His gaze climbed to Ixqueya’s and stayed there.
For a moment the palace fell away. The ribs, the orchids, the silent guards, even the moon framed behind her like a halo made of interrogation lamps. All of it blurred to backdrop. There was only the woman in the scandalous armor of feathers and ice, and the fact that he had been allowed closer to her than almost anyone who still breathed.
“You know,” he said more softly, “you speak of ledgers and guests and categories as if you are not writing in one of your own columns.” He took a cautious step toward her. Not enough to crowd. Enough to make his words meant for her, not the hall. “I heard the rumors first and I will admit it,” Tona continued, “I was very disappointed it was not some lost prince with shoulders for days and a tragic backstory about needing his trousers properly sized.”
A flash of grin, quick as a spark on Necro Ice. “But that was not why I laid runners and silk up your throat,” he said. “That was only the joke I told myself so I could move fast.” His tone shifted again, losing the showman’s swell. What remained was the Loom Quarter boy who had learned to count by buttons and pray by pleats.
“I have seen winters, My Lady,” he went on. “Long ones. Not the kind that crack stone outside, the other kind. The ones that move into a house and take a chair at the table. You feed them duty and they do not leave. You pour your life into their cup and they only ever complain the tea is cold.”
His eyes searched hers, knowing he walked near lines no one else dared. “You are very good at that winter,” he said. “At being the cold that keeps the border. The rib that never bends. The flame on the Tree that always leans the right way. The Court looks at you and sees an organ that works. The March looks at you and sees a wall that does not crack.” He spread his hands, fingers splayed, bangles chiming.
“I look at you and see a woman who has not had a real party in… ever,” he added. “Not a victory feast. Not a war council with better wine. I mean a party where you were allowed to be something besides the knife at the threshold.” Skein, the smallest skeleton, tilted its skull toward Ixqueya as if in silent agreement.
“You keep your front strong,” Tona said. “It is a good front. Very intimidating. Very Frostmarrow. But winter that never ends is a failed season. The doctrine forgets to write that down.” He glanced around at the silk he had hung, at the beads, at the softened echo of her own heels on the runner.
“So yes,” he said, “I dressed the hall for your guest. I wanted her to see that Hextor knows color, that the dead can walk through light without flinching. But mostly I dressed it for you.” His voice dropped a fraction. “I wanted you to walk down your own ascent and remember you have a friend in this icebox, not just an ally.”
The word friend landed between them with more weight than any title he could have chosen. “Do you remember the first time I came before you,” he asked, head tilting. “All glitter and theories and a ledger full of men’s names that the respectable priests thought meant I should be quietly buried in a nice, anonymous wall.” He raised his brows, a small, incredulous echo of that younger self.
“You looked straight through me,” Tona said. “Saw every sin they had stitched into my back. My taste in men, my refusal to hide it, my habit of teaching skeletons to clap on the off-beat. You had every excuse to turn me away. Call me a distraction. A liability.” His smile softened, edges rounding.
“But you did not,” he said. “You said, ‘If you can make a corpse look like it died on purpose and a general look like he won on purpose, I do not care who you kiss when you are off my clock.’” His impression of her voice was not mocking; it was fond, precise, shaded with respect. “That was the first time in my life,” he added, “anyone with power spoke over my neck and chose usefulness instead of disgust.” He nodded toward her, feathers and bronze and all.
“So here we are,” he said. “You accepted me. All of me. The Necrocouturier, the man, the one who eyes your guards and asks impolite questions about princes.” He lifted one hand, palm up. “It is only fair,” Tonatiuh went on, “that I accept you in return. All of you. The Marchioness, the inquisitor, the martyr who would rather freeze herself than ask the fire to move closer.” His eyes were steady now, no glitter hiding them.
“I see the way you treat your own comfort,” he said. “Like a dress one size too small. Something to be endured until the duty is done. I see the way you carve yourself thin so the border can be thick.” He shrugged one shoulder, shifting his coat. “I cannot fix that,” he admitted. “I am a tailor, not a theologian. I cannot rewrite the Marrow Doctrine so it stops asking you to bleed on the altar every time the wind changes.”
A small, wry smile. “But I can do this much,” he said. “I can make sure that when you come home from whatever crusade or inquiry or ruin you are marching toward, your palace does not look like it already buried you.” He gestured once more at the hall. “I can make the ribs glitter,” he said. “I can make the corridors applaud. I can remind the stone that you are not just its organ, you are its inhabitant. And if I must act the court jester in the process, then very well. Every cathedral needs one saint who wears bells.”
