I didn’t answer. He laughed again, too quietly for humor. “I think she frightens you more than the Frostfather does.”
“She doesn’t frighten me,” I said, but my voice was too tight. Too quiet.
Kael pushed off the wall and took a step closer. “Then what does she do to you?”
The question struck harder than it should have. I could still feel the echo of her pulse against my fingertips, the way my name had almost left her lips in that frozen hall. The Dreamstone had stirred for her. The Frostfather had threatened her. And I—
I was standing outside my own chamber, guarding her like something precious and dangerous. Maybe shewasboth.
I finally met Kael’s gaze. “Go back to your quarters.”
He didn’t move. “You know, if you keep pretending you don’t care, you might almost convince yourself.”
He left after that, the sound of his boots fading into the distance.
When I was alone again, I turned toward the door. The frost along the frame had shifted—faint, curling patterns that hadn’t been there before. Not runes, not sigils. Something more alive. I reached out, tracing one line with my ungloved fingertip. The mark shimmered, responding to my touch, then vanished.
The frost remembered her, too.
It crackled in the walls, in the beams above, in my bones. The entire Hold had a pulse tonight, and every beat followed hers.
It would have been wiser to go to the barracks, or to the Veil posts—anywhere the air wasn’t full of her scent. But my body refused to leave the door. Every time I took a step away, something inside me tightened until I stopped.
I pressed my palm flat against the wall beside the frame. The frostlight ran down my wrist, answering the pressure like a pulse under glass.
Control, Kaelith.
But control was a thin thing when my mind kept returning to that kiss.
I’d told myself it was an accident—heat of anger, the pressure of proximity, too much energy between us and nowhere to put it. But it hadn’t felt like an accident. The taste of her still lingered when I breathed. Thewarmth of her mouth had burned straight through the cold I’d spent centuries perfecting.
I remembered the small, startled sound she’d made—the one that had undone me more than the kiss itself. Her fingers had caught in my cloak, as if to steady herself, but she’d pulled me closer instead.
And for that one instant, Winter had melted.
I drew a shaky breath and leaned my head back against the wall. The memory had no mercy. It lived in my chest, a low thrum that refused to fade.
The Frostfather would have called it weakness. Maybe it was. Yet for the first time, I didn’t care.
I could still feel her warmth on my now gloved hands, though I hadn’t touched her since. The skin beneath the leather felt fevered. I pulled the gloves off again, staring at my hands as frost began to climb the edges of my fingers. The air around me shimmered; thin trails of ice formed on the floor, bending toward the door.
I clenched my fists. The frost shattered into powder.
“Get a hold of yourself,” I muttered.
The words echoed down the empty hall. They didn’t sound convincing.
I turned away, pacing once, twice, anything to stop seeing the shape of her mouth when she’d whispered my name. But it was already too late.
The frostlight along the walls brightened, reacting to every stutter of my breath. I hated it—the way the magic betrayed what I refused to show.
I closed my eyes and tried to remember the weight of my father’s voice, the rules, the duty, the endless cold. But her warmth had rewritten those things in me.
For centuries, I’d believed I couldn’t feel warmth without pain. But she’d proven me wrong, and that was infinitely worse. Because now I wanted more of it.
My hand lifted, unthinking, until my fingers hovered just above the door separating us. A thin shimmer of frost spread across the wood, tracing the pattern of my pulse.
“She’s mortal,” I whispered, as if saying it aloud would make it true enough to save me.
