The Journey North: They travel to Frostmoor through the Howling Peaks - two brutal days of anti-wyrm walking technique and wind that sounds almost like voices - into a landscape that isn't cold in the way of weather but in the way of world. A place where cold is what everything is made of.
The City of Frozen Tears is still alive, but barely. Perhaps two hundred of its eight hundred souls show symptoms of cold-sickness - the Frost King's pressure bleeding through the weakening seal and finding the unresolved griefs inside people, making them bigger until those people go still and silent and can't find their way back. A carpenter named Daven hasn't spoken in three months. His wife Mira sits beside him every day and talks to him anyway.
The Winter Court has been waiting for this Gathering for three centuries. Their High Emissary, Lysandra, has held the position for forty years - the same silver-white hair as her records describe, the same bearing. She is not young. She is not quite old in the ordinary sense either. The Winter Court has a different relationship to time.