His hand fell back to his side. “So yes, I am sulking that your guest is not a handsome prince with an emergency trouser situation,” he added lightly, letting the humor rise again like steam from hot cloth. “I will complain to the God Beneath about this breach of contract at a later date.” Then, gentler: “But do not mistake that pout for the reason I am chipper,” he finished. “I am chipper because you are glorious in my work, because you let me lace a little joy into your bones, and because for once, My Lady Winter, you are not the only color in the room.”
He dipped his head, almost a bow, almost a vow. “You gave me a place in your house when no one else would,” Tonatiuh said. “As long as I breathe and stitch, you do not walk it alone.”
His skeletons shifted, as if they had heard this lament before. One offered him the bead basket in consolation. He waved it away and straightened, theatrics smoothing into something quieter. The pout lingered for a heartbeat, then he folded it neatly away, like a costume between acts. When he spoke again, his voice was still warm, still bright, but the edges had changed. “Well, if our foreign morsel is not a prince, she will at least have the decency to be impressed. I will make do.”
His gaze climbed to Ixqueya’s and stayed there.
For a moment the palace fell away. The ribs, the orchids, the silent guards, even the moon framed behind her like a halo made of interrogation lamps. All of it blurred to backdrop. There was only the woman in the scandalous armor of feathers and ice, and the fact that he had been allowed closer to her than almost anyone who still breathed.
“You know,” he said more softly, “you speak of ledgers and guests and categories as if you are not writing in one of your own columns.” He took a cautious step toward her. Not enough to crowd. Enough to make his words meant for her, not the hall. “I heard the rumors first and I will admit it,” Tona continued, “I was very disappointed it was not some lost prince with shoulders for days and a tragic backstory about needing his trousers properly sized.”
A flash of grin, quick as a spark on Necro Ice. “But that was not why I laid runners and silk up your throat,” he said. “That was only the joke I told myself so I could move fast.” His tone shifted again, losing the showman’s swell. What remained was the Loom Quarter boy who had learned to count by buttons and pray by pleats.
“I have seen winters, My Lady,” he went on. “Long ones. Not the kind that crack stone outside, the other kind. The ones that move into a house and take a chair at the table. You feed them duty and they do not leave. You pour your life into their cup and they only ever complain the tea is cold.”
His eyes searched hers, knowing he walked near lines no one else dared. “You are very good at that winter,” he said. “At being the cold that keeps the border. The rib that never bends. The flame on the Tree that always leans the right way. The Court looks at you and sees an organ that works. The March looks at you and sees a wall that does not crack.” He spread his hands, fingers splayed, bangles chiming.
“I look at you and see a woman who has not had a real party in… ever,” he added. “Not a victory feast. Not a war council with better wine. I mean a party where you were allowed to be something besides the knife at the threshold.” Skein, the smallest skeleton, tilted its skull toward Ixqueya as if in silent agreement.
“You keep your front strong,” Tona said. “It is a good front. Very intimidating. Very Frostmarrow. But winter that never ends is a failed season. The doctrine forgets to write that down.” He glanced around at the silk he had hung, at the beads, at the softened echo of her own heels on the runner.
“So yes,” he said, “I dressed the hall for your guest. I wanted her to see that Hextor knows color, that the dead can walk through light without flinching. But mostly I dressed it for you.” His voice dropped a fraction. “I wanted you to walk down your own ascent and remember you have a friend in this icebox, not just an ally.”
The word friend landed between them with more weight than any title he could have chosen. “Do you remember the first time I came before you,” he asked, head tilting. “All glitter and theories and a ledger full of men’s names that the respectable priests thought meant I should be quietly buried in a nice, anonymous wall.” He raised his brows, a small, incredulous echo of that younger self.
“You looked straight through me,” Tona said. “Saw every sin they had stitched into my back. My taste in men, my refusal to hide it, my habit of teaching skeletons to clap on the off-beat. You had every excuse to turn me away. Call me a distraction. A liability.” His smile softened, edges rounding.
