Blaze Ashford had sharpened his knife for a man made of ice. Tonight he meant to cross the pass, find the sorcerer who froze his family's hearth years ago, and end him. His coat answered the plan. Flames rolled across the fabric and warmed the small room. He pulled on his boots and reached for the round door with the burning emblem. Then the wind hit the cabin like a fist. Timbers groaned. The red and blue embers along the logs flickered low. Blaze shoved the door open and stared into a wall of white. Snow fell so thick he could not see the trees. In one hour, a blizzard had sealed the only pass out of town. He had not even started the hunt. His lion rose from the hearth and padded to his side. The beast's blazing mane lit the doorway. Even that fire could not melt the storm fast enough. Blaze knew the pass. Drifts there already stood taller than a man. By dawn they would bury the road for a week. "The sorcerer did this," Blaze said. His breath steamed. "He knows I'm coming." He would not sit and wait. A week gave the ice-wielder time to run. Blaze buckled the knife to his belt and stepped into the cold. His coat spat fire that died in the falling snow. Each flame hissed out before it touched the ground. He pushed ten steps toward the pass and sank to his knees in white. The lion roared behind him. Blaze turned. A small shape clung to the cabin's doorframe, scales catching the ember-light. His drakecat. The creature had followed him into the storm and now shivered, half-buried, too weak to climb back inside. Blaze made his choice. He waded back, scooped the drakecat against his warm chest, and hauled it through the door. He slammed the round door shut behind them. The storm howled on the other side. He set the drakecat by the fire and watched its shivering slow. His hands shook, not from cold. The pass was lost. The hunt was stalled before the first step. But the drakecat had reached the door from outside. It had come from somewhere low, somewhere out of the wind. Blaze remembered the old tales the townsfolk told. Beneath the mountain ran tunnels, cut long ago by miners who feared the pass in winter. Hunters used them. Smugglers used them. He had always thought them a story. Blaze knelt and gripped the drakecat's chin. Snow still clung to its scales, but not deep snow. Sheltered snow. "You found a way under," he said. He stood and pulled his coat tight. The flames climbed again, bright and hungry. The pass was sealed. The tunnels were not. If the stories were true, the way led under the mountain and out the far side, past the sorcerer's door. But no one had walked those tunnels in years, and no one came back to say what lived down there now.

Blaze stood where the drakecat had come from, deep in the drifts behind his cabin. The tunnels had to open somewhere here, low and sheltered. He drove his hands into the snow and dug. His coat flared, hissing as flakes struck it. Each hour of searching turned his fingers slow and his breath thin. The cold did not kill his fire, but it drained the man beneath it. He had circled this slope three times. No entrance. Only white, and more white. He dug until his arms shook. The snow fell faster now. Soon it would bury whatever opening lay beneath. His lion paced nearby, mane bright against the storm, but even that beast could not sniff out stone under so much snow. Blaze dropped to his knees. For the first time he feared he would freeze here, an arm's length from the way under the mountain, and never find it. Then a voice cut the wind. "You're digging in the wrong spot." Blaze turned. A man stood in the snow, boots planted, blue flames curling off both hands. The fire lit his French military jacket and threw no heat Blaze could feel, yet the man did not shiver. Blaze knew him. Ember. The one person he had hoped to keep out of this hunt. "Go home," Blaze said. "This is mine." "No." Ember walked closer. The blue flame on his palm brightened. "The entrance is downhill. Air moves there. Watch." He opened his hand wide. The blue fire stretched, thinned, and bent sideways in a slow draft. Blaze had felt no wind at that height. But the flame pointed, steady, toward a dip in the slope he had passed over twice. Blaze stumbled to the spot. He shoved both arms deep and his fingers struck wood. A frame. Buried planks, set into the mountain long ago. He tore the snow away. His coat roared and melted the last crust. A dark mouth opened in the hillside, breathing old, still air. "Found it," Ember said. He said nothing about the hours. He only stepped to Blaze's side and held his blue fire into the dark. The light reached down a stone throat that fell away under the mountain. Blaze's heart pounded. The way under the sorcerer's door lay open at last. He turned to tell Ember to leave, to stay in the warm and the safe. Ember was already climbing in. His boots found the first ledge. "I'm not waiting out here," he said. "And I'm not waiting for you to die alone." Blaze gripped the frame and swung after him. The storm shrank behind them. Ahead, the tunnel bent into black. The cold had not beaten him. But he had not come down here alone, and now Ember's life was tied to whatever waited in the dark.