Phei looked toward Consort and gave the signal.
The Head Maid understood immediately:
She stepped beyond the hidden entrance and rose into the Dead Winter Realm without acknowledgement, question or visible effort and Consort drifted through the murderous blizzard with her katana resting against one hip and her dark hair streaming behind her. Winds capable of flaying steel screamed across the Titan's colossal corpse, carrying frost sharp enough to strip ordinary men to bone, yet they touched her only where she permitted them to tease her hair and snap at the hem of her short kimono.
Everything else went around.
Phei watched her cross above the Titan's frozen brow before slowing over the ancient crown embedded in its skull. The crown resembled the wreckage of an extinct celestial kingdom, its broken prongs climbing through glaciers like mountain peaks while jewels lay entombed beneath frost older than civilizations.
