When he left, the door sealed silently behind him. I sank onto the edge of the bed, the room still pulsing faintly with warmth that didn’t belong here. Fenrir rested his head on my knee, eyes reflecting the frostlight.
I ran my fingers over the faint glow still clinging to my skin and whispered, “What are you?”
The stone beneath the floor answered with a single, soft pulse. Almost like a heartbeat. Perhaps Kaelith was right.
Chapter thirty
Kaelith
Frostlight bled faintly from the walls outside my chamber, not steady as it should have been but flickering and uneven, as if mirroring the pulse beneath my skin. I’d long ago learned to quiet myself until even the ice forgot I was there. But tonight, every breath came with a tremor.
She was behind the door.Safe.Alive.
That should have been enough to calm me, but still, my pulse raced.
My gloves hung loose at my side. I’d tried to put them back on twice, but the tremor in my hands betrayed me. The memory of her skin lingered—the warmth of it, the way it spread through me like a fault line. I’d been careful for centuries, never letting that warmth near. I couldn’t afford it.
The Frostfather’s words still echoed in my skull:Seal her before it spreads.
He’d meant her heartbeat, her defiance, the thing that made her human. The thing that now lived in me, too.
A laugh slipped from my throat before I could stop it, low and bitter. My own father had called her a curse. He wasn’t wrong. Curses don’t always destroy. Sometimes they awaken. Theyweaken.
Footsteps approached from down the hall. Kael’s. I didn’t turn.
“Still guarding your mortal?” he said. His tone was lighter than before, but I heard the edge beneath it.
“She’s under protection until I decide otherwise.”
“Protection,” he repeated, leaning against the opposite wall. “That what they’re calling it now?”
I didn’t rise to it. He hated that.
“I saw the frostlight,” Kael continued. “Half the Hold did. Whatever she touched—”
“The Dreamstone.”
His brows lifted as his gaze flicked toward my door. “It’s real, then.”
“It’s more than real. It’s awake.”
“And she’s the reason?”
I hesitated. “Maybe. Maybe it chose her.”
Kael laughed under his breath. “You sound like one of the priests of the old faith. You know how Father feels about mortals meddling in what’s sacred.”
“I know how Father feels about anything that isn’t his.”
That earned a faint smile. “Careful, Brother. You sound almost … disloyal.”
“Loyalty,” I said, “isn’t obedience.”
Kael studied me for a moment, then his expression softened. “You should rest. You look like hell.”
“I can’t.”
He tilted his head. “Because of her?”
