A scream rose up in the back of my throat.

I swallowed it back, hard.

I couldn’t waste time or energy on screaming or panicking or doing anything that might keep me here a second longer. I had to get out.

The window still glistened, but the ice had grown so thick that I couldn’t see the stars through its rippled surface. I hit it a few times with an irrational hope that it might give way or come loose from its icy frame, but of course nothing happened. The door wouldn’t budge, either, and I couldn’t get my head far enough into the fireplace to look up the chimney without the blue flames burning me with their cold.

I was trapped.

I looked around the room for something I could use to smash through the door, but the room was almost empty aside from the chairs in front of the fireplace, which were both too heavy to move. I was surrounded by shimmering ice, and aside from the colors shifting from powder blue to cornflower to periwinkle in the flickering firelight, everything looked the same. The room was strange, with the walls carved into the shape of bookcases and picture frames. Inside the bookcases were matching volumes in blue leather and silver writing, and the frames held cool-tinted oil portraits of snowy landscapes. The room was a strange juxtaposition of ice and real objects.

I hadn’t noticed before. I’d been too busy focusing on Frost. I wondered if all the rooms in the palace were like this—just icy approximations of what a real home might look like.

I didn’t have time to wonder. And yet, I had all the time in the world—or at least all the time until Frost came back, because there was no way I was getting out of here unless I magically figured out how to melt a hole through the door.

Melt.

The lighter.

I shoved my hands into my coat pockets and scrambled desperately for the weight of the lighter.

It had only been a good luck charm, I knew that, and Felix had never intended me to use it against Frost. But the charm I had used against Frost had only made him angry.

What time was it? How late was Santa? I glanced around. In the corner, a tall grandfather clock with a frosted face had its hands frozen at three o’clock. Like everything else here, it was a lie.

My left hand closed around the lighter. My right hand closed around something else that crinkled in the silence of the room.

I hadn’t worn this coat long enough to collect any receipts or scrap paper in the pockets. Carefully, I pulled out whatever had made the sound.

It was a small folded note. On the front, in elegant looping letters, was one word: Holly.

I glanced at the door. There was no sign of Frost or of Joy. The hallway outside sounded deserted.

I flipped the paper open.

Dear Holly,

I hope by the time you find this note you’re safe at home. I’ll see you again before we depart the North Pole, but as I may not get a chance to say everything I’d like to say, I’m writing it here in the hope that I’ll find the right words in my own time.

Your presence at the North Pole was as unexpected for me as it was for you. It’s been many years since anyone from the Humdrum world has come to visit us, and I did not expect our first visitor to be you: a guarded young woman who had no love for Christmas and, it seemed clear, no love for me or anything I stand for or believe in.

Because of that, your courage and selflessness over the last few weeks came as a surprise to me—a surprise that, I fear, highlighted my own distrust of the world outside the Workshop. I have spent longer than any man should live trying to keep your world safe, and at times, I confess, I wondered why I sacrificed so much. I wondered even more when you arrived, hating my world and doing everything in your power to go home. I trusted you as little as you trusted me, and wished you home perhaps harder than you wished for it yourself.

Then I saw the way you befriended the elves, and the way the reindeer took to you, and your generosity in caring for them all, and I realized that I had misjudged you. I had allowed my first impressions to decide my judgment, and that, Holly, is something Santa should never do. Santa Claus looks inside people, at their hearts, and sees the good in everyone. I had forgotten about that before you arrived, and it’s only in these past few days that I’ve started to realize how much I’ve let my responsibility to care for the pole drag me down, and everyone with me. Mary has been telling me I’ve lost sight of the point of the thing for years, but, of course, I’m a foolish old man and have to learn these things for myself.

You are good. I didn’t realize it until you and Felix lost the pole and you were willing to put your life on the line to bring it back. I spend too much of my time thinking about Frost and his coldness. I haven’t spent enough remembering how much warmth and courage is in the ordinary people of the world—people like you, who are willing to put their lives on the line to save others.

You’ve restored my faith in people and reminded me that, no matter how cold things get, there is always warmth and goodness in this world. It’s my responsibility to protect that goodness. No, responsibility isn’t right—it’s my honor.

Thank you, Holly.

With love,

Nick

I swallowed the enormous lump that had formed in my throat.

I was in danger. I needed to escape immediately. This was a stupid time and place to start crying.

I wiped my eyes on my sleeve.

No one had ever told me I was good—not good at being a friendly neighbor, not good at appeasing irritated customers, but just plain good. No one had ever expected me to be particularly brave or generous, not even me.

I’d come to the North Pole without having a choice in the matter, but I wouldn’t leave it the same way.

I tucked the note carefully back in my pocket.

Frost would be back any minute. I walked to the window and looked out. The rippled slab was hard to see through, but the emptiness of the night sky was clear enough.

There was no repaired sleigh flying through the night, no reindeer, no indication that Santa was on his way or would be soon. There was only me, and the ice, and the chilling black waves, and, somewhere in this palace, my captors.

I didn’t have magic. I wasn’t that smart. I couldn’t outwit Frost. But I had to do something to stop him, no matter the cost. I was the only one between the ice prince and world domination, and that meant I had to act.

Getting the pole back was important to Santa, it was important to the world, and, in a way that burned down to my toes, it was important to me.

I slipped off the phoenix down jacket and got to work.