Narniya

Chapter 1

CC awoke to the relentless howl of wind battering the walls of her cottage. Instinctively, her fingers brushed against the frost gathered on the windowsill, its chill anchoring her to the present. This reality always felt too cold, too suffocating. The Winter Court, an ancient fortress carved into the heart of a mountain, lay cloaked in the oppressive stillness of an eternal winter. The air was filled with the sharp tang of pine and ice, accompanied by the faint hum of magic suspended in the timeless frost.

She hated it.

It wasn't just the biting cold or the ghostly silence of the halls that weighed on her. It was the gnawing truth that she had never belonged. The Winter Court was her home by birth, but it had never felt like hers. Even among the fae, she was an anomaly—a stranger with power too strange, too dangerous for their carefully balanced world.

Her magic was a curse, a burden she could never escape.

The warmth of sunlight never penetrated the palace's stone walls, and CC had never seen the world beyond the jagged peaks of the mountain range. She wasn't allowed to. Her abilities—wild, unpredictable—had become her prison.

With a soft sigh, she pushed aside the cocoon of furs and stepped up to the mirror. Her reflection revealed a figure of frigid beauty, with her fae ears slightly red from the cold. Her skin, pale as untouched snow, contrasted with her silver hair, which shimmered like frost in the moonlight. But her eyes—they were too dark, too gray, brimming with unspoken secrets.

Her fists tightened at her sides. She turned away, refusing to linger. She didn't need a reminder of what she was—a creature of ice and winter shaped by magic she could neither control nor fully comprehend.

The soft creak of the door interrupted her thoughts. A figure slipped into the room, and the air turned colder, though this chill was not her doing.

"You're awake," came a voice, smooth yet laced with something sharper, something dangerous.

She didn't need to look to know who it was. Caelyx.

The Regent of the Court of Stars was not a man who could be ignored. His presence carried the gravity of the heavens themselves—calm, composed, and utterly inscrutable. He was everything CC was not. And that alone made him dangerous.

"I'm here to collect you for the council meeting," Caelyx said, his voice smooth and unhurried yet threaded with undeniable authority.

The scythe strapped to his back caught the faint light filtering through the frost-laden windows, its dark metal gleaming like a predator's eye. More than a mere weapon, it was a sigil of his dual role: protector and enforcer. The Night Court, veiled in secrecy and steeped in shadows, had forged a bargain with the Winter Court generations ago. When the curse passed from CC's mother to her, Caelyx became bound to her—a sentinel as much as a shadow, tasked to guard and observe.

He had always been there, a silent, immovable force in her life. Yet despite his constant presence, one truth never wavered: Caelyx wasn't there by choice.

"Council meeting?" CC's voice was as cool as the frost on the windowpane, betraying none of the unease his presence always stirred. "What do they want from me this time?"

Turning from him, she let her gaze fall back to the window. Her breath fogged the glass as she exhaled slowly, the frost-rimmed view outside as confined as the palace itself. The council. It was always the council. A gathering of regents and advisors who saw her as a weapon to wield, a calamity to contain—never as a person.

For a moment, Caelyx said nothing, his silence stretching taut between them. Then, with deliberate precision, he answered. "The Ember Court has been making moves—spies spotted along the borderlands. Their troops are stationed closer than usual. They call it a defensive maneuver, but no one is convinced."