It repeats on me now, an echo from the past.
I’m immersed in snow, chilled to the bone, pushing against the weight of an emptiness that has drained my heart of all love and all hope, and yet…I feel everything. Every part of my body is awake and yearning for the stroking touch of heated hands…
Heated hands.
Hands that stroke me, warm me, and bring life back to every inch of my body.
I don’t know how far the heat in the vision was going to take me because the vision ended before the yearning was quenched. I don’t know if it means I need him to hold me, or…
I don’t know.
But he’s right.
My body was ready to die. My mind was ready to die.
I’m only alive because of the punishing song he continues to sing. A song that is undoubtedly driven by his Lethian Voice and has somehow forced my soul back into my body—a bodythat is frozen and empty of blood…a body that can’t sustain life unless I can somehow get warm.
Heated hands.
I need heat to live.
“Save my body,” I snarl with all my might, compelling my next scream to form a command so full of fury that I don’t recognize my own voice. “Make me warm.”
Somehow. I don’t care how.
The only way my body will survive is with warmth, and I will accept any means of making that happen.
At my cry, the Frost King’s startled eyes snap to mine, his irises nightmarishly pale.
The note he was humming dies in his throat, the punishing song fading, but his sudden pause only brings a different pain.
Without his song, I feel death creeping back into my limbs.
I’ve clearly startled him, but I don’t have time to wait for his response.
Wrenching my now-free upper arm forward, I slap my frozen hand against his chest, my palm to his heart, my hand too numb to feel his clothing or skin.
At the same time, I push myself closer to him, drawing on my dwindling reserves of strength to force myself upright and to slide my legs to either side of his hips. Trying to get as close to him as I can. For he is alive, and a living body is a source of warmth.
He’s frozen where he kneels, his arms tight at my back while the wind plucks at us.
In that moment of stillness, snowflakes gather on his shoulders.
Not a single, gorgeous crystal of ice melts against his skin.
Oh, but I was wrong.
He has no warmth.
He is as cold as the snowstorm swirlingaround us.
My hope for salvation vanishes and a whimper passes my lips. “Please. Give me warmth.”
His head lowers to mine, and his voice carries none of the punishing melody that brought me back to myself.
Instead, he sounds hollow. “I have no warmth to give.”
My cracked lips turn down in despair, but I can’t give up.
