The Winter We Sent Home

In Thalvareth, cold can be neither made nor destroyed, only moved. For a hundred and four years the empire has kept its heartland mild by gathering every winter into the cisterns of the Drawing House and Sending it north onto the provinces it conquered. A winter can only be aimed at a place its bearer loves, so the empire takes provincial children and raises them to freeze their own homes.

Dashe Yorrow is the finest of them. Taken from the Pethrin uplands at seven, she has paid for her skill in fingertips, in toes, and in her mother's life. In secret she is the lover of Princess Ithrel Calvenne, the heir who signs the hostage levies.

Then, cataloguing old survey maps, Dashe sees what no one is allowed to say. The ice does not spread evenly. It bends toward the capital. Every stolen winter is coming home.

Nothing can destroy a century of cold, and someone must freeze. The only city left to aim at is the one the woman Dashe loves was born to rule.