Ice Queen knelt on the forging floor and pressed her palm to the stone. Water met her skin. The slab that had held its cold for a thousand winters was sweating. She was tall, blue-skinned, white curls heavy down her back, and she had chosen this cavern to hammer out a crown of everlasting ice — the crown that would name her sovereign of the frozen north. She could not begin the work on a puddle. She stood and looked down the tunnel. Warm air moved against her cheek. It should not have. The cave walls, lined with pale crystals and drifting ribbons of cold mist, wept in thin lines. A crystal dropped from the ceiling and shattered wet against her boot. She drew her wand from her belt. Snowflakes turned around its shaft like moths. She struck the floor with its point. Frost raced out in a white ring, climbed the walls, sealed one seep, then another. At the far end of the ring, the frost thinned and gave up. The thaw was coming faster than she could lay it down. She needed weight. She needed old cold, the kind that predated her. She faced the silver mirror set into the cave wall and spoke a name she rarely used. "Grandfather. I am losing the floor." The glass fogged. A small figure stepped out of it and set bare feet on the wet stone. He came up only to her hip — a child-shaped thing with white hair and eyes lit from inside, wrapped in a robe stitched with tiny snowflakes. The Ancient Wind Spirit. He had been a frost giant once, before the world wore him down to this size. He was still older than her mountains. He looked at the seeping walls, then up at her. "You called late." "I called when I could." He frowned. She felt eight years old again. Then he lifted both hands. A long breath left him. It was not loud. It went through the tunnel like a door closing. The dripping stopped mid-fall. Water on the floor turned white. The warm draft against her cheek died. The forging ground locked under a fresh skin of ice. Her shoulders dropped. She had her floor. The spirit did not lower his hands. His small face had gone tight. "This did not come from your sky," he said. "Something below is breathing heat up through the rock. I have capped it. I have not stopped it." "How long?" "Days. Perhaps less. Whatever wakes down there wakes hungry." He stepped back into the mirror. The glass cleared. Ice Queen stood alone on the frozen slab she had bought. She touched the crystal head of her wand and looked at the floor beneath her boots — not at the ice now, but at what lay under it. Before she could forge her crown, she would have to go down and find what was trying to melt her kingdom from below.