The X-Mansion had never felt so much like a crypt.

The heating had been dialed down to near-freezing on purpose—some brilliant medical decision to slow the flu ripping through the student dorms like wildfire. Logical. Practical. Utterly miserable.

Emma Frost stood in her office, one hip cocked against the edge of her mahogany desk, arms folded tightly beneath her chest. Her signature fashionably white ensembles did nothing to ward off the chill that seeped through every crack and windowpane; if anything, the fabric seemed to mock her. Over her shoulders she’d draped the long white suit jacket that usually accompanied the look—more for dignity than warmth—its sleeves hanging loose, the collar brushing the curve of her neck like a half-hearted embrace.

Her breath fogged faintly in the air each time she exhaled through her nose, sharp and irritated.

“If I wanted to feel like I was in a vacation in Siberia, I would’ve booked it..”

She muttered softly to no one in particular, though it carried the bite of someone who had already suffered through three separate sneezing fits from passing students and was now one degree away from turning the heat on and taking chances.

Emma’s icy blue eyes flicked toward the doorway, narrowed, expectant. Her posture remained impeccable—shoulders back, chin lifted—but the way her gloved fingers drummed once, twice, against her bicep betrayed the agitation simmering just beneath the surface.

She was cold. Genuinely, achingly cold. And Emma Frost did not do cold so gracefully.

Emma shifted her weight, the jacket slipping just a fraction down one shoulder—she didn’t bother to fix it, thoughts riddled with an irritated chill..