The snow outside the Frostlands palace had fallen heavily through the night, so when dawn came the world was quiet and muffled, the roofs and battlements hidden under thick white.

In the highest tower, the King’s study was alive with a different kind of silence, the kind broken only by the scratch of a quill and the faint crackle of the fire. Kieran sat at his desk, bent over a spread of border reports, his dark hair falling into his eyes as he read line after line without really seeing ...