Page 231 of Frost and Death
“It’s okay,” I murmur up to Jerrick through a pained smile.
He looks down, his entire expression forlorn.
I seek his hand, not knowing if he can feel the circles I am drawing along his skin to comfort him. “You get to find someone to break your curse. You get to findlove—you get to find your happy again, Jer.”
I inhale the mixture of cologne, leather, and blood.
One last time.
A presence lowers as everything feels heavy—so dark.
I can’t tell who it is, and I don’t even want to look. I keep my attention on Jerrick as long as I can, smiling faintly at him.
But I just want to rest my eyes.
“Tove, you fool,” Jerrick whispers.
A beam of light shines in the darkness, the sense of something foreign leaving my body. It scrapes my skin, feeling just as painful, if not more so than when I was stabbed.
I slowly blink, yellow light in full view. It is blinding and warm.
“We need to move her,” someone says.
“But what about the frost coming from Lord Nikolaj?” a man asks.
“We need to warm her first,” another declares.
“What about—”
My mind drifts...
A warm comfort grazes my chest, my arms, my legs, and my feet. It spreads along my body, light and sweet.
It reminds me so much of Jerrick’s magic.
Maybe when I wake, I can compose a melody to remember how sweet and serene this warmth is, too.
Cologne fills my senses as a hard solid cushion barricades me. Nuzzling in close, the nostalgic fondness of home draws a smile from my lips.
Images of Jerrick’s face blur in my mind.
His face swirls and swishes away, converting into a room adorned in candlelight.
A beautiful vision of a couple sitting on a piano bench together, heads resting against one another. One, a woman with long silver-blonde locks, runs her hands up and down the entirety of the piano, laughing. In the other, a man with black shoulder-length hair loops an arm around her and scoots closer, lifting his head to kiss the top of the woman’s. The vision is one of what I wish for in my own life, wishing I had the strength to utter those three precious, tenderlyperfectwords to a man who never once believed I was a monster.
A man who stole my breath away when I first laid eyes on him.
A man who stole my heart, connected my soul, and gave me the briefest of glimpses of finding my happy again...
I love you.
Darkness surrounds me as the phantom pain drifting through me dissipates. I revel in the void’s embrace, descending into the abyss. Warmth blankets itself around me as I take in fuzzy auras that flash to life with familiar faces.Threefamiliar faces.
One female, long silver-platinum hair, eyes pale and blue like mine, holding the hand of another woman, whose dark strands matches that of the last person, a man, resting his hands on the two women’s shoulders.
Warm, familiar hazel eyes come into focus, and my lips tremble.
“I’m home,” I whisper, running into the arms of my mother, my father, and my sister.
