I wished I’d worn more layers. It was almost more than I could handle to take off my sweater and the T-shirt underneath it.

I threw them on the chair in front of the fireplace and stood there in just my bra and jeans, shivering convulsively. It took longer than I wanted to get the phoenix down coat back on, but the moment I zipped it up my skin tingled as though I’d just stepped into a hot bath.

My socks had to go, too, awful as it felt to shove my freezing bare feet back into my shoes.

I sat back down on the fur pelt and balled the clothes up behind me. It was a long shot—the longest, stupidest shot I could possibly imagine—but it was the only idea I had and these were the only tools in the room.

I couldn’t maintain this courage forever. I rubbed the paper in my pocket between my fingers until I thought I might wear a hole through it, and listened. Only the sound of wind whistling around the palace broke the deep silence.

I tapped my feet against the floor, then pulled the lighter out of my pocket and clicked it on and off, on and off, watching the tiny, inconsequential flame as it glowed vivid orange against the blue. Every second felt like thousands of years, but then, finally, I heard them.

“I’ll be downstairs,” Joy said, her voice muffled outside the thick door. I shoved the lighter back in my pocket.

Frost said something in response that I couldn’t quite made out, and then I heard her footsteps disappear down the hallway as the door dissolved into a pile of powdery snow.

Frost blew the snow aside with a sweep of his scepter, which cast flashing blue lights onto the walls. The icy snowflakes swirled off into the corners of the room and dissolved.

“Miss North,” he said, and graced me with a smile I didn’t trust.

Despite the cold in the room, the back of my neck grew hot. Frost approached me like he was a predator and I was his prey, and I fought the urge to run.

I couldn’t run. There was nowhere to go.

“Frost,” I said. I tensed on my seat and shoved my hands in my pockets. My fingers wrapped around the smooth stick of Felix’s lighter.

“Jack, please,” he said. “We are still friends, Miss North, whatever you may think. It’s time to go. You’ll like my sleigh. It’s more elegant than the old man’s. Bring the fur. It’s nippy out.”

It couldn’t be any colder than it was here, in this room, with him. I clenched the lighter.

I was out of time. I was out of allies. I was out of everything but the sharp awareness that I couldn’t let him leave this room with the pole in his hand.

“Come, Miss North,” he said. He turned. I took a deep breath and grabbed my balled-up clothes.

Then I lunged at him, throwing my whole weight at his back. I slipped on the ice as my body slammed against his, and he went down with me.

He seemed too startled to shout or even fight back for a moment, and then he rolled over onto his back and raised the hand with the pole. Cold fire flashed in his eyes.

“Miss North,” he growled. He started to sit up.

I threw myself at him again.

I didn’t have magic. But I had fabric, and I had a lighter that Felix had claimed could light anything without kindling.

I kneed Frost hard in the stomach, and he winced and held the pole up again. I swept my arm against his, trying to dislodge his grasp, but his bony fingers tightened around the scepter.

He was going to freeze me just like Santa had warned. I had seconds, maybe less.

I yanked the lighter from my pocket and reached for the clothes, which had fallen to the floor just out of reach.

“Look out!” I shouted, leaping off of him, and Frost craned his neck before realizing that it made no sense to listen to me.

It was enough.

I grabbed the clothes and threw myself at Frost again, pinning his scepter arm down with one of my knees. He growled and reached for me with the other arm, but I turned my back to it and hunched over the fabric.

My fingers fumbled against the lighter’s thumbwheel. A tiny flame emerged, then died away.

“Come on,” I muttered.

The flame sprang to life as though coaxed by my desperation, and I held it to the fabric. Frost punched my back with his free arm. I coughed as the impact pushed breath out of my lungs, but hunched over more and held my ground.

Felix had been telling the truth. The flames caught instantly and crept up my balled-up sweater so quickly I almost dropped it.

But I had to hold on.

I pinched the sweater at the bottom while the fire began to devour it, my fingers less than an inch away from the base of the flames. I twisted to face Frost.

“Drop the pole,” I ordered.

Frost pressed his body into the floor, recoiling from the vivid flames. His hand tightened around the scepter, and I lowered the fire.

“Let go,” I said. “Or I’ll make you.”

