The hum in the air faded. All that remained was the faint sound of melting ice.
Chapter thirty-five
Kaelith
The tower was older than any map dared mark, carved into the cliff’s edge where the Sea of Glass began its endless hush. No sentry guarded it; no sound carried from Skadar Hold behind us. The silence was too large for words.
I hadn’t meant to bring her here. Every instinct told me distance was safer, cleaner—but the world had already begun to splinter, and I wanted one hour where the noise couldn’t reach.
Katria followed without speaking. The wind pressed her cloak against her frame, pale hair bright against the night, like a shard of sunlight the realm hadn’t yet managed to kill. I kept a pace ahead, pretending I didn’t feel her eyes trace the frostlight pulsing weakly along my gauntlet.
At the tower’s crest, the air thinned. Below, the sea lay flat and perfect—an expanse of mirrored ice catching the fractured aurora above. Lines of red and white streaked the horizon, trembling like a heartbeat under glass.
She drew a breath. “It’s beautiful.”
“It’s dying,” I said.
Her gaze flicked toward me, but I didn’t meet it. I watched the horizon instead—the place where light met ice, and both began to break. “When the Veil weakens, even beauty decays slower than truth.”
She moved closer until her reflection joined mine in the ice window. “And what truth is that?”
“That all things warm end here.”
A pause. Then softly: “I think you’re wrong.”
The words struck harder than they should have. I turned my head at last. She stood with her hands resting on the stone rim, eyes catching the aurora’s crimson threads. No fear, only quiet defiance.
Something in my chest drew tight. I forced a breath through it. “You came here as a sacrifice,” I started.
“And now?” she whispered when I didn’t continue.
I hesitated. The wind carried her scent—wild herbs and ash, the memory of her touch against my armor. I wanted to step back, but my body didn’t listen.
“Now,” I said, voice rougher than I meant, “the gods themselves would bleed before I let them take you again.”
The air between us changed. Her breath caught; mine refused to leave. The frostlight along the wall flared once, as though the tower had exhaled with us.
She looked away first, down to the Sea of Glass, where faint cracks shimmered under the surface. “The sky looks like it’s on fire.”
“It is,” I murmured. “The Veil’s bleeding.”
Another silence settled—fragile, shimmering, the kind of stillness that makes a man aware of every inch of himself. Her hair stirred against her cheek, and I almost reached to brush it away before memory stopped me: the heat of her lips, the sound she made when my control faltered.
I stepped back, flexing my gloved hand to hide its tremor.
She didn’t move. “You don’t have to protect me from everything, Kaelith.”
“I do.”
“Why?”
Because I can’t stop caring. Because the moment I stop, the frost will.
I didn’t say it. I only looked back to the sea and tried to steady my breathing. The aurora’s light danced in the ice below, and for a heartbeat it looked like fire trapped beneath the world.
“Do you ever miss it?” she asked quietly.
“Miss what?” I breathed, the words coming out too tender. I cleared my throat.
