Domenic’s fingers traced up and down her arm thoughtfully. “So what do you think would need to be different?”
Ellery hesitated. For all they’d promised each other, she didn’t know if he could promise her this.
“I think Summer would have to cede territory permanently. An Alderland that’s split between the two seasons, I guess. Is that a compromise you can make?”
“Of course I can,” he said immediately, fervently. “For people to stop living in terror of the day Winter arrives? For magicians and civilians both to stop dying in a pointless war? That’s worth sacrifice. That’s worth anything.”
The only acceptable response was to kiss him again. After how close she’d come to surrendering all hope of their shared future, the truth burned deliriously within her. Domenic Barrow was as much a part of her as her magic, and she could no sooner uproot him from her heart than she could purge Winter from her veins. Of course loving him was her destiny. It could be nothing else.
Abruptly, the bedside lamp cut out. The room darkened, but the darkness bore a heaviness, as if the air Ellery breathed crushed her from the inside out.
“What was that?” Domenic gasped against her lips.
“I-I don’t know.”
Simultaneously, they bolted from the bed. Ellery yanked open the window shades and uttered a horrified noise.
It was midday, and yet a false, sunless twilight was suspended across the firmament. No lights shined in any neighboring windows, no lampposts glowed on the streets, no billboards glared from atop the buildings. Gallamere, the City of Magic, had gone dark.
And above it, descending in a terrible oblivion, was a storm.
It was a winterscurge at its beginning: frost just sharp enough to grate against the window glass, winds that whined rather than wailed. But it wasn’t the storm’s power that horrified Ellery—itwas its size. It smothered the skyline, vaster than anything she’d ever lived through, even heard of. Yet as she searched for a heartbeat, she couldn’t feel Kythion’s, nor any other winterghasts as its source. It didn’t have one. It was nothing but Winter magic—unbridled, ravenous magic—threatening to devour the city she loved.
“This is it, isn’t it?” she rasped. “This is the cataclysm.”
Domenic staggered back from the window, the ember gleam of his eyes the only hint of him in the darkness. “You’re right,” he choked. “This is it. I feel it. I feel this…”
“Dread,” she finished gravely.
“All right. W-we don’t need to panic. Even if we can’t thwart the cataclysm before it begins, we can still stop it before it gets worse.” Domenic riffled through his discarded clothes until he wrenched Valmordion from his pants pocket. Its core ignited, and he stumbled as he held it and dressed. “But what do we do? Do we fight this thing like a scurge?”
“I don’t know if that’ll be enough,” Ellery said. “Chosen Ones can’t defeat the cataclysm until they finish the prophecy. And we haven’t.”
“Then we finish it. Right now. I know we’ve been going in circles about the traitor for weeks, but things are different now. We have each other.”
His words steadied the more he spoke. And they steadied Ellery, too.
“You’re right,” she said. “Where’s Iskarius?”
He cocked a brow. “I believe it’s where—”
Ellery flushed. “I remember now.” She darted into the living room, then snatched her wand from the carpet and cast a light. It illuminated the slivers of ice creeping like ivy across the floorboards. A vase swept off her mantel in a gust of wind, then shattered.
She hurried to the closet and yanked hanger after hanger aside, overwhelmed with the suddenness of so many decisions,both significant and trivial. For all Ellery knew of fashion, she wasn’t quite prepared to choose an outfit for the potential end of her world. She pulled on a pair of thick woolen trousers and a random sweater, then shoved her feet into combat boots.
“If Summer’s traitor isn’t me, or you, then whoisit?” Ellery called.
Domenic appeared at the closet entrance, still buttoning his shirt. “I’ve got no clue. I really don’t. We’ve interrogated every last member of the Order.”
“Is it possible it could be someone outside the Order?”
“What, like a hedge magician?” he asked skeptically.
“No, that doesn’t seem right. And we know it’s not the Winter magicians, either. It has to be someone with real power. Someone important.”
He barked out a stressed, high-pitched laugh. “‘Ms. Prime Minister, ma’am. Sorry to disturb you in your hyper-insulated bunker, but are you actually working to dismantle the current magical order?’”
Ellery laughed direly in return. “There must be something we haven’t thought of, something we missed. Someone Hanna didn’t…”