“But you did not,” he said. “You said, ‘If you can make a corpse look like it died on purpose and a general look like he won on purpose, I do not care who you kiss when you are off my clock.’” His impression of her voice was not mocking; it was fond, precise, shaded with respect. “That was the first time in my life,” he added, “anyone with power spoke over my neck and chose usefulness instead of disgust.” He nodded toward her, feathers and bronze and all.
“So here we are,” he said. “You accepted me. All of me. The Necrocouturier, the man, the one who eyes your guards and asks impolite questions about princes.” He lifted one hand, palm up. “It is only fair,” Tonatiuh went on, “that I accept you in return. All of you. The Marchioness, the inquisitor, the martyr who would rather freeze herself than ask the fire to move closer.” His eyes were steady now, no glitter hiding them.
“I see the way you treat your own comfort,” he said. “Like a dress one size too small. Something to be endured until the duty is done. I see the way you carve yourself thin so the border can be thick.” He shrugged one shoulder, shifting his coat. “I cannot fix that,” he admitted. “I am a tailor, not a theologian. I cannot rewrite the Marrow Doctrine so it stops asking you to bleed on the altar every time the wind changes.”
A small, wry smile. “But I can do this much,” he said. “I can make sure that when you come home from whatever crusade or inquiry or ruin you are marching toward, your palace does not look like it already buried you.” He gestured once more at the hall. “I can make the ribs glitter,” he said. “I can make the corridors applaud. I can remind the stone that you are not just its organ, you are its inhabitant. And if I must act the court jester in the process, then very well. Every cathedral needs one saint who wears bells.”
His hand fell back to his side. “So yes, I am sulking that your guest is not a handsome prince with an emergency trouser situation,” he added lightly, letting the humor rise again like steam from hot cloth. “I will complain to the God Beneath about this breach of contract at a later date.” Then, gentler: “But do not mistake that pout for the reason I am chipper,” he finished. “I am chipper because you are glorious in my work, because you let me lace a little joy into your bones, and because for once, My Lady Winter, you are not the only color in the room.”
He dipped his head, almost a bow, almost a vow. “You gave me a place in your house when no one else would,” Tonatiuh said. “As long as I breathe and stitch, you do not walk it alone.”
For a heartbeat, the glacier cracked.
Not for the hall. Not for the guards. For him.
Ixqueya’s eyes held Tonatiuh’s and something in them loosened, the way ice loosens around a spring. The set of her mouth eased. The cold in her shoulders dropped by a finger’s width. For one breath she looked less like a carved saint of winter and more like a woman the season had chosen to live inside.
Then she cleared her throat, low and soft, as if grinding that moment back into powder.
“You are sentimental,” she said. “It is an unwise habit in Hextor. It will get you killed long before your taste in men does.”
The words were cool. The tone was not unkind.
Her gaze flicked once around the hall he had dressed, then returned to him.
“I accepted you because I am not in the business of throwing away working organs,” Ixqueya went on. “The border does not care whom you kiss. The Undying Tree does not distinguish between one sinner and another. It counts only what they bring to its roots.”
A faint ghost of humour touched her mouth.
“Hextor’s ledgers do not mark a separate column for sword swallowers and ball jugglers,” she added, the innuendo light and deliberate. “Only for the useful and the wasteful. You have always been firmly in the first.”
She let that sit. A judgment. A reassurance.
“You make the dead beautiful,” she said. “You teach the living not to dress like they have already failed. You remind this palace that it is not only a tomb, but also a womb. Something that must hold new purpose, not only old bones.”
Her eyes softened again. Only slightly. Enough that someone who knew her could see it.
“You say I have not had a real party,” she murmured. “You are wrong. I have had three.”
She ticked them off on her fingers, as if enumerating crimes.
“The day the March stopped losing more men than it kept. The day the Court stopped calling Frostmarrow a frontier experiment and started calling it necessary. The day a loud, glittering necromancer from the Loom Quarter stood in my hall and told me he did not care what the priests thought, he would dress my Dominion in color anyway.”
Her gaze sharpened. The warmth did not leave, it went under the ice.
“I do not require warmth to function,” Ixqueya said. “The organ vaults are cold. The border is cold. My work is cold. That is the point. A feverish wall is no wall at all.”
She inclined her head, a small bow that would never be mistaken for submission.
“But I am not blind to the cost,” she added quietly. “Martyrs rot early. Frozen ones crack. It is useful to have one man in the house who insists on reminding the stone that I am still alive.”
