---

Astier stood still a moment longer, as though carved from ice and silence, eyes narrowed beneath the pale sweep of his brow. The wind tugged at the edges of his fur, tousling silver and ash like a cloak undone. Across from him, she turned, half invitation, half challenge, and the gesture pulled at something low in his chest. He did not flinch. He did not blink. But something shifted beneath his skin.
With a breath sharp as sleet, he moved. One step, then another, unhurried but certain. His limbs flowed like water over rock, smooth, glacial, deliberate. Snow barely crunched beneath his weight, his paws slicing through the drifts with practiced precision. He moved not like one who followed, but one who haunted; an echo in her wake, yet never lost in it.
As her figure cut through the white-dusted wilds ahead, his gaze lingered on the curve of her stride, on the flick of pale fur teased by the wind. And for the briefest moment, so quick it almost escaped him, he thought of the siren. The way her voice had once echoed beneath storm-tossed skies. The soft weight of her gaze before it turned distant. That ache still hummed in the cold hollows of his ribs, but he buried it, as he always did, beneath frost and resolve.
Let Morwenna believe what she would. Let her taste the gravity of his steps behind her. He would follow, yes. But not as servant, not as shade, as the wraith, the frost that did not melt.