“Or what?” she whispered.
I didn’t answer. Couldn’t.
The ground trembled, a deep, rolling note that climbed through my boots, through her spine, until we were both shaking with it. Light bled up through the cracks in the stone. It painted her face, her throat, her lips—
Stop.
But I didn’t. My hand slid from her cheek to the nape of her neck, fingers threading into her hair. The contact was a spark, small at first, then wild. The frost around our feet hissed and broke apart, running in rivulets down the stones.
She made a sound—half breath, half disbelief. The sound of someone on the edge of surrender.
“Kaelith,” she whispered again.
Everything inside me snapped taut. The frostlight exploded outward, threads of brilliance racing across the ceiling. Outside, the Sea of Glass answered with a low roar; the cracks on its surface flared like veins of molten silver.
I should have feared it, but all I could think of was the feel of her heartbeat under my palm.
“I warned you,” I said, voice raw.
“I’m not afraid.”
She reached for me then, her fingers brushing the side of my face. Heat and cold collided—steam rising where her skin met mine. I shut my eyes against it, against her, against the flood of everything I’d kept buried.
The first scream of the Veil tore through the sky.
Light poured in through the tower’s open arch, twisting, alive. It coiled around us like a living flame, brilliant and blinding, and for an instant I couldn’t tell if it came from the heavens or from the space between our bodies.
I could taste the air turning electric; I couldhearher heartbeat echo in my bones.
The wind struck the tower, hurling ice and dust around us. I caught her against me instinctively, holding her close as the storm broke. The moment my arms closed around her, the world erupted.
The light didn’t burst—itunraveled.Threads of silver ripped through the air like a thousand harp strings snapping at once.I felt each one in my chest, vibrating against my ribs.
Katria gasped, and the sound dragged me back from the brink of blindness.Her face glowed with reflected fire, strands of hair rising as if the air itself had turned to static.My arms were still around her.If I let go, the storm would take her.
“Hold on,” I breathed.
“To what?” she shouted over the roar.
“To me.”
The frostlight burned white-hot along the seams of my armor, searing my skin. I pushed my magic outward, trying to cage the chaos, but it only coiled tighter, hungrier. The tower floor split in two jagged lines beneath our feet; the world smelled of iron and snow and the faint sweetness of her breath.
She pressed her palms against my chest, not in rejection—in instinct, to steady us both. Heat spread through the point of contact. The light bent toward her, not me. Itwantedher.
“Katria—”
Her eyes locked on mine. “You can’t stop it.”
“I can try.”
I forced the frost back into my veins, summoning every lesson of discipline, every shard of the crown that had been hammered into me since childhood. Control is safety. Distance is order. But none of those things belonged here.
The magic surged again, answering not to command but to desire. The line between the two vanished. I heard my own heartbeat in the thunder. Hers answered a beat behind. When they aligned, the tower walls bowed inward, glassy frost turning liquid.
“Kaelith!”
Her voice cut through the noise. I turned toward it—toward her—and the motion broke whatever fragile hold I had. Power rushed out like breath from a wound. The windows shattered. Shards hung suspended in the air, spinning slowly in the red glow. In each one, I saw a reflection of her face—eyes wide, light spilling from them.