“You’re a Humdrum,” he hissed. “With all the backbone of a melted icicle.”

“There is nothing Humdrum about me,” I said. “You know what? You did what everyone else does. You didn’t expect anything from me. Well, you made a big mistake.”

I grabbed his free arm and forced his hand into the flames.

He screamed and writhed underneath me as his pale skin began to steam. I wrenched his hand away.

I looked at the door. All I had to go was get the pole and go.

It was an impossible task.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” I said. “But you want to hurt everyone in my world, and I can’t let you do that. Give me the pole.”

“Never,” he spat.

His hand tightened on the scepter.

My heart hammered inside my chest. My stomach heaved like I was about to vomit. The phoenix down coat was suddenly too hot, and the air outside of it was still too cold. I couldn’t feel my feet.

The ground around us crackled as a carpet of icy frost began to grow out from the scepter and towards us. It crept along Frost’s arm, and then it began to creep across me, too, covering my jeans and then my arm with a delicate white pattern.

I shivered violently, and Frost’s image began to blur and sway before my eyes as ice crept over my vision.

“Drop it,” I said, but I couldn’t move my lips, and the sound came out muffled and trapped.

I was trapped.

The frost crept up the burning sweater in my hand. It smothered the flames, leaving only ash and crumbled bits of fabric behind. I stared in horror through the white film that covered my eyes as the cold began to burrow its way into my skin and down to my bones. Even the coat meant nothing now, and my shivers began to slow as everything hardened.

Frost looked up at me with wild delight and hunger in his eyes.

I would freeze here.

I would die.

But for the love of all that was Christmas, I would not do it until I had stopped this monster.

The ocean lay outside the window. The black waves were dark and deep enough to swallow everything, maybe even the pole.

I screamed and wrenched my arm down as hard as I could. Pain tore through my muscles and grated against my joints.

Pain didn’t matter.

I slammed my hand down on Frost’s scepter arm and let the frozen weight of my body crash down on him.

The white film on my vision melted a little, and I saw the dancing fire and lightning clearly for a brief instant. I focused on the light and put all my concentration onto the Herculean task of moving.

I jerked my knee. Shards of ice scattered away from my jeans and skittered across the slick floor.

It was just enough to let me move. I swung my leg out toward Frost’s hand, kicking at it with everything I had.

He cried out as an awful crunching sound filled the air, and the pole tumbled out of his fingers and rolled across the floor.

We leapt for it in the same moment, but I was on top of him and gravity was in my favor. I fell onto the pole and clutched it tight to my chest.

My muscles began to thaw. The coat felt warm again. My vision cleared.

I rolled toward the wall and scrambled to my feet, keeping the window behind me.

Frost leapt up from the floor and swept toward me, but I held the pole out. My hand shook.

“Don’t come any closer.”

He sneered, but he was holding his left hand and seemed to be limping slightly.

“You don’t know how to use that.”

“Don’t underestimate me again,” I said. “Or you’ll end up with more than a couple of broken fingers.”

It was an empty threat. He was right: I didn’t know how to use the pole, and I wouldn’t be able to physically overpower him now without surprise and sheer dumb luck on my side.

I dug into my pocket with my free hand. In some kind of miracle, the lighter was still there. I held it out along with the scepter.

My T-shirt was too far away, but the drapes weren’t. The heat from them wouldn’t be nearly enough to melt through the thick window, but I had nothing left.

Terror pounded in my chest, and I kept my eyes focused on Frost while I crouched and lit the bottom of each curtain.

He snarled, but didn’t come any closer.

The flames might keep him away from me, but he still stood between me and the door.

“Move,” I ordered.

His mouth curled up.

“I don’t think so,” he said. “Unless you’ve figured out how to use that.”

I clenched the scepter. I felt its power, but I had no idea what to do with it, or if I even could without having magic of my own. It wasn’t like the ornament. This object came with no instincts, no instruction manual, and no hint as to how I could use it to get out of here.

I stood between the curtains as flames crept up them. In any other situation, I’d have been panicked at the thought of standing so close to two pillars of fire. As it was, they were by far the safest thing in the room.

“Jack!” someone shouted from the door. I looked up to see Joy, her eyes wide and mouth open. She threw herself through the door and toward us just as the window shattered behind me.