The next breath she drew was slow, controlled.
“I accept you, Tonatiuh,” she said. “All of you. The stitches. The glitter. The sword swallowing. The ball juggling. The way you look at my ribs and think ‘runway’ instead of ‘rampart’.”
A thin, wry line at her lips.
“In return,” she finished, “you will accept me. All of me. The knife at the threshold. The woman who will always choose the border over her own comfort. The winter that does not know how to end on time.”
She turned slightly, profile cutting against the moonlit ice.
“If you wish to call that friendship,” Ixqueya said, “I will not correct you. Call it what you like. Just remember what we are.”
Her eyes found his again, clear and cold and honest.
“You are my tailor,” she said. “My enchanter. My jester. The single warm candle I tolerate on this altar. I will let you dress my house, and I will let you try to dress my solitude in silk and noise.”
A pause. Then, softer, almost playful for her:
“And since you seem to require it written plainly, yes. I approve of the dress. It serves its purpose. It pleases my vanity. It flatters your ego. We are both allowed that much, once in a while, before the next storm arrives.”
Not for the hall. Not for the guards. For him.
Ixqueya’s eyes held Tonatiuh’s and something in them loosened, the way ice loosens around a spring. The set of her mouth eased. The cold in her shoulders dropped by a finger’s width. For one breath she looked less like a carved saint of winter and more like a woman the season had chosen to live inside.
Then she cleared her throat, low and soft, as if grinding that moment back into powder.
“You are sentimental,” she said. “It is an unwise habit in Hextor. It will get you killed long before your taste in men does.”
The words were cool. The tone was not unkind.
Her gaze flicked once around the hall he had dressed, then returned to him.
“I accepted you because I am not in the business of throwing away working organs,” Ixqueya went on. “The border does not care whom you kiss. The Undying Tree does not distinguish between one sinner and another. It counts only what they bring to its roots.”
A faint ghost of humour touched her mouth.
“Hextor’s ledgers do not mark a separate column for sword swallowers and ball jugglers,” she added, the innuendo light and deliberate. “Only for the useful and the wasteful. You have always been firmly in the first.”
She let that sit. A judgment. A reassurance.
“You make the dead beautiful,” she said. “You teach the living not to dress like they have already failed. You remind this palace that it is not only a tomb, but also a womb. Something that must hold new purpose, not only old bones.”
Her eyes softened again. Only slightly. Enough that someone who knew her could see it.
“You say I have not had a real party,” she murmured. “You are wrong. I have had three.”
She ticked them off on her fingers, as if enumerating crimes.
“The day the March stopped losing more men than it kept. The day the Court stopped calling Frostmarrow a frontier experiment and started calling it necessary. The day a loud, glittering necromancer from the Loom Quarter stood in my hall and told me he did not care what the priests thought, he would dress my Dominion in color anyway.”
Her gaze sharpened. The warmth did not leave, it went under the ice.
“I do not require warmth to function,” Ixqueya said. “The organ vaults are cold. The border is cold. My work is cold. That is the point. A feverish wall is no wall at all.”
She inclined her head, a small bow that would never be mistaken for submission.
“But I am not blind to the cost,” she added quietly. “Martyrs rot early. Frozen ones crack. It is useful to have one man in the house who insists on reminding the stone that I am still alive.”
The next breath she drew was slow, controlled.
“I accept you, Tonatiuh,” she said. “All of you. The stitches. The glitter. The sword swallowing. The ball juggling. The way you look at my ribs and think ‘runway’ instead of ‘rampart’.”
A thin, wry line at her lips.
“In return,” she finished, “you will accept me. All of me. The knife at the threshold. The woman who will always choose the border over her own comfort. The winter that does not know how to end on time.”
She turned slightly, profile cutting against the moonlit ice.
“If you wish to call that friendship,” Ixqueya said, “I will not correct you. Call it what you like. Just remember what we are.”
Her eyes found his again, clear and cold and honest.
“You are my tailor,” she said. “My enchanter. My jester. The single warm candle I tolerate on this altar. I will let you dress my house, and I will let you try to dress my solitude in silk and noise.”
A pause. Then, softer, almost playful for her:
“And since you seem to require it written plainly, yes. I approve of the dress. It serves its purpose. It pleases my vanity. It flatters your ego. We are both allowed that much, once in a while, before the next storm arrives.”
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