Gwen didn't have time to breathe before the freezing gray mist slammed directly into her chest. It didn't pierce her flesh; it sank into her skin like water into dry sand.
The world went entirely silent.
Gwen's head snapped back, her spine arching off the mattress in a rigid, unnatural curve. The baby slipped from her arms, but Kaelen caught the infant in mid-air, his massive body rolling to protect the boy as he scrambled away from the center of the bed.
"Gwen!" Kaelen roared, his voice cracking with a terror he had never felt in the face of an army.
Gwen's eyes were no longer amber. They were a flat, opaque, and lifeless gray—the exact color of the frost that had covered the tomb of the Frost-Queens. Her skin turned ice-cold to the touch, the golden veins that usually hummed with solar magic turning into dark, frozen tracks beneath her flesh.
