I drew a sharp breath, and the frostlight along the wall leapt in answer.
She didn’t pull away. “You don’t have to be alone in this.”
“I do,” I said, and the lie scraped raw in my throat.
She tilted her head, studying me. “Then why are you trembling?”
Because you make the world move. Because I don’t know how to stop.
The words stayed inside me, unspoken and burning.
Below, the Sea of Glass groaned again. The sound echoed through the tower like a heartbeat cracking open.
I told myself to move first—to turn away before the silence became something neither of us could name.I didn’t.
The frostlight across the railing throbbed, dimming, brightening again. Every flare matched the pulse I could feel in my own wrist. The tower breathed with me.
Katria’s eyes caught the reflection of the sea below—glints of red fire and white fracture curling inside them. She looked like the first sunrise Winter had ever seen. I hated that I thought it. I hated that I couldn’t stop.
“Kaelith,” she said softly, “what are you afraid will happen if you stop fighting everything?”
“That I’ll destroy it.”
“What?”
“All of it. You. Me. This.” I gestured at the light trembling across the ice. “You don’t understand what happens when a Frostbound loses control.”
“Then show me,” she said.
The words stole what little air the tower had left. Her tone wasn’t challenge—it was something quieter, almost mercy.
I closed the distance before I thought better of it. My hand rose again, bare now, glove forgotten somewhere between us. I stopped just shy of her cheek. Heat coiled at the edge of my palm, the kind that could crack stone.
Her breath brushed my wrist. “I don’t believe you’d hurt me.”
“You should.”
“I don’t.”
The sky outside trembled. A long fissure of light stretched across the aurora, bleeding down toward the horizon. The Sea of Glass moaned in answer. I should have stepped back. I should have frozen every emotion where it stood.
Instead, I let the warmth reach her skin. It was faint, only a whisper, but she closed her eyes as if the touch burned sweet.
The frostlight leapt in a single bright arc along the wall. Cracks radiated outward, glowing. The sound was not thunder but something more intimate—the sound of a realm unmaking itself, quiet and inevitable.
I drew my hand away like a man waking from a dream. The air between us steamed; her breath came quick and visible.
“I told you,” I managed, voice unsteady. “I destroy what I touch.”
She opened her eyes. “Maybe you just thaw it.”
That small, impossible smile nearly undid me. For a moment the ache in my chest wasn’t cold at all—it was unbearable heat.
Then the tower shuddered. Ice split across the floor, sending lines of light crawling up the walls. The Sea of Glass below erupted in a long,echoing crack that went on and on, the sound of a continent breaking apart.
Katria turned toward the noise, but I couldn’t look away from her. The world was ending, and all I could see was the shape of her in the red light.
A rush of wind slammed through the tower, and instinct moved before reason. I caught her by the waist, pulling her against me as the first shards of ice rained down from the ceiling. She gasped—half shock, half something else—and for a single heartbeat she didn’t resist.
