As for Lydia Greyrose, she is actually from Candy World, a land of cookie roads, chocolate rivers and candy cane trees. She is one of three sisters (the youngest of the three, she is actually only a half sister to them, which is why she has faerie wings and they do not). The other two sisters are evil -- they live in gingerbread houses, and have cooked up a legion of gingerbread minions to continue the long, proud tradition of children-cooking evilness. It is probably her half-faery blood that made her "the good one." She learned ice magic as a way of putting out the fires underneath the cook pot, so that she could help the children get away.
". . . with Persistence, Victory is assured" Lydia Greyrose Professor of Ice Magic