I picked at my mashed potatoes. Joy and Nate had invited themselves to my table when they’d seen me eating dinner alone, and now they were cheerfully bickering about who’d won some annual snow sculpture competition.

“No way,” Nate said. “Caulfield dominated.”

Joy snorted. “Yeah, in the pretension category.”

“Shakespeare is the father of English literature, which includes those romance novels you’re always gobbling up,” Nate said.

“Yeah, but that codpiece, though.” Joy held up a hand, indicating the size of the thing, and dissolved into giggles.

“You seriously think a lifelike sculpture of the Bard is less pretentious than the Venus of Willendorf?”

“Hey,” Joy said. “That was cool.”

“Who’s Frost?” I said.

They both stopped talking. Nate stared at me, and Joy glanced sharply behind her, as though someone might be eavesdropping.

“Jack Frost?” Joy said, so quietly I almost didn’t hear her.

I lowered my voice, too, since apparently that was the thing to do. “I guess?” I said. “I overheard Mary and Santa talking about someone called Frost.”

Nate’s eyebrows drew together. “He’s the prince of this region.”

“I guess you wouldn’t know, not being from around here,” Joy said.

“And a Humdrum,” Nate added.

Joy looked over her shoulder, but no one was paying attention to us.

“The Glimmering world is full of royalty,” she said, still in an undertone. “Most of the titles are just that, titles, but some members of certain royal lines still have power. The Faerie Queen is the biggest one, obviously, but then there are the sea kings and the rulers of the Irish faerie courts. The North Pole has Jack Frost.”

I should have guessed. If Santa existed, why not Jack Frost and the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy and the monster under my bed?

“Santa seemed pretty nervous about him.”

“We’re all nervous about him,” Joy said.

Nate picked up his knife and started sawing into a slice of ham.

“Speak for yourself,” he said. “Not everyone thinks he’s an actual threat. Santa’s kept him under control for a long time. He’s not going to suddenly get more powerful just because he wants to let Humdrums in to drill oil.”

“That’s what Santa’s worried about, though,” Joy said. She glanced around again and leaned across the table towards me. “Frost has always been, um—”

“A handful,” Nate said.

“Yeah. But in the last couple of years, I guess he’s realized that he can make a lot of money by letting Humdrums drill for oil here at the North Pole. We’re pretty oil-rich, or we would be, and Frost would get the biggest cut. Santa doesn’t want anything to do with it, though.”

“Humdrums can’t know about the Workshop or the city,” Nate said. “They find out about that and it’s just one more step until they know all about the Glimmering world, and that can’t happen.”

“Why not?” I said.

“Would you want the world’s governments experimenting on you?” he said. “We have magic. Think about what would happen if your people found out about it.”

I didn’t have to think hard. The kind of magic I’d already seen at the North Pole could only be the tip of a large iceberg, and one look at the news was enough to tell me there was nothing humans wouldn’t try to weaponize or exploit.

“Santa and Frost have been in a power struggle over it for a while,” Joy said. An elf walked behind her, and she lowered her voice even more. “In the last year, Frost’s stopped asking nicely. He’s been trying to shut down the magic barrier that encloses the city so the Humdrums can get in.”

“His palace is outside the dome,” Nate cut in. “He’s not allowed in Santa’s territory, but that’s where the oil is.”

“Sounds like a mess,” I said. I ran my finger through the condensation on my water glass, leaving a clear streak behind amid the sweat. “Wait—is that what’s been causing the lights to flicker?”

Joy nodded, but Nate scoffed.

“That’s just rumor,” he said. “We’ve had electrical failures before.”

“Not this often,” Joy said.

“So we need to update the power grid,” he said. “I think everyone’s jumping at shadows.”

“Listen, you probably shouldn’t talk about this to anyone else,” Joy said to me. “Santa doesn’t like people asking about Frost.”

I nodded, but I didn’t have to talk in order to keep thinking.

I stood at my bedroom window that evening with the lights off and a cup of steaming cocoa in my hand. It was dark enough in my room that I could see outside. The icy sea churned into the distance, but above it, the sky was alive with light. The Aurora Borealis cascaded in giant ripples across the heavens in shades of green and blue.

I’d seen pictures of the Northern Lights before, of course, but nothing could have prepared me for the way the sight took my breath away. The lights shifted across the sky like miles of shimmering fabric, and the colors were so bright I almost couldn’t believe they were real.

This Jack Frost had Santa scared, or at least nervous. I didn’t know what I thought about that, because I still wasn’t sure what I thought about Santa. He wasn’t quite the jolly old elf I’d expected, and he certainly wasn’t crazy about me. That might not be enough to make him a bad person, but it was enough to make me wonder what Frost was actually like.

More than that, it was enough to make me wonder was Frost was capable of. If he was trying to shut down the dome around the North Pole, did that mean he could get in?

I stood and watched the lights until my cocoa grew cold.

If Frost could get in—didn’t that mean he could also get out?