The steam rose in thick, ghostly plumes, clinging to the crystalline ice formations that served as the cave’s ceiling. Here, in the heart of the frozen mountains, Avalon Skylar had found a sanctuary. Submerged to her shoulders in the volcanically heated water, she let the day’s trek soak out of her weary muscles. The water was silky with minerals, the air sharp with the faint, clean scent of sulfur and ice. It was a starkly beautiful, and lonely, peace.

  It reminded her of Kayla’s spa. A pang of nostalgia, sharp and unwelcome, hit her. She remembered lazy afternoons spent there with Blaze Reddington, the two of them complaining about training while Kayla fussed over them with hot towels. Avalon smirked into the steam. She’d always suspected Kayla had a crush on her; the girl had even dyed her hair dark blue to match Avalon's own long, severe locks. The memory made her laugh softly, a sound instantly swallowed by the cavern. It was a simple, silly drama—Kayla’s crush on her, Blaze’s hopeless crush on Kayla. She missed those days, when their world’s biggest problem was a foolish love triangle.

  Then came the Great Calamity, and the world had no more time for simple things. The memory of that day was not warm, but cold as the ice around her. She, Blaze, and her half-sister Thalassa, leading the desperate assault against the zombie horde that had poured towards their city. They had fought side-by-side, a trio forged in fire and blood. They had won the battle, shattered the undead legions, but lost the peace that followed. Avalon’s jaw tightened. She should be leading the city, not that polished, political creature, Elodie Petalcrest. To win a battle only to lose the politics to a family of socialites was a disgust that had simmered in her for years.

  Still, she kept informed. Her little sister Tessa’s letters were a lifeline, filled with city gossip, tactical updates, and vials of the vaccine from Tansy Mossbrook—a precaution Avalon only took upon hearing that Blaze took it too. The last letter had been urgent. The city was tense, Elodie’s rule was wearing thin, and the people were growing impatient. They would back you, Tessa had written. If you made a claim, they would rally to a Skylar.

  And she would. That was why she was here. During the chaotic climax of the battle that followed the Calamity, a colossal, bone-white dragon had descended from the sky. It had snatched Thalassa from the battlefield and soared away, disappearing into these very mountains. Years had passed, but Avalon knew in her gut her sister was still out there. Now, with the political plates shifting, she needed her. A letter had gone back to Tessa with instructions. Acquire Ether. Use the family wealth, build a reserve. Steal it if you must. With Thalassa’s strength and a monopoly on the game-changing new substance, the Skylars wouldn’t just be making a claim; they would be seizing the power that was rightfully theirs. The thought of the Petalcrests’ shocked faces was a delicious warmth, second only to the spring she now occupied.

  Her pleasant thoughts were shattered by a low, guttural growl that vibrated through the water. It was a sound she had become all too familiar with. From the cavern entrance, a hulking shape blotted out the pale light. It was enormous, a shaggy, white-furred beast with curling horns and claws like obsidian daggers. An Abominable. Fear did not register. Only pure, undiluted irritation. It was disturbing her bath.

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  With a sigh of annoyance, Avalon rose from the water. The cave’s geothermal warmth saved her from the immediate shock of the cold, but goosebumps still prickled across her smooth skin. There was no time to dress. Water streamed from her lean, powerful frame, tracing the lines of corded muscle in her back and the network of faint, silvery scars that mapped her history. Her body was not soft; it was an athlete’s, a warrior's—honed, efficient, and deadly. She snatched up her silver Bowie knife from the rock beside her clothes. The blade, her mother’s, felt like a familiar extension of her hand. It had once stabbed a Reddington in a tavern to save her aunt. Since then, it had tasted the rot of zombies and, more recently, the flesh of these mountain beasts.

  The Abominable roared, a spray of spittle flying from its maw, and charged. Avalon didn't meet its force. She moved like a phantom, her bare feet silent on the damp stone. She sidestepped the clumsy, swiping claws and flowed around the beast's bulk, her agility a stark contrast to its brute strength. The monster was a storm of fur and fury; she was the calm eye at its center. As it turned, roaring in frustration, she sprang onto its back, locking her legs around its torso. Her left arm hooked under its jaw, wrenching its head back to expose the thick, sinewy neck. The Bowie knife flashed. One clean, powerful slash, and the beast gurgled, collapsing to the stone floor with a ground-shaking thud.

  Breathing calmly, Avalon slid from the corpse, retrieved her clothes, and dressed quickly. As she began the practical work of skinning the beast for its valuable pelt, a low rumble started, deeper and more profound than the monster’s growl. It grew rapidly into a deafening roar—the sound of a world breaking apart. Avalanche.

  She abandoned the carcass and sprinted from the cave. The mountain was shedding its skin. A titanic wave of snow, ice, and rock was thundering down the slope, devouring everything in its path. She ran, her legs pumping, lungs burning, the roar of the avalanche, a physical presence at her back. Trees snapped like twigs. The ground shook. She leaped over crevasses, slid down sheer faces of rock, her every instinct screaming for survival. The wave of white death closed in, the wind it generated threatening to tear her from her feet.

  Finally, she threw herself over a final ledge, tumbling down a steep embankment and landing in a heap in a sheltered, lower valley as the avalanche roared past above her, its power shaking the very foundations of the earth. Panting, bruised, and covered in snow, she pushed herself to her feet. The landscape here was different—a basin of blue, compressed ice. And in the center of it, rising like a jagged tombstone, was a huge, unnaturally clear chunk of glacial ice.

  She approached it cautiously, wiping frost from its surface. Her breath caught in her throat. Deep within the frozen heart of the ice, a figure was suspended. A warrior, clad in familiar battle-worn armor, a determined, defiant expression locked on her face. Her dark blue hair, a shade so like Avalon's own, floated as if in water. It had been years, but there was no mistaking her.

  It was Thalassa. Frozen but still alive.