Lyra's pregnancy became the central, sacred rhythm of The Cradle. Her condition dictated its tempo. Kaela's patrols grew wider, her snarls fiercer, her eyes constantly scanning the high passes for any sign of the Ice Country's promised advance. The human settlers, now thinking of themselves as *citizens*, worked with a fervor that transcended fear. They were building a legacy, a fortress for the unborn heir.
Nicolas felt the shift in the very air. His power, always humming in the background, now pulsed in time with the tiny, growing spark of life within Lyra. It was a constant, low-grade awareness, like a second heartbeat. His decisions were no longer just about survival or expansion; they were about creating a cradle of absolute security.
This protective obsession led him to Sly. The Cat-man had proven useful, but Nicolas needed more than maps. He needed a deeper understanding of the enemy's magic. He found Sly oiling leather straps in a quiet corner of the armory.
"The sorcerer, Valerius," Nicolas began, leaning against the doorframe. "You said he commands the 'deep cold.' Explain."
Sly flinched at the name, his new loyalty warring with ingrained fear. "Master… Valerius is not like other Frost-Singers. He does not just summon ice. He… speaks to it. He learns secrets from the oldest glaciers. He can make cold so deep it steals the will to move, the will to fight. They say he can freeze a man's soul inside his body, leaving a living statue."
Nicolas digested this. A magic of cold that targeted the spirit, not just the flesh. It was a threat his raw power of command might clash against in unknown ways. "His weakness?"
"Pride," Sly said immediately, his voice dropping to a whisper. "And… curiosity. He collects oddities. Magical trinkets, strange creatures, forgotten lore. He would trade a dozen warriors for a single unique spell-shard. He is the Queen's Hand, but his first love is his art."
An idea, cold and precise, began to form in Nicolas's mind. He needed to deal with the Ice Country threat before Lyra's condition advanced further. A direct assault with his fledgling force was suicide. But a targeted strike…
He sought out Lyra. She was in their chamber, her fingers tracing the lines of Sly's maps, her brow furrowed not in strategy, but in a new, inward-focused calculation.
"We cannot wait for them to come to us," he stated, closing the door.
She looked up, her hand instinctively moving to her stomach. "No. We cannot. But we are not strong enough to take their camp."
"We don't need to take the camp," Nicolas said, his eyes gleaming with a dark light. "We need to take the sorcerer. Or, more precisely, we need to make him ours."
Lyra's strategic mind caught up instantly. "A bait. You wish to lure him. But with what? He is no simple scout to be intrigued by mysterious power."
"He is a collector," Nicolas said, repeating Sly's words. "And we have something unique. Or rather, we can create the impression of something unique. We need a relic, a magical anomaly he cannot resist investigating personally."
Lyra's gaze sharpened. "The mountains here are old. There are places where the veil is thin, where elemental forces leak. Sky-iron deposits can sometimes resonate with strange energies. If we could 'discover' such a site… and let a captured scout 'escape' to report it…"
"A perfect confluence of his interests," Nicolas finished. "A unique magical site, in the territory his queen covets. He would come. Not with his whole force, but with a small, elite guard. To study, to claim."
The plan was audacious. Dangerous. But it was proactive. It was the move of a king, not a refugee chieftain.
For the next week, The Cradle became a theater of deception. Nicolas, using Sly's knowledge of Frost-Song patrol patterns, had Kaela and two of her best hunters ambush a small, three-cat scouting claw on the eastern slopes. Two were killed. The youngest, a sharp-eyed female, was allowed to flee after seeing a carefully staged scene.
She would report back to her superiors that she had seen humans not fortified, but digging frantically at the base of a particular lightning-scarred peak. That they had uncovered a vein of sky-iron that pulsed with a strange, warm, amber light, and that the air around it hummed with a power that made her frost-magic feel sluggish and wrong.
It was a complete fabrication. The "amber light" was cleverly placed crystals and fox-fire moss. The "hum" was a hidden waterskin dripping onto a resonating sheet of slate. But for a culture that revered cold and ice, the description of a 'warm' magical anomaly would be irresistible heresy to a sorcerer like Valerius.
The trap was set. All they could do was wait and watch.
Three nights later, the lookout's horn blew a single, low note. Not an attack, but a sighting.
From the palisade, Nicolas, Lyra, and Kaela watched a ghostly procession wind its way down the distant glacier. A dozen elite Cat-warriors, their fur pure white for camouflage, moved with lethal silence. And in their center, gliding more than walking, was a figure in robes of deepest indigo, embroidered with silver threads that seemed to move like creeping frost. Even from this distance, the air around him shimmered with a palpable, hungry cold. Valerius, the Witch of the Whispering Snow, had taken the bait.
He stopped a quarter-mile from the fake dig site, his guard fanning out. He raised a hand, and Nicolas felt it a probing, intellectual chill that swept over the mountainside.
It was seeking magic, analyzing, dissecting. It brushed against their fabricated aura and paused. The sorcerer's head tilted, a scholar presented with a fascinating, contradictory text.
"He's intrigued," Lyra whispered.
"Now," Nicolas said, his voice like stone. "We spring the trap."
This was not a battle for territory. It was a hunt for a singular, prized beast. And Nicolas was no longer just a hunter.
He was a collector, too. And he had just seen the perfect addition to his